Romney Up, Gingrich Down, Dollar Under Challenge, Jesse Blasts Grammys, Coke Busted at UN

January 27th, 2012 - by: danny

Today: 1-2 PM Tune in to News Dissector Radio on Progressive Radio Network.com or PRN.fm

Backlash Neutering Newt

The conservative Washington Times is reporting that what was up is now down, as a conservative backlash reportedly sets in against Newt Gingrich in Florida.

”A Rasmussen poll conducted Wednesday night shows Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich by 8 points in Florida. The polling firm Insider Advantage also found a big swing toward Romney.

•Boston Globe: Hightlights From Last Night’s “Debate”

•Joke from the Yes Men:

New York, NY — Five months ago, in an effort to draw attention to the bigoted nature of the current debate around immigration in the United States, a group of activists got together to come up with the most outlandish approach imaginable to immigration issues: Self-deportation. The result– www. SelfDeport.org– launched last fall, cheerily reminding Americans unsure about the status of their immigrant forebearers that “Stopping Illegal Citizenship Starts with You.”

During this past Monday nights GOP debate, Mitt Romney stole the idea and passed it off as his own

•Skip Mendler Sends In another GOP Joke

So the RNC decides that they have to do something before their candidates all destroy each other – so they call a special super-secret conclave down in Miami for the four Presidential candidates. They ask each one this question: “If you couldn’t be President, what job would you accept instead?”

Mitt Romney says, “I’d like to be Secretary of the Treasury – then I could use my expertise in business and finance, and be in charge of all that money.”

Rick Santorum says, “I’d like to be Secretary of HHS – then I could do something about contraception and abortion.”

Ron Paul says, “I’d like to be VP – then I could be in charge of the Senate, and make sure that nothing gets done by government.’

Newt Gingrich says, “Emperor.”

News of Note

•AP: Obama Pushes Old Ideas

Fluent: ‘Nuclear row: Iran President Ahmadinejad offers talks’

Fluent: Socialist ‘French presidential candidate Francois Hollande unveils manifesto’ on Fluent News. Here is the link:

Fluent: ‘Davos 2012: Bill Gates commits $750m to fight AIDS’ Here is the link:

Fluent: ‘Taxpayers still owed $132.9 billion from financial bailout; some gone forever, watchdog says’:

The US Dollar: Going, Going, Gone?

Independent: Robert Fisk, The Demise of The Dollar

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. “Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable,” he told the Asia and Africa Review. “We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security.”

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil - yet again turning the region’s conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. “One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations,” he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China’s extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America’s power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China’s growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China’s reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.
Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America’s trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington’s control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. “The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies,” a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent.

“The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won’t be able to use the US dollar.”

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years’ time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

LBN: Fed Signals Recovery Is Years Away

The Federal Reserve, declaring that the economy would need help for years to come, said Wednesday it would extend by 18 months the period that it plans to hold down interest rates in an effort to spur growth. The Fed said that it now planned to keep short-term interest rates near zero until late 2014, continuing the transformation of a policy that began as shock therapy in the winter of 2008 into a six-year campaign to increase spending by rewarding borrowers and punishing savers.

Its Only Money

The Hill: Senate kills measure to stop President Obama from raising debt limit ?

President Obama will raise the nation’s debt limit to $16.39 trillion after the Senate on Thursday killed a measure to stop the president from adding another $1.2 trillion to the total.

After just over two hours of debate, the Senate voted 44-52 to block a motion to disapprove the debt-limit increase, which the House passed overwhelmingly last week. Four Senate Republicans missed the vote.

The $1.2 trillion debt increase is expected to cover the nation’s borrowing requirements until after the November election.

Salon: Wall Street Execs Are Major Obama Donors

LA Times: Fire them? Federal employees, retirees owe $3.4 billion in taxes

A recent IRS report showing that current and retired federal employees owe more than $3.4 billion in income taxes is fueling a drive on Capitol Hill to fire — and prohibit the hiring of — tax delinquents on Uncle Sam’s payroll.

China: How Tough Is Tough?

WAJ: Conservative World Affairs Journal Backs Obama on China

Gordon Chang writes: “I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules,” said President Obama in his State of the Union message on Tuesday. And to make sure other nations comply with their obligations, he announced the creation of the “Trade Enforcement Unit.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the new grouping will be a task force combining officials from the Treasury, Commerce, and Energy Departments as well as the US Trade Representative’s office. Despite the generic name, the target of the Trade Enforcement Unit is China.??China may have racked up as much as a $300 billion trade surplus against America last year; if it failed to achieve that record-smashing mark, it was only billion or two short. In any event, it will surely surpass its 2010 surplus against the US of $273.1 billion.

The 2010 deficit with China is the largest single-country one in the history of the United States. ??If there were any time for the White House to get serious about Beijing’s predatory trade policies, this is it. Clearly, China’s surpluses are not sustainable, especially in a period of deteriorating economic conditions. Last Wednesday, the World Bank downgraded its global growth estimate by a full percentage point to 2.5 percent. ??The president is right to highlight the China issue, and perhaps his organizational approach will result in more effective policies. Ted Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations, in comments carried in the January 12th Nelson Report, correctly called the task force proposal “the most comprehensive effort by any administration to rethink approaches to trade enforcement since the creation of the WTO.”

Occupy London: Remembering and Recreating The Dialectics of Liberation

HP: American Mayors Monitoring Occupy

Economy via: BP Newswire:

FT: Capital controls are not beggar thy neighbor

Al Ahram (Cairo): New IMF loan would be ‘odious’ and illegitimate, says Egypt debt amnesty group

Must Read: The New York Times, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.”

IPA: Radhika Balakrishan, Executive director of the Center for Global Leadership and professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, comments:

“With something like an iPad, it’s not just creating the finished product — we need to look at the value added that is happening at each step in the supply chain. There are issues of secrecy in the supply chain, what each level is being given to make that part of the product. It’s possible that some of the suppliers who are being blamed simply cannot produce their components at the rate set by Apple without treating workers horribly.

“We basically have a system of self-monitoring by corporations. There used to be an agency at the UN that did monitoring — The United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations — but that was basically ended in the 1990s. The International Labor Organization is important but can’t hold companies accountable, only governments — and governments frequently plead that they are fundamentally at the mercy of corporations that would leave if they were made to pay and treat workers better.

“We need a global perspective in how to make corporations accountable, what kind of trading system we have and

•The Week: Prison Without Punishment

•Egypt: Americans Not Allowed To Leave Egypt

Sam LaHood, the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and the head of the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) Cairo office, and 5 others, were blocked from departing Egypt earlier this week. He, along with a dozen other American NGO colleagues, have been placed on an Egyptian “no-fly” list, officials with IRI told Yahoo News Thursday.

The younger LaHood was blocked at passport control when he went to the Cairo airport Saturday, Lorne Craner, the head of the IRI, a Washington-based pro-democracy non-government organization, told Yahoo News.

Is Nothing Sacred?

BBC: Cocaine Seized At UN Headquarters

Cocaine seized at UN headquarters in New York

UN headquarters The cocaine arrived at the UN building’s mailroom, police said

A bag containing 16kg (35.5lb) of cocaine was found at the United Nations headquarters last week, a police spokesman in New York has confirmed.

The drugs were in a bag printed with a version of the UN symbol which arrived at the organization’s mailroom, setting off a security alert.

With Jesse at The “Summit”

Yesterday, I stopped at Reverend Jesse Jackson’s annual “Wall Street Summit” at the Sheaton. The event used to take place at the now long gone Windows of the World at the World Trade Center. Many workers at the restaurant perished on 9/11. Yesterday there was an Occupy Hip Hop event.

I met one of Malcolm X’s daughter and listened in to a very personal exchange between her and Jesse’s wife, Jackie, a long time activist about distinguishing between personal/political attacks and the work of political leaders.

I also learned that the Reverent sent a letter to the head of the Grammys protesting their decision to drop various categories of music from award consideration. Here’s an early text:

Mr. Neil Portnow
President and CEO
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Via: neil@grammy.com.

Dear Mr Portnow:

The Rainbow Push Coalition, one of our nation’s leading civil rights organizations, has been advised by some of its members and supporters in the entertainment community, including recording artists, that the National Academy of Recording Arts And Sciences has arbitrarily, and without input or a vote of its membership, decided to eliminate traditional categories in your annual awards competition.

We share their alarm at the shrinking of musical diversity at a time when our country needs to celebrate all of its cultural traditions.

When the American public is not exposed to those traditions on the Grammy awards telecast, they are likely to be uninformed about them. The consequence: less tolerance and awareness of how our diverse cultures contribute to the American mosaic.

Many of us learn about each other first through our music and cultural interdependence.

Needless to say, we in the civil and human rights movement, become very alarmed when decisions are made that will flatten cultural knowledge. Perhaps that’s why we agree with one of your very first Grammy winners, the great Frank Sinatra, who insisted that the Grammys must be about music, not sales:

He said, “Remember ladies and gentlemen, it’s about excellence, not popularity.”?

We were shocked to learn that some of the categories dropped from the Grammys constitute the very heart and soul of the music that nourishes and inspires minority communities. It is also the music that helps define the larger American experience.

They include: Latin Jazz, Traditional R&B, Traditional and Contemporary Jazz, World Music, Native American, Cajun/Zydeco, Hawaiian, Polka, Instrumental Rock, Traditional and Contemporary Blues, Gospel, Mexican and other ethnic and instrumental categories.

Your corporate decision will make it much harder for many talented artists to get attention for their work and the recognition they deserve.

That’s not fair.

We are urging you to review this ill-considered decision and reverse it before it brings irreparable harm to the image, stature and respect that the Grammys justifiably enjoys.

Already, there are artists denouncing this decision as racist, and threatening to picket the Awards ceremony.

Others are endorsing their concerns—like we are at Rainbow Push—and fear that this controversy could, potentially, polarize the music world in the same way that our political world had been divided by often ugly but deeply felt and passionate emotions.

Music should be a bridge to unity, not another irritant unraveling our culture.

We would like to meet with you urgently to express our concerns and to see if we might help resolve this conflict to insure a just and fair outcome and allow the Grammys to do what they do best.

Sincerely,

Reverend Jesse Jackson
President, Rainbow Push

Mavis’s Message To Neil

Kent Welton writes:

“On Jan. 13 the Atlanta Jewish Times featured a column by its owner-publisher suggesting that Israel might someday need to “order a hit” on the president of the United States. In the column, publisher Andrew Adler describes a scenario in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would need to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel.”

“Take a look at this video of Obama kissing Israeli keester (Warning: You may want to cover your keyboard with a puke-guard as this is truly nauseating):”

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/scandalous-new-campaign-video-obama-takes-israel-pandering-dangerous-levels

And then take a look at this:

http://news.yahoo.com/gingrich-donor-casino-mogul-israeli-hardliner-081717911.html

Is there any question about who our overlords are? The message here is loud and clear: We’ll pick your ‘President’ and if he doesn’t do our bidding enthusiastically enough, we’ll simply have Mossad take him out.

What a bunch of pitiful, spineless fools Americans have become to allow this to continue.

For truth and justice — galen

On 1/25/2012 11:10 PM, Glutimas Maximus wrote:

The uproar over this “suggestion” that Israel murder Obama is not because the comment was made. It is because this guy Adler was telling the truth. These people are both willing and capable of killing anyone that gets in their way. They have proven that time and time again. See this article. It reflects just the tip of the iceberg.

If anyone else said “the President should be killed,” the Secret Service would have them in manacles faster than you could say Lee Harvey Oswald. This clown not only said it, he had the balls to publish his remarks in a newspaper. In the public domain. Do you think the same fate awaits Mr. Adler, one of the chosen? Don’t bet on it. What does that say about the United States and our current state of occupation? “

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