DON’T EXPECT MUCH FROM COPHENHAGEN SUMMIT: WORLD LEADERS NOT READY DESPITE YEARS OF PLANNING AND WARNINGS

(AP) President Barack Obama and other world leaders agreed Sunday that next month’s much-anticipated climate change summit will be merely a way station, not the once hoped-for end point, in the search for a worldwide global warming treaty.

“There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days,” said Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economic matters.

IN CHINA, OBAMA SPEAKS TO STUDENTS ABOUT INTERNET FREEDOM, NOT POLITICAL RIGHTS

NY TIMES: ““I should be honest, as president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time,” he said. But, he added, “because in the United States, information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

NYT: Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform

“Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.”

Remember when many of these companies agreed to support health care reform?

THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES OF THE WEEK
OBAMA IN ASIA, MAKING NICE
WILL THERE BE MORE PROSECUTIONS OF WALL ST CRIMINALS?

PARIS, SUNDAY NOV 15: The suspicion and distrust of President Obama has reached across the oceans, even here in France where the Obama glow captured a population who had enough with his predecessor years earlier. Last night I was offered a $1000 bet by a former banker that our President wlll end up working for Goldman Sachs., and that the Presidency is just a relegitimizing interregnum for his desired destiny.

That banker, Max Keiser went from working in the markets to predicting their fall, a poet, he says of the coming collapse. He is on the air, on radio and TV preaching the virtues of owning gold as he predicts the dollar’s ongoing demise. Max, who has TV and radio shows focused on financial scandals, was among those who came to a private screening of my new film Plunder on Saturday night. We did an interview on Friday.

Watch: Keiser’s Report on Goldman Sachs

Ironically, other analysts see the fall of the dollar as desirable because it makes US exports less expensive and will help the recovery.

Writes Joe Gagnon, a currency expert on BaselineScenario.com:

“A lower dollar is good news for US exporters and foreign importers and bad news for foreign exporters and US importers. However, if policymakers respond appropriately, there is no reason to fear overall harm either to the US economy or to foreign economies. Indeed, a lower dollar could jumpstart the long-overdue rebalancing of the global economy away from excessive US trade deficits and foreign reliance on export-led growth, putting the world on track for a more sustainable expansion.”

Meanwhile, here’s another factor to blame for the financial crisis says Carl Worden, an Oregon based conservative:

Carl F. Worden: “I rarely hear from pro-free traders anymore because most of them have now realized their error, not because of anything I, or Ross Perot, or any other sane person tried to tell them, but because most people do have a grasp of the obvious, and it is now obvious that enacting those free trade agreements was the direct cause of the economic mess the majority of Americans now find ourselves in. It wasn’t the Stock Market collapse or the housing bubble that did it; those were mere ’secondary infections’ that occurred as a result of the free trade agreements and the elimination of strict banking regulations put into place after the Great Depression. Those responsible for the latter were a strange co-op of Republicans and Democrats who received massive campaign contributions from the international corporations who almost exclusively benefited from enactment of the free trade agreements. Go figure.

CONSPIRACIES R’US

France has always bad a culture favorable to conspiracies. One friend here is reading a book arguing that the American revolution and colonization was the work of secret societies. But is not just France. Two of the biggest are promoted by Americans. One involves the swine flu vaccine which is seen as a plot of evil:

Eg: “The biggest story on the Planet today is the outbreak of a very serious Advanced Biological War virus in Europe. The second biggest story on the Planet is the suppression of this story for almost two weeks by the corporate owned mainstream news media.

‘There is a lot we know and a lot that we can only speculate on about what is unfolding in Central Europe. We know that in mid-October, less than a month ago, there was a growing number of cases of what many thought was Swine Flu (A/H1N1) in the western part of the Ukraine. We know that many hundreds if not thousands of people in western Ukraine witnessed low flying light airplanes aerosol spraying something over Ukrainian cities during the days of October 29, 2009 and October 31, 2009. We know that beginning the night of October 29th, massive numbers of people begin to get very sick”

The other compares Major Hasan, the military shrink now charged with 13 counts of murder. The NY Times reports, “Investigators are trying to determine whether Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a terrorist driven by extremism, a troubled loner, or both. as a modern day Lee Harvey Oswald, a “patsy” in a convoluted scheme.”

Webster Tarpley predictably offers his own view:

“In the wake of the massacre at Fort Hood Texas , two principal theories have emerged to explain the conduct of the accused shooter, identified by the U.S. Army as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist of Jordanian-Palestinian ancestry.

One of these theories is embraced by left liberals and other supporters and acolytes of the Obama regime, and argues that Major Hasan is a sincere and devout Muslim who was the victim of a tragic contradiction between his religious faith and the logic of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both the heritage of the odious Bush-Cheney regime.

According to this version, Hasan must be viewed as a troubled and tormented individual who “snapped,” breaking down psychologically under the stress of his awful predicament.….

The other theory is the one advocated by assorted neocons, reactionaries, Islamophobes and others generally hostile to Obama.

This account maintains that Major Hasan was a homegrown, self-starting Islamic terrorist, trumpeting his devotion to jihad and suicide bombing, seeking to make contact with “Al Qaeda,” and generally filled with hate for America , for freedom, and for his fellow soldiers.

In this view, it is only the pervasive political correctness and multicultural obsession of the subversive-riddled and soft on terrorism Obama regime that prevented Major Hasan from being neutralized before he could act, and which prevents Obama and his Democratic allies from telling the truth after the fact.

These views are both superficial, naïve, and inadequate.

They amount to two prongs of an articulated campaign of media hysteria and mass manipulation designed on the one hand to prod the dithering Wall Street puppet Obama – who is having second thoughts about his own political survival — into an early decision in favor of massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan for the purpose of hastening the breakup of Pakistan, and thus threatening China.

On the other hand, the delirium of Islamophobic hatred being ginned up against Major Hasan by the usual cast of reactionary radio ogres (Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Levin) seeks to accentuate and strengthen the racist and xenophobic elements in the militant anti-Obama opposition, in particular among the Tea Party movement. The decision to put the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confreres on trail in New York City, plus the recent government seizure of numerous US mosques and other buildings on the grounds that they are Iranian assets, also contribute to a growing mood of anti-Moslem hysteria…..

Major Hasan can be seen as a mixture of Lee Harvey Oswald, legendary 9/11 “suicide pilot” Mohammed Atta, and Cho Seung-Hui (the alleged April 2007 Virginia Tech shooter). He also has elements of reputed Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and of John Hinckley Jr., who was involved in an attempt to kill President Reagan – both of whom survived the operations in which they were implicated. He thus represents a new cocktail of patsy ingredients.”

Meanwhile, CBS reports the Major is in bad shape:

“Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, who is recovering in an Army hospital’s intensive care unit, is in “extremely serious” condition, retired Col. John Galligan said this morning.

Galligan met with his client yesterday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, after Nasan was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. Their meeting lasted about an hour.

Galligan was joined by an unidentified member of Hasan’s family.”

“He cannot get up and walk,” Galligan told a group of reporters gathered at Ft. Hood’s main entrance, adding that Hasan’s paralysis is likely from the waist down. Galligan said that his client was also experiencing intense pain in his hands.

HASAN DRIVING SOME WILD

The conspiracy theorists are certainly right that THE RIGHT is going nuts spinning everything and anything Obama says into its antithesis within hours, using access to the internet and large lists. One examample, the well organized PAC of the MINUTEMEMEN, the folks who patrol the Southern borders to menace Mexicans who cross illegally.

Listen to their husterical tone as they seek to discredit hundreds of years of trial by Jury and the forget the successful prosecution of earlier waves of terror types like the Blind Sheikh:

“Fellow Patriot,

Yep, you read that right…Barack Obama has ordered his appointee U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to bring the self-proclaimed 9/11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four of his accomplices to New York City - just blocks from Ground Zero - where they will be given a U.S. citizen’s ‘fair trial’ including due process, court appointed attorneys, and likely TRIAL BY JURY (who are their PEERS??)!

AG Holder quipped, “I am confident in the ability of our courts to provide these defendants a fair trial, just as they have for over 200 years.”

This is UNPRECEDENTED and UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution specifically grant the rights to due process and fair trial by jury to United States citizens only!

What a travesty!!! Barack Obama’s world of kumbaya global-feel-good political correctness says we ought to care more about what third world Islamist enemies think of us than whether justice is served!”

What kind of “justice”do they favor? Probably executions with the bodies dumped in a lime pit. I am sure they are happy by the latest development in Ohio:

“Ohio is set to resume executions using a single drug that has been used in the US to euthanise pets but never to put condemned prisoners to death.”

A NEW GITMO?

AP: CHICAGO – The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday.

The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made.

OBAMA IN ASIA

Meanwhile Obama is in Asia “holding out the hand of frienship; “ The Guardian reportsUnited States president starts his four-nation tour of the far east by holding out the hand of friendship to North Korea and Burma. He is said to be placating China, not urging the government there to make reforms.

Meanwhile, Mr Gates, his Defense Secretary is barring the release of torture photos according to Mother Jones

“The new exemption’s requirements are stunningly lax. In order to withhold the photos, Gates simply had to certify, as he did in the court filing, that “public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.” In other words, their release had to endanger someone, somewhere…”


You would like to think he would be more attentive to news like this:

Lack of health care killed 2,266 US veterans last year: study
(AFP)


WASHINGTON — The number of US veterans who died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance was 14 times higher than the US military death toll in Afghanistan that year, according to a new study.

The analysis produced by two Harvard medical researchers estimates that 2,266 US military veterans under the age of 65 died in 2008 because they lacked health coverage and had reduced access to medical care.

That figure is more than 14 times higher than the 155 US troop deaths in Afghanistan in 2008, the study says.

NEWS LIKE THIS COULD TORPEDO WHAT’S LEFT OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

WP: Report: Bill would reduce senior care

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending — one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system — would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions

NY TIMES QUOTE OF DAY ON HEALTH CARE DEBATE:

“We were approached by the lobbyist, who asked if we would be willing to enter a statement in the Congressional Record. I asked him for a draft. I tweaked a couple of words. There’s not much reason to reinvent the wheel on a Congressional Record entry.”

STANLEY V. WHITE, chief of staff for Representative Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania, one of dozens of lawmakers who used speeches ghostwritten by a biotechnology company during the health-care debate in the House.

MEMORIES OF PRAGUE

Dick Meister, ZSpace: Nov 14, 2009 By Dick Meister

It’s a time of celebration in Prague this month. A time to mark the November day 20 years ago when the “Velvet Revolution” erupted. A time to mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet rule that had crushed democratic reform movements in Czechoslovakia and its eastern and central European neighbors.

For two decades, Soviet troops and Soviet-controlled political leaders had been in charge. But then, on that November day in 1989, hundreds of protesting university students marched through downtown Prague. Riot police moved in to club and beat the peaceful marchers, prompting widespread outrage and a month of peaceful demonstrations — the “Velvet Revolution” that would soon lead to the end of Soviet domination.

It was a realization, at last, of the high hopes for liberation raised 20 years earlier. I was there in the hopeful summer of 1968, one of the journalists who had rushed over to record the miracle that was occurring throughout central and eastern Europe during what was known worldwide as “The Prague Spring.”

NO, NO, NO: SURPRISE: ISRAEL SHOOTS DOWN PALESTINIAN STATEHOUSE

CSM: Israel rejects Palestinian statehood bid via the UN

“Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a new Palestinian plan to seek
unilateral statehood through a UN Security Council vote. Palestinian
leaders say the US and Israel leave them with no other option.”