XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Friday, 23 April 2010

Ron Paul Warns Congress on Iran: A Vote For Sanctions is a Vote For War - scare-mongering about Iran having missiles -

April 22, 2010

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iranto detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

Tuesday, 20 April 2010

U.N.'s Ballooning $732 Million Haiti Peacekeeping Budget Goes Mostly to Its Own Personnel - salary, perks and upkeep -

The United Nations has quietly upped this year's peacekeeping budget for earthquake-shattered Haiti to $732.4 million, with two-thirds of that amount going for the salary, perks and upkeep of its own personnel, not residents of the devastated island.

The world organization plans to spend the money on an expanded force of some 12,675 soldiers and police, plus some 479 international staffers, 669 international contract personnel, and 1,300 local workers, just for the 12 months ending June 30, 2010.

Some $495.8 million goes for salaries, benefits, hazard pay, mandatory R&R allowances and upkeep for the peacekeepers and their international staff support. Only about $33.9 million, or 4.6 percent, of that salary total is going to what the U.N. calls "national staff" attached to the peacekeeping effort.

Click here to see the supplementary budget document.

Presumably, the budget also includes at least part of some $10 million that the U.N. has spent on renting two passenger vessels, the Sea Voyager (known to some U.N. staffers as the "Love Boat") and the Ola Esmeralda, for a minimum of 90 days each, as highly subsidized housing for some of its peacekeepers and humanitarianstaff. The tab for the two vessels, which offer catered food, linen service and comfortable staterooms and lounges, is about $112,500 per day.

Under a cost-sharing formula, the U.S. pays a 27 percent share of the entire $732.4 million peacekeeping tab for Haiti during this 12 month period, or about $197.7 million.

The ultimate size of the peacekeeping bill for Haiti this year has been a source of much concern among the three dozen or so of the U.N.'s 192 members who pick up roughly 96 percent of the U.N.'s overall peacekeeping bill.

That concern rose sharply about a month ago, when U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office issued an updated peacekeeping estimate that used a $700 million figure strictly as a placeholder for the final Haiti post-quake number.

The new figures take some of the uncertainty out of that estimate, but even so, the U.N. was taking no chances of raising concerns higher with its new tally; rather than take a new vote on the expanded peacekeeper budget, the U.N. Secretariat simply issued its revised tally as an extension of the previous $611 million allotment it had voted for Haiti.

The Haitian peacekeeping budget is relatively unique among U.N. efforts, because there was no civil war or widespread bloodletting to inspire the original peacekeeping force, which arrived in 2004. Instead, the mission has mainly been intended to bolster political order in a society crushed by hurricanes, political turbulence, and grinding misery.

The revised peacekeeping tab is over and above the roughly $15 billion in short- and long-term aid that the international community — led by the U.S. and European Union — pledged to Haiti at an international donor's conference last month.

It is also over and above the $773 million in humanitarian aid raised from donor nations and private citizens in a "flash" appeal in the days after the Jan. 12 earthquake — which is about half the total hoped for by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs when it raised the appeal.

Moreover, the revised Haiti peacekeeping budget only covers a period that ends in about 10 more weeks — on June 30, 2010 — at which time, Ban's office will have to formulate another peacekeeping estimate for the stricken island, not to mention the remainder of its global peacekeeping effort.

Given the temporary nature of this year's sudden 20 percent boost in Haiti peacekeeping costs, there is some possibility that next year's budget will mark a decrease from the $732.4 million figure.

Since the U.N. installed peacekeepers on the island in 2004, however, the budgeted cost of peacekeeping has roughly doubled, from an original $372.8 million.

Monday, 19 April 2010

Sunny Vacations a Human Right: EU - Elderly, poor, disabled and young to get subsidized holidays -

Oppressed Europeans are about to usher in a new human right - government-subsidized vacations.

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, says the days of overseas vacations being a luxury are gone. He believes subsidizing holidays in the sun for seniors, the disable, young adults and poor families will build pride in European culture, bring north and south closer together and prop up resorts in the off season.

“Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” he said.

The pilot project is to begin in 2013. It will encourage northerners to head to the sunny south. A harder sell may be persuading southerners to head north. The program will also pay for seniors and the disabled to take a companion.

If the program becomes universal, it will cost EU taxpayers as much as half a billion dollars a year.

India has more mobile phones than toilets: UN report - mobile subscribers totalled 563.73 million - Toilets 366 million -

India's mobile subscribers totalled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country's 1.2 billion population.

But just 366 million people - around a third of the population - had access to proper sanitation in 2008, said the study published by the United Nations University, a UN think-tank.

"It is a tragic irony to think in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones," so many people "cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet," said Zafar Adeel, the UN University director.

Mr Adeel heads the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based in the Canadian city of Hamilton, which prepared the report.

Worldwide, an estimated $358 billion (£230 billion) is needed between now and 2015 to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people with inadequate sanitation from 2000 levels.

Proper sanitation "could do more to save lives, especially those of young people, improve health and help pull India and other countries in similar circumstances out of poverty than any alternative investment," Mr Adeel said.

Poor sanitation is a major contributor to water-borne diseases, which in the past three years alone killed an estimated 4.5 million children under the age of five worldwide, according to the study.

The report gave a rough cost of $300 to build a toilet, including labour, materials and advice.

The world could expect a return of up to $34 for every dollar spent on sanitation through improved productivity and reduced poverty and health costs, said Adeel.

He said improving sanitation was "an economic and humanitarian opportunity of historic proportions."

Sunday, 18 April 2010

Jason Bermas presents - Fabled Enemies - The intelligence apparatus and its involvement in 9/11 -

Jason Bermas presents - Fabled Enemies - The intelligence apparatus and its involvement in 9/11

Jason Bermas presents - Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined -

Saturday, 17 April 2010

South Park's 200th, litigious celebs and Mohammed: Matt Stone and Trey Parker Video -

Al Sharpton Claims American Public Voted for Socialism When Electing Obama

Microsoft's Chinese Labor Scandal - list of alleged abuses in China is long and damning -

Back in February, I wondered if Apple (AAPL) might be the next Nike(NKE) because of labor problems reported at one of its big manufacturing contractors. At the time I mentioned that other high tech firms could find themselves in hot water because of what overseas factories did in their names. Two months later and it’s happened, this time to Microsoft(MSFT). High tech companies need to wake up to a PR and ethical issue that’s waiting to engulf them.

If accurate, the report by the National Labor Committee, which bills itself as a human rights advocacy group that focused on global labor abuse, is far more damning than the information that surfaced about Foxconn, which builds many products for Apple. (Apple also issued its own comprehensive report about a greater number of its suppliers.)

The list of alleged abuses at the contractor KYE — which claimsbetween 3,600 and 4,500 employees in China, depending on seasonal need — is long and damning:

workers reporting working 68 hours a week despite being at the factory for 83 hours
16- and 17-year-old students hired under the guise of work study who are put on the factory floor for 15 hours a day, six or seven days a week
workers are unable to use the bathroom during working hours
security guards that sexually harass women workers
forced living in “primitive and dirty dorm rooms,” and workers must take sponge baths rather than showers
violation of all Chinese labor laws

If true, this all put the lie to the company slogan of “Integrity Is the Best Honor.” Customers supposedly include Microsoft, HP (HPQ),Best Buy (BBY), Logitech (LOGI), and, ironically, Foxconn. Equally disturbing is the note that corporate codes of conduct “have zero impact” on KYE’s operations.

I’m not going to argue whether this report is accurate or not. The fact that something like this might be accurate should send chills down corporate spines. Monitoring conditions in a foreign factory takes dedication and significant cost and effort. The only way to know what’s really happening is to spend extensive time in a facility so management could not cover up conditions during a brief visit. A company that wants to be responsible clearly needs its own people in a facility to monitor on a continuing basis what actually happens.

But many industries, high tech clearly among them, have been happy with feelgood solutions: the annual visit and corporate labor standards for contract help. Apple’s program goes much further than those of most companies, and the company still hasn’t eliminated its problems. To avoid the embarrassment — and potential government oversight, as the political climate becomes less tolerant of sending jobs overseas — companies will have to move even more strongly. But you have to wonder whether the lure of cheap labor and the cold comfort of not knowing exactly what goes on in a factory won’t continue to win out.

GE had plenty of earnings last year - but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. a whopping tax bill of $0 -

General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, but when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

How'd it pull off that trick? By losing lots of money.

GE had plenty of earnings last year -- just not in the United States. For tax purposes, the company's U.S. operations lost $408 million, while its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit.

That left GE (GE, Fortune 500) with no U.S. profit left for Uncle Sam to tax. Corporations typically face a 35% federal income tax on their earnings. Thanks to its deductions and adjustments, GE reported an actual U.S. federal income tax rate of negative 10.5%. It got to add a "tax benefit" of $1.1 billion back into its reported earnings.

"This is the first time in at least decades that GE has reported negative U.S. pretax income and it reflects the worst economy since the Great Depression," Anne Eisele, GE's director of financial communications, said via e-mail.

But what about the $10.8 billion profit overseas? GE is "indefinitely" deferring income tax payments on those profits, Eisele said.

It may seem like accounting magic, but it's completely legit.

GE isn't the only "Top 5" company on this year's Fortune 500 list that owed no income taxes. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), which suffered major losses in 2009, included a tax benefit of $1.9 billion in its annual profit.

"That's one way of escaping taxes," said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. "Companies get to deduct their losses, so if there's no earnings, then they pay no income tax."

But GE isn't exactly escaping all tax-related pain: The company paid almost $23 billion in taxes to governments around the world from 2000 to 2009, Eisele said.

Plus, paying the accountants to crank out 7,000 tax returns can't be cheap.

And then there's all the lawyers needed to defend those returns. GE filed tax paperwork in more than 250 jurisdictions around the world last year. "We are under examination or engaged in tax litigation in many of these jurisdictions," the company dryly notes in its annual report.

GE may not owe the IRS, but it still has to file -- and its filings are epic.

In 2006, as the IRS ramped up its corporate e-filing program, the tax agency actually issued a celebratory press release when it processed GE's tax return. On paper, the return -- the nation's largest -- would have totaled a massive 24,000 pages. But instead, the IRS was able to upload the 237 MB document in under an hour.

Reading it, though, is apparently taking a bit longer. The IRS is currently auditing GE's tax returns for 2003-2007.