Now They’re A Virus…

February 4, 2011 in Montana

by lizard

so…

if the spreading social unrest in the Middle East is like a virus, then what kind of remedy would Doctor McCain prescribe? I would guess whatever stabilizes the patient. And sometimes viruses must be treated aggressively.

Kudos to McCain for being upfront. But he’s not the president, so he can say what he wants, no matter how offensive. Obama can’t be upfront. Instead, he’s walking an oratorical tight rope, and if he fails, then the true nature of our foreign policy—duplicity, hypocrisy, and deceit—might get exposed, and that would be bad. The virus could spread anywhere, and it’s not clear if Americans have all been properly inoculated.

today Obama had this to say:

President Obama condemned the attacks on journalists in Egypt Friday amid mounting criticism that the assaults were being orchestrated by President Hosni Mubarark to suppress international coverage of bloodshed by pro-government operatives against peaceful protesters.

“We continue to be crystal clear that we oppose violence as a response to this crisis,” Obama said. “We are sending a strong, unequivocal message: Attacks on reporters are unacceptable. Attacks on human rights activists are unacceptable. Attacks on peaceful protesters are unacceptable.”

Where would Mubarak have gotten the idea that going after journalists is fair game? For some reason, this old anti-drug ad comes mind:

and then there’s this:

An air raid on the Al-Jazeera TV offices in Baghdad killed the journalist Tareq Ayoub and wounded a colleague on April 8, 2003. The network had shown civilian victims of U.S. bombings. Big banners marked “TV” hung outside the building. Six days earlier, the Basra Sheraton Hotel, whose only guests were an Al-Jazeera team, received four direct artillery hits, without casualties, according to the Arabic TV news channel. And in November 2001, U.S. bombs destroyed Al-Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan, also without casualties. Before all three incidents, the network had notified U.S. authorities of the respective locations, a spokesman said.

Within three hours after the Baghdad bombing, a tank fired at the Palestine Hotel there and fatally wounded two cameramen: Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian, of Reuters; and Jose Couso, a Spaniard, of the Telecinco network. The French Press Agency reported next day that footage by France 3 television “shows a US tank targeting the journalists’ hotel and waiting at least two minutes before firing.” The Department of Defense claimed the shooting was self-defense. Reporters Without Borders said that all the facts indicated “exactly the opposite.” The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), based in Brussels, accused the Pentagon of a “cynical whitewash.” Robert Fisk of the UK newspaper Independent asked if it was possible to believe that the twin Baghdad attacks were accidents. “Or was it possible that the right word for these killings … was murder?”

Tank fire also killed the Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana of Reuters outside of Abu Ghraib prison on August 18, 2003. The U.S. Army claimed that soldiers mistook his camera for a weapon. But colleagues with him said otherwise. The Guardian, UK, next day quoted a Reuters soundman, Nael al-Shyoukhi, saying the soldiers “saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission…. We were noted and seen clearly.” They had filmed the prison and were about to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived; Dana stepped out of the car to film again, walked a bit and was shot. IFJ noted that it happened in broad daylight and that the camera team had made contact with soldiers to explain its mission and received permission to film the prison.

Dhia Najim, an Iraqi freelance cameraman working for Reuters, in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, was shot to death, evidently by a U.S. sniper, on Nov. 1, 2004. He had been filming clashes between marines and foes, but exchanges had ended when he was felled by a single shot. Najim’s colleagues and family said a U.S. sniper killed him. Military authorities denied it. Reuters noted that photographs taken two days earlier showed marine snipers taking positions in Ramadi. The news agency called for an investigation.

Duplicity, hypocrisy, deceit.

No, the people in the streets resisting their respective oppressors are not themselves a virus, but they are certainly suffering from some physically intangible malady, and, as usual, that aspect is NOT being explored by our MSM. How can they focus on what’s fueling this spreading insurrection when Anderson Cooper is getting punched in the head?

Luckily others are on the case, and not surprisingly some of the usual suspects are implicated:

The dramatic rise in food prices is fueling a great deal of discontent in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. It’s a deep undercurrent propelling many of the poor, who face prospects of starvation to resort to the streets and to violence. According to the United Nation’s Food Agency (Food and Agriculture Organization — FAO) world food prices are up for the 7th month in a row and are likely to surpass the record high reached in December 2010

though it may make some squirm, it looks like Wall Street and Clinton-era deregulation have once again played a destabilizing role, exacerbating global impoverishment.

In March 2008, a dramatic spike in food prices led thousands of people on the brink of starvation in Egypt to violently riot — sending a seismic shock wave through the Mubarak regime. After the Egyptian military was able to distribute enough wheat to dispel the rioting, efforts to stockpile wheat by the Mubarak government have failed, as food prices continue to hover at record highs.

The media is reporting many reasons for this problem ranging from soaring demand, cuts in food subsidies, droughts, and government mandates to use more grain-based biofuel. But, another significant factor is at play: unfettered speculation by investment banks. As noted in USA Today, in 2008, “the bulls may not be running on Wall Street, but they’re charging in the commodities pits.‰

At issue are the still deregulated commodity markets ushered in by the Clinton administration and the U.S. Congress with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Before this law, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) served as a cop on the beat, enforcing rules that prevent the distortion or manipulation of prices beyond normal supply and demand. But Wall Street banks and companies such as ENRON and British Petroleum were determined to make a lot more money from speculation by exempting energy-derivative contracts and related swaps from government oversight.

For this reason, the 2000 law allows entities that have no stake in whether adequate amounts of food and fuel are available for ordinary people and commodity-dependent businesses to make huge sums of money by gambling with other people‚s money.

Soon after passage of the 2000 law, “dark” unregulated futures trading markets emerged, most notably the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in London — created by Wall Street and European investment banks and several oil companies. A key practice involves “over the counter index trading” in which hundreds of billions of dollars of pension, sovereign wealth, and other institutional funds are used to flood “dark” commodity markets to buy and hold futures contracts without an expiration date or oversight. When it’s time to make money on a losing bet, these funds are withdrawn, causing commodity price crashes and economic instability.

These transactions don’t involve customary “bona fide commodity traders, such as an airline company hedging on the price of jet fuel by purchasing futures contracts. As prominent hedge fund manager Michael McMasters noted before a U.S. Senate panel in 2008, this amounts to “a form of electronic hoarding and greatly increases the inflationary effect of the market. It literally means starvation for millions of the world’s poor.”

There are underlying currents beneath what is happening half a world a way that connects all of us.

And not all attempts at inoculation are successful.