Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Chinese Economists: "Washington's warped conception of regulation"

[Chinese officials seem to be galled by the apparent hypocrisy of Americans telling them what to do while the American economy is at best stagnant. China, on the other hand, has maintained its feverish growth.

Some officials are promoting a Chinese style of economic management that they suggest serves developing countries better than the American model, in much the same way they argue that they are in no hurry to copy American-style multiparty democracy.

In the last six weeks alone, a senior banking regulator blamed Washington’s “warped conception” of market regulation for the subprime mortgage crisis that is rattling the world economy; the Chinese envoy to the World Trade Organization called on the United States to halt the dollar’s unchecked depreciation before the slide further worsens soaring oil and food prices; and Chinese agencies denounced a federal committee charged with vetting foreign investments in the United States, saying the Americans were showing “hostility” and a “discriminatory attitude,” not least toward the Chinese...

...The Chinese attitude is no doubt bolstered by the lame-duck status of the Bush administration and by the fact that the United States is widely seen as having squandered its political and military leadership during the war in Iraq, which China opposed. Likewise, Chinese officials and state news media have suggested that the relatively quick mobilization of the Chinese Army during the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province contrasts favorably with the Bush administration’s reaction to Hurricane Katrina.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/world/asia/17china.html?sq=china%20us%20regulation&st=nyt&scp=3&pagewanted=print

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Whites only swimming hole

The map below shows Lake Bell which lies between 2 Florida cities steeped in history.

View Larger Map
Eatonville lies to the west and "was the first such town to be incorporated. Zora Neale Hurston grew up there..." and as of 2000 census",,,makeup of the town was 89.31% African American."

To the east lies Winter Park "Winter Park was founded as a resort destination by wealthy New England industrialists before the turn of the 20th century..." and as of 2000, "The racial makeup of the city was 85.90% White."

Winter Park officials want to deny Eatonville right to build boat dock on shoreline within city boundaries.

Before casting this as purely racial, let me add a caveat: Florida leads the nation in stamping out every bit of undeveloped land with concrete, asphalt, and buildings which end the natural interlations within the ecology.

So giving the lady interviewed on tv her due when she said homeowners worried about environmental concerns and not racism, if it were about the natural resources, they would seek to compromise on access rather than seek to ban access by Eatonville.

In Florida, when they say it ain't 'bout race, usually 'tis.


"Winter Park will ask Orange County for control of Eatonville's access to Lake Bell for motorboats or swimming, according to a Monday resolution by the City Commission. The Orange County Commission has held that authority since the school district gave Eatonville a piece of lakefront property in 1997. Winter Park has annexed most of the shoreline and the majority of the lake. Lake Bell homeowners have resisted Eatonville's attempts to build a boat ramp for several years. Eatonville Mayor Anthony Grant said Winter Park has no right to control his town's access."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/community/news/winterpark/orl-b3report24_308jun24,0,2598756.story

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Fuck Tim Russert the "Legend of Journalism"

With all due respect to Mr. Russert as a human being and condolences to his family and friends, the last 2 days of sycophants lauding him with hyperbole better applied to real journalists such as Edward R. Murrow or Jimmy Breslin has made my head explode.

Seriously, has anyone outside the so called So Called Mainstream Media considered Russert an impartial journalist?

I come not to bury Mr. Russert as an incompetent hack partisan masquerading as neutral obeserver, but to praise him for helping pioneer and build a fact free journalism, which "tolerate[s]lazy, undisciplined reporting, in which careless habits of thought are routinely applied to even the simplest sorts of data."

So throughout the 90's russert insinuated that President Clinton lied but after the Cheney administration invaded Iraq on the basis of lies he failed to rouse himself from his stupour to ask Jr cogent questions during an hour long interview.

Russert served his Republican masters so well that his show, Meet the Press, served as conduit for President Cheney's propaganda and lies.

Jeepers, just search Daily Howler or Media Matters

What doth it profit a man if he gains the world of media elites but loses hi acquaintance with truth?

See you in hell, Tim.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Modern Slavery: the greatest shame of Florida

Surely in June 2008, no one lives in slavery in the United $tates of America?

Tell that to thousands of workers freed by work done by Coaliton of Immolakee Workers and federal prosecutors.

[Slavery exists in America. Still. This is the shocking revelation of Nobodies, the tale of author John Bowe's investigation into active slave rings on American soil. It's a discomforting notion, since modern American society has become comfortable with the idea that slavery is an atrocity that exists only in America's past, or in countries where the rule of law hasn't been established...

Bowe exposes modern-day slavery at several U.S. companies in the States and Saipan, and reveals a chilling corporate view--that what is "an embarrassment to modern notions of human rights" is a necessary consequence of free trade. Bowe also posits that more often than not, there is an enslaved worker hunched over a sewing machine or a sun-beaten fruit picker behind every cheap good American consumers enjoy.

Bowe begins his investigation in central Florida, which one former DOJ prosecutor he interviews calls "ground zero for modern slavery." He arrives in 2002, in time for the trial of Juan and Ramiro Ramos, brothers accused of operating a slavery ring in Immokalee, Fla., an agricultural area carved out of the swamps where farm workers pick tomatoes and oranges for such companies as Taco Bell and Tropicana. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District in Florida found the Ramos brothers guilty of conspiracy to hold people in involuntary servitude...]



Irony alert: in 2007. my favorite slave master got 30 years after prosecution by the Department of Justice, a sentence warranted by facts: [the Evans' deducted rent, food, crack cocaine and alcohol from workers' pay, holding them "perpetually indebted" in what the DOJ called "a form of servitude morally and legally reprehensible...

...in 2003. In Florida, Ron Evans worked for grower Frank Johns (query Federal Elections Commission data). Johns was 2004 Chairman of the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, the powerful lobbying arm of the Florida agricultural industry. As of 2007, he remained the Chairman of the FFVA's Budget and Finance Committee.]]

Booze, crack, food rent, throw in some hookers, and I'll sign up also.

Seriously, however, only a small percentage of Americans have stamina for the back-braking work of picking tomatoes and getting about $200 a week filling 32 lbs buckets. Show me the anti immigrant ignoramuses like Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanon trying to pick tomatoes for $10,000 to $12,500 per year., and l'll show you heart attacks in waiting. In Florida, businesses have counter attacked with fake emails, misinformation, and intransigence.

Slavery exists in the tomato fields of Florida, a U.S. Senate committee was told Tuesday.

"Today's form of slavery does not bear the overt nature of pre-Civil War society, but it is none the less heinous and reprehensible," Collier County Sheriff's Detective Charlie Frost told Democratic members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. No Republicans attending [sic] the hearing...

Eric Schlosser, an investigative reporter and author of "Fast Food Nation," testified he found it "incredible" that slavery exists in 2008, but "I find it even more incredible that the tomato growers of Florida and some of their largest customers continue to deny that such abuses exist...



Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said workers would have to pick almost 3,000 tomatoes to earn $14 and would have to fill and empty their buckets every two minutes.]
West Palm Beach Post, 4/16/08]

Of course, by diking Lake Okeechobee and building "flood control" systems, the state of FL and Army Corps of Engineers created land to grow fruits and vegetetables, and sugar and overbuild in coastal flood plains--y'all paying for it, suckahs--but of course Hoover Dike like "swiss cheese."

Or as Michael Greenwald put it in Why the Everglades is Burning: "Enter my friends in the Army Corps of Engineers, the ground troops in America's war against nature. They built the massive Hoover Dike around the lake, forever cutting off the Everglades from its wellspring. Then they built America's most ambitious flood-control system, with more than 2,000 miles of levees and canals, plus pumps so powerful the engines were cannibalized from nuclear submarines. The project gave water managers power to move almost every drop of rain that fell south of Orlando, allowing them to whisk floodwaters into the lake, the Everglades, or its estuaries for the convenience of thirsty farms and communities that only wanted water when they wanted it.

These waterworks made southern Florida safe for 400,000 acres of sugar fields, as well as one of the spectacular development booms in human history. On the southeast coast, suburbs like Coral Springs, Miami Springs, Sunrise, Miramar, Weston, and Wellington began sprouting west of I-95, paving over the eastern Everglades. And on the southwest coast, Naples and Fort Myers started marching east into the western Everglades." Link found at eyeonmiami.com
http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2008/05/scorched-hope-for-east-everglades-by.html

So any wonder Florida--courtesy of JEB! Bush and his development cronies--serves as
epicenter for world creit mortgage crisis. http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/search/label/Housing%20crash

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Florida Follies: Huge Confederate Flag and Shot 68 Times

Nothing to do with a black man getting nominated for President of the United States. just honoring Jefferson Davis' birthday.

Huge Confederate flag is raised early along I-75 and I-4
By Jan Wesner and Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writers
In print: Wednesday, June 4, 2008

TAMPA — Men [missing teeth and of limited mental capacity] driving pickups honked and flashed a thumbs-up sign. One yelled "Hell, yeah!" Another pumped his fist [the 1 not holding the beer] in the air.

Others, though, weren't nearly as pleased at the sight of a Confederate flag the size of a semitrailer truck flying Tuesday high above the junction of Interstates 75 and I4.

"It's huge and it's obnoxious," said Curtis Stokes, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP.

Organizers building a Civil War monument at the site said last week they hoped to fly the Confederate flag sometime next year. But they raised it shortly after sunrise Tuesday to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America...

"I love it. It's gorgeous," said Tanya Heard [whose white ancestors used to own black people], 27, who lives nearby and pulled over to look up at the flag, along U.S. 92 in the Eureka Springs neighborhood just west of I-75.

The flag, which cost $800, was lowered at sundown and organizers said it won't go up again until the site is officially dedicated...[yesirree Bob, just a damn coincidence]...

Tampa resident Marion Lambert [an ignorant redneck cracker bitch], a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, paid $7,000 for the 0.19-acre site in January 2004. In February 2005, Lambert met with six planners from Hillsborough's Planning and Growth Management Department, who advised him how to prepare an application for a variance to build a monument.

In April 2005, county records show, a land use hearing officer approved Lambert's request for a lighted park with monuments and a flagpole "to commemorate American [and lynching. Jim Crow and segregation] veterans."

But no one in county government asked Lambert which veterans he planned to honor, or how...

While the flag's outline was visible from more than a mile away at some points, it was the view from the southbound lanes of I-75 that took drivers' breath away.

It was suddenly, jarringly there as drivers rounded a bend in the road and crested the I-4 overpass, and just as they came upon the exit sign that says "Martin Luther King Blvd. 1 mile." The flag made [Florida a national laughingstock] this week on CNN and Fox News...

[In an unrelated except in a desecration of what little passes for justice these days]

LAKELAND, Fla. -- The Department of Justice says SWAT team officers didn't use excessive force when they shot the suspected killer of a sheriff's deputy 68 times during a manhunt near Lakeland in 2006.

[68 freakin' times! How dead can you make someone? No trial for this dreadlocked (pic on newscast) cop killing nigra. Why he even shot the police dog! He's lucky we didn't shoot him 168 times.]

Angilo Freeland was the man believed to have fatally shot a Polk County deputy and his police dog. Nine officers fired on the 27-year-old after finding him hiding in the woods the next morning. They say a sudden movement by the suspect caused them to fire.

The Justice Department sent a letter to Sheriff Grady Judd this week saying an investigation had concluded that Freeland's civil rights had not been violated.

Don Brown, president of the local NAACP chapter, says he still believes the number of shots fired at Freeland was excessive. He called it "profoundly disturbing."

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

A new dawn in America; Obama and RFK's dream

In 1968 at the tender age of 10, I saw Julian Bond nominated for office of Vice President of the United States in America.

Little did I know it would take 40 years, a biblical generation, for one of African American descent to achieve nomination for President.

While the electoral map looks favorable and all rationality lines up behind Senator Obama rather than a third President Cheney term--"This is the baseline. Democrats have the money advantage, the issues advantage, and soon, we'll be unified. When that happens, expect this map to improve significantly." (Also from Kos link)--all progressives need to work to heal wounds among factions so as to protect the Constitution and our very liberty.

If the Good Lord were willing, then we will have a President who embodies the vision of Robert F. Kennedy as described in eulogy by his brother, Ted: [ "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.

"Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

This is the way he lived. My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JTYnMpRyg

[During the 1968 Presidential election, Bond led a challenge delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Here, unexpectedly and contrary to his intention, he became the first African-American to be proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States. While expressing gratitude for the honor, the 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 years of age to serve in that office.]