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Sun, October 28, 2007 11:39:30 PMFrom:
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NEWS DISSECTOR : Why Are We In Denial About The Coming Economic Collapse?
NEWS DISSECTOR October 28, 2007
Why Are We In Denial About The Coming Economic Collapse?
From iTulip.Com: The only serious journalism I'm reading these days is done by comedians. Maureen Dowd is already funny, but when Stephen Colbert does her column it's like Mad Max turning on the nitro while chasing gasoline thieves in the last of the Interceptors.
I was in Graz, Austria last week talking about my film IN DEBT W ETRUST at a conference/festival on democracy. On the way to the meeting inside a mountain used by the Nazis as a bomb shelter and weapons factory employing slave laborers, in WW !!, I passed an Austrian Bank called Bawag that suffered $1 billion in losses in connection with a Wall Street scandal involving the looting of a firm named REFCO. (Refco was connected to that controversial loan to Hillary Clinton in Arkansas in 1978. That was the $1000 investment that turned into $100,000 in a year.) The Bank has since been sold while court cases continue.
EUROPE BRACES FOR MORE SUBPRIME PROBLEMS
HOW YOUR NEWS DISSECTOR DISCOVERED JOURNALISM
DAVID HOROWITZ GOES TO WAR
On the way home, I sat with a very engaging and smart retired Austrian arts dealer who told me he believes that the economic system is on the edge of collapse but says he wonders why Americans are in denial about these problems. He thinks there is a lag between the news reports we are reading now and when most Americans will be inpacted by the crisis He says the most Americans will face the reality in 2008-which, of course, just happens to be an election year.
Europeans may be more aware of this than we are. I was talking about the subcrime scandal touched on in my film IN DEBT WE TRUST. The press in Europe is very aware of it and worries about its global fallout. The International Herald Tribune in Paris put the story as its lead on page one. This was the headline: "EUROPE FEELS CHILL OF SUBPRIME FIASCO. Economic Forecasts Show Continent Still Vulnerable."
The Financial Times published in London, went further in editorial titled "CREDIT SQUEEZE-THE DISASTER MOVIE." They compared the credit "squeeze" (does that term sound familiar) to "the plot of a hundred disaster movies." They said, "the longer this goes on, the greater the risk to the real economy." I enjoyed this because months ago, CNN Money compared In Debt We Trust to the horror Movie Carrie commenting my documentary is 'even scarier." The Economist compared the subriime scandal to a "toffee apple with a maggot at its core." All of these news outlets say this scandal is not going away anytime soon.
Paul Krugman commented in the New York Times, "Maybe the subprime disaster will be enough to remind us why financial regulation was introduced in the first place."
FORECLOSURES IN CALIFORNIA
More lose home from foreclosures than from Fire, although 12000 homes are still threatened in the conflagration. See my piece on the TWO DISASTERS on our Mediachannel.org home page.
LA TIMES: The third quarter's total surpasses 24,000, which is a record. 'It's working its way to the Westside,' an agent says.
Californians lost their homes to foreclosure in record numbers for a second straight quarter, and the trend is creeping into affluent communities, figures released Friday show.
Foreclosures statewide hit a new high of 24,209, besting the previous record by 39%, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Default notices ? the first step toward foreclosure ? rose to 72,571 for the three months ended Sept. 30, breaking a record set in 1996.
Separately, the Census Bureau reported that the nation's homeownership rate fell for a fourth straight quarter, the longest decline since 1981. The agency said foreclosures helped push the number of vacant homes to a record 17.9 million.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) ? Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest broker, on Tuesday reported its first loss in about six years, saying bad judgment and weak risk management strategies forced it to write down almost $8 billion of mortgage and related assets, well above its own previous estimate.
Merrill shares fell almost 8% to a near two-year low of $62" . Note: Merrill did another write down a week later of $4.5 billion. The Financial Times commented: "The sense that valuation is still matter of "pick a number and divide by the chief trader's golf handicap" seems to be pervasive. Can you believe this? Even Hollywood couldn't make up something as fiip as that,
At least Merrill confesses to "bad judgment." (Merill's CEO is expected to resign today.) Some how I think it was more than just poor judgment I think this is another instance of "Greed Gone Wild" to quote former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who also spoke at the Elevate Democracy conference.]
SPEAKING OF MCKINNEY
French citizens are attempting to use their laws to prosecute former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld while he was visiting Paris in "Old Europe, "to quote a favorite putdown of his. USA Daily reports:
American and European rights groups filed a legal complaint in France accusing former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of responsibility for torture in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.
The complaint was filed with the Paris prosecutor's office as Rumsfeld arrived in France for a visit, according to the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights.
Lawrence Di Rita, former Pentagon spokesman under Rumsfeld, said: "These assertions have no merit, and they have been completely dismissed when made in other jurisdictions."
"Complaints such as this have zero foundation in the truth or the facts as presented in countless investigations," he said
The rights groups say their complaint could go forward because people suspected of torture can be prosecuted in France if they are on French soil. .
Of course done of us have forgotten this Donald's contribution to the defense of freedom..and it reminded me of some questions that Cynthia McKinney had the guts to ask him while she was in Congress?which may be one reason that she no longer is:
ANTI-WAR PROTESTS AND THEIR COVERAGE
Shebar writes: Thousands"? Thousands here, thousands there, pretty soon you're talking about some serious change. But this reporter doesn't seem capable of doing even simple arithmetic! United for Peace & Justice ( http://www.unitedforpeace.org/) is claiming that 100,000+ marched. (Not enough, it seems. No doubt heavy rains along the East Coast didn't help.)
Thousands Protest Iraq War Across U.S.
Sunday October 28, 2007 2:01 AM
By JASON DEAREN
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Thousands of people called for a swift end to the war in Iraq as they marched through downtown on Saturday, chanting and carrying signs that read: "Wall Street Gets Rich, Iraqis and GIs Die'' or "Drop Tuition Not Bombs.''
The streets were filled with thousands as labor union members, anti-war activists, clergy and others rallied near City Hall before marching to Dolores Park.
As part of the demonstration, protesters fell on Market Street as part of a "die in'' to commemorate the thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens who have died since the conflict began in March 2003.
The protest was the largest in a series of war protests taking place in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities?
MILITARY LAWYER BREAKS RANKS
The Independent reports:
The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as "unconscionable".
His critique will be the centerpiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack - and another Supreme Court ruling against it - that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.
The whistleblower's testimony is the most serious attack to date on the military panels, which were meant to give a fig- leaf of legitimacy to the interrogation and detention policies at Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. The major has taken part in 49 status review panels.
FALL INTO THE GAP: AP, Gap Vows Action After Child Labor Report
Gap Promises Action After British Newspaper Finds Subcontractor in India Using Child Labor
LONDON (AP) ? Clothing retailer Gap Inc. said Sunday that it will convene all of its Indian suppliers to "forcefully reiterate" its prohibition on child labor after a British newspaper found children as young as 10 making Gap clothes at a sweatshop in New Delhi.
Their Journalism And Mine: A Personal Story
PRESS CLUB
I was talking about media issues in Austria. Ian Inaba of Guerilla News Network took an upbeat and positive stance about the prospects of Digirtal Democracy and more engagement with young people. Other panelists were more concerned with threats to press freedom by media concentration and subservience to market values The Economist notes that "American style" TV has infiltrated Europe in a major way. Newspaper circulation is down 8% while celebrity coverage is up 28%,
Before I went on my latest overseas speaking trip, I spoke in New Yiork before The Silurians, the oldest press club in the city or perhaps even the country, They meet for lunch at the National Arts Club ,hear spekers and remember their glory days in a rapidly transforming media system. I was honored to be asked to talk before a group of experienced pros and insiders who worked at the NY Times and, all the bigtime newspapers in New York. I knew a few people there including Eric Williams of WBAI and Myron Kandell, who was at CNN when I was and served for many years as the financial editor.
In the spirit of that appearance which was well received showing that everyone in the media is worried about its future, , allow me to share an account of my introduction to journalism from my book News Dissector (Akashic Books, and online at ElectronPresss.com). It was published in that scariest of years of our lord, 2001.
BODONI BOLD
Journalism has its mysteries. Typefaces are one of them. Our newspaper at the mighty DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx used Bodoni Bold, a deep black inky distinctive typeface. I was never quite sure why. There was a rumor that the printer, who set the paper for us in hot type eight times a school year, had cornered the bodoni market, had it locked up, maybe even received a commission on each slug banged out in the bold.
Who knows? Who cares, except it is one of the details still percolating through my brain cells 39 years later. I am thinking of a stuffy, tiny Clinton News Office, for a time my home away from home. On every wall there were lists of the students who had come before us, including some famous names who went on to the big time. Where did the others go? Most of them, I suppose, had the good sense to move on to other non-journalism lives. I rose through the ranks from reporter to editor, getting a whiff of newsprint, leads, headlines, and the by-line bug. It gave me a taste that would stay with me for the rest of my life.
Lou Simon is the guy I'd thank. He was our advisor, teacher, confessor. He was young when he came to Clinton in the mid-fifties, maybe 28 or 29. He had a crewcut and a funny duck walk. His English classes and journalism sessions hammered away at basics. Who? What? Why? Where? When? How? He made us recite these five W's, and slashed away at stories that missed one or another aspect of the formula. "Get it right, check your facts, watch your grammar." Nothing was sent to the printer without a big Blue L from Lou Simon scrawled up in the left hand corner of the copy. It was his stamp of approval.
There were times that I fought with him, fussed with him and cursed him under my breath. He was stubbornly insistent and usually right, and the Clinton News had the scholastic prizes to prove it. Here we were, this massive 4200 all boy Bronx High School, so rough that we quipped we'd have a recess every day to carry out the wounded, and we'd win top national student press prizes every year, competing in the kudo count against newspapers from fancy prep schools.
Fully a third of the students came from feeder junior high schools in Harlem. Every year, four tall high scoring black kids would bring the tricks from their playground practices on to the backboards in the school gym. Somewhere they'd pick up a Jewish kid, or an Italian here or there, some guy whose every minute was spent practicing jump shots or learning to drive towards the basket like a Spanish toreador. Clinton was supreme on the courts.
We were sports kings all right, terrorizing the mere mortals who played against us, some of whom were more frightened about the inevitable fight after the game than the athletic contest itself. Anyway, Clinton boys had a street rep; a respect born of intimidation. We were the incarnation of the movie "Blackboard Jungle." Every few weeks, there were reports of rumbles on the subways involving some of our fellow students. 4200 adolescent boys pump out a lot of testosterone.
Being on the newspaper didn't do much for you on the mano a mano scale, but the athletes liked you because they wanted their pictures in the paper. Thinking back on it now, I'm glad I went there. I was thrown into the great NY melting pot or, perhaps more accurately, the salad bowl, the stew of ethnicities and neighborhoods that give the city its vitality. Some of us mixed; some of us didn't, but we were all together. When you'd go to the boy's room, there were always some black kids harmonizing. They felt that the tiles in the bathroom sweetened the sound. And they were always on key. The comedian Robert Klein, who graduated two years before me, has produced a comedy album and an HBO special goofing on his time at DeWitt C. He has even written a song celebrating life in the Bronx back then "The Bronx was so beautiful that time of year." He belted the song out at the School's hundred year reunion. Grown men cried, singing along. There was even an alumnus there from the class of 1919.
I was a working class kid at a working class school. No pretensions, little elitism. It was a real down to earth grounding, and for me part of a larger tradition. My father went there, as did my uncle. My brother followed me. Something must have touched him about the experience, because he has been a high school teacher ever since getting out of college. A great one. And irony of ironies, one of his students was a descendant of the original DeWitt Clinton, the New York Governor after whom the school was named. He brought the kid back to the Bronx and introduced him to the institution that carries his name.
Don't get me wrong. This was not high school heaven; it was no educational oasis or utopia. It had many problems and flaws. It was run like a boot camp! There were overcrowded classes, incompetent teachers, and hard-headed students including many who were proud to be called JDs?juvenile delinquents. It also practiced tracking, so that the brighter kids were exposed to more advanced subject matter and greater opportunity. But we were all thrown together up in the lunch room, in gym, in the intro courses. The school made the toughest kids, the real hoods, into hall monitors to channel their energy in a more positive but still authoritarian direction. I hated a lot of what went on there then, but I remember it fondly now. Time does take the edges off?and allows us all to mythologize about a golden age that, of course never existed
We were also the fifties generation. We had duck-and-cover fallout shelter drills. We had assemblies with patriotic themes. Most of us wore our hair short and were pretty straight. I was introduced to pot by a black friend who identified with the jazz world. But only a few of us had our illicit puffs then. (And yes, I inhaled.) It was basically the pre-drug era. I did okay in school?not great. I was hopeless in math, bored in science, but animated by history, and, yes, a bit of an ass-kisser and do-gooder. But to this day I am loyal to the red and black, and can still remember the school song, "Clinton Alma Mater, thy name we sing."
About five years ago, I went to a reunion that brought together some of the Clinton generations. Maybe it was a sign of the times, but it was held in suburban Westchester where many Bronx residents fled after the borough was allowed to decay in the urban disasters of the '70s. That year, the honorees were the 50 year veterans of the Class of '43 and the silver anniversary vets, closer to my time, the Class of '68. The World War 2 vets celebrated their war, the big one, with anecdotes about hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in the school auditorium and then rushing out to enlist. They left as boys and came back as men. Not all of them came back.
I was more touched by the representative of 1968 who said he wished he could have been as proud of his generation's war, the one in Vietnam, but he wasn't. There was silence, and then a trickle of applause. He stood there, six foot six, black and proud, with tears welling in his eyes as he apologized for dropping a ball in a Public School Athletic League (PSAL) city-wide championship game. "Forgive me," he asked, "but it has been bugging me all these years."
The shame of it was still with him twenty-five years later. He received an ovation with the older vets who went up on stage to embrace him. Then they all hugged and squeezed each other, including a little old Italian men in an ill-fitting suits and this giant jock groomed on the streets of Harlem. That was the Clinton spirit!
But then, it was time for the big shock. In the intervening decades since I graduated in 1960, Clinton fell on hard times. Large sections of the Bronx had been torched for the insurance money. The borough became national exhibit number one for urban decline. All of New York's social problems soon infiltrated the halls and the ranks, decimating the student body and the school's reputation. Drugs. Crime. Gangs. The collapse of educational standards. At some point, the powers that be decided on a drastic step, a radical break with tradition. They integrated the school. They let girls in!
And so now, the doors at our reunion burst open as a color guard marched in, followed by the current Student Government leaders who came to say hello to us old-timers.
Oh, my god, they were w-o-m-e-n, Latina foxes, mostly Puerto Rican, beautiful and brassy in tight outfits and high heels. Wow. Some of the guys reverted to form and whistled, quickly laughing at themselves for doing so. Yes, Clinton had changed, as had we. And yet these kids were part of our tradition, up from the streets city kids. The ethnic mix was different now, but their youth and exuberance remained as energized as ours had ever been.
I even met one of the editors of the newly revived Clinton News. The baton had been passed.
LETTER AND REPORTS ON DAVID HOROWITZ'S LATEST CRUSADE
ON ANOTHER SUPERBUG?Liz Sheppard writes:
Dude, hold on??. You are on the money but missing so much??
Meet Liz, RN of long duration, with experience on both sides of the bed so to speak???
Have ya even heard of Borrelia? Probably you have but with it's other name, the one that minimizes it. Borrelia is a spirochete. Remember Tuskegee???? Well didn't America promise never again? Or maybe I dreamed that or something?..
Borrelia causes a lifetime neuropsychiatricmuscular disease with accompanying autoimmune problems. And believe it or not, Borrelia supposedly can rarely be found in blood or sera samples??? even by
DNA PCR> So what is wrong with this picture? Don't we consider DNA evidence at the bare minimum in courts of law to try , convict and even execute human beings? Yes sir we do?. but maximal standards are being
applied in the medical world with regard to DNA PCR testing of Borrelia. I really don't know of any other organism or disease with this controversy??. and I have searched. Believe me.It's Lyme Disease if you don't know yet by the way??? and why pray tell wouldn't you know all of this? Same reason Dr. Gerberding's testimony was redacted. If you can spare a few minutes, it would really be worth your time to read this attached article ( I promise it's clean and info only)??. and understand many many things in medicine are NOT what they appear. In fact, I suggest thinking money first, always??
Your friend in the truth?? Liz Shepherd RN Columbia SC?.. with a thirty year misdiagnosed case of
Borrelia??.. and it sux
ALEXANDER COCKBURN ON DAVID HOROWITZ'S LATEST CRUSADE
Islamo-Fascism Awareness week has been featuring Horowitz and big-name ranters of the right like Anne Coulter and Fox's Sean Hannity, plus former US Senator Rick Santorum, and noted Islamophobe Daniel Pipes. They descended on various college campuses to be received by Christian-Fascists and the curious while they hurled imprecations at the left for being soft on sons of the Prophet stoning women to death for adultery.
The reaction of the left has been mixed. In some ways it always takes Horowitz's antics far too seriously, though the latter's effect on timid college administrations cannot be entirely gainsaid. On the other hand, Awareness week is having a galvanizing effect. Coalitions have formed to combat Horowitz's version of Awareness with superior Progressive Awareness about what is good or not so good about Islam. Since Santorum and others have ripe records of intolerance for women, the air is usefully thick with shouts of "hypocrite". Horowitz is probably the best organizer the left has these days. He's an Energizer, apt to the beseechings of Energy Awareness Week, though the target in that instance was probably that other insidious element in the American way of life, the incandesce
ON HOROWITZ AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NO WATER IN ATLANTA IN 90 DAYS!
Just back, in time to watch the Red Sox. So have to go. Your comments welcome as usual.
Write: Dissector@mediachannel.org
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