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Special to The Canadian

It is apparent that the U.S. Tea Party movement is not a spontaneously developing populist grassroots movement.  Investigative reports suggest that the Tea Party is a front for U.S. Big Business interest to undermine and frustrate any policy in the U.S. designed o advance public healthcare rights or social justice in general

A comprehensive New Yorker report this summer detailed substantial links between Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity and Tea Party campaigns. The magazine quoted an unnamed Republican campaign consultant who’d done work for David Koch and his brother Charles.

“The Koch brothers gave the money that founded (the Tea Party),” he said. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud — and they’re our candidates!”

Read more?

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by Joe Biden

This week, when the President first told me he’d chosen Elena Kagan to serve on the Supreme Court, I couldn’t help but smile. I had a chance to interview many great candidates, but Elena stood out. I met her nearly 20 years ago, when she took a break from teaching to join my staff in the Senate. She helped us confirm Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and even then, it wasn’t hard to picture a day when we’d be helping Elena prepare for confirmation hearings of her own.

Since that time, I’ve followed her career, and today, I believe Elena Kagan is an inspired choice for the Supreme Court.

Throughout her career, she’s been a trailblazer, breaking glass ceilings in both academia and government. She’s been a consensus-builder, earning praise for her work with Republicans in the Clinton White House and her support for the free exchange of ideas as the dean of Harvard Law. She’s flat-out brilliant, easily one of the best legal minds I’ve ever met. But most importantly, she’s also someone who understands that the application of the law holds real consequences for Americans in all walks of life.

Now her nomination goes to the Senate. I’ve been through this process more than once, and I’ve learned that the success of any nomination is strongly influenced by the public response in the first few days.

As a young attorney, Elena clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. She often calls him her hero. Now, she’s following in his footsteps as the Solicitor General of the United States, the chief legal advocate for our government. If Justice Marshall were with us today, I’m sure he’d be proud of the clerk he used to call “Shorty.”

To see why, look no further than her role in the Citizens United case. It was a legal battle that most experts agreed would be impossible for the government to win. But as Solicitor General, Elena chose this as her first case. She recognized that rolling back bipartisan election law would allow special interests to dominate campaigns across the country and drown out the voice of the American people. Though she knew she’d probably lose, she chose to make it her fight all the same. That’s character.

That kind of decision defines Elena’s career. With her resume, she’s had no shortage of lucrative opportunities. But her parents were both public servants — her mother a school teacher and her father a housing lawyer who fought for tenants’ rights — and she has always followed their example. Like her dad, she’s used her legal knowledge to serve others, and like her mom, she’s been an educator, working to pass her knowledge on to another generation. Now, it’s time to bring that heartfelt, principled commitment to the Supreme Court.

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by E. Galen

The ongoing spill of millions of gallons of crude from the BP oil rig into the Gulf of Mexico is an enormous environmental disaster, threatening fish, birds, and shallow water species like oysters, shrimp and crayfish. Human beings are part of the environment, and the oil slick poses major risks to public health.

In the past few days, residents of southwestern Louisiana have complained about odors causing headaches and burning eyes and nausea. The state health department has ordered testing of water systems near the Gulf for oil contamination.

Major oil spills have caused billions of gallons of oil to pour into the environment in the last several decades. As the World Health Organization has pointed out, there are hardly any studies following the effects on the health of residents who live near those spills.

Oil is a mix of complex chemicals. It contains hydrocarbon compounds, some of them cancer-causing, others causing neurological and reproductive damage, as well as skin and lung problems. Sometimes crude oil has traces of mercury, lead and arsenic.

There are several ways an oil spill is harmful to human health. From evaporation or smoke as oil is burned, people can inhale volatile organic compounds and other hydrocarbons. Oil vapors can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, eye and throat irritation, and breathing difficulties. People who inhale large amounts of fumes are in danger of a chemical poisoning called hydrocarbon pneumonia.

“Smoke from burning oil contains many chemicals; some are potentially lethal poisons and some are nuisance irritants, but even these nuisance irritants can trigger breathing problems in people with asthma or emphysema or other lung disease,” stated Dr. Marcel Casavant, chief of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

The smoke from burning oil contains carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organics, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), hydrogen sulfide acidic aerosols and soot, solid particles embedded in tar. Particulate matter is very harmful to the lungs. Once inhaled, these particles can damage the heart and cause other serious health effects, including premature death in people with heart or lung disease.

Volatile organic compounds can lead to respiratory problems, allergic reactions and weakened immune systems. They are also associated with harmful effects on the gastrointestinal tract and liver.

According to Dr. Gina Solomon, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council and an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, some of the volatile chemicals have been linked to miscarriage, premature births and low birth weight.

The oil spill can also damage human health indirectly, through absorption into the food chain. Oil floating on the water contaminates plankton, very small plants and animals. Small fish eat plankton, larger fish eat small fish, animals and humans eat large fish and other seafood: all ultimately ingest oil.

The Water Encyclopedia states, “Oil waste poisons the sensitive marine and coastal organic substrate, interrupting the food chain on which fish and sea creatures depend…. Wildlife other than fish and sea creatures, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds that live in or near the ocean, are also poisoned by oil waste.”

As people eat some of the components of the oil that is contaminating these food sources, the risk of getting cancer increases. “Contaminants in oil can persist for years and accumulate in the food chain, causing elevated cancer risks or neurological risks from exposure to heavy metals such as mercury,” writes Dr. Solomon.

Some scientists are downplaying the real threats to human health from the massive oil spill. “This is an ecological event, rather than a human health problem,” says LuAnn White, professor of environmental health and toxicology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

But oil-producing communities have complained about the health impacts linked to environmental toxins used in production. For instance, residents in Conecuh County, Alabama, have experienced headaches, open sores, miscarriages and other health effects, believed related to air and water contamination. In March 2006, an oil and gas company operating in Conecuh County was fined for releasing various compounds without permits, including hydrogen sulfide, a potentially deadly gas often associated with oil production in south Alabama. Residents have also noticed thick, unidentified foamy substances in water connected to their water wells.

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project describes the experience of a Colorado landowner who said, “When a well was being drilled near my house, the fumes were so strong that I passed out.”

In 2006, a Colorado Air Quality Control Commission report stated that oil and gas developments are the primary sources of the Denver region’s air pollution. In the Rocky Mountain region, the emission of sulfur dioxide has increased by 147 percent as a byproduct of petroleum production. The chemical aggravates heart and lung diseases and is poisonous at high levels.

The Environmental Working Group and The Endocrine Disruption Exchange reported that 430 million gallons of chemical-laced fluids have been injected into oil and gas wells in Colorado, mainly to force out the petroleum. Halliburton Corp. has threatened to leave the state of Colorado if forced to disclose the chemicals it uses. The giant energy services company is responsible for cementing the deepwater drill hole in the current BP oil spill, which may have contributed to the failure of the well.

Oil and gas companies are not required by state or federal law to disclose what chemicals they employ during drilling. More than 2,500 chemicals are being used by the oil and gas industry today. Some of these oilfield chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They can trigger biological changes at very, very low concentrations, and have been implicated in health problems such as cancer and genetic mutations.

An online report by BBC News in August 2000 looked at the legacy of pollution in Kuwait from its oil spills and fires in 1991. Iraqi troops spilled oil into the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War. They then set fire to hundreds of wells. The oil spill, by some estimates the largest in history, involved tens to hundreds of million gallons.

In 2000, scientists said that parts of the desert were still heavily polluted with oil. Doctors reported a significant increase in patients with heart disease and cancers. Dr. Badria al-Awadi, a lawyer and the Kuwait representative for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said health statistics since 1991 were alarming. “A lot of diseases which we never had before, now we are having,” she said. The incidence of cancer “is much higher that it was before.” There are also growing numbers of people with respiratory diseases and allergies.

As with all industrial pollution, the oil industry will deny responsibility for the toxicity of its products and the devastating impact these poisons have on the health and lives of millions of people. The full impact of the Gulf of Mexico spill may not be known for many years.

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by Joe Kishore

In 2009, the Obama administration intervened to support the reversal of a court order that would have halted offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has long had close ties to the industry, specifically cited BP’s Deepwater Horizon operation as one that should be allowed to go forward, according to a group involved in the court case.

A Washington DC Appeals Court ruled in April 2009 that the Bush administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling (covering 2007 to 2012) was not based on a proper review of the environmental impact of the drilling. Only days before the ruling, the Obama administration had granted BP a “categorical exclusion,” exempting it from an environmental impact study for the Deepwater Horizon project.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, intervened to reverse the court order, and was backed by the administration.

Kierán Suckling, executive director and founder the Center for Biological Diversity, which was involved in the original lawsuit, told the World Socialist Web Site that Salazar “filed a special motion asking the court to lift the injunction, and he cited the BP drilling several times by name in the request.”

In July 2009, the court ruled that drilling in both the Gulf and off the coast of Alaska could continue, on the condition that the administration conduct a study of the potential environmental risks. This study has yet to be completed.

Salazar praised the decision at the time, saying it allowed the administration to go forward with “a comprehensive energy plan,” including the BP project and a sale of leases for drilling in the Gulf.

Even since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon less than three weeks ago, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Services (MMS) has continued to grant “categorical exclusions” to oil and gas companies, allowing them to bypass environmental studies.

The administration has publicly announced that no new offshore drilling grants will be issued until a review, to be completed by the end of the month. Nevertheless, at least 27 exemptions have been granted, including one for a BP exploration plan for drilling at more than 4,000 feet. Another exemption was granted to Anadarko Petroleum Corporation for an exploration plan at more than 9,000 feet. The Deepwater Horizon was drilling at about 5,000 feet.

“The same problems we saw under the Bush administration are continuing under Obama,” Suckling said. “The change in political parties has done very little in terms of corporate domination of the political system. Who got to vote on turning over our natural resources to private corporations? The whole system is corrupt from the bottom up.”

The Obama administration’s announcement earlier this year that he would expand offshore oil drilling was a clear sop for the oil industry, as was his earlier decision to appoint Salazar as Interior Secretary. Suckling noted that as a Senator for Colorado Salazar supported the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006, which expanded drilling. Salazar received money from BP, and when he became Interior Secretary he brought several BP officials on his staff.

These latest revelations come as the haphazard and experimental attempts by BP and the government to stop oil from flowing into the Gulf have failed.

Oil is now beginning to appear on the coast, from Louisiana to parts of Alabama. Tar balls have washed up on the shore of an Alabama barrier island, according to the Associated Press.

Oil is also dispersed throughout the Mississippi Delta region. According to the Financial Times, a vessel it has chartered with Canadian oil spill consultants “located patches of thick crude oil on a beach at the mouth of the South Pass, one of the navigable channels of the Mississippi. ‘This is bad,’ said Dec Doran of Ontario-based Oil Spill Control Services, as he took samples from a saucer-sized patch of red-brown crude, the consistency of peanut butter. ‘If nothing is done, this will take 10 years to disperse.’”

On Saturday, the cofferdam—a 100-ton containment box or “dome” that BP sought to place over one of the major leaks—had to be removed after it was clogged by gas and water crystals. The project, which was presented as the most feasible short-term option for slowing the leak, was highly experimental, untested at the depths BP was drilling. The clog developed even before operators could hook up a tube intended to direct the leaking oil into ships above.

While BP has said it will try again, government officials have begun floating another, even more improbable scheme. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the government’s response, outlined on Sunday what he called a “junk shot” tactic. “They’re going to take a bunch of debris—shredded up tires, golf balls, and things like that—under very high pressure and shoot it into the [blowout] preventer.” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

These desperate measures are intended to give the appearance of action and hide the fact that neither the administration nor BP had in place any plans to deal with the failure of a blowout preventer, an entirely foreseeable event.

The actions could well have the effect of making the spill worse by damaging the pipe, which is restricting the flow of oil. Currently, oil is spewing out at a rate of between 5,000 barrels a day (government estimate) and 25,000 barrels a day (estimate of several scientists). If the pipe completely fails, the leak rate could soar to as high as 60,000 to 100,000 barrels a day.

At the same time, BP and government officials have noted that all attempts could fail. “It’s very difficult to predict whether we will find solutions,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer. “This dome is no silver bullet to stop the leak,” Rear Adm. Mary Landry of the Coast Guard acknowledged.

The major step intended to block off the well completely—drilling a relief well—will take several months to complete and is not guaranteed to work. In the worst-case scenario, which appears increasingly likely, the eruption of oil could continue until the entire reserve is drained—tens if not hundreds of millions of gallons of oil.

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Bail-out Plans are insufficiently focussed on People

by Horace Carby-Samuels

The prevailing economic reconstruction/bail-out packages, which the U. S. Government as well as the governments of other industrialised societies are promoting, neglect to embrace people as being more than potential customers and sources of hired labour. Instead, without a doubt, these economic reconstruction packages need to set the stage in respect of where we expect to end up as a society. These packages must aim to generate circumstances which will enable people to be better able to operate as managers of the patterns of survival that they seek to secure for themselves and for their heirs. What is therefore required, is economic bail out packages that focus beyond the simple creation of commercial regeneration. The so far overlooked need is to remedy the circumstances out of which the prevailing economic downturn had been initially generated.

The current economic bail-out packages are apparently focussing on the quantity of financial insertion that government is making. That may be because in a complex industrialised society, people normally require and use money in order to acquire the items that they need to satisfy their requirements for living. However, it is what is happening to the lives of people, rather than what has been happening to the balance sheet of firms, that the economic reconstruction/bail-out packages should aim to have an impact on. As a result, governments which are planning to use cash-activated economic reconstruction/bail-out programs, as the economic remedy strategy, will need to also look upon what impacts on people will be forthcoming. They will need to accommodate their programs to the fact that it is people that are important. Meanwhile, money is merely a useful created economic instrument; even though the prevailing educational system has conditioned the members of the society to hold a money-centred view on their reality and also on their achievements in living.

The capitalist doctrine has led societies to operate under the guidance of the principle that monetary values, and net financial returns, should function as the overall economic “master conductor” that orients and quantifies how effectively the available resources in the society have been used. However, the economic bail-out packages must not be sucked into concentrating on that capitalist money-centred appraisal of overall economic performance. Instead, we need to recall that from time immemorial, persons have been seeking to use their overall time and resource commitments in strategies to pursue personal lives which they can regard as being meaningful.

The People Dimension

When the economic bail-out packages recognize that as people go about their lives as sentient mind guided entities, they draw on this additional personal living-centred resource management focus. Adjustments must therefore be made in how aggregate economic performance is measured, if a people-centred focus is to be included. The mere buoyancy of commercial results, may not be relied on to appraise the potential effectiveness which the proposed economic reconstruction/bail-out programs will generate in the long term.

Clearly, therefore, impacts on the lives of people, as managers of their effort and resource commitments, must be treated as one set of the significant results, that reveal the effectiveness of government economic investment. The potential long term appropriateness of the current cash-centred economic reconstruction/bail-out package which the U. S. government is being requested to execute, should therefore be reconsidered. In particular, appraisals of results from the economic reconstruction/bail-out packages should especially be done in light of the following recognition:

Although capitalist doctrine emphasizes persons as budgeting the financial resources over which they have control, if the circumstances that produced the current economic malaise are not to be repeated, the programs of economic reconstruction must go beyond that financial concentration on what humans do. The reconstruction packages must begin to also focus on facilitating economic activities which accompany the behaviour of persons as managers of their scarce time, so as to achieve preferred patterns of living.

The framers of the economic reconstruction packages, need to bear in mind that in the living-centred economic operations in which persons participate, they do not have the same type of economic options which firms have. For example, persons are keenly aware of their mortality. When things are not going good, they do not “close down” nor “suspend operations” as commercial firms do. Unlike firms that have a potentially perpetual life, it is only through heirs, that humans can lay claim to any type of perpetuity. In their economic remedy proposals, the framers of the economic reconstruction packages must therefore recognize that humans, as economic agents, also have living-centred targets and not merely financial ones at which they aim.

In particular, persons essentially operate as budgeters of how they commit their time among the opportunities that they have to live. They seek to achieve patterns of time-usage, as living, which will enable them to interpret their continued survival as being meaningful.

The economic reconstruction/bail-out programs must therefore aim to be supportive of the mix of time-use budgeting opportunities which will become available to the members of the society, as they go about their lives. These proposed economic reconstruction/bail-out proposals may therefore not overlook the essential fact that in the economic management that persons do, they aim to secure access to the patterns of time-using that will give quality to how they are able to live.

	Quality of Living and Human Development is a book for further reading on this subject.

An extensive elaboration of the background private opportunities, as well as administrative support which enable persons to gain access to that pattern of economic achievement, was elaborated in Horace Carby-Samuels (2007); Quality-of Living and Human Development as the Outcome from Economic Progress; Ottawa, Canada; (Agora Publishing Consortium, ISBN 1897036353).

The proposed economic reconstruction packages therefore need to begin to understand that, human economic reality is also revealed in terms the forthcoming living-centred time-use opportunities that become accessible to persons. However, capitalist economic doctrine sets out to lead governments and the framers of economic programs, to accept the view that the commercial-equivalent wealth that has been generated from the resource, time, and effort commitments of persons, forms the most appropriate statement of the economic results from their activities. In that way, the capitalist focus on economic output (as the market determined monetary value of achievement from our efforts), is a conditioning technique. The monetary emphasis aims to manoeuvre persons away from seeing that in the living that they do, they are also intuitively operating as thinking mind-guided entities, who are seeking to achieve patterns of time usage that will give a preferred quality to their survival.

We must therefore not allow ourselves to be distracted from recognizing that our resource and effort commitments, are also life-support operations (in the natural environment). These resource and effort commitments that persons make, are not merely wealth-generating activities. Governments would therefore be making an unfortunate mistake if they allowed the prevailing economic reconstruction/bail-out programs to overlook the fact that the economic efforts of persons, also comprise living-centred time management commitments into which these persons have entered. Nor should these governments ignore the fact that, substantively, in their living-centred time and effort commitments, persons are also aiming to gain verifiable information. Persons seek verifiable information about their natural environment, which will enable them to enhance the level of the consciousness and sensibilities that they will be able to bring, in their efforts to enhance the quality of the survival they will be able to secure from their resource and effort commitments.

We therefore need to wake up to the awareness that, (just as Pavlov did to his dogs, when he trained them to salivate with the mere ringing of bells), the purveyors of the capitalist doctrine, are correspondingly actively engaged in creating a conditioned reflex among humans. People are correspondingly being trained to respond primarily to the relative financial outcomes that arise with the resource and effort management activities that accompany how they live.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the concentration on financial revitalization that the proposed economic reconstruction/bail-out packages seek to execute, betrays the success of that conditioned reflex which has led humans to look upon their reality overwhelmingly from a money-centred focus. However, by means of the conditioning in the emphases of the capitalist doctrine, humans will have been manoeuvred away from the practice of those priorities in human living, that are associated with (and that are centred on) mutuality and empathy. Instead, acceptance of and accommodation to the capitalist emphasis on interpersonal predation and on exploitation, is leading us toward our existential doom as a result of the associated capitalist-promoted psychological and spiritual despoiling of humans.

That manoeuvring and conditioning of humans, into behaving according to the resource and economic management priorities and responses which are dictated by the capitalist doctrine; and away from priorities in respect of living and human survival; is being used to divert the human population of planet earth. With the emphases in capitalist doctrine, on financial outcomes, rather than on living-centred ones; on selfishness, rather than on mutuality; and on exploitation, rather than on empathy; we are being led into operating, and into becoming as no more than lower-order life entities.

That is the type of human degradation (leading to overall sustained material as well as psychological predation, control, and existential non substantiveness), is the outcome as a type of doom, which the membership of the hideous alien consciousness that is behind the capitalist doctrine, aims to execute on us.

To avoid continuing in that human enslavement routine, the economic reconstruction and bail-out packages must draw on indicators of economic performance which focus on more than financial results. They must focus on the access of persons to critical services that meet their needs for food, clothing, shelter, health care, entertainment, security, and for enhanced understanding of their natural environment and how it operates. It is the relative access of persons to those features, which will reveal how effectively the quality of their living toward which humans direct their resource and effort management, has been serviced.

The outcomes that will legitimate the reconstruction initiatives, is the forthcoming impacts of these initiatives on people, rather than how extensively the level of commerce has been enhanced. The peak indicator of economic performance, is not the extent to which humans will be able to operate successfully in competition among each other, and then ultimately securing private relative quantities of material or money-equivalent rewards for themselves from their efforts.

Instead, the need is for development initiatives where economic management programming is also guided by the principles of mutuality and empathy of persons, with each other, as well as with the natural environment (and its autonomous evolution). As responsible humans, we therefore must not allow this hideous alien consciousness which is behind the capitalist emphasis on results that are framed in financial terms, to distract or to misdirect us from pursuing, or from structuring a living-centred environment of human economic survival.

The economic reconstruction/recovery and development programs must therefore aim to foster Human Development. Programs must emphasize operations which seek to foster the achievement of our human evolution, as a process of informed understanding of our natural environment (and also of our reality). Effective economic reconstruction programs must also foster resource management operations which are in service to outcomes where the economic management behaviours of persons are also centred on mutuality and on empathy.

The economic programs in which the U. S. Government is engaged via the economic reconstruction/bail-out packages, should go beyond a commercial emphasis. The programs should recognize and also accommodate to the fact that intuitively, persons are pursuing targets in behalf of the type of survival (as patterns of time-usage), that will enable them to make meaningful, their decision to remain alive.

A Matter of Roots

As soon as a society comes to recognize that its human participants are time-use budgeters (who are effectively in pursuit of preferred survival patterns), the society will also begin to recognize that money and its usage merely forms a service instrument. Therefore, although the programs of formal education advance the capitalist focus, some measurement adjustments must be made. The foremost adjustment, as it relates to these economic reconstruction/bail-out programs, is a matter of focus. People need to arrive at the decision that in the human-centred economic reality which they are aiming to create, they should not treat money as the master conductor and director of operations.

The creation of money and the distribution of access to it, is merely one of the instruments that a society must manage, at the same time that persons budget how they commit their scarce time. Historically, as conscious mind-guided entities, persons have aimed to secure from their resource and effort commitments, outputs and results that will service the living-centred targets at which they aim as they set out to pursue their survival. That is why the effectiveness of the cash injections that the U. S. government is now making, should be primarily appraised against that quality-of-life delivery to which these initiatives contribute.

Money is a part of trade. However, the capitalist emphasis on these cash injections as initiatives to generate employment and commercial revival, should not be used as the only, or as the most important focus for either the program approval of these initiatives, or for appraising how they are supposed to perform. The output from prevailing economic management is not only shown by the level of aggregate commercial activity on which capitalist economists concentrate. Additionally, the people who make up the society are not merely to be seen as sources of hired biological “machinery” services (human capital), that will then secure paid employment from the projects on which the cash injections are spent. Nor do these people merely form the foundation of the buoyant commerce that will re-emerge when that cash is spent on outputs which are being produced and offered for sale.

Therefore, when the new administration of U. S. President Obama talks about investment which it will aim to promote, it is necessary to examine the extent to which that investment package contains initiatives to provide mixes of critical technical, administrative, and educational services, in behalf of the quality of life attainment of the “person in the street”. For example, investment in education as one of the proposed recovery strategies, must be directed at creating informed participants in the work force, rather than at creating working “stiffs”, in the form of “human capital”.

It will not be sufficient for these economic reconstruction packages that are being proposed, to merely promote employment, where persons function as “hired hands”, as “human capital”, and so forth. Instead, government investment in education, and in corporate support by way of the economic reconstruction packages, must require adjustments in curricula, as well as in the structure of these educational programs.

The delivery process in these educational programs, must recognize that when working people (as effort providers) decide to commit their time in respective production ventures at hand, they are also parallel risk takers with the providers of risk financing. These educational programs which are receiving government investment, will therefore need to offer skills development and training programs that prepare workers to also appreciate and to discharge, within firms, associated project facilitation and management responsibilities.

It is not consistent with fostering Human Development, to merely have educational investment that aims to function merely as capitalism-supportive brain-washing operations. The programs receiving the government investment via the economic reconstruction/bail-out packages, must not function as skills development operations, where the providers of effort are “trained” to behave merely as the dispensable hired “human machines” ( that Theodore Schultz and Gary Becker labelled as human capital).

If the economic reconstruction proposals aim to be successful in the long term, the associated investment commitments must deliberately aim at creating impacts on the opportunities of persons to use their time and to also understand their natural environment. That is, the economic reconstruction packages must aim to enhance the access of persons to services and to opportunities out of which enhancement in their quality-of-living will arise. Accordingly, the bail-out packages will foster those results only if they are accompanied by effective administrative strategies. They will need to monitor and to verify that the government cash injections are being effectively used to promote in a sustainable manner, the access of persons to services which will satisfy their needs for food, clothing, shelter, health-care, security of property and of person, and for entertainment. In addition, if persons are to achieve the higher quality-of-survival at which they aim, they will also need to have enhanced access to the type of understanding that will enable them to participate more effectively in how their lives evolve.

In contrast, stimulus packages as cash injections which aim to achieve capitalist rejuvenation, will limit their appraisals of economic performance to a concentration on the changes in market results which arise. However, the effectiveness of economic outcomes must also be measured in terms of the contribution to living-centred results which arise from the resource commitment initiatives that are associated with these cash injection packages.

We cannot allow ourselves to forget that, the economy is also about the mixes of opportunities that members of a society have to manage the scarce time for living which becomes available to them. That is why the economic reconstruction operations (that form government policies of the new President Barack Obama, for example), must be aimed at enhancing the flow of mixes of critical living-supportive components. These are the survival-centred services on which persons seek to draw within the adjustments that they must execute, as they go about the trading operations which comprise the technically complex society that the United States is.

Even though it is much more than potential monetary results, which should guide the selection of economic outcomes at which the economic reconstruction packages must aim, the subtle role that money plays as a medium of exchange in a technologically complex society, must be recognized. For example, governments need to ensure that the rules of trading that they legitimate, are people-centred, rather than centred on merely facilitating the generating money profits. The economic development (or reconstruction) initiatives, should therefore focus upon money as being merely an instrument which persons use, as they manage their time so as to secure the quality-of-survival targets to which they are committed.

Making it Happen

The managers of the proposed programs of economic reconstruction, are challenged to ensure that the significant program impacts, will be on the economic opportunities of persons for managing their time. From time immemorial, humans have aimed to demonstrate a conscious presence in their reality/environment. That must not be overlooked. As a result, the economic basis on which project packages are being framed, also needs to recognize that humans are about the business of ratifying their presence in their environment. It must therefore be recognized that persons have sought to manage their effort commitments with the aim to eventually secure a survival in which they have the opportunity to better understand themselves, and also the rules under which their environment evolves.

It is that process of accommodation to their natural environment, which has led humans to evolve civilizations which will provide them with the opportunity to manage their time for living, as a result of their greater access to verifiable information about their reality to which respective persons gain access. These persons then set out to draw on that information, so as to ratify their presence in, and also their linkage to their environment . That is why the managers of the proposed economic bail-out programs, are also challenged to promote the underlying features that will eventually foster and enhance the opportunities of persons to secure heightened understanding. It is thereby that such persons will be able to further facilitate their capability to contribute to enhancement in the quality of the survival which will become available to them, as members of the society.

Governments are therefore called upon to recognize that enhancement in Human Development, with its various quality-of-life attributes (which accompany meaningfulness in how humans are able to pursue their survival), is the outcome which shows how effective their economic development/reconstruction package initiatives have been. The administration of incoming U. S. President Obama, is therefore invited to become mindful of how fostering impacts on people, and on the achievement of Human Development, fit into the economic reconstruction packages which it is now promoting.

Where the Banks Fit in

If fostering Human Development is the economic management target, that outcome will not be promoted by government cash injections to revitalize the presently constituted banking system. It was that system which had initiated massive loan curtailment when it found itself holding the now worthless commercial paper that was associated with the sub-prime mortgages (that had also been generated within a part of its system). The fact is that, the prevailing banking system is a commercial credit operation which has been legitimated to operate and to make loans, on the basis of a fractional holding of its total deposits. This banking system forms an intrinsic part of capitalist economic activity; and its overall operation is designed to be a key support to the financial profit making to which the capitalist system is dedicated. In the process, the banks do their profit making on a pyramid of secured financial credit, which they are able to execute by virtue of the fractional deposit reserve system under which they are allowed to operate.

This operating banking system, (which largely makes its income from generating and from servicing commercial paper), is not servicing any pyramid which is aimed at the quality-of-life requirements of people. Accordingly, the incoming administration of U. S. President Obama; the United States Congress; and also the governments of most Western Countries; need to begin to ask themselves the following question:

Meanwhile, as they face such questions, these governments would find it useful to give due recognition to the substantive resolution background that was extensively elaborated in Horace Carby-Samuels (2007); Quality-of-Living and Human Development as the Outcome from Economic Progress; (Ottawa, Canada, Agora Cosmopolitan, ISBN 1897036353).

Gary McKinnon with his mother Janis Sharp Photo: Facundo Arrizabalaga

The medical report said Mr McKinnon, who is known to suffer Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, also has a “fixed-psychological conviction he will kill himself in preference to being extradited”.

The emergency study by consultant psychiatrist Professor Jeremy Turk of St George’s Hospital, London, said that suicide was now an “almost certain inevitability”.

Details of the report emerged following a decision by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, not to block the extradition on medical grounds, as disclosed by The Daily Telegraph on Thursday.

Mr McKinnon’s distraught mother said the Government, and Mr Johnson, “should hang their heads in shame” over the extradition to face hacking charges.

Extracts of Prof Turk’s report, disclosed in the Daily Mail, show that he recorded in September that Mr McKinnon, 43, suffered from a “‘very serious Major Depressive Disorder…. aggravated and complicated by anxiety and panic attacks with multiple psychosomatic symptoms on a background of his having Asperger’s syndrome”.

But following the failure of Mr McKinnon’s bid to have his case heard at the Supreme Court, he concluded that he was now “at an even higher risk of self harm and suicide”, something he said was a “real probability”.

Mr Johnson, who was shown the report, said that he felt the information he had seen was “not materially different from that placed before the High Court earlier this year” when Mr McKinnon lost his earlier legal challenge.

He added: “It is clear from the proceedings to date that Mr McKinnon will not, if convicted, serve any of his sentence in a supermax prison.

“Should Mr McKinnon be extradited, charged and convicted in the US and seek repatriation to the UK to serve a custodial sentence, the Government will of course progress his application at the very earliest opportunity.”

The family, who were informed of Mr Johnson’s decision on Thursday, are now set to apply for a judicial review in a bid to stop his extradition.

The decision was almost universally criticised by opposition MPs, campaigners.

Mrs Sharp said: “To force a peaceful, vulnerable, misguided UFO fanatic like Gary thousands of miles away from his much-needed support network is barbaric.

“This is a cruel and miserable decision.

“If the severity of Gary’s medical condition isn’t sufficient to prevent his extradition, I can’t imagine what is. God help others facing a similar fate. I’m so upset and angry.”

She added: “Where are the ‘very real safeguards’ that the Government consistently hid behind when forcing this appalling Act through Parliament.

“The only people who won’t get extradited are terrorists facing the death sentence, the very people the Act was meant to be about.

“What bitter irony.”

Mrs Sharp said her legal team would now apply for a judicial review, but if that was not granted then her son could be extradited before Christmas.

“What a heartless and cowardly decision this is,” she said.

Mrs Sharp wept as she told how she broke the news to Mr McKinnon.

She said: “He was very, very bad. He was very quiet – and I am more worried when he is quiet. I have got concerns for Gary. Alan Johnson has made the wrong decision. It is just awful.”

Mr McKinnon’s lawyer, Karen Todner, said: “It’s a devastating blow but we are not going to give up.

“We are certainly coming to the end of the road.

“We’re just hoping at some point someone sees sense and steps in.

“All the legal team do know is we cannot give up because in some ways it’s like dealing with a Death Row case, and we genuinely believe that Gary’s life is at stake here.”

Another of his legal team said: “It is a miserable decision that we fundamentally disagree with – he could be gone by Christmas. We are considering all our legal avenues. What does it take for someone not to be extradited?”

She added that she planned to issue judicial review proceedings next week, but added: “We are normally allowed three months to issue but the Home Secretary has only allowed us seven days.”

Keith Vaz MP, the chairman of the home affairs select committee which has pressed Mr Johnson directly not to extradite Mr McKinnon, said: “I am very disappointed at this decision. This is the wrong decision for the wrong reasons.”

Last month Mr Johnson threw a lifeline to Mr McKinnon, who suffers from a form of autism, with a promise to examine new medical evidence “very carefully” before deciding on his extradition last month.

However in an emailed letter to Mrs Sharp, Mr Johnson is understood to have said that a decision to block the extradition of Mr McKinnon was not in his control.

During an earlier legal battle in the summer, judges warned Mr McKinnon, who is accused of hacking into networks at the Pentagon and Nasa from his flat in north London, might kill himself if he was extradited.

The legal process, which had been paused while Mr Johnson considered the medical evidence, will now start again, with legal sources suggesting Mr McKinnon could be extradited by Christmas.

Mr McKinnon’s lawyers can either seek a fresh emergency judicial review of Mr Johnson’s decision at the High Court within the next seven days or appeal to the European Court of Human Rights within the next 14 days.

David Burrowes, the Conservatives’ shadow justice minister and Mr McKinnon’s local MP, said: “It is extremely disappointing that the repeated calls for compassion and justice for Gary have been ignored by the Home Secretary.

“Despite substantial medical grounds giving Alan Johnson the opportunity to stop the extradition, he has washed his hands of Gary.

“The decision flies in the face of the medical evidence, which showed the serious risks to his health and life if extradition was to be granted.”

Mr Vaz added: “The unanimous view of the Home Affairs Select Committee was that the Home Secretary has the power to intervene.

“His [Alan Johnson's] decision has important constitutional implications if he is not prepared to use his discretion even though he is allowed to so no matter how narrow the scope.”

Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society which has been campaigning on behalf of Mr McKinnon, said: “We are bitterly disappointed by the Home Secretary’s decision and feel hugely sympathetic towards Gary and his family who have now been living under extreme stress for a prolonged period of time.

“People with Asperger syndrome are often much more vulnerable than appearances would suggest and can be highly susceptible to additional mental health problems.

“On the strength of recently submitted medical evidence and the support of the Home Affairs committee, we had hoped that Mr Johnson would listen to these concerns.

“The National Autistic Society will continue to support Gary and his family during this incredibly difficult time and as the case continues.”

Mr McKinnon, 43, from Wood Green, North London, has insisted that his hacking of Pentagon computers was nothing more than him searching for reports of UFO sightings.

He is being extradited under a treaty which has been criticised because, while British prosecutors must provide details of the evidence against an American citizen, US prosecutors need only explain the charges to take a Briton to America.

Mr Johnson said: “I have carefully considered the representations in the case of Gary McKinnon.

“I am clear that the information is not materially different from that placed before the High Court earlier this year and does not demonstrate that sending Mr McKinnon to the United States would breach his human rights.

“As the courts have affirmed, I have no general discretion. If Mr McKinnon’s human rights would be breached, I must stop the extradition. If they would not be breached, the extradition must go ahead.”

He added: “Earlier this year the High Court upheld the extradition request for Mr McKinnon. This was after all proceedings under the Extradition Act 2003 had been completed.

“The High Court dismissed a further challenge by Mr McKinnon that extradition to the USA would be in breach of his human rights.

“Throughout this process there have been a number of assurances. Firstly due to legitimate concerns over Mr McKinnon’s health, we have sought and received assurances from the United States authorities that his needs will be met. These were before the High Court in July.

“It is also clear from the proceedings to date that Mr McKinnon will not, if convicted, serve any of his sentence in a supermax prison. Finally, should Mr McKinnon be extradited, charged and convicted in the US and seek repatriation to the UK to serve a custodial sentence, the Government will of course progress his application at the very earliest opportunity.

“I know there is a concern on all sides to see a conclusion to these proceedings. It is now open to Mr McKinnon’s lawyer to consider their legal options. As a consequence I do not propose to comment any further.”

internet site reference: LINK

Edited by Iain Mackenzie

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Various representatives within the UFO Disclosure Movement, notably includes Exopolitics groups. Exopolitics groups, have sought to provide leadership in inspiring humanity to become responsible members of what they describe as the broader Galactic Community.

In order to help work toward that goal, Exopolitics groups have sought to help champion UFO Disclosure, and to help “channel” messages attributed to alleged Ethical Extraterrestrials. These channelings include messages of ‘peace’, ‘love’, and environmental stewardship. Sounds ethical, does it? However, just because an explicitly communicated message is benevolent, does not necessarily mean that the consciousness behind it, is. Indeed, that is how the aboriginal peoples of Canada, and other indigenous peoples globally, have been conquered: accepting at face value, messages of peace and friendship, that are designed to pacify “the enemy”, just before the conquest.

Editorial Reference, LINK

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