Neo-Nazi's rising in Europe...red flag of bigotry has many faces

The World Jewish Congress said Tuesday it is greatly concerned about the emergence of what it called neo-Nazi parties in Europe, singling out Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik, and Germany’s National Democratic Party.

A study presented at the congress’s assembly here in the Hungarian capital highlighted the links among the growing strength of such extremist groups, the European economic crisis and latent Nazi-type tendencies in Europe. (from "World Jewish Congress warns of rise of neo-Nazi parties in Europe" by Pablo Gorondi Associated Press, in Toronto Star, May 7 2013 , below)
The European history of targetting a specific race, of decimating  a specific race and of generating an archetype of one of, if not the, most virulent examples of racism in human history, against the Jews in WW II, cannot be either forgotten or glossed over. Currently, as European countries experience an onrush of albeit non-Jewish immigrants, that history is likely to rear its ugly head once again.
And from an outsider's perspective, it is not difficult to see how the deep and profound contempt for Jews and the state of Israel among radical Muslims and the neo-Nazi movement could coalesce, once again, into an even more virulent, if unlikely set of political "bed-mates".
In order to secure power, any single group will get into bed with another group, if in doing so their larger objectives are served, even if in the short run, they are appearing to compromise their identity and integrity.
There have been other examples of racial superiority, based on a concept of "racial purity" that links easily and quickly to a public stance of economic protectionism, especially if and when "outsiders" are taking jobs from "insiders"....In short, when the economies of any countries are suffering and as a result individual people are fighting to retain their jobs and income, while "outsiders" are moving in and taking jobs that would otherwise go to indigenous inhabitants, all of the voices of fear, and alienation and bigotry and hate begin to find their way to the surface of the public debates.
There is no established link, so far, between the neo-Nazi groups and the radical Islamic groups, some of which are willing to resort to terrorism to achieve their objectives, it is not a stretch too far to imagine that somewhere, in some coffee shop there are individuals plotting and conversing and motivating others to accomplish a common front.
Anti-semitism is one of the barometers for the existance of radical racism....and clearly both radical Islamists and neo-Nazi's have a common identifying thread of hatred of Jews.
Consequently, the anti-semitic movement(s) are a litmus test for the degree of racial bigotry in any society, as it has been for decades, if not centuries.
And when the World Jewish Congress "goes public" about their concerns over the neo-Nazi movement in three Eurpoean countries, already having won seats in the governments, it is time for all of us to listen, and to be watchful and vigilant in opposing such bigotry...when times are tough, it is time for the strongest to rise up against those forces that are determined to erode or even eradicate those political and cultural values that have characterized western democracies for more than a century, although we all recognize that there are still many battles for equality, respect and dignity to be waged and won before full equality and respect are achieved.
While this story reads as a eurocentric story, it does directly or indirectly involve the global community.

World Jewish Congress warns of rise of neo-Nazi parties in Europe


WJC points to resurgence of extremist groups inside the party political system in Greece, Hungary and Germany.
By Pablo Gorondi Associated Press, in Toronto Star, May 7 2013

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY—The World Jewish Congress said Tuesday it is greatly concerned about the emergence of what it called neo-Nazi parties in Europe, singling out Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik, and Germany’s National Democratic Party.
A study presented at the congress’s assembly here in the Hungarian capital highlighted the links among the growing strength of such extremist groups, the European economic crisis and latent Nazi-type tendencies in Europe.
“Although neo-Nazi style movements and ideologies are present in other parts of the world, it is unsurprising that an ideology that was born in Europe should be most likely to show a resurgence in Europe inside the party political system,” the study said.
The study recommended that mainstream parties effectively quarantine neo-Nazi groups by refusing to appear with them in public or meet with them in private. The “economic crisis, which has nurtured the neo-Nazi cause, may endure or worsen,” the document said. “We must be prepared for all eventualities.”
In a resolution adopted by the congress at the end of its three-day meeting, the group led by U.S. businessman Ronald Lauder urged countries whose constitutions allow it to urgently consider banning neo-Nazi parties or organizations “posing a threat to the safety and well-being” of minorities.
One concern of the group is Golden Dawn, Greece’s third most-popular party. The party, which was once marginal, rejects the neo-Nazi label, but it is fond of Nazi literature and symbols. It has been accused of being behind a spurt of violence against immigrants living in Greece.
Hungary’s Jobbik, which styles itself as a nationalist movement and also rejects the neo-Nazi tag, is the second-largest opposition group in parliament, having won 16.7 per cent of the vote in 2010. Germany’s far-right National Democratic Party has deputies in two of Germany’s 16 regional assemblies but no representation at the federal level.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s speech at the start of the congress’s meeting on Sunday was criticized by the Jewish organization for failing to specifically mention the threat posed by Jobbik.
On Tuesday, however, Lauder said he was told about a recent interview Orban gave to the Yedioth Ahronoth Israeli newspaper in which the prime minister called Jobbik “an increasing danger” to Hungarian democracy.
“This was a strong statement about Jobbik,” Lauder said, apologizing for not knowing sooner about the interview published last week. “I would like that to be put in the record that the prime minister really did take a stand against Jobbik, and I appreciate that.”
For its part, Jobbik said the congress’s meeting in Budapest “grossly meddled with Hungary’s domestic politics” and said the Hungarian government had “grovelled subserviently” without being able to please the Jewish organization.
“They came here and unperturbedly offended, directed and humiliated our country,” said Jobbik lawmaker and spokesman Adam Mirkoczki, rejecting suggestions from some members of the Jewish organization that his party should be banned. “Hungary has had enough of the serial foreign provocations.”

New weapon produced by 3-D printer....available without legal restrictions

 ATexas lawstudent who allegedly describes himself as an anarchist has produced a weapon that works using a 3-D printer, and a nail from the printer owner's office or residence.
Just when you thought that the technology industry was providing some conveniences, without impairing individual or collective security, along comes this story, on the same day that The United States goes public with more evidence of cyber hacking of their national computers, allegedly by the Chinese.
Now lawmakers will have to design a law to restrict, forbid, or at least control the production of weapons by and for individuals who have a 3D printer. Obsolete already are the many animated conversations about extended background checks, large magazines, and an assault weapons ban especially if one can construct, albeit a still somewhat amateur and inaccurate version, a gun using a design available on the internet.
This is only the tip of the anarchist's dream....where will it surface next, and with what impact.
There is no way a moribund, designed for only bull-low speed, democratic legislature in any country including the United States can or will keep up with the speed of the changes overtaking the tech-world, and thereby the rest of the world as well.
Will this and other models of technology render legislatures and legal structures emasculated, given the appetite for both the design and the production of individual products, especially weapons and especially in the United States?
Will this technology result in a planetary armed camp, including all of those self-radialicalized young men in too many countries who are already salivating at the thought that, regardless of their age, their legal status, their education or occupation, they could and will easily acquire access to the tools necessary for the production of killing instruments, who sophistication can and will only increase, as each generation of product comes along.
Where is Aldous Huxley, and his "Brave New World" now?



from Toronto Star blog May 7, 2013
It's news that's sure to ease the anxieties of any gun owner worried that their government may make it harder to obtain their weapon of choice: forget about gun shops -- now, you can make your own gun.

A gun called the "Liberator" that was made with a 3D printer has been successfully test-fired in the U.S.
The gun was produced by Defense Distributed, a group that says it wants to "defend the civil liberty of popular access to arms" through "information and knowledge related to the 3D printing of arms." It is the second to have made the headlines in the past year.
Each of the Liberator's parts were made using a 3D printer, with the exception of a metal firing pin, which is made from a nail.
The gun made by Defense Distributed, a group headed by 25-year-old law student Cody Wilson, has a piece of steel embedded inside of it so it will be picked up by metal detectors, as required by U.S. laws.
While the barrel of the Liberator is threaded, it's not expected to be extremely accurate -- at least in its current design. The gun uses a small .380 calibre bullet.
The BBC's Rebecca Morelle watched a demonstration of the gun.
Wilson told Morelle his initiative is about "liberty."
"I'm seeing a world where technology says you can pretty much be able to have whatever you want. It's not up to the political players any more," Wilson said, according to the BBC. "I recognize the tool might be used to harm other people - that's what the tool is - it's a gun. But I don't think that's a reason to not do it - or a reason not to put it out there."

Israeli strikes on Hezbollah-bound missiles in Damascus provoke questions...

Which of the many strikes in Syria will be the one that ignites a much larger conflict?
Will the Israeli week-end strikes on Iranian-made guided missiles near Damascus, allegedly bound for the militant (terrorist) group Hezbollah in Lebanon, be the one that generates a more violent response from Iran, in support of Syria? Will the actions by the Israelis prompt more aggressive acts from the United States, already actively investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons? Will the Syrian regime's alleged provision of these more sophisticated missiles to Hezbollah provide enough stimulus and provocation to the members of that group to launch their own attack on Israel, testing the missile defence system in Israel that proved so effective the last time Hezbollah attacked Israel?
Will the Israeli attack on Damascus push Russia a little closer to military support, not just the provision of weapons, but with actual combat troops in support of the Syrian regime?
Will Iran be pushed a little closer to full development of their nuclear weapons, thereby making it more likely that they would and could deploy such weapons against Israel directly?
Is the Israeli prime minister attempting to generate a U.S. military response toward the conflict in Syria, as his own way to "protect the Israeli people from more agressive and more accurate attacks from Hezbollah?
We all know the history of many military conflicts begins, or is assessed to have begun, with a single act, commonly known as the 'tipping point' in an already precarious political/military/economic equation. In the Middle East, there have been so many moments that might have flared into a major conflagration, that many people in the west have come to regard the cauldron as one of constant boiling, just waiting to "boil over" by engaging major powers from outside the region.
The political energy to eradicate Israel ebbs and flows without ever fully dissipating in countries like Iran, and among terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The Islamic fundamentalist contempt for Israeli runs so deep that its very existence is, or seems to be, constantly under threat. And no matter what attempts to dampen the feelings and perceptions of injustice, bitterness, resentment, jealousy and outright hate are attempted, in the 'final' analysis, what remains is a precipitate of bigotry and contempt for the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Canada, under the current government, has become one of Israel's most public and vocal allies, a major shift from previous Canadian governments' positions that attempted to strike a balanced approach as power broker in the region between the Israeli's and the Palestinians. However, as recently as this past week, Qatar has been reported to be soliciting public support among members of the United Nations, to move the only United Nations facility from Montreal to that nation state, as a political and diplomatic snub of Canada's cozyness with Israel.
Qatar hopes to pry International Civil Aviation Organization out of Montreal: Siddiqui


Campaign could be retaliation for Stephen Harper’s pro-Israel stance.

By Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, May 5, 2013 Qatar wants to pry the International Civil Aviation Organization away from Montreal. It is promising to build a gleaming new headquarters in Doha for the agency that sets international standards for civil aviation. It is ready to pay for the transfer of the UN agency’s 535 staff and do whatever else needs doing. The tiny gas-rich Arab nation of 270,000 certainly has the resources.

It created Al Jazeera, Arabic and English. Hosted the 2001 Doha round of trade talks and the 2006 Asian Games. Landed the 2022 World Cup of Soccer with a pledge to build $4-billion worth of stadiums with outdoor air conditioning in 48C summer heat.
Last year, Qatar bought the athletes’ village at the Olympics in London, where it also owns the Harrods department store, the American embassy building and the Shard of Glass, Europe’s tallest building. Recently, it reportedly offered $200 billion to rent Egypt’s pyramids for tourism.
The lunge for the only UN agency that Canada hosts is in keeping with that relentless drive to put itself on the map.
There’s speculation that the bid is also politically motivated, in retaliation for Stephen Harper’s rabid pro-Israeli stance.
The prime minister’s stand was a major reason for Canada’s shocking failure in 2010 to win a seat on the UN Security Council.
Still, Canada changed its historic position on three key UN resolutions. It voted against one that asserts the status of Jerusalem as occupied territory; against another that speaks to the illegality of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories, and yet another that asserts the applicability of Geneva Conventions to Israel.
Last fall, Canada was one of only nine states to vote against the Palestinian bid for observer-status at the UN, with Foreign Minister John Baird threatening to cut off Canadian funding to the Palestinian Authority.
Last month, he warned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah not to haul Israel before the World Court in The Hague for its actions in the Occupied Territories. Strange for a man who thinks Israel does no wrong. Stranger still for one who touts his own pro-Israeli position as “principled” — yet wants the Palestinians to sell their principles for Canadian aid.
Baird proceeded to meet Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni in East Jerusalem, ignoring the reported advice of Canadian embassy officials. He tried to pass it off as nothing more than “having coffee,” and insisted that Canada had not changed its stance, when it clearly has in more than ways than one.
“Either the man is ignorant or he was trying to set a precedent,” an enraged PA official told me on the phone after the April 9 meeting. “Baird gave the green light to Israel to occupy East Jerusalem.”
The official added that had the Palestinians known about Baird’s plans with Livni, Abbas would not have met the minister.
Back in Ottawa, Baird met Arab ambassadors April 15. He was asked to clarify his stance. He got testy and became “undiplomatic,” according to a person present there. “All these actions do have consequences.”
Along the way, Canada picked a fight with the United Arab Emirates over granting Emirates Airlines extra landing rights in Canada. In retaliation, the U.A.E. booted Canada out of Camp Mirage, a free way-station for ferrying Canadian troops and machinery in and out of Afghanistan. That reportedly cost Canada between $300 million and $500 million. Baird has since mended fences with the U.A.E.
All these ideological, bull-in-a-china-shop moves may be cited by Qatar. It needs the support of 60 per cent of the 191 member states (115 votes) when the matter is decided in September.
The Qatari bid is likely to fail, for no other reason than that the agency has been in Montreal since 1946, and has attracted other airlines-related groups. Montreal is also a far more pleasant place to live and visit than Doha.
But Ottawa is forced into a fight, and has to rally support at home and abroad. Baird lost no time dashing to Quebec Friday, to forge a common front with the Parti Québécois government as well as the city of Montreal, which benefits by $100 million a year and 1,200 direct and indirect jobs.
The real battle would have to be waged internationally.
Baird said Qatar’s immense wealth should not be a factor in the vote. Harper said there’s no reasonable case to move the agency out of Montreal.
True. But that’s not all that may be in play.
So...now that Canada is fully in Israel's court, what will the political implications be for our country, should there be another military conflict in the Middle East?
No longer the "modest peace-maker" is Canada under Harper becoming what James M. Minifee once asked, a "powder monkey"?





Israel escalates involvement in Syria conflict with airstrikes on Hezbollah-bound missiles


By Bassem Mroue And Ian Deitch, Associated Press, In National Post, May 5, 2013

Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital Sunday, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be on their way to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, officials and activists said.

The attack, the second in three days, signalled a sharp escalation of Israel’s involvement in Syria’s bloody civil war. Syrian state media reported that Israeli missiles struck a military and scientific research centre near Damascus and caused casualties.
An intelligence official in the Middle East, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to disclose information about a secret military operation to the media, confirmed that Israel launched an airstrike in the Syrian capital early Sunday but did not give more precise details about the location. The target was Fateh-110 missiles, which have precision guidance systems with better aim than anything Hezbollah is known to have in its arsenal, the official told The Associated Press.
The airstrikes come as Washington considers how to respond to indications that the Syrian regime may have used chemical weapons in its civil war. President Barack Obama has described the use of such weapons as a “red line,” and the administration is weighing its options — including possible military action.
Iran, a close ally of the Assad regime, condemned the airstrikes but gave no other hints of a possible stronger response from Tehran.
Israel has said it wants to stay out of the Syrian war, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated the Jewish state would be prepared to take military action to prevent sophisticated weapons from flowing from Syria to Hezbollah or other extremist groups.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in mid-2006 that ended in a stalemate.

Sacred Cows in all fields...let's not obsess about certainty, rather embrace mystery

The story of a single grad student, while working on an assignment might turn the western world's economic practice on its ear, while news-making in many ways, is important for some ways not mentiong in the piece from the Toronto Star below that documents the story.
First, there is an intellectual "church" that worships at the altar of austerity, including both Rogoff and Reinhart from Harvard, the European Union, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the U.K. and, not surprisingly, the Tea Party and the Republican party generally in the United States. Canada's government too has deep roots in this political/economic position, as do most of the business and corporate leaders of the western world, especially given their contempt for any government interference in their rampant and unbridled pursuit of profit, to feed their greed. Similar "chuch" positions exist in the U.S. around the retention of assault weapons, the resistance to background checks, the resistance to banning large magazines of 30-plus rounds of ammunition....as if those positions were declared as pontifical "dogma-and-doctrine"....by some faux pontiff (read Reinhart and Rogoff in the case of austerity, read the NRA in the case of guns.)
A similar "church" exists in the U.S. around the use of military power around the world, for whatever potential or miraged or real threat the country might face. In this case, the pontiff is perceived to be the Pentagon, the largest military machine in world history, when the facts are that it if often the Joint Chiefs who express the greatest caution to the White House prior to any military action. They know, after all, what it takes to conduct those missions, costs in both lives and treasure.
In the medical field, there have been many similar "churches" for and against the consumption of peanut butter, for example, or milk products, or red meat, or specific prescription drugs for which insufficient clinical trials have been conducted to know with some degree of confidence whether their consumption is worth the risk.
In parenting, and in school philosophy and operation, there have been many "churches" over the decades and centuries. Sparta, for example, condoned only the most austere and militaristic development of its young people, while Athens preferred a more relaxed and more humane approach.
Dewey wanted children to "experience" their learning, as does the Montessori model, while Waldorf practices a curricular integration arranged thematically. Research apparently demonstrates that Waldorf graduates perform exceptionally when they reach university, given their confidence and willingness to question and engage with the instructor and the other members of their class, as they have been doing for their elementary and secondary years.
Now, of course, technology reigns supreme in all  "western schools" given the demands of the marketplace for "tech-savy" employees in all enterprises.
It is also much more difficult to "poke holes" in the mathematical calculations of any specific school design and delivery system, given that none are based exclusively on a reduction to numerical precision. Although there is a tsunami of public opinion attempting to justify the reduction of education to "performance objectives" on objective testing devices that can only be skewed in the direction of the culture and world view of the designer(s) of the test. Politicians, however, being simple-minded and fixated on the next election want "numbers" to prove that their decision was "right" on No Child Left Behind, or Race to the Top, or some other equally glib and uncomplicated description of the program that is designed as another silver bullet to "fix the schools" as if another "bullet prescription" would work.
It is our collective obsession with the "silver bullet" and the instant solution to the most complicated of problems that generates a culture, both in the entertainment and in the political classes, that elevates a twenty-eight-year-old grad student to celebrity status.
Paul Krugmann will want to recruit him to study for his doctorate at Princeton, now that he and his professor have attained a degree of recognition for their collaborative deconstructing of the work of Reinhart and Rogoff.
But, there will be other "deconstructions" of other "church beliefs" in all other fields, including within the relgious world, that will in effect decompose many of the current sacred cows, just as this grad student has apparently done to one paper of Reinhart and Rogoff.
In fact, it is our addiction to sacred cows, when everything else seems like complete chaos, as if the world is one giant volcano erupting unceremoniously and rebelliously, without notice, all around us, and we try in vain to cling to those sacred cows as if they were "God-sent" manna and we were all pilgrims wandering in some ancient desert, starved and slacked.
Going to church, after all, is not an exercise in clinging to sacred cows, of whatever sort, as if they were life-preservers for those cast overboard in a sea of doubt. Going to church, rather, is about searching for some kind of meaningful connection, relationship and "one-ness" with a presence whose magnitude and magnificience and ubiquity cannot be grasped. And that exercise, if it is to be even marginally consummated, will be fraught with uncertainty, doubt, more searching and more and more awe and amazement at the design of both the universe and each creature within that universe....and not barnacled over with fossils of sacred cows whose creation and preservation depends and always has depended on our frightened little existences, amid the amazing world that is turbulently tumbling, as described in the lyrics of The Windmills of your Mind:
Like a circle in a spiral

Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of it's face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space

And while those lyrics depict a male-female relationship, there is a quality of confusion, and discombulation and disorientation that has engulfed us all, every single person currently dwelling on the planet, seemingly pushing us closer to some kind of "talisman" of  certitude, something in which we can believe, no matter our politics, our religion, our ethnicity, our geography or our culture.
And we dare not look to the media for road maps, and we dare not look to the entertainment or the political industries for road maps...and we dare not look to the academic world of theorists or mathematicians, for the road maps we seek...
Rather we might begin to look within, to the deep silent streams of both consciousness and unconsciousness for some help in coming to terms with the uncertainties that confound each of us...
while continuing to read, to ask questions, to confront the thoughts and the writings of others, as a normal part of healthy, engaged citizenship with others from all corners of the globe in a similar pilgrimmage....to some distant and perhaps even mystical unity...never to be fully grasped or experienced...thankfully

Thomas Herndon: How a lone grad student became a media sensation by blowing a hole in austerity’s ‘bible’

U.S. grad student becomes superstar overnight by poking a hole in austerity

By Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star, May 3, 2013
Grad student Thomas Herndon is a wanted man.

European media outlets are after him. He’s been profiled by New York magazine, the Washington Post and featured on MSNBC. New York Times Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is singing his praises and Stephen Colbert referred to him as the “grad student who had fiscal conservatives’ panties in an economic bunch.”
Herndon became an instant celebrity in the nerdy world of global economics almost overnight when he found some whopping errors in a paper that is often referenced as the “bible” for austerity. His findings are causing influential thinkers, conservative politicians and bankers to rethink harsh economic policies imposed on some of Europe’s most indebted and struggling states.
With all the attention, Herndon can barely get his homework done.
“The media response has been tremendous, and a tad overwhelming. It’s been hard to get all my work done for the semester,” Herndon said in an email.
The 28-year-old University of Massachusetts Amherst student turned the world of global finance on its head last month when he published an academic paper, along with professors Bob Pollin and Michael Ash, ripping a massive hole through one of the top pro-austerity arguments championed by two Harvard University professors, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
While studying the data used by Reinhart and Rogoff, Herndon kept discovering mistakes. He repeatedly told Pollin, his professor, that he was having trouble with the assignment and he couldn’t seem to replicate the findings. Herndon thought there could be some big errors in the Harvard work.
“You know, I’ve heard this before from students. It is fairly common,” laughed Pollin from his UMass office in Amherst. “But he kept coming back with the same answer. Eventually, we believed him.”
What the U Mass team found stunned them. They uncovered coding errors, “selective exclusion” of data — including figures from Canada that showed the country had both high debt and high growth levels from 1946 to 1950 — and a problematic weighting of statistics that led to “serious errors that inaccurately represent the relationship between public debt and GDP growth among 20 advanced economies.”
Their paper has set off shock waves.
To say that the theories contained in Reinhart and Rogoff’s “Growth in a Time of Debt” were a pillar of the global austerity policy push would be an understatement. Essentially, they outlined that once a country’s debt reaches 90 per cent of its gross domestic product, long-term growth is unsustainable and dips negative. To remedy that, pro-austerity believers say a country must slash its deficit by imposing deep cuts to government spending in order to achieve job growth.
Austerity policies are currently used in the United Kingdom, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Each of those economies suffered immense blows after the financial meltdown in 2008.
And, in each of those countries, it is fair to say that austerity has not been a blazing success — witness the violent riots in Athens with youth unemployment hovering at 50 per cent; excessive macroeconomic imbalances in Spain; and the slashing of council government budgets in Britain that are cutting so deep, even the bishops are pleading for mercy.
George Osborne, the U.K.’s finance minister, has championed Rogoff and Reinhart’s theories, even including them in major speeches. Paul Ryan, the U.S. Congressman and 2012 vice-presidential candidate, leaned on the Harvard work for his Path to Prosperity budget.
Pollin confessed he had no idea exactly how influential the Reinhart and Rogoff work was until Mike Mike Konczal of the non-profit Roosevelt Institute blogged about the UMass critique on April 16. The issue exploded online.
Since then, Reinhart and Rogoff have shot back, writing rebuttals in both the New York Times and London’s Financial Times.
The UMass crew may not have sought the brouhaha, but they now find themselves in the spotlight of one of this century’s most important economic arguments.
Herndon is taking it all in stride. “I am very honoured to be able to contribute to the discussion about controversial austerity policies, and to help renew the debate.”
The more seasoned Pollin is a little more pragmatic. Yes, Rogoff and Reinhart presented their initial findings in a clear and concise way and should be commended for that, he said. “The problem is when you do that, you have to be right. But their research didn’t hold up. It collapsed. This is just a bad paper.”

Bangladesh: the exploitation of the impoverished by the wealthy capitalists

The collapse of the eight-storey building in Savar, which left more than 400 dead, shone light on the overseas operations of the fast-fashion industry, where impoverished garment workers went to work in a building with cracked walls that had been ordered evacuated. (from "Bangladesh factory collapse: Loblaw to audit structural safety of suppliers’ buildings, by Francine Kopun, Toronto Star, Mary 2, 2013, excerpted below)
It is all very well for Mr. Weston, under provocation from unions and public pressure, to seek better auditing of working conditions in Bangladesh, and even to provide some compensation for families of the victims of this latest tragedy, neverthelesss, the story serves as a glaring example of the power imbalance between countries where people are struggling for survival and those where wealth is not only taken for granted but is really used as a weapon against those struggling people.
With garment industry wages in China "rising" to $200 a month, as compared with $38 a month in Bangladesh, no one is surprised that companies like Loblaws would move their orders for cheap but fashionable clothing to Bangladesh. However, it is the race to the bottom, on worker protections and on environmental protections that has in large part characterized the movement to globalize the world's economy.
So long as the world worships at the altar of the capitalist, corporatist profit motive, to the degree that it has become a kind of holy grail for many of the brightest college graduates in the last generation, and pays mere lip service to the notion of "social needs," the story of the collapse of the garment factory building in Bangladesh will be just another chapter of exploitation, abuse and criminial negligence on the part of those who write the cheques for their clothing production orders.
So long as the governments where these corporations operate "sleep" with their corporate pupeteers, and make decisions, as the U.S. Congress did in 2005 to remove the limits on clothing imports into that country, thereby completely "gutting" the U.S. garment industry, leaving a few struggling producers only in the U.S. while granting the corporate executives access to the world's poorest people, as their "slaves" this kind of oppression, racism and commodofication of human beings, at the lowest possible level, will not only continue, it will continue to grow. Now there is a growing gap between the kind of technology used in the Chinese garment factories and those in Bangladesh, giving the Chinese far superior equipment on which to operate, and thereby to produce more intricate and detailed enhancements on the garments produced there, also at higher production costs, leaving the race to the bottom in full operation.
Making public relations "lemonade" of what is much more than a "lemon" of a story, in fact a scathing indictment of the political/economic cabal which holds the people of the world hostage, as Mr. Weston is doing so effectively, merely brings a small cover-up to the glaring structural weaknesses of the greed and profit that drive the world's economy.



Bangladesh factory collapse: Loblaw to audit structural safety of suppliers’ buildings


Labour organizations call on Loblaw Cos. executive chairman Galen Weston to take immediate steps to prevent another tragedy in Bangladesh

By Francine Kopun, Toronto Star, Mary 2, 2013
As the death toll in Bangladesh’s biggest industrial disaster continues to rise, apparel retailers around the world are taking steps toward improving worker safety in the struggling nation.

The collapse of the eight-storey building in Savar, which left more than 400 dead, shone light on the overseas operations of the fast-fashion industry, where impoverished garment workers went to work in a building with cracked walls that had been ordered evacuated.
Here in Canada, Galen Weston, executive chairman of Loblaw Companies Ltd., announced Thursday that his company will send Canadian employees to monitor factories in Bangladesh where Joe Fresh clothing is made. In addition, a team of senior company officials, including supply chain experts, will travel there next week to discuss safety with Bangladeshi officials and unions.
Loblaw has also set up a fund for victims and their families.
Weston said a new standard has been established at Loblaw in the wake of the tragedy — all products under their brand control must be made in facilities that respect local construction and building codes.
Joe Fresh clothing is made at 47 factories in Bangladesh.

Obama clearly full of "juice" if only his legislators would release him and the country!

Does Obama have the "juice" as ABC's Jonathan Karl put it, in a question to the president at Tuesday's press conference, marking the first 100 days of the second term of the U.S. President?
In the President's words, "The way you put it, Jonathan, makes it sound as if I should just pack my bags and go home, gollllly!...Like Mark Twain, reports of my demise are slightly exaggerated."
And the theme of the president's juice was picked up today by Tom Ashbrook in his radio talk program, On Point, aired daily on NPR.
Running through both the press conference and the radio talk fest are two parallel themes:
1) Can the president get passed the legislation he has proposed, and bully-pulpitted almost to death?
2) Is the president too aloof and too cerebral and thereby has failed to develop personal relationships with members of both houses of Congress?
However, it was a 76-year-old caller to the On Point program who cut through the abstractions, the intellectualisms, the political prevaracating and the obfuscation...."From what I can see, having lived through the Equal Rights Act, if you were to scratch most of the members who opposed the president, you would find, barely beneath the surface, a BIGOT!"
The Southern Poverty Law Centre has documented the dramatic rise in militia groups in the United States since 2009, the first year of Obama's second term. They attribute the spike to a deep and profound contempt for the president. Others have researched the background reasons why some members of the Senate refused to vote for expanded background checks for gun purchases and found that, while some of the Senators favoured the proposed as it was drafted on a bipartisan basis, by Senators Manchion and Toomey, they refused to "give the president anything that he wanted" in the form of legislation.
And while some in both parties, Democrats and Republicans, feared being primaried if they cast a vote in favour of the bill, there can be little doubt that, following the Mitch McConnell dictum in the first term of the Obama adminstration that his primary goal was to assure the Obama would be a one-term president, the level of contempt for this president is both deep and visceral.
And, when he joked, at the Correspondent's Dinner at the White House, about some critics suggesting that he "have a drink with  Mitch McConnell"..."Really?" Why don't YOU have a drink with Mitch McConnell?" he was not merely cracking a well-scripted joke; he was uttering his words for "finger-in-the-eye" to McConnell.
And so he should! McConnell has been nothing but a political bowel obstruction, to both the country and the president, since Obama won the first victory in 2008.
Another caller to the On Point program, this time a woman not only agreed with the septaginarian, but went even further, almost breaking down in tears, so upset is she that the Congress is behaving in such a shameful way, like school children, and the country is being held hostage to their infantilism.
Listening to the president throughout his press conference, and later to the media's judgement that he has become a lame-duck president barely 100 days into the second term, I am both shocked and dismayed by their profoundly critical characterization of the president's resignation to the political realities that he has faced since becoming president.
Here is a man whose command of each of the many files is both exhaustive and nuanced.
Here is a man whose breadth of perspective embraces the widest possible range of American people and who proposes action when and where he is confident the people are in support.
Here is a man whose equanimity and scholarship, not to mention his command of both the language and the legal complexities within which he is expected to operate, are exemplary, and equip him for every public performance, regardless of the emotion, the tragedy, the grief, the firmness, and even the resolve which each different situation requires and demands.
In nearly five years on the job, (and I have watched every public appearance for which I could find a video transmission) I have never experience the slightest twinge of inappropriateness, maladroitness, or failure to articulate both the goals he has set and the arguments on which those goals are based.
This is a world statesman, whose job is clearly the most demanding on the planet, and whose own Congress is one of his strongest opponents, when the world is going through one of the most challenging periods in recent history...from an economical, medical, environmental, military, national security and even a jurisditional  perspective. And while he commits each and every file to his intellect, and imposes on each file and subordinate a discipline and a rigour not only to find and corroborate the facts but also to seek the most visionary and pragmatic recommendations, his legislative branch, his legal branch and even some of his bureaucratic arms of government seem predisposed to derail anything he proposes.
Senator Chuck Shumer from New York, upon learning that the President was going to deliver a speech just recently in Nevada on his proposals for a comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, phoned the president and asked him not to deliver that speech. "Whatever you are in favour of will be opposed, so it is better that you find what you can in a bill developed by Congress and support it where you can," ran the Shumer argument....and Shumer is a Democrat, and a supporter of the President!
It is not only the people of the United States, but also the people of the world who need all the contributions we can be given from this president, whose steady hand, and balanced and cautious approach, and incisive mind and spirit comprise a unique and gifted leader and a deep and honourable human being...
And it is time for the political "class" in the United States to come to terms with the historic needs and aspirations of their people, and open the gates of their armoured and closed, even gated, minds to the potential of their government, led by this man who is merely attempting to give voice and wings to the American spirit....while the Congress has not only clipped his wings, but also those of the country's potential and the world is the less for their effort, as, of course, are they!

$3.1 billion unaccounted, $29billion in uncollected taxes...but Canada's doing fine thanks!

Inability to track some $3.1 BILLION dollars of public money earmarked for beefing up anti-terror security, a failure to purchase new aircraft for the search and rescue program, a failure of the government agencies, one a ministry and the other a commission of reconciliation on the Indian Schools debacle, to even agree on what documents are needed to complete the  process....these are just some of the more glaring highlights of the Auditor General's most recent report released yesterday.
The Harper government pays dearly for advertising that touts its own competence in providing economic growth, jobs and opportunity for Canadians attempting thereby to corner the political market on fiscal competence, economic management and political "smarts" given the last few years of economic malaise. It has buckets of money for "fighter jets" and new armed and unarmed ships, but seems to have lost track of another $3.1 billion, "because there is not a "whole government" accounting system, in the words of one of their spokepersons, Tony Clement, he of the gazebo boondogle in Muskoka for the G-8 heads of state meetings.
Slipping through the cracks, would therefore seem to be Clement's rationalization, explanation, and obfuscation of the issue. What then, if the government consists only of cracks through which another few billion can and do "escape"....without a process of determining where, when, how, and by whom it is spent?
Canadians are a rather gentle lot except when the public funds are missing and there seems to be no one or no government department, agency, ministry, or even the PMO taking responsibility.
In fact, governments have been defeated for losing much less than $3.1 billion.
There is no indication in the AG's report that anyone absconded with the money, that it was improperly spent, or that it did not go to national security enhancement.
It's just that it cannot be account for.
Fiscal management, for which this government has long held tightly, as one of the cornerstones of its raison d'etre, especially when compared with the Liberal sponsorship scandal, and even Mulroney's relationship with Hans Schreiber after he left office and envelopes of cash....includes appropriate, even anal accounting of the public purse...both on the revenue side and on the spending side.
And the AG was hardly commending the government on the revenue side...given the glaring $29 BILLION that is missing in uncollected taxes and the need for more resources in Revenue Canada to collect those missing revenues to which his report directed both the government's and the public's attention.
(As a footnote, Liberal leader Trudeau chose to look the other way without firing a single question to the government on the AG report, while the NDP and their leader Tom Mulcair pounded the government on the boondogles!)
Seems the NDP has indeed begun to position itself as a government in waiting, being gifted by a tired, complacent and obviously incompetent, by its own standards, government in decline.
2015 cannot come soon enough, when the citizens finally get a chance to weigh in a vote the Harper gang from office.