Obama aide: 'No commitment' on missile shield yet

Update: Obama aide says 'no commitment' to missile shield as of yet

From the New York Times:

President-elect Obama has spoken to the president of Poland about relations between the two countries but didn't make a commitment on the multibillion-dollar missile defense program undertaken by the Bush administration, an Obama aide said Saturday.

That contrasts with a statement by Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who said Obama told him the missile defense project would continue.

In secret agreement, Shell nets 25-year monopoly on S. Iraq's gas

Royal Dutch Shell oil company and the Iraqi Oil Ministry have struck a secret, as-of-yet non-binding agreement that gives a monopoly over southern Iraq's natural gas to the energy giant. It marks the first time in over 35 years a Western oil company has played a major role in the country's most lucrative industry.

Signed Sept. 22 and obtained by United Press International, the "Heads of Agreement" document -- basically a legal framework for a contract -- delegates Shell sole access to the reserves for the next 25 years, with an option to extend that term.

Kristallnacht 70 years on

Karen Pollock

Published 08 November 2008

Seventy years after the terror and cruelty of Kristallnacht, the event should not be simply consigned to our history books writes Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust

Can you imagine your neighbours being attacked and dragged away – and you doing nothing? Seeing their houses looted and torched – and you saying nothing?

Seventy years ago on Sunday 9th November the Nazi government sanctioned widespread destruction of property and wanton terror and violence against the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria. In the space of a few hours more than 1000 synagogues were torched, tens and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes ransacked and destroyed, 91 people murdered and more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The name given to this night of terror was Kristallnacht or Night of Broken Glass in reference to the shattered glass that carpeted the streets – a testimony – even a trophy to the perpetrators ‘achievement’ in causing widespread destruction.

In the years that followed Kristallnacht, it came to mean so much more than mere broken glass. Kristallnacht came to represent broken lives, broken families, the collapse of civilisation and humanity. It signalled the prelude to the annihilation of six million Jewish people and millions of others, including from the Roma and gay community, disabled people and political opponents. It signalled the prelude to the Holocaust.

The challenges of eating right on a limited budget

By Tara Parker-Pope

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

How much does it really cost to eat a healthy diet? Economists, health researchers and consumers are struggling to answer that question as food prices rise and the economy slumps. The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day, or even less; in the United States, the daily food-stamp allowance is typically just a few dollars per person, while the average American eats $7 worth of food per day.

Even middle-class people struggle to put healthful food on the table. Studies show that junk foods tend to cost less than fruits, vegetables and other healthful foods, whose prices continue to rise.

This fall a couple in Encinitas, California, conducted their own experiment to find out what it was like to live for a month on just a dollar a day for food. Overnight, their diets changed significantly.

John Maynard Keynes: Can the great economist save the world?

Revered in his day, John Maynard Keynes was later pilloried as a dinosaur of big-state meddling by Margaret Thatcher and her fellow free marketeers. But now, as untrammelled capitalism implodes once more, people are asking: could the great economist's ideas really save the world?

By Nick Fraser
Saturday, 8 November 2008

Some years ago, I was present when Bill Clinton visited Warwick University, during the dying days of his presidency. The faculty were awkwardly lined up, each of them holding a book as a gift. I noticed that Big Bill wasn't excessively interested in geology, and he didn't do much better with Germaine Greer and her volume of women's poetry. Things were different when he encountered Robert Skidelsky, author of the definitive Maynard Keynes biography. "Keynes!" the President exclaimed, as if recalling a long-lost crony. He told us all how he had always loved the boldness of the man.

"Keynes had the idea of using government money to spend your way out of a depression," the President explained. "That was a major discovery." I realised that Clinton, like myself certainly, had come to comprehend capitalism through the work of Maynard Keynes. And Keynes, like FDR, whom he met and admired, had been right. There really was nothing to fear, least of all fear. Humans need not think of themselves as victims of impersonal economic laws, suffering stoically. With luck, and the due exercise of brilliance, we could learn to save ourselves. Who knows, we might even come to fathom the "dismal science" of economics.

Robert Fisk: Obama has to pay for eight years of Bush's delusions

He will have to get out of Iraq, and he will have to tell Israel a few home truths

Saturday, 8 November 2008

American lawyers defending six Algerians before a habeas corpus hearing in Washington this week learned some very odd things about US intelligence after 9/11. From among the millions of "raw" reports from American spies and their "assets" around the world came a CIA Middle East warning about a possible kamikaze-style air attack on a US navy base at a south Pacific island location. The only problem was that no such navy base existed on the island and no US Seventh Fleet warship had ever been there. In all seriousness, a US military investigation earlier reported that Osama bin Laden had been spotted shopping at a post office on a US military base in east Asia.

Keep Your Euphoria to Yourself, Soldier

In a stroke of self-satire, Pentagon officials tried to block Stars and Stripes — the military’s respected independent newspaper — from covering the troops’ plain and honest reactions to the election night news about their new commander in chief. The Department of Defense once again made news by smothering news.

The boneheaded muzzling of the newspaper, which is protected by First Amendment guarantees against editorial interference, barred reporters assigned to do simple color stories from the public areas of military bases in order to “avoid engaging in activities that could associate the Department with any partisan election.”

New U.S. Rule Pares Outpatient Medicaid Services

Watching Them Squirm: Is Fox News Abandoning the Mob It Created?

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2008.

A huge schism develops between Fox's post-election attempts at "civility" and its pitchfork-wielding audience.

The first polls had just closed when the Republican Right's "Agony of Defeat" moment arrived. It was just after 8 p.m. -- right as Fox's "America's Election HQ" show returned from a commercial break, and Brit Hume welcomed viewers back to his "Fair and Balanced" network.

But something wasn't right: There was a strange lack of background banter, none of the golf-buddy joshing that comes with overconfidence. There was just Bergman-esque silence between every one of Brit Hume's dramatic pauses. The Fox cameras wandered over an incredible scene: the cream of right-wing/neocon punditry -- William Kristol, Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke -- were caught slumped in their chairs during the commercial break, deep in a state of hopelessness and depression. They didn't see the camera train on them, or maybe they were incapable of faking it, as if they'd been on a three-day Ecstasy roll at Burning Man, and now they were paying the horrible serotonin-deprived price. Kristol looked like he was suffering the worst: He was slouched over the table, his grotesque Stewie-shaped head sulking down to his navel, his glazed eyes staring down at the floor. He strained to lift his head when Hume called on him to comment -- and when Kristol spoke, it was in a raspy, slow voice, not his usual smirking, energetic arrogance. To quote a sympathetic right-wing blogger, "Will Collier e-mails to tell me that he hasn't seen Bill Kristol look this bad since his man McCain get stomped in S.C. by Bush in 2000."

Blueprints for Auschwitz camp found in Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) – The original construction plans believed used for a major expansion of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1941 have been found in a Berlin flat, Germany's Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

The daily printed three architect's drawings on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of blueprints it obtained. One has an 11.66 meter by 11.20 meter room marked "Gaskammer" (gas chamber) that was part of a "delousing facility."

No one from the federal government's archives was immediately available for comment on the authenticity or importance of the documents.

Ted Rall: No, We Didn't

Obama Win More Hysterical Than Historical

NEW YORK-There is less here than meets the eye.

Yes, the election results are notable. But they don't mean as much as people think.

First, the important stuff: The first black president has been elected. And not just elected by a majority of voters, many of whom were black and/or first-time voters, but by nearly half of white voters. Twenty-eight years after the Reagan Revolution, the electorate has repudiated Republican inaction-on Iraq, in New Orleans, most of all on the economy-to an extent not seen since Watergate. Americans delivered a proxy impeachment of George W. Bush, holding McCain less to account for his policies than his association with a (cough) leader they blamed for their troubles.

Memo to Obama: Welcome to Hard Times

Worse Than Subprime, the Alt-A Mess Now Looms

By Mary Kane, 11/7/08 9:00 AM

Given the reality of a credit crunch that shows few signs of easing despite the billions of dollars of government money thrown its way, an alternative to offering the new president-elect congratulations might be: “Welcome to hard times.”

The honeymoon period that most new presidents enjoy has probably been voided this time around. From Day One, as the former Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton used to say, President Barack Obama will face a financial crisis that only threatens to become more severe at the start of 2009. And it’s one for which there are no simple fixes — only controversial and painful remedies that may or may not work.

“It’s really analogous to choosing a new skipper for the Titanic after it already hit the iceberg,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, which covers the subprime lending industry. “It’s not the kind of situation where the president can sit down and and concentrate on a plan. He’ll be in damage-control mode every single day.”

Paul Krugman: The Obama Agenda

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever. If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you.

But will the election also mark a turning point in the actual substance of policy? Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can.

Right now, many commentators are urging Mr. Obama to think small. Some make the case on political grounds: America, they say, is still a conservative country, and voters will punish Democrats if they move to the left. Others say that the financial and economic crisis leaves no room for action on, say, health care reform.

Poker Returns to the White House

Barack Obama's hidden talent: He's a top-notch poker player. Thank goodness—he’ll need it.

Among the countless blessings conferred by the election of Barack Obama is the energizing fact—until now little-known—that poker will be back in the White House for the first time in 35 years. Not since Richard Nixon has the United States had a dedicated player of its historic national game in the Oval Office.

Throughout the campaign, Obama’s media minders have been far from keen for you to know this. Asked early on by the Press Association to name a "hidden talent," Obama rashly revealed that he considers himself "a pretty good poker-player." Subsequent investigations were hampered by a blanket shutdown on the subject from said minders. But it was already on the record that, after a cool reception from fellow legislators in 1997, when he first took his seat in the Illinois state senate, Obama won over colleagues of all parties with his charm and expertise at the green baize.

Retailers Report a Sales Collapse

By Stephanie Rosenbloom

Published: November 6, 2008

Sales at the nation’s largest retailers fell off a cliff in October, casting fresh doubt on the survival of some chains and signaling that this will probably be the weakest Christmas shopping season in decades.

The remarkable slowdown hit luxury chains that sell $5,000 designer dresses as badly as stores that offer $18 packs of underwear, suggesting that consumers at all income levels are snapping their wallets shut.

Green spaces 'reduce health gap'

A bit of greenery near our homes can cut the "health gap" between rich and poor, say researchers from two Scottish universities.

Even small parks in the heart of our cities can protect us from strokes and heart disease, perhaps by cutting stress or boosting exercise.

Their study, in The Lancet, matched data about hundreds of thousands of deaths to green spaces in local areas.

Open Letter: The Way Forward

This is an open letter to world leaders attending the November 15 White House summit on financial markets and the world economy.

Dear world leaders:
The winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide. For more than three decades, mainstream neo-liberal economists have preached, and regulators have accepted, the myth of the efficiency of unregulated markets, ignoring the critical lesson provided by John Maynard Keynes's analysis of interconnection of financial markets and the international payments system.

We only need one Bretton Woods II

By Aldo Caliari

Next Friday, leaders of several of the world's most powerful countries will gather at the White House to address the burgeoning global financial crisis. The November 15 summit and an accompanying series of smaller meetings will weigh the potential for reforms of the international financial system, leading the meetings to be dubbed a "Bretton Woods II", in reference to the New Hampshire conference held in 1944 that created today's main global financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The keys to the country

By Pepe Escobar

KEY WEST, Florida - The state of Florida was a case study of how the 2008 United States presidential election was won. Talk about will to power. Implanted in the Barack Obama campaign mindset, articulated by the "two Davids" - former Obama chief strategist Axelrod and campaign manager Plouffe - an uncontroversial Florida win would not only erase the nightmarish hanging chad film noir of eight years ago but achieve burning bright redemption by routing the Republicans with an overwhelming ground game, part of the most sophisticated field operation in the history of American politics.

Katha Pollitt: Sayonara, Sarah

And so we bid farewell to Sarah Palin. How I'll miss her daily presence in my life! The mooseburgers, the wolf hunts, the kids named after bays and sports and trees and airplanes and who did not seem to go to school at all, the winks and blinks, the cute Alaska accent, the witch-hunting pastor and those great little flared jackets, especially the gray stripey one. People say she was a dingbat, but that is just sexist: the woman read everything, she said so herself; her knowledge of geography was unreal--she knew just where to find the pro-America part of the country; and don't forget her keen interest in ancient history! Thanks largely to her, Bill Ayers is now the most famous sixtysomething professor in the country--eat your heart out, Ward Churchill! You can snipe all you want, but she was truly God's gift: to Barack Obama, Katie Couric--notice no one's making fun of America's sweetheart now--Tina Fey and columnists all over America.

Summers, Emanuel Candidates for Obama Administration

by Albert R. Hunt

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's top priority will be appointing a Treasury secretary and White House chief of staff. The leading candidates: two Clinton administration stalwarts, Lawrence Summers and Representative Rahm Emanuel.

It's unlikely the president-elect can assemble a Cabinet and staff within 10 days as some have advised, say people who have discussed this with him in recent days, all of whom asked for anonymity. Still, given the financial crisis and two wars, Obama, 47, is bound to move more quickly than either of his two predecessors in making key personnel decisions.

Advice to the new administration: UM foreign and domestic policy guide

National security shift, health care reform, bailouts

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - The incoming administration will confront an array of threats and challenges as serious as any ever faced by an American president, says Steve Fetter, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. To help whoever won, Fetter asked six experts on his faculty with deep research and government expertise to create policy briefs recommending steps to address key challenges.

Most of the foreign policy and security experts conclude that the nation is ill-equipped to deal with the changing nature of 21st century threats. In general, they recommend multi-agency and multi-national approaches to security and a foreign policy that stresses international cooperation and a diplomacy-first approach.

Campaign is one point of hope

By John Browne

Having received more than 60 million votes, president-elect Barack Obama has earned a spectacular personal victory and a clear mandate to bring some form of change to the United States. Obama's decisive and masterly election campaign, where he first had to outmaneuver the formidable Hillary Clinton machine, may bode well for his ability to implement a government response of unprecedented magnitude. Time will tell if this is a blessing or a curse.

In the short term, markets may likely rally on the grounds that election uncertainty is over and that Obama and a Democratic Congress may institute massive infrastructure spending along the lines of Roosevelt's New Deal. The larger question for investors will be whether government spending will make any difference to long-term performance, or whether the markets are already locked into a downward spiral that no amount of pump priming can counteract.

Medical tourism causes complications

Medical tourism causes complications

By Christina L Madden

Forty-five million Americans are currently uninsured and health expenditures in the United States are rising faster than wages and inflation. Despite spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, the United States in 2000 ranked 37th in the World Health Organization's evaluation of health care systems around the globe. Reforming domestic health care was a big issue in the US presidential campaign, yet a growing number of Americans and insurance providers are turning to international solutions.

About 750,000 Americans traveled overseas for medical treatment in 2007, and the number of so-called medical tourists could increase to more than 15 million in 2017. In previous decades, the medical tourism industry was dominated by cosmetic and dental procedures. Today everything from knee replacements to major heart surgery can be obtained in developing countries where internationally accredited health centers provide high-quality treatment with lower costs and shorter waiting periods than in the United States.

The Fierce Urgency of Now

Why Obama has to take over economic policymaking—today.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008, at 5:38 PM ET

The transition from the Bush-Cheney administration to the Obama-Biden administration is well underway. The president-elect has reportedly asked Rahm Emanuel to serve as his chief of staff. On Thursday, Obama will start to receive intelligence briefings.

That's a good start. Given Obama's methodical, no-drama style, we probably shouldn't expect hasty announcements of Cabinet secretaries. After all, the 11-week transition period offers plenty of time to mull over names and vet candidates. And with incumbent secretaries and other officials eager to hold on to their jobs in this punk market, Obama won't need to have a full slate ready on Jan. 20, 2009. The departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services will continue to chug along, even if Obama waits until February or March to choose new leaders. But in the area of economic and financial policy, the transition must start in an instant. On CNBC, John Harwood this morning said that Obama might wait until about Thanksgiving to announce a new Treasury secretary. (The smart money says it'll be Larry Summers. The stupid money—i.e., mine—is on Tim Geithner.) That's not soon enough. It may be poor form, but Obama and his team need to get involved in economic policymaking yesterday. Here's why.

Another thumb on the scales

The world is in economic turmoil, but the Bush administration isn't budging from its antiregulatory convictions.

The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice has published a new set of guidelines that narrow the interpretation of abuse that would justify government intervention against monopolies. It is a deregulatory gift aimed at getting pesky antitrust enforcers off of the back of big business.

The new doctrine bends over backward to protect big firms from accusations of anticompetitive behavior. It requires proof that the harm done by a monopolist's actions are "disproportionately" greater than the potential gains to consumers.

'No Child' law gets an 'F' from education professor at Illinois

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The controversial No Child Left Behind law has forced teachers in low-income school districts to craft a curriculum that marginalizes writing at the expense of teaching to the test, resulting in educators who feel straitjacketed by a high-stakes test, according to a U. of I. education professor who has studied the issue.

Mark Morford: Yes We Did

Party like it's 2009, 'cuz baby, now the real work begins

by Mark Morford

This is no time for gloating.

This is no time to get carried away by some sort of rapturous rose-colored ROTFLMAO celebration full of streamers and confetti and blissful weeping in the streets, all wrapped in a big creamy ribbon of stunned disbelief, the overwhelming sense that, oh sweet God in heaven, our wary and battered nation has finally agreed, after all these years and seemingly all at once, to grow the hell up.

Is that not the feeling? That we as a country just did the impossible, just chose to get a little bit serious with ourselves, to actually attempt to right our myriad ills and rid the national body of our Republican toxins and oh yes by the way make a huge, shocking jolt of unprecedented history while we're at it? You're damn right it is.

What Happens to the Progressive Movement Now?

By Sara Robinson

Created 11/04/2008 - 4:38pm

All good movements turn into organizations turn into businesses turn into rackets.
—Old organizers' saying

I don't think any of us expected to get so far so soon.

Back in 2003, when Bush was southern-frying the Dixie Chicks and the Iraq War was propelling millions into the streets and progressive blogs consisted of a small handful of folks writing in their pajamas under esoteric banners like "Eschaton" or "Orcinus" or "Daily Kos," anybody who suggested that America might someday return to its liberal Enlightenment roots was right up there on the wack-o-meter with those who dreamed that the country might someday abolish private property and adopt socialist utopianism. Nobody serious thought it was remotely possible. Amongst ourselves, we told each other that ousting the conservative juggernaut would probably be the work of a couple of decades. Or maybe even a whole generation. Or maybe it was a fool's errand that wasn't even possible at all any more.

Thomas Frank: Conservatism Isn't Finished

I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine. His famous plea at the 2004 Democratic convention for an end to the red state/blue state divide, I thought, sounded noble but overlooked the obvious: that a unilateral display of brotherly love from the Democratic Party had no chance of actually ending the culture wars. The reason those wars have raged ever since 1968 was because they help Republicans win elections. For Democrats to wish that they would please stop was about as useful as asking Genghis Khan to a tea party.

What would beat the culture wars was always clear from the pseudo-populist language in which they were framed. In place of a showdown between a folksy "middle America" and a snobbish "liberal elite," Democrats needed to offer the real deal -- the conflict between a public that craves fairness and an economic system that enables the predatory.

Obama: Promises to Keep

President-Elect Talked of Many Programs -- Now He Has to Make Them Happen

By Sridhar Pappu 11/4/08 6:20 PM

At last, we have reached the beginning. Sen. Barack Obama has won the presidency. Now we stand at the beginning of a new era — based on a set of promises and ideals that have raised hopes for millions at a time of darkness and rekindled the optimistic beliefs and possibilities of much of America.

Obama has maybe a day to celebrate the end of what has been a caustic, difficult and, most especially, long campaign. At rallies, the Democratic nominee is fond of saying that since he announced nearly two years ago, children have been conceived, born and are walking and talking. But these children will grow up in the post-Bush era. They will know Obama as their first leader and scoff at the notion that anyone ever questioned whether an African-American could win the presidency.

Michael Kinsley: McCain's Last Mistake

Undivided government won't be as bad as he warned it would be.

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, at 9:31 PM ET

John McCain's last, desperate argument to the voters was the danger of undivided government. Give the Democrats the White House, both houses of Congress, maybe even a flibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and they will be unstoppable. And then God knows what they'll do.

As I write, it's still too early on Election Night to know whether the Democrats will actually achieve their flibuster-proof Senate majority. If they don't, there will be wise observers all over TV and in Wednesday's newspapers asserting that the voters have chosen divided government or decided to warn the Democrats not to go too far, or some such nonsense.

Trapped in the New 'You're on Your Own' World

By Robert M. Solow

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families

by Peter Gosselin

Basic Books, 374 pp., $26.95

1.

When the Bush-Cheney administration proposed to replace Social Security with a system of individually accumulated, individually owned, and individually invested accounts, my first thought was that its goal was to take the Social out of Social Security. It took a few minutes longer to realize that it also intended to take the Security out of Social Security.

That attempt failed. In recent years, however, a mixture of public and private policy decisions and impersonal market developments has had the broad effect of shifting many financial risks from established institutions, including even society at large, to individuals who are unable to cope with them in an adequate way. Information may be impossibly difficult for citizens to process; or else the basic information may not be available to individuals or private groups. Sometimes the scale of the possible bad outcomes may be overwhelming. Sometimes the appropriate insurance market cannot function or just does not exist. The result is that individuals and families can be the casualties of situations that once would have been handled by a more centralized and more bearable allocation of risks.

The Co-President at Work

By David Bromwich

The Dark Side: The Inside Story on How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
by Jane Mayer, Doubleday, 392 pp., $27.50

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency
by Barton Gellman, Penguin, 483 pp., $27.95

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
by Ron Suskind, Harper, 415 pp., $27.95

Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy
by Charlie Savage, Little, Brown, 400 pp., $25.99

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception
by Scott McClellan, PublicAffairs, 341 pp., $27.95

The Bush Tragedy
by Jacob Weisberg, Random House, 271 pp., $26.00; $16.00 (paper)

Cheney: The Untold Story of America’s Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President
by Stephen F. Hayes, HarperCollins, 578 pp., $27.95

The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006–2008
by Bob Woodward, Simon and Schuster, 487 pp., $32.00

When George W. Bush testified before the 9/11 Commission, Dick Cheney was with him in the Oval Office. What was said there remains a secret, but throughout the double session, it appears, Cheney deferred to Bush. Aides to the President afterward explained that the two men had to sit together for people to see how fully Bush was in control. A likelier motive was the obvious one: they had long exercised joint command but neither knew exactly how much the other knew, or what the other would say in response to particular questions. Bush also brought Cheney for the reason that a witness under oath before a congressional committee may bring along his lawyer. He could not risk an answer that his adviser might prefer to correct. Yet Bush would scarcely have changed the public understanding of their relationship had he sent in Cheney alone. "When you're talking to Dick Cheney," the President said in 2003, "you're talking to me."

Oil Creation Theory Challenged by Fuel-Making Fungus

A newfound fungus living in rainforest trees makes biofuel more efficiently than any other known method, researchers say.

In fact, it's so good at turning plant matter into fuel that researchers say their discovery calls into question the whole theory of how crude oil was made by nature in the first place.

While many crops and microbes can be combined to make biofuels — including the fungi that became infamous as jungle rot during WWII — the newfound fungus could greatly simplify the process, its discoverers claim. Researchers have suggested that billions of acres of fallow farmland could be used to grow the raw material of biofuels. But turning corn stalks or switchgrass into fuel is a painstaking process and the end product is expensive and not entirely friendly to the environment.

Ozone hole over Antarctica grows again

Stratospheric levels of harmful CFCs will take between 40 and 100 years to dissipate and have only dropped a few per cent since reaching a peak in 2000, scientists warn

John Vidal
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday November 04 2008 11.20 GMT

The ozone hole over Antarctica grew to the size of North America this year – the fifth largest on record – according to the latest satellite observations.

US government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say this year's ozone hole reached its maximum level on September 12, extending to 10.5m sq miles and four miles deep. That is bigger than 2007 but smaller than 2006, when the hole covered over 11.4m sq miles.

Send off the clowns

It is not our place to tell Americans how they should vote. Their concerns are health plans, taxes and, suddenly, socialism. That's their business. We can however tell them what America looks like to us, and it's our business, because America is a 800-pound gorilla in our patch of jungle. We need the gorilla because it helps sustain our ecosystem by consuming stuff we make but can't use ourselves. But for the past eight years our gorilla has been acting like a crazed thing, bringing wars and economic catastrophe. Its antics have made it a pariah and worse - a laughing stock. It's a gorilla that wears a big red nose, a frizzy wig and oversize shoes.

Judge: AIG reserves fraud caused big investor loss

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A financial manipulation scheme cost American International Group Inc investors at least $544 million, a judge has estimated, a finding that could mean the five former executives convicted in the fraud will face lengthy prison terms when sentenced.

The case is unrelated to AIG's mortgage-related losses that led to a near collapse of the company in September and an $85 billion emergency line of credit from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Nicholas von Hoffman on Kevin Phillips’ ‘Bad Money’

By Nicholas von Hoffman

Americans, rich or poor, have consciously or otherwise bought into the master-nation proposition that really bad things do not happen to the USA. We might suffer setbacks and commit a blunder once in a while, but we are too big, too rich, too smart, too powerful and too blessed to be visited by a national catastrophe. That the whole goddamn economy could melt right out from under our feet is an unimaginable event, an occurrence out of history when crackly voiced recordings captured President Franklin Roosevelt talking to the Okies.

Such disasters may overtake Argentines or Malaysians or Bulgarians or Russians or even, occasionally, the English, but not the red, white and blue über-nation. Yet in the space of a year the U.S. has gone from über-nation to under-nation, or at least a nation under water as hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs, been tossed out of their homes and seen the savings of a lifetime decimated. Americans have seen many of the most respected business institutions revealed as organizations run by confidence men whose cupidity is yoked to their pride and their stupidity in believing that they could run their ruinous games forever.

Paul Krugman: The Republican Rump

Maybe the polls are wrong, and John McCain is about to pull off the biggest election upset in American history. But right now the Democrats seem poised both to win the White House and to greatly expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Most of the post-election discussion will presumably be about what the Democrats should and will do with their mandate. But let me ask a different question that will also be important for the nation’s future: What will defeat do to the Republicans?

Commentary: They’ve squandered lives, fortunes and our sacred honor

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

Here’s to the American people, the electorate, for finally coming to their senses and voting for something different, for someone different and for a chance to fix the multitude of man-made disasters that confront us.

By their votes, the Republican revolution and all it's wrought — an economic meltdown, two endless wars, class warfare that’s enriched the very rich and beggared everyone else and a treasury bulging only with IOU's — will be crushed.

Glenn Greenwald: The Post and "the most disliked president since polling began in the 1930s"

In February, 2007, David Broder -- the Dean of the Washington Press Corps -- announced that "President Bush is poised for a political comeback" and "is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge." Today, his own paper, The Washington Post, documented how painfully wrong that was, that George Bush's presidency is one of the greatest failures in all of American history, and he is so widely despised that he dare not show his face in public for fear of further hurting his party's nominee:

Lies, Half Truths and Contradictions: Chronicle ''Hidden'' Audio on Obama

It's not true.

But the Drudge Report, the Republican National Committee and apparently even GOP VP candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fell for completely fabricated news from a shady website called Newsbusters today suggesting the San Francisco Chronicle has ''hidden'' audio with Sen. Barack Obama regarding his statements on coal.

''Barack Obama explained his plan to the San Francisco Chronicle this year,'' she told a rally in Ohio Sunday. ''He said that sure, if the industry wants to build coal-fired power plants, then they can go ahead and try, he says, but they can do it only in a way that will bankrupt the coal industry.''

Two, three, many 'grand bargains'?

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - As the United States waded ever deeper into the Indochinese quagmire in the early 1960s, Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara called for "two, three, many Vietnams" to bog down the superpower in unwinnable Third World conflicts which would drain its treasury and overstretch its military.

While today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not quite as costly - at least as a percentage of the gross domestic product - as then, Guevara's vision, echoed nearly 40 years later by Osama bin Laden, of an increasingly stressed hyperpower which now confronts its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, must weigh heavily on whichever candidate moves into the White House on January 20.

The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall

A chronology tracing the life of the Glass-Steagall Act, from its passage in 1933 to its death throes in the 1990s, and how Citigroup's Sandy Weill dealt the coup de grâce.

1933--Glass-Steagall Act creates new banking landscape

Following the Great Crash of 1929, one of every five banks in America fails. Many people, especially politicians, see market speculation engaged in by banks during the 1920s as a cause of the crash.

In 1933, Senator Carter Glass (D-Va.) and Congressman Henry Steagall (D-Ala.) introduce the historic legislation that bears their name, seeking to limit the conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds. In the early part of the century, individual investors were seriously hurt by banks whose overriding interest was promoting stocks of interest and benefit to the banks, rather than to individual investors. The new law bans commercial banks from underwriting securities, forcing banks to choose between being a simple lender or an underwriter (brokerage). The act also establishes the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), insuring bank deposits, and strengthens the Federal Reserve's control over credit.

Europe's looming crisis

Iain Macwhirter
Published 30 October 2008

It all started with sub-prime loans in the United States. Or did it? As the IMF is called in to bail out failing economies, the scale of European exposure to toxic debt is becoming clear

It was Europe’s dark secret. While American banks were lending irresponsibly to homeowners who couldn’t pay, European banks were lending to emerging countries who couldn’t pay. Europe’s sub-prime crisis has now come home as heavily-indebted nations of the eastern bloc – Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Baltic states – are collapsing one by one into the arms of the IMF. “Icelandisation” is the new spectre stalking Europe.

And, as with sub-prime in urban America, this latest crisis was shockingly predictable. I visited Latvia at the height of the credit bubble 18 months ago, and it was clearly an accident waiting to happen. Riga, the capital, was bristling with upmarket shopping malls and classy bars that were all quite empty. Stalin-era flats were being sold for $200,000 in a country where the average wage was less than $400 a month. Latvia has hardly any industry, no energy and few natural resources apart from trees. But such was the irrational exuberance of foreign banks like Swedbank, it was awash with credit.

Europe's looming crisis

Iain Macwhirter
Published 30 October 2008

It all started with sub-prime loans in the United States. Or did it? As the IMF is called in to bail out failing economies, the scale of European exposure to toxic debt is becoming clear

It was Europe’s dark secret. While American banks were lending irresponsibly to homeowners who couldn’t pay, European banks were lending to emerging countries who couldn’t pay. Europe’s sub-prime crisis has now come home as heavily-indebted nations of the eastern bloc – Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Baltic states – are collapsing one by one into the arms of the IMF. “Icelandisation” is the new spectre stalking Europe.

And, as with sub-prime in urban America, this latest crisis was shockingly predictable. I visited Latvia at the height of the credit bubble 18 months ago, and it was clearly an accident waiting to happen. Riga, the capital, was bristling with upmarket shopping malls and classy bars that were all quite empty. Stalin-era flats were being sold for $200,000 in a country where the average wage was less than $400 a month. Latvia has hardly any industry, no energy and few natural resources apart from trees. But such was the irrational exuberance of foreign banks like Swedbank, it was awash with credit.

Obama's green jobs revolution

Democrat will lead effort to curb world's dependence on oil; Plans to create five million new posts in clean energy projects

By Geoffrey Lean in San Francisco and Leonard Doyle in Washington
Sunday, 2 November 2008

Barack Obama is promising a $150bn "Apollo project" to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy, if his final push for votes brings victory in the presidential election on Tuesday.

"That's going to be my number one priority when I get into office," Mr Obama has said of his "green recovery" plans. Making his arguments in a radio address yesterday, the Democratic favourite promised: "If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election. Together, we will change this country and change the world."

Frank Rich: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

AND so: just how far have we come?

As a rough gauge last week, I watched a movie I hadn’t seen since it came out when I was a teenager in 1967. Back then “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was Hollywood’s idea of a stirring call for racial justice. The premise: A young white woman falls madly in love with a black man while visiting the University of Hawaii and brings him home to San Francisco to get her parents’ blessing. Dad, a crusading newspaper publisher, and Mom, a modern art dealer, are wealthy white liberals — Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, no less — so surely there can be no problem. Complications ensue before everyone does the right thing.

Though the film was a box-office smash and received 10 Oscar nominations, even four decades ago it was widely ridiculed as dated by liberal critics. The hero, played by the first black Hollywood superstar, Sidney Poitier, was seen as too perfect and too “white” — an impossibly handsome doctor with Johns Hopkins and Yale on his résumé and a Nobel-worthy career fighting tropical diseases in Africa for the World Health Organization. What couple would not want him as a son-in-law? “He’s so calm and sure of everything,” says his fiancée. “He doesn’t have any tensions in him.” She is confident that every single one of their biracial children will grow up to “be president of the United States and they’ll all have colorful administrations.”