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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Travis_Bickle who wrote (97819)	1/31/2007 3:15:56 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362603

Cali is quite liberal and progressive and Gore should do very well out there...;-) -s2@LastTimeICheckedWharfRatWasFromCaliforniaToo.com

To: Travis_Bickle who wrote (97819)	1/31/2007 3:47:00 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362603

Good article by Chalmers Johnson. An excerpt: Whatever future developments may prove to be, my best guess is that the U.S. will continue to maintain a façade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the U.S. any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2001-2002. It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system—or for military rule, revolution, or simply some new development we cannot yet imagine. Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a further loss of control over international affairs, a sudden need to adjust to the rise of other powers, including China and India, and a further discrediting of the notion that the United States is somehow exceptional compared to other nations. We will have to learn what it means to be a far poorer country—and the attitudes and manners that go with it. As Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism , observes: "U.S. global power, as presently conceived by the overwhelming majority of the U.S. establishment, is unsustainable. . . The empire can no longer raise enough taxes or soldiers, it is increasingly indebted, and key vassal states are no longer reliable. . . The result is that the empire can no longer pay for enough of the professional troops it needs to fulfill its self-assumed imperial tasks." In February 2006, the Bush administration submitted to Congress a $439 billion defense appropriation budget for fiscal year 2007. As the country enters 2007, the administration is about to present a nearly $100 billion supplementary request to Congress just for the Iraq and Afghan wars. At the same time, the deficit in the country's current account—the imbalance in the trading of goods and services as well as the shortfall in all other cross-border payments from interest income and rents to dividends and profits on direct investments—underwent its fastest ever quarterly deterioration. For 2005, the current account deficit was $805 billion, 6.4 percent of national income. In 2005, the U.S. trade deficit, the largest component of the current account deficit, soared to an all-time high of $725.8 billion, the fourth consecutive year that America's trade debts set records. The trade deficit with China alone rose to $201.6 billion, the highest imbalance ever recorded with any country. Meanwhile, since mid-2000, the country has lost nearly three million manufacturing jobs. To try to cope with these imbalances, on March 16, 2006, Congress raised the national debt limit from $8.2 trillion to $8.96 trillion. This was the fourth time since George W. Bush took office that it had to be raised. The national debt is the total amount owed by the government and should not be confused with the federal budget deficit, the annual amount by which federal spending exceeds revenue. Had Congress not raised the debt limit, the U.S. government would not have been able to borrow more money and would have had to default on its massive debts. Among the creditors that finance these unprecedented sums, the two largest are the central banks of China (with $853.7 billion in reserves) and Japan (with $831.58 billion in reserves), both of which are the managers of the huge trade surpluses these countries enjoy with the United States. This helps explain why our debt burden has not yet triggered what standard economic theory would dictate: a steep decline in the value of the U.S. dollar followed by a severe contraction of the American economy when we found we could no longer afford the foreign goods we like so much. So far, both the Chinese and Japanese governments continue to be willing to be paid in dollars in order to sustain American purchases of their exports. For the sake of their own domestic employment, both countries lend huge amounts to the American treasury, but there is no guarantee of how long they will want to, or be able to do so. Marshall Auerback, an international financial strategist, says we have become a "Blanche Dubois economy" (so named after the leading character in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire) heavily dependent on "the kindness of strangers." Unfortunately, in our case, as in Blanche's, there are ever fewer strangers willing to support our illusions. Full article at: tompaine.com

To: Travis_Bickle who wrote (97819)	1/31/2007 6:44:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362603

Al Gore Nobel nominee __________________________________________________________ The fight for the global climate is a fight for peace, say members of parliament Børge Brende and Heidi Sørensen, and they have nominated former US Vice-president Al Gore for a share of the Nobel Peace Prize. aftenposten.no The two green-thinking MPs suggest that Gore share the prize with Inuit Sheila Watt-Cloutier, in recognition for their efforts to put the danger posed by climate change on the global political agenda. "This is clearly, absolutely, one of the important efforts to achieve conflict prevention. Climate change can lead to enormous flows of refugees on a scale the world has never seen before. Fighting climate change is immensely important work for global peace," Heidi Sørensen, member of parliament for the Socialist Left Party (SV), told Aftenposten. "The Nobel Committee has previously been adept at addressing new threats with their awards. Climate change is one of the greatest and most serious threats humanity faces. The United Nations' climate panel now maintains that the earth may be changed more in the next 100 years than in the 10,000 years since the last ice age," Conservative Party MP and former Minister of the Environment Børge Brende said. The former US VP has toured the world the past year with the film "An Inconvenient Truth", which has actualized the climate change issue for a great many people. Gore has worked with environmental issues for over 20 years and had a decisive role in forming the Kyoto protocol for reducing CO2 emissions in 1997. Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a Canadian Inuit and for years has been one of the leaders of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents over 150,000 Inuit. In recent years she has concentrated on focusing attention on the rapid warming taking place in the Arctic, and made a massive effort to explain to world leaders that the Arctic is the planet's barometer of climate change. "Climate change is also a threat to global welfare. One hundred million climate refugees, major changes in potable water supply and a reduction in biological diversity that will first and foremost hit the poor who live in and depend upon nature - these things will quickly become a major security threat," Brende said. "Al Gore has done a very important job as former US VP and has created so much pressure in the USA that for the first time President Bush must now say that climate change is a problem. No other single person in the last year has done so much to put the threat of climate change on the agenda, and contributed to lasting changes in international policy," Børge Brende said. "Gore played a key role in Kyoto and Sheila Watt-Cloutier has opened the world's eyes to what is happening in the Arctic. When she communicated this, the climate debate took a new and important turn. She has communicated the drama and given it a face," Heidi Sørensen said.