Remember "Jobless Recoveries"?

Remember how, in the 1980s and 1990s, we used to laugh ruefully at the nonsensical notion of a "jobless recovery"? Good times. Now that the general public's standards have been lowered by thirty-years of failed neoliberal dogma, they think we're ready for the "increasing unemployment recovery."

As Mike Whitney mentioned, this so-called "recovery" is based on a US stock-market rally that's fueled by loose money from the US Federal Reserve. Unemployment continues to rise in the United States, household wealth continues to fall with falling real-estate values, which means that household debt there will be a growing burden. Given that consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the USA's GDP, and given that much consumer spending there was based on increasing levels of debt, this "recovery" in the USA seems unsustainable, to say the least.

As for Canada's "increasing unemployment recovery," it actually appears that we might just be getting started on our recession, as the effects of the plummeting US economy start to impact our export industries. It looks like the Bank of Canada (which appeared to have been caught off-balance by the enormity of this recession)'s prediction of a slow recovery is going to have to revised.

Economic Bullshit and Blackwater as "Murder Inc."

So I read two remarkable things last night. And then I read something else remarkable this morning.

David Lindorff at CounterPunch writes: "The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot." I have to say that his analysis makes a lot more sense than the "happy talk" from the Obama administration and the MSM:

Where is the consumer spending supposed to come from that used to represent a whopping 70% of economic activity in a United States that long ago stopped making things? The answer is: nowhere. The amount of lost wealth makes a joke of the celebrated Obama stimulus plan, which was less than $1 trillion, and which is spread out over two years.

There is simply no money to rekindle the orgy of consumer spending that kept the US economy afloat for so long.

Certainly, "happy talk" might get an economy going by boosting public confidence, but like Lindorff, I feel that consumers are just too over-extended and vulnerable to return to their previous role.

The MSM has been chirping about a rally in the stock markets again. For a long time I've found this to be absolutely inane. Stocks were trading at completely bogus price-earnings ratios for over a decade, it was obvious that any rationalism attached to the stock markets was long-divorced from anything to do with the real economy and more related to some gambler's mentality. Still, given today's circumstances, I've been wondering what could possibly be behind this rally in the financial markets. Apparently it's the Obama administration! In another CounterPunch article, Mike Whitney's "Bernanke's Shell Game" describes how the Federal Reserve is creating money to help boost the stock markets:

It means the revered professor Bernanke figured out a way to circumvent Congress and dump more than a trillion dollars into the stock market by laundering the money through the big banks and other failing financial institutions. As Kessler suggests, Bernanke knew the liquidity would pop up in the equities market, thus, building the equity position of the banks so they wouldn't have to grovel to Congress for another TARP-like bailout. Bernanke's actions demonstrate his contempt for the democratic process. The Fed sees itself as a government-unto-itself.
...
So, the magical "Green Shoots" stock market rally was fueled by a mere $400 billion from the money markets. The rest ($2.3 trillion) was main-lined into the market via Bernanke's quantitative easing (QE) program, of which Krugman and others speak so highly.

Meanwhile, of course, the real economy on which all of this is nominally based goes begging. There's a thin strand of thread anchoring this gigantic balloon to the earth. The danger, as Whitney and others point out, is that this is unsustainable. This "rally" depends upon continued monetary growth, supplied by the Fed, and as the Whitney's article points out, that's going to give foreign buyers of $US-denominated government savings bonds leery of the worth of those assets.

Finally, via "Crooks and Liars" there's this article from Jeffrey Scahill in The Nation, "Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder."

I've always found Eric Prince to be one of the more revolting and frightening products of the USA's degenerate political culture. A child of privilege who is also an elite killing machine and a fanatical Christian, founds a company of mercenaries and builds the world's largest private army. I'm getting inspired to create a leftist "James Bond" kind of agent to try to save the world from this sort of insanity.

What are the allegations? Prince's large-scale operation of smuggling illegal weapons into Iraq:

Among the additional allegations made by Doe #1 is that "Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq." He states that he personally witnessed weapons being "pulled out" from dog food bags. Doe #2 alleges that "Prince and his employees arranged for the weapons to be polywrapped and smuggled into Iraq on Mr. Prince's private planes, which operated under the name Presidential Airlines," adding that Prince "generated substantial revenues from participating in the illegal arms trade."

Employing violent racist sociopaths and steroid abusers knowingly:

Both individuals allege that Prince and Blackwater deployed individuals to Iraq who, in the words of Doe #1, "were not properly vetted and cleared by the State Department." Doe #2 adds that "Prince ignored the advice and pleas from certain employees, who sought to stop the unnecessary killing of innocent Iraqis." Doe #2 further states that some Blackwater officials overseas refused to deploy "unfit men" and sent them back to the US. Among the reasons cited by Doe #2 were "the men making statements about wanting to deploy to Iraq to 'kill ragheads' or achieve 'kills' or 'body counts,'" as well as "excessive drinking" and "steroid use." However, when the men returned to the US, according to Doe #2, "Prince and his executives would send them back to be deployed in Iraq with an express instruction to the concerned employees located overseas that they needed to 'stop costing the company money.'"

And murdering others who tried to alert federal authorities about these crimes:

Doe #2 alleges in a sworn declaration that, based on information provided to him by former colleagues, "it appears that Mr. Prince and his employees murdered, or had murdered, one or more persons who have provided information, or who were planning to provide information, to the federal authorities about the ongoing criminal conduct." John Doe #2 says he worked at Blackwater for four years; his identity is concealed in the sworn declaration because he "fear[s] violence against me in retaliation for submitting this Declaration." He also alleges, "On several occasions after my departure from Mr. Prince's employ, Mr. Prince's management has personally threatened me with death and violence."

The allegations against Prince are from two former Blackwater employees' sworn affadavits as part of a legal suit against Prince and his company for the murder of innocent Iraqis by the Iraqi families of those victims. I hope that somehow, someway, this will take this psychopathic Prince down permanently. Even in Obama's "forget the past, think about continuing these crimes in the future" administration.

Make of it what you will ...

I posted a link to the story of the child-raping Afghan National Police to Terry Glavin's blog five times. He's deleted every one. Here's my letter to him (also deleted):

Still no response to the stories of child-raping Afghan National Police Terry?
What's wrong with your blog, deleting inconvenient things like that?
I understand you went to Afghanistan. I wonder, if you'd seen any Karzai officials raping children, did you simply look the other way?
(And then write some pompous drivel about how critics of "the mission" are betraying the people of Afghanistan?)
You could argue the story is false. You could argue some lame nonsense about how raping children arises out of poor training. Or, you could incorporate this harsh reality into your blinkered view of the world and perhaps come out sadder and wiser.
Instead, you choose to gutlessly delete these references.

I guess the reason that I'm so incensed by this gutlessness is that, ... oh for god's sake, ... isn't being opposed to the rape of children some sort of litmus test for something?

But yet, Glavin will slither away from discussing this assault on his delusions but then type crap like this:

During the Israel-Hezbollah war last summer, this column examined Canada's so-called antiwar movement, and concluded that its conduct was squalid, and its "peace" was really about opposing Israel.
I expressed support for the struggles of the Palestinian people, but I pointed out that there's another, much larger, war going on. It's a war against modernity, against the emancipation of women, against the Jews, and against everything any self-respecting liberal or socialist or democrat has ever stood for.
...
This time, I'm here to say Canada's main "antiwar" groups have finally, fully, and openly exposed themselves to be active participants in that war. And they're on the side of the enemy.
For those of my readers who will continue to insist after reading this that that they are "shocked" and "appalled" that I write disparagingly about the key leadership of this country's "anti-war" movement, I'm afraid we no longer have anything to discuss.
For the last time, I am not "smearing the anti-war movement." The anti-war movement has disgraced itself.

Really Terry? So, where does child-rape fit in with "modernity, ... the emancipation of women, ... and ... everything any self-respecting liberal or socialist or democrat has ever stood for"? What version of the Whig Interpretation of History has child-rape as one of the stages on the path to liberal democracy.
And now, check out the vermin inhabiting Glavin's comments section:

Blazing Cat Fur said...
Terry your work is necessary and valued. I respect your decision to regain your life, just keep blogging. Sorry for gettin all maudlin here, but yours is a voice of reason and intelligence that needs to be heard. Keep blogging at the least!6:24 AM W.L. Mackenzie Redux said...
Great investigative blogging!The results and links your investigation has turned up are indeed shocking but not unexpected.The common thread between fanatical Islam and radical dogmatic communism is a shared mythology which holds "Zionists" (roughly translated this means the Jewish mercantile class of the world) responsible for all the failings of utopian idealists to produce the social utopia promised by the dogma to their constituents.As Islamists and paleo-communists wallow deeper in the obvious failings and human misery of outdated/errant social theory, they become more adamant to scapegoat someone/something for their falling short of utopia....as with all intellectually degenerate ideologies they trot out a scapegoat…the oldest one being the mythology of the vast conspiracy of the Joooooos. They seed it into the culture of their constituency as a placebo for dystopian mysery and a diversionary focal point for their follower's anger."Oh so you have no running water in your village comrade Alli?...this is because the globalist imperialism of Zionist Jewry does not want you to have it...the sons of Monkeys keep those
of the true faith in bondage to their international capitalist tyranny...they are the great Satan’s financiers...Islam can only be free when the Zionist pigs are driven from our lands (the genocide of Israel) and the Zionist imperialists taste the wrath of Mohamed's sword( global Jihad)"The “Borat” skit where he sings a Kazakistni folk song about “throwing the jews down the well so my country can bee free” is a satirical take on the backwards anti Zionist culture in the former soviet Balkan states.Can't you just hear the paleo-commies cheering on the similar anti Zionist Islamic dogmatic perversity?...it could have been said in a Moscow rally by Stalinists during the great social purges of the absolutist soviet ascension.Anti zionism/antisemitism and autocratic control over public morality is a tenet of Stalinist communism and Islamic extremism which is a natural ideological fit...we saw it in the Baathists and in the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Anti zionist/antisemetic culture still thrives in
most of the former soviet block….it is a deeply entrenched cultural remnant of radical communist dogmatics.So for me there is no surpise paleo-communists have found common ground with radical Islmists...what does surprise me is the size of this 5th columnist Marxist-Trotskyite-anti-semitic cabal in Canada…truly Orwellian they hide under “peace protester” banners....some one has to keep an eye on them and expose the treasonous alliances they form.Perhaps the next alternative media investigative front is exposing the link between fist nations extremists and the domestic 5th column left -Islamic fanatic bund...we routinely see both international worker's party and Hezbolla flags at native blockades and pro native land claim protest-marches.... strange bed fellows?...things that make you go hmmmm.
Keep up the great work Terry there is a lot of unseemly garbage that lies just beneath the white blanket of snow that is Canada's Christmas card picture image. Exposure is the first step to removing the garbage. It is the job of the alternate media to melt the snow so we see the dog-do on the lawn.
9:06 AM

Shona Holmes

Shona Holmes is the John McCain fan (read: "Idiot") who has decided to make herself the poster-girl for the "STOP healthcare for the poor" movement in the United States of America.

While Ms. Holmes's deadly, cancerous brain tumour has since been fact-checked down to a cyst, there's also the fact that the cyst was causing temporary blindness, which must have been traumatic. Also, there's been over a decade of growing waiting-lists caused by deliberate under-funding of healthcare by scumbag neoliberal politicians who couldn't have done a better job of discrediting our public healthcare system if they were in the employ of private health insurance companies.

But waiting-lists or not, Ms. Holmes's cyst was a "pre-existing condition" that a private insurer would have used to disqualify her for care, so she obviously has her head up her ass if she thinks she wouldn't have had to take out a second mortgage on her house and etc., if she'd lived in the USA with their for-profit system. And what her story has to do with those USians who can't afford healthcare at all is unclear. "I had to wait months for treatment. Don't push for a system that would at least pay for you to get diagnosed, because you might have to wait a few months for the care you're going to get. You're better off having nothing at all."

"A Creative Revolution" has a link that debunks the stories of hordes of us Canucks rushing over the border to get that healthcare we can't get at home.

CF Personnel Who Don't Support "The Mission" (tm.)?

Every time my local rag, "The Hamilton Spectator" prints a story about a local soldier serving in Afghanistan they seem to always ask if they support "the mission" over there, and invariably, the soldiers say that yes indeed they do.

My response to that is that I'm not going to change my mind about Canada in Afghanistan just because some interviewed soldier says that they are in complete accord with what we're doing there. Especially if they don't explain why they support it AT ALL. Sometimes they'll add some little touch about building schools, sending girls to school, and etc., but that's not enough for me either.

You could look into the eyes of a hundred children going to school and think "it's worth it." You could then look into the eyes of a hundred children, some dead, others wounded, others shattered by the deaths of their loved ones in a NATO air-strike and think "it's not worth it."

But I wonder whether an CF personnel feel obliged to say they support the mission when they talk to the media, because to criticize it would lead to trouble? Then, these meaningless assertions of agreement get to become fodder for the propaganda wars back home.

Obviously, there are also soldiers who are going to want to "see the job done" because their comrades died in the effort. But that's no reason for other people to vote for us staying.

I suppose, finally, that I could go to some pro-war military blogs and get some greater detailed accounts of their support for the mission, but in all honesty, I hate pro-war blogs, and I'm pretty sure it's all a fucking waste of time. If the pro-war mainstream media can't find someone to say something coherently and concisely after eight years of trying (and I've done some looking) then why should I descend into one of those internet snake-pits to read tiresome dirges about the global-Islamo-fascist conspiracy?

Wanted: A Better Grade of Troll

Recently, the schoolyard's been infected with a relatively large influx of internet trolls. (Either that, or it's just one obsessively deranged individual with a bunch of sock-puppets, a possibility too terrifying to really entertain.) The real problem is that it's the same old thing. Vague generalizations about how stupid I am, and/or stated concerns about my precarious mental health. Sometimes I'm in the mood to play with these trolls, to either back them into a corner to get them to actually attempt to prove that I'm as contemptibly stupid as they say, or to establish that they really have no ability to genuinely critique me and they're forced by necessity to resort to meaningless assertions.

I'm getting bored with this though. So my thinking here is to type this once-and-for-all entry that I can re-post anytime these individuals (or this one, pathetic individual) shows up with the usual garbage.

Here's the thing trolls: I don't know who you are. Your opinions about me are therefore unimportant to me. When you go to the trouble of typing out that you have a low opinion of me it has absolutely no impact. It has less than zero impact actually, because it's my belief that most of the people typing these stupid things do so because they're stupid people who believed in Saddam Hussein's WMDs, in bush II's policies and in stephen harper's brilliance. The empty insults from such people are like a validation of my blog.

If you REALLY want to make me feel bad, show me that I'm stupid. Show me that I fucked up. Show me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'll feel embarrassed, maybe even humiliated. But you know what else? In the end, the world will be a better place because you'll have taught me something, and you'll always have that over me.

If, however, you respond with words to the effect of "Why should I bother debating with an insane man/moron/leftist moonbat/stupid canuck/etc., etc., ad nauseum" then I'll only assume (rightly, obviously!) that you're actually incapable of destroying my views and defending your own.

Here's one of the latest examples of this meaningless criticism, provided by the dull-witted "vin":

Nice try twack,but the only embarassment here is your blog.It's quite rare to see this amount of bullshite all in one place.Yet here your blog sits like a steaming pile.How is that you can be so completly wrong in nearly everyway possible.That's quite an accomplishment.One would think that by blind,stupid,dumb luck you'd be right about something/anything at least once in awhile but no, you don't even have that going your way.Just another pompous pud looking for something to say.The fact that you take yourself so seriously is the real kicker .It's fantastic to see someone so absolutely sure of their own correctness in spite of everyday reason and common sense. battle.It wouldn't be so bad but your drivel is so stale.Can't you at least update it?

Notice that there's nothing in there specifically pertaining to anything I've actually said or done. It's just a string of insulting words that could be applied to anyone. Why should I care about this paragraph of insults? How could I feel embarrassed about how my writing inspires such bile when there's absolutely nothing in there to tie to my writing? Why should I feel sad or angry that somebody with the pseudonym "vin" or someone anonymous wrote this string of meaningless words? Why should I even care?

It says that I'm "completly wrong in nearly everyway possible" but it doesn't say how. It's even the case apparently that I haven't ever been right "by blind,stupid,dumb luck," but there's no evidence for this assertion.

I mean, really, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this drivel? Why would anyone even bother to go through the exertions of typing it? You could go to a conference on world experts on rocket-science and shout that same string of words at the world's foremost scientists and it would be just as meaningless, just as inapplicable. One would have to be an absolute idiot to imagine that I, or anyone else, would be at all affected by those words. And that's what causes me to think that my trolls are genuine right-wing opponents of my ideas. Because most right-wing beliefs are stupid and most right-wingers are mostly stupid. And it's because of that stupidity that they go to all the effort of typing these stupid jibes and insults. Because they stupidly imagine that I'll care and because they're too stupid to type anything else.

So, trolls, if you find yourself reading this, it's sorta my offer to invite you to actually try to prove that I'm wrong and you're right. Try to make this pompous, stupid, unoriginal leftist feel the pain of having to admit to a scornful right-wing commentor that by jimbo, you the scornful commentator are right and that I'd best heat-up that big helping of crow.

But this offer is only for a limited time. If you continue with the useless assertions, I'll simply delete them.

Governments that Rape Children

More about yesterday's post about accusations from Afghans in Helmand Province that the Afghan National Police rape their children: For me, support for a government is going to be inversely-related to how much its agents tend to rape children. This seems to me to be a no-brainer.

If we've been in Afghanistan for 8 years and we haven't gotten around to solving the problem that its police force rapes children, then maybe supporters of that "mission" should give their heads a shake.

"Brian" at the Canada-Afghanistan blog says that lack of training, old uniforms and equipment and the absence of a computerized payroll system will solve the problem of corrupt, brutal "police" from the private armies of gangster warlords robbing farmers and raping their children to death. I believe the cluelessness of that response is self-evident. More coherently, Brian argued that Helmand Province has, up to this date, been relatively free of any NATO presence, and that now that Obama has made the province the centre of his expanded war, all sorts of good things are going to result.

This ignores the fact that the police are the thugs of the gangster warlord governor, one of the several warlords upon whom Karzai's government depends for its very survival. Also, the responses of the British and US-American officials to this problem don't appear to be particularly gripped by the enormity of the problem of people joining the insurgency to fight back against the child-raping police who are to return in the footsteps of the NATO forces once the Taliban has been cleared out:

The British and U.S. forces in Helmand province appear to be unprepared to deal with the popular anger over police abuses. The spokesman for the U.S. 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Captain William Pelletier, told IPS in e-mail that he had "no information about the allegations of misconduct" by police reported to British officers, despite the fact that the Marine brigade's headquarters in Helmand are right next to those of the British Task Force Helmand.

Pelletier had not responded as of Wednesday to an IPS query about popular allegations to U.S. officers of police abuses in the U.S. area of responsibility in Helmand.

The spokesman for the British Task Force Helmand, Lt. Col. Nick Richardson, asked in an interview with IPS about the grievances voiced by village elders to British officers, said, "We are aware of those."

He refused to specify what grievances against the police had been aired to the British, but said, "If there is any allegation, it will be dealt with by the appropriate authorities."

That meant the "the chain of command of the Afghan national police", Richardson explained.

This also ignores the fact that Canadian Forces personnel in Kandahar Province were complaining about the exact same thing and they were told to shut-up about it. Obviously, seeing children lying raped and murdered by the employees of the government you're killing and dying to protect is hard to keep quiet about and under pressure, stephen harper consented to a bullshit two-year long "investigation" to sweep the matter under the rug.

In other words, NATO will be as diligent at putting and end to this nastiness in Helmand as it has been in Kandahar, which is to say, not at all. Because, amazing as it might sound, stephen harper, John Manley, Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, bush II, all of them, Obama included, don't really give a shit about the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is to provide airbases from which the USA can project power in Central Asia. Full stop. Canada is there to suck up to the USA. Full stop.