craig cline: My War

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:02:44 GMT

This is so funny!

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots
(No. 218)

October 17, 2005
Stage-Managed Edition

Conservative woes increased last week as George W. Bush (1) made a fool of himself during a live teleconference, leaving Scott McClellan (2) in the line of fire. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland of Security (3) has been scaring people, Harriet Miers' (4) personal papers were released, and the the Department of Defense (5) are screwing the troops. Elsewhere, Tom DeLay (6) is still in trouble, Ann Coulter (9) demonstrates conservative integrity, and John McCain (10) plays the hypocrite. Enjoy, and don't forget the <A href="javascript:openWin('/top10/key.html');">key!

George W. Bush
What's a president to do when faced with growing public discontentment and crashing poll numbers? If you're George W. Bush, the answer is clear: try to focus the nation's attention away from what a jackass you are, and regain some of that pre-election military mojo.

Which is exactly what Our Great Leader attempted to do last week, holding a live teleconference with some troops from the 42nd Infantry Division, all of whom coincidentally happened to agree with all of the Bush administration's current talking points on Iraq.

Here's George, participating in a totally spontaneous back and forth chat with the troops:

Wait a minute... the president appears to have dyed his hair. And lost some height. And turned into a woman.

Okay, you got me. That's not George W. Bush, that's Allison Barber of the Defense Department. And what was she doing there? Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the answer was revealed by the raw satellite feed streamed to news outlets before the teleconference began. The feed showed Ms. Barber carefully coaching the troops on what Bush was going to say, the techniques they should use when responding, and giving them an opportunity to rehearse their answers. Some choice quotes:

"Master Sergeant Lombardo, when you're talking about the president coming to see you in New York, take a little breath before that so you can actually be talking directly to him. You've got a real message there, okay?"

(snip)

"If the question comes up about partnering how often do we train with the Iraqi military who does he go to?"

(snip)

"...if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit the hometown and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?"

(snip)

"But if he gives us a question that's not something that we've scripted, Captain Kennedy, you're going to have that mic, and that's your chance to impress us all."

Hmmm. "Not something we've scripted," eh?

Funnily enough, even though the event was totally stage-managed and pre-packaged, Our Great Leader still managed to make a complete hash of it . Bush forgot about the satellite delay and talked across soldiers, stumbled over words and phrases (as usual), offered a completely disingenuous invitation for the troops to drop by and visit him any time they're in Washington, and at>Scott McClellan
But it was Scott McClellan who took the brunt of Bush's tomfoolery at the White House press conference which followed the teleconference. Unfortunately for Scott, he didn't know that the reporters already knew that the event was staged. Hilarity ensued:

Q: Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, I don't know what you're suggesting.

(snip)

Q: ...we asked you specifically this morning if there would be any screening of questions or if they were being told in any way what they should say or do, and you indicated no.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I don't think that's what the question was earlier today. I think the question earlier today was asking if they could ask whatever they want, and I said, of course, the President was - and you saw -

Q: And I asked if they were pre-screened.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: You saw earlier today the President was trying to engage in a back-and-forth with the troops...

(snip)

Q: But I also asked this morning, were they being told by their commanders what to say or what to do, and you indicated, no. Was there any prescreening of -

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm not aware of any such - any such activities that were being undertaken...

Worst. Press Secretary. Ever.

By the way, don't miss this Keith Olbermann segment on Bush's teleconference travesty - I promise you won't be disappointed!

Olbermann Part target=_blank>Olbermann Part Two
Olbermann Part Three

Videos hosted by CanOFun.com.

The Department of Homeland Security
Unlike Mike Brown, Keith Olbermann's been doing a heck of a job lately. As well as his hilarious exposé of Our Great Leader's Giant Stupid Teleconference, Olbermann reported last week on " The Nexus of Politics and Terror," citing numerous occasions when the Department of Homeland Security raised the terror alert level immediately following either bad news for the administration, or a speech on terror by George Bush.

Former Homeland Security head Tom Ridge outright admitted back in May of this year that during his tenure "he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or 'high' risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled" (see Idiots 198).

But that didn't stop the administration from trying to pull the same tired old trick in New York City last week, causing New Yorkers to... well, yawn and go about their business as usual.

We commented recently (see Idiots 217) on George W. Bush's "major speech" on Iraq and the war on terror at the National Endowment for Democracy, which basically involved him gabbing on and on about 9/11 (again). Just seven hours after that speech, a bomb threat warning was issued by New York City officials.

According to Olbermann's blog, the warning was "based on information supplied by the Federal Government," but it was later revealed that "a Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is 'of doubtful credibility.'" That intelligence was subsequently determined to be a hoax.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg: it seems that not target=_blank>according to the New York Daily News:

At least two E-mails revealing the purported plot were sent to a select crowd of business and arts executives early last week by New Yorkers who claimed to have close connections to Homeland Security and other federal officials, authorities said.

The NYPD confirmed that it learned of the E-mails on Oct. 3 - three days before Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the FBI went public with the threat.

But surely it was mere coincidence that despite days of foreknowledge the warnings were announced just hours after Bush's big speech on terrorism. And the fact that terror warnings have coincidentally followed bad news for Bush or big terrorism speeches on multiple occasions - well, um, that must be a coincidence too.

Harriet Miers
It looks like Harriet Miers is qualified after all! Perhaps not qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, admittedly, but certainly highly qualified to lick George W. Bush's boots.

Last week a handful of Miers' personal papers were released by the Texas State Library, "most of them routine legal memos, press releases and transcripts," according to Knight Ridder. But among those papers were a few personal notes from Miers to Bush, which reveal... well, let's see:

"You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect!" - Harriet Miers

"Cool!" - Harriet Miers

"You are the best!" - Harriet Miers

Can you imagine if she'd been on the court in 2000?

...in a Presidential election the clearly expressed intent of the legislature must prevail. And there is no basis for reading the Florida statutes as requiring the counting of improperly marked ballots, as an examination of the Florida Supreme Court's textual analysis shows that George W. Bush is the best governor ever - deserving of respect! We will not parse that analysis here, except to note that the principal provision of the election code on which it relied, §101.5614(5), was, as the Chief Justice pointed out in his dissent from Harris II, "cool."

The Department of Defense
Scenario: you volunteer to serve your country in the armed forces. You're sent to Iraq, where a bomb takes target=_blank>according to the Washington Post, "the government's computerized pay system is designed to 'maximize debt collection' and has operated without a way to keep bills from going to the wounded."

Now why am I not surprised? So much for "supporting the troops."

Tom DeLay
There was more bad news for Tom DeLay this week - according to the Austin American-Stateman, "Travis County prosecutors want to know how U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, purchased a 2004 Toyota Sienna minivan, subpoenaing all records surrounding the transaction, as well as telephone records from Delay, his campaign and his daughter."

The new subpoenas raise further questions - and not just about DeLay's alleged money-laundering activities. For example, why would someone so staunchly pro-American buy a Japanese car? And what would a manly Texas dude like DeLay want with the soccer mom's vehicle of choice?

Perhaps he was attracted to the 230-horsepower V-6 engine which, according to U.S. News and World Report, "shows a lot of chutzpah." And of course there's always the "numerous configurations that let you fold down any or all of the seats, depending on your hauling/chaufeurring needs," which would make it super-convenient for moving lobbyists, golf clubs, and tote-bags filled with non-sequential hundred dollar bills.

Top 10 Conservative Idiots exclusive: thanks to a talented DU cameraman with an extremely long lens, we have obtained this photograph of DeLay's actual 2004 Toyota Sienna:

The Pentagon
I just thought you should know that according to Fox News, "Pentagon officials are denying that a live video conference between President Bush and U.S. troops in Iraq was staged."

In a related story, Milli Vanilli want their Grammys reinstated.

Lou Beres
Won't somebody think of the children? Lou Beres, "longtime head of the Christian Coalition of Oregon," apparently has been. Last week he stepped down from his position and said he will "withdraw from political life" after he was accused of sexual abuse by three of his relatives.

According to the Seattle Times:

The three women - now adults - allege they were abused by Beres as preteens. Their families called the child abuse hot line last month, after the three openly discussed the alleged abuse for the first time.

"I was molested," target=_blank>website, "The Christian Coalition of Oregon is committed to representing the pro-family agenda and educating America on the critical issues facing our society."

Perhaps someone should explain to Lou Beres that "pro-family" doesn't mean "banging your pre-teen relatives."

Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter revealed the full extent of her integrity last week on Sean Hannity's radio show and you'll be unsurprised to learn that, yes, Ann Coulter has no integrity.

During a conversation with Hannity and Brent Bozell, Coulter remarked that the administration is not telling the truth about the Harriet Miers nomination. "They're treating us like liberals lying to us," she said. "When they lie to conservatives, we have a problem."

So there you have it - Ann Coulter admits that the administration is a bunch of liars, it's just that when she thought they were src="http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/icons/top10-10.gif" widthU align=left>John McCain
And finally, Sen. John McCain criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week for holding "carefully staged campaign events," according to Reuters. "The benefit of an open town hall meeting is target=_blank>barred from attending. The Washington Post reported back in March that "McCain has been especially supportive of his target=_blank>loyalty oaths.

Here's a picture of McCain sternly taking Bush to task at a campaign rally in 2004:

What was that about credibility again? See you next week!

How Publishers and Their Production Teams Fared in Covering the Tragedies in New York and Washington

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:47:15 GMT

Four years ago, when I was still at Seybold Seminars, I asked Dave Winer to host a session on "How Publishers and Their Production Teams Fared in Covering the Tragedies in New York and Washington." That year, Seybold San Francisco occurred just 2 weeks after 9/11. Dave led a spirited, yet somber discussion, whic was chronicled on this web site. Check it out.

Trapped in the Big Easy

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:54:38 GMT

First hand account of being trapped in the Big Easy during Katrina courtesy of Anna Voog.

Trapped in New Orleans

By LARRY BRADSHAW
and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY
(Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradsahw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790.
[California])

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreens store at
the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the city's historic French
Quarter remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible
through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running
water, plumbing, and the milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to
spoil in the 90-degree heat.

The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers and prescriptions, and fled the city. Outside Walgreens' windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized, and the windows at Walgreens gave way to the looters.

There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices and bottled water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead, they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New
Orleans two days ago and arrived home on Saturday. We have yet to see
any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess
that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or
affluent white tourists looting the Walgreens in the French Quarter.

We also suspect the media will have
been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and
police struggling to help the "victims" of the hurricane. What you will
not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the
hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans.

The maintenance workers who used a
forklift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers who rigged,
nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who
improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the
little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop
parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent
many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious
patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in
elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats
to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters.
Mechanics who helped hotwire any car that could be found to ferry
people out of the city. And the food service workers who scoured the
commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for hundreds of those
stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their
homes and had not heard from members of their families. Yet they stayed
and provided the only infrastructure for the 20 percent of New Orleans
that was not under water.

* * *

ON DAY Two, there were approximately
500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of
foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves and locals who
had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina.

Some of us had cell phone contact
with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told
that all sorts of resources, including the National Guard and scores of
buses, were pouring into the city. The buses and the other resources
must have been invisible, because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves.
So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come
and take us out of the city. Those who didn't have the requisite $45
each were subsidized by those who did have extra money.

We waited for 48 hours for the buses,
spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water,
food and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the
sick, elderly and newborn babies. We waited late into the night for the
"imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later
learned that the minute they arrived at the city limits, they were
commandeered by the military.

By Day Four, our hotels had run out
of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously bad. As the desperation
and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to
rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that
"officials" had told us to report to the convention center to wait for
more buses. As we entered the center of the city, we finally
encountered the National Guard.

The guard members told us we wouldn't
be allowed into the Superdome, as the city's primary shelter had
descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. They further told us
that the city's only other shelter--the convention center--was also
descending into chaos and squalor, and that the police weren't allowing
anyone else in.

Quite naturally, we asked, "If we
can't go to the only two shelters in the city, what was our
alternative?" The guards told us that this was our problem--and no,
they didn't have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of
our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement."

* * *

WE WALKED to the police command
center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing--that
we were on our own, and no, they didn't have water to give us. We now
numbered several hundred.

We held a mass meeting to decide a
course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We
would be plainly visible to the media and constitute a highly visible
embarrassment to city officials. The police told us that we couldn't
stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp.

In short order, the police commander
came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a
solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the
greater New Orleans Bridge to the south side of the Mississippi, where
the police had buses lined up to take us out of the city.

The crowd cheered and began to move.
We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had
been lots of misinformation, so was he sure that there were buses
waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated
emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves, and the 200
of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we
marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and
optimistic group, and asked where we were headed. We told them about
the great news.

Families immediately grabbed their
few belongings, and quickly, our numbers doubled and then doubled
again. Babies in strollers now joined us, as did people using crutches,
elderly clasping walkers and other people in wheelchairs. We marched
the two to three miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the
bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it didn't dampen our
enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed
sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were
close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads.
This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.

As the crowd scattered and
dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of
the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the
police commander and the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed
us that there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to
get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross
the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the
six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to
become New Orleans, and there would be no Superdomes in their city.
These were code words for: if you are poor and Black, you are not
crossing the Mississippi River, and you are not getting out of New
Orleans.

* * *

OUR SMALL group retreated back down
Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated
our options and, in the end, decided to build an encampment in the
middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway--on the center divide, between
the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned that we would be
visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated
freeway, and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the
yet-to-be-seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families,
individuals and groups make the same trip up the incline in an attempt
to cross the bridge, only to be turned away--some chased away with
gunfire, others simply told no, others verbally berated and humiliated.
Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from
self-evacuating the city on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two city shelters
sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge
was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans,
semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with
people trying to escape the misery that New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to
blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us.
Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an Army truck
lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the
food back to our camp in shopping carts.

Now--secure with these two
necessities, food and water--cooperation, community and creativity
flowered. We organized a clean-up and hung garbage bags from the rebar
poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a
storm drain as the bathroom, and the kids built an elaborate enclosure
for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas and other scraps. We even
organized a food-recycling system where individuals could swap out
parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was something we saw repeatedly
in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food
or water, it meant looking out for yourself. You had to do whatever it
took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. But when
these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other,
working together and constructing a community.

If the relief organizations had
saturated the city with food and water in the first two or three days,
the desperation, frustration and ugliness would not have set in.

Flush with the necessities, we
offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many
decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people.

From a woman with a battery-powered
radio, we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view
on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way
into the city. Officials were being asked what they were going to do
about all those families living up on the freeway. The officials
responded that they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a
sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling
(along with the sinking city) was accurate. Just as dusk set in, a
sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at
our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking freeway." A helicopter
arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy
structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our
food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were
forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared
threatened when we congregated into groups of 20 or more. In every
congregation of "victims," they saw "mob" or "riot." We felt safety in
numbers. Our "we must stay together" attitude was impossible because
the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp
raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group
of eight people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school
bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible
criminal elements, but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the
police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill
policies.

The next day, our group of eight
walked most of the day, made contact with the New Orleans Fire
Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban
search-and-rescue team.

We were dropped off near the airport
and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young
guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards.
They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that
meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks
they were assigned.

* * *

WE ARRIVED at the airport on the day
a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome.
We eight were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for
several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a
photo op. After being evacuated on a Coast Guard cargo plane, we
arrived in San Antonio, Texas.

There, the humiliation and
dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed
on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for
hours and hours. Some of the buses didn't have air conditioners. In the
dark, hundreds of us were forced to share two filthy overflowing
porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions
(often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) were subjected to two
different dog-sniffing searches.

Most of us had not eaten all day
because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport--because the
rations set off the metal detectors. Yet no food had been provided to
the men, women, children, elderly and disabled, as we sat for hours
waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we weren't carrying any
communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp
contrast to the warm, heartfelt reception given to us by ordinary
Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was
barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with
words of welcome.

Throughout, the official relief
effort was callous, inept and racist. There was more suffering than
need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

LARRY BRADSHAW and LORRIE BETH SLONSKY are emergency medical services (EMS) workers from San Francisco.
They were attending an EMS conference in New Orleans when Hurricane
Katrina struck. They spent most of the next week trapped by the
flooding--and the martial law cordon around the city.

+++

here seems to be the original posting:
http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml

i called the SF chapter of SEIU, and found out that lorrie is his wife, from the woman on the phone. she fwd me to a voicemail (his?) i left a message for him. so these ARE real people and can be contacted!

ands yes, there WAS an ems convention in new orleans on those days described in the article:

NATIONAL EMS MEETINGS 2005-2006
August 2005
Fire-Rescue International
Denver, CO
August 11-14, 2005
www.iafc.org
EMS EXPO/NAEMT
EMS Expo 2005
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
900 Convention Center Boulevard
New Orleans, LA 70130
August 23-27, 2005
www.emsmagazine.com
http://www.caas.org/meetings.html

and the people who wrote the article are listed in the phone book of san francisco. media should contact them more.
so this is all very real. please forward this to media. this story needs to get out to everyone!

Surviving the Attack

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 18:56:50 GMT

Firsthand account of suriving the terroist attack on the tube in London....

July 07, 2005

Fait Accompli

Surviving a Terrorist Attack

Fate is a strange thing. On this particular day a series of events transpired such that I ended up on a Tube train that was destroyed by terrorists. Fortunately it was only the carriage in front of me, but tragically it resulted in a serious amount of injuries. This is my story.

I boarded the train at King's Cross after a series of line closures forced me onto a Circle Line train; little did I know at the time that this was probably the worst thing I could have done.

Travelling just past Edgware Road Station the train entered a tunnel. We shook like any usual tube train as it rattled down the tracks. It was then I heard a loud bang.

The train left the tracks and started to rumble down the tunnel. It was incapable of stopping and just rolled on. A series of explosions followed as if tube electric motor after motor was exploding. Each explosion shook the train in the air and seems to make it land at a lower point.

I fell to the ground like most people, scrunched up in a ball in minimize injury. At this point I wondered if the train would ever stop, I thought "please make it stop", but it kept going. In the end I just wished that it didn't hit something and crush. It didn't.

When the train came to a standstill people were screaming, but mainly due to panic as the carriage was rapidly filling with smoke and the smell of burning motors was giving clear clues of fire.

As little as 5 seconds later we were unable to see and had all hit the ground for the precious air that remaining. We were all literally choking to death.

The carriage however was pretty sealed; no window could open, no door would slide and no hammers seemed to exist to grant exit. If there were instructions on how to act then they were impossible to see in the thick acrid black smoke.

In the end I opted to do something about the problem and began shouting to find out in which direction the fires were emanating from. I then tested with the inter-carriage door to see if venting the smoke caused fire to spread. It didn't so I held the door open trying to clear the carriage and look for escape routes.

The train was packed and so there was no escape to the other carriages. Through the gap between the carriages however I saw an escape route and it calmed me from panic; if things got bad I could see an exit along the tunnel wall.

The fire concerned me and the acrid smoke never seems to fully dissipate. I calmed passengers playing down the issue as a bad tube network and a network derailment. Naturally people were in a mixture of states from quiet to abject panic in all its colours.

People could be heard screaming from all around; people were trapped, yet no-one could move and do anything.

After an eternity a guard moved through the carriages and asked everyone to move in the opposite direction. No one however moved, I think they were all in shock.

Questions were asked and we were still trying to determine which direction could be used for escape, which directions had fire. It was all so unclear and the smoke persisted.

In the end a flow of people started and stopped after more confusion and screaming, then out of the smoke injuries started to come through.

Everyone parted, for in the next carriage there was total carnage. Serious facial and body injuries caused by smoke, glass from windows and pure shock.

Naturally we let the injured off first, but with no medical assistance in the area I feared for the others. Particularly as there was little more I could do.

Eventually I made it to the end of the train and dismounted down the wooden ladder, something curiously I've done before. We walked down the tunnel back to Edgware Road and fresh air, finally being able to breathe properly.

I called my love ones and told them what had happened; the news hadn't broken. I was lead out of the station and expected to see emergency services. There were none; things were so bad that they couldn't make it.

The victims were being triaged at the station entrance by Tube staff and as I could see little more I could do so I got out of the way and left. As I stepped out people with camera phones vied to try and take pictures of the worst victims. In crisis some people are cruel.

I prayed for the victims and injured, I truly hoped they'd get medical attention quickly, but terrorism isn't about compassion it's about pain and London's poor medical and fire services are being stretched to their limit today.

London Transport should have closed all stations immediately, but didn't. My dice with death could have been avoided with better planning. The design of trains needs to be changed and zero-visibility factored into emergency plans.

I pity the waste and loss, while thanking the gods while wondering why me - why do I get to live another day?

Edit: Thank you all for your kind comments on my experiences. If you wish to read the follow-up of my day you'll find it here.

--- Justin (8th July)

Posted by justin at 11:10 AM UTC+1 | Comments (41) | TrackBack (39)

While Others Argued, Marla Acted

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:19:08 GMT

Reading this euology brought tears to my eyes, becuase it was clear this guy loved her. I've known women like her and its perilous to love them because their focus is so far beyond you.....

Marla Ruzicka with Harah, who was 3 months old when her entire family was killed when a U.S. rocket struck their car.

Marla Ruzicka, RIP
While others argued, Marla acted. She gave her young life to help the innocent victims of the Iraq war. At 28, she represented the best of America.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Phillip Robertson

April 18, 2005 | This is a eulogy of a thousand words that should really be a poem. It's one I never thought I would write. In Iraq on Saturday afternoon, around 3 p.m., a suicide bomber entered Baghdad Airport road, heading east. On the same stretch was a U.S. military convoy, an Australian security detachment, and a car that carried U.S. aid worker Marla Ruzicka and her colleague Faiz Ali Salim. When the bomber detonated his explosives, Marla and Faiz were among those killed, and with that terrible act, the bomber cut short the life of a tireless champion of the victims of the war.

Marla Ruzicka founded the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) in 2003, an NGO that began as a one-woman operation and grew to include dedicated Iraqis who compiled statistics of Iraqi civilian casualties. It was a difficult, heart-wrenching job. Marla pursued the casualty figures by going door to door in a country that sent so many other aid agencies over the brink. Human Rights Watch works in some of the most dangerous countries in the world. But it does not have field offices in Iraq.

Marla was amazingly cheerful about the dangerous situation. Unfazed by the weight of paranoia around her, she continued to travel around the country, even when her American citizenship made her a target. Looking back to the time we spent in Baghdad last summer, when I was covering the conflict, I can't remember Marla ever talking about being afraid. This was during the height of the insurgency in Sadr City, a brutal time, and I can't remember a single instance where Marla said she was scared. It doesn't mean she didn't feel it. But fear wasn't something that slowed her down.



	Premium Benefits Get 2 months of Paste Magazine Get Premium on your PDA or Wireless device Free one month audio subscription to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal Get Salon's headlines delivered to your e-mail address Download Salon as plain text or PDF

I remember Marla throwing salsa parties, inviting all of us to gatherings at the Hamra pool, encouraging us to crash other people's parties. Marla was the activities director on a cruise liner in the most hellish seas, and she knew how to dance. All of us, and I mean the hundreds of people in the press corps, loved her. But we were just the beginning of the story. Marla was as open and gracious with Iraqis as she was with Westerners. Who knows how many are grieving for her now. I thought she would never get hurt out there, a superstition that bad luck was for others and would just take a detour around someone like Marla. Rita Leistner, a photojournalist who knew her, wrote me a message this evening: "I think it's possible that she didn't have a single malicious bone in her body."

Above all, Marla Ruzicka had a mission. She believed deeply that the families of civilians killed by the U.S. should receive compensation. She forcefully argued that the U.S. government had a duty to all innocents injured by its weapons, especially children who needed urgent medical care from decent hospitals. These simple principles cut straight to the heart of our collective responsibility during wartime.

She lobbied Congress, raising the most uncomfortable questions about our involvement in Iraq, and then demanded justice for the people forgotten in government policy. She won. Tens of millions of dollars were set aside to assist Iraqis who were the victims of the war.

But Marla didn't stay in Washington. How many innocent people have been killed by U.S. forces? Marla wanted to know the answer to that ugly question and so she returned to Iraq. She started looking for the truth by going door to door in Baghdad, taking a survey. She just started asking Iraqi families how many people they were missing. Of course, it was so simple -- this was her human approach.

Marla spent a great deal of time trying to help Iraqis who lost family members to the war. During the first siege of Fallujah, I once found her screaming at the director of the Iraqi Red Crescent, demanding that he organize a way to bring supplies to refugees. She was furious at his apathy. It drove her crazy.

Marla told me how hard it was to try to wring compensation payments from the U.S. military and what it was like to lobby Congress for Iraqi civilians rights. To get her projects through, she described to anyone who would listen the cases of injured Iraqis and the families of those killed. She would lean on her point, even when surrounded by experts who were supposed to know the deal.

Marla also understood the power and the responsibility of the press because she thought we could help her save people. It was all true. Charming and relentless, she sought out reporters to pick up her stories, she got her quotes in print and on television. I was one of the lucky ones who learned about her projects by hearing her describe them in her own voice, her lilting California accent that camouflaged her determination and bravery.

Marla also had a wild messianic streak and was beautiful in the way girls from Northern California are often beautiful, with blond hair and clear eyes. Around the time I first met her three years ago, I was coming out of a U.N. press conference in Kabul. It was dusk and we were on the grounds of the Hotel Intercontinental on a high hill, surrounded by deep ditches. Marla was talking to me about something and I was so hypnotized by her otherworldly style, I walked right off the edge of a 15-foot cliff. When she finally found me in a gully, she didn't laugh. Anyone else would have died laughing. She was concerned and thought I was hurt. "Oh my God. Are you OK?" she yelled. I had just become an innocent victim of a cliff -- and one of her fans.

This is not a hagiography. Marla had her rough spots like anyone. She was emotionally vulnerable but her projects gained strength and she never gave up. What more can you ask of someone?

Here is one of the great things about her. In a divided nation, when so many idealistic young Americans chose a side as if it were a football team, picking the partisan fights and slugging it out over the dinner table, Marla chose the war instead. It would be her stage. She bought a ticket, organized her visas and went to Afghanistan and Iraq to see it for herself. In the end, she knew more about the true nature of conflict than any analyst in the United States, more than the president himself. If Marla's methods were unorthodox, it's because the war couldn't be handled the normal way. It needed her personality and her style. Her heart was pure.

I ran into Marla all over the world. I saw her in Afghanistan, Baghdad, and recently in New York City. We were on some kind of strange trajectory that meant we were always running into each other. I took this to be part of her magic and came to expect to see her all the time because her territory was the entire planet.

In late March, over dinner at a place on the Lower East Side, the day before she left for Iraq, Marla was talking about a medical evacuation case with my friend Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images. Chris had recently photographed a checkpoint shooting in Tal Afar, where the mother and father of an Iraqi family were killed by American soldiers. One of their orphaned children, a young boy named Rakan Hassan, had a bullet in his spine and needed medical care that he couldn't get in Iraq. As Marla and Chris talked about how to get Rakan surgery so he could walk again, I witnessed Marla in action, plotting and scheming in her ingenious way. She was planning to work on Rakan's case from Iraq and left for the Middle East as soon as she could. The moment she arrived, she wrote to her contacts in Washington and the State Department in Amman, Jordan.

Subject: Visa for little boy who needs treatment in the U.S.
Date: 12/04/2005 03:03:57 Eastern Daylight Time

Hi Karen and Tim,

We are working to get a little boy medical treatment in the U.S. We have a doctor who will treat him in San Francisco, but he needs it ASAP. He has a visa and we have his costs secured -- is there any way we could get him a humanitarian visa? Karen is there, any way the State Department in Baghdad could help with this -- if we don't get him treatment soon he may never be able to walk again. Thanks, Marla

See how she goes straight for the gut. Marla then received a long bureaucratic reply from the embassy that detailed what she would need to do to get an appointment. It made her mad.

Subject: RE: emergency
Date: April 12, 2005 2:21 P.M.

hi we have a medical emergency -- is there no compasssion? can we have the department of state help?

The diplomats replied with information that was more personal and to the point than any that ever comes from the government. Marla had called on their humanity and sympathy and won. They pledged to see the boy as soon as he made it to Amman. "The little boy must come to Amman a.s.a.p., and once he is in Amman, write me again and I will set up an appointment for him the very next day," the diplomat replied. "In the email, give me the child's full name as it appears in his passport, his passport number, and a copy of the enclosed emails."

Marla had broken through to them. She was brilliant that way. Reporters are now writing about how she became an innocent victim of the war, just like the people she championed. I know that is true because she was certainly innocent. But at the end she wasn't a powerless victim. She had already won. She fought cruelty and bloodshed and indifference. Marla Ruzicka was a true enemy of war and she triumphed over it again and again with every person she helped. The last thing she said to me that night in New York was, "You know, Phillip, I'm trying to save the world."

Marla Ruzicka was 28.

Daily Kos on the latest Polls post Schiavo

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 02:49:18 GMT

Is this mind-numbing or what? all you ahve to do is listen to the BBC or some other european news service to see the cirucs that is American politics today in the absurd, incredulous light in which folks outside our country view it. It's breathtakingly cynical.....

Daily Kos:

Schiavo political impact. It's not pretty for the GOP.

CBS News. 3/21-22. MoE 4%. (February results)

Congress Job Approval
Approve 34 (41)
Disapprove 49 (44)
Bush Approval Ratings
Approve 43 (49)
Should Congress and the President be involved in the Schiavo matter?
Yes 13
No 82

This is turning into a disaster of epic proportions for the GOP. They thought they had the Dems wedged, and instead they have wedged themselves from the American public. Congress is being exposed as the cynical, power-mad, ethics-free zone that it has become under DeLay's leadership.

Read the poll. It has nothing but bad news for Republicans. And don't miss Bush's numbers on Iraq - his approval ratings in the war are down six points in the last month - from 45 percent to 39 percent.

Update: The party breakdown for this poll is:

Republican 44
Democrat 29
Independent 28

If the poll represented the actual partisan breakdown of the US public, the numbers would be far, far worse. [Daily Kos]

Bloggers in the Cross Hairs

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:02:35 GMT

FEC Considers Restricting Online Political Activities

New Rules May Apply to Web Ads, Bloggers' Endorsements

By Brian Faler

Special to The Washington Post
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page A17

The Federal Election Commission has begun considering whether to issue new rules on how political campaigns are waged on the Internet, a regulatory process that is expected to take months to complete but that is already generating considerable angst online.

The agency is weighing whether -- and how -- to impose restrictions on a host of online activities, including campaign advertising and politically oriented blogs.

Election officials are reluctantly taking up the issue, after losing a court case last fall. The FEC, which enforces federal election law, had issued scores of regulations delineating how the campaign finance reform legislation adopted in 2002 ought to be implemented. But Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), who sponsored the legislation, complained that many of those rules were too lax, and they successfully sued to have them rescinded. The commission must now rewrite a number of those directions, including ones that left online political activities virtually free from government regulation.

"We are almost certainly going to move from an environment in which the Internet was per se not regulated to where it is going to be regulated in some part," said FEC Commissioner David M. Mason, a Republican. "That shift has huge significance because it means that people who are conducting political activity on the Internet are suddenly going to have to worry about or at least be conscious of certain legal distinctions and lines they didn't used to have to worry about."

Which people, what activities and where those lines should be drawn, though, have yet to be determined. The rise of the Internet as a political tool, the variety of ways in which it can be used to promote a campaign and the fact that most federal election laws were written long before the Internet became a household word have combined to present the agency's commissioners with plenty of knotty legal questions to consider.

Should bloggers who work for political campaigns, for example, be required to disclose that relationship? Should their writings include a disclaimer indicating that they were paid for by a campaign? What if a campaign supporter links his Web site to a candidate's home page? Is that considered a campaign contribution subject to government regulation? What if an independent blogger endorses a candidate? Or posts a campaign's news release? Are those contributions?

The panel, which has been criticized for being slow to decide contested points of the law -- but is loath to do anything that would chill free speech -- is free to address whatever issues it chooses. The three Democrats and three Republicans who compose the commission have not settled on an agenda for this latest round of rulemaking. That is expected to come later this month. But several commissioners have begun making their suggestions public.

Republican Commissioner Bradley A. Smith, who opposed some previous attempts to impose regulations on online political activities, sparked a furious debate among bloggers earlier this month, when he told the online technology magazine CNET that the FEC might regulate their activities. He argued, for example, that the laws that allow publications such as this newspaper to make political endorsements without having them considered akin to financial contributions to those campaigns -- and therefore subject to government regulation -- may not apply to bloggers who back candidates.

His comments quickly ricocheted across the Web, as bloggers began wondering if they might have to bone up on election law. Two of the authors of the campaign finance legislation, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) issued a joint statement denouncing Smith's remarks, saying they would "whip up baseless fears." A few prominent online political strategists and bloggers sent a letter recently to the FEC, urging it not to restrict unpaid political activities on the Internet. Their letter has since been endorsed by more than 2,500 other supporters. Republican Commissioner Michael E. Toner said he has begun receiving "very heated" e-mails on the issue.

Four commissioners -- Democrats Scott E. Thomas and Ellen L. Weintraub, along with Toner and Mason -- said in interviews that they oppose regulating independent bloggers.

"I really see no appetite at the agency for regulating bloggers," Weintraub said. "I would be very, very surprised if that was the result."

She said the commission would likely focus on other issues, such as whether to subject expenditures on Internet ad campaigns to the agency's contribution rules. The FEC requires campaign supporters who spend money on political ads in coordination with a candidate to report those expenses to the government and subjects them to contribution limits -- but the rules apply only to offline ads. So if, for example, a campaign supporter pays for an ad in the Los Angeles Times at the request of a candidate, that expenditure must be reported and counted against those limits. But if the supporter pays for an ad on the Los Angeles Times's Web site, it does not.

Weintraub also predicted that many of the activities mentioned as possible items on the FEC's agenda would ultimately fall outside its jurisdiction.

"We regulate campaign finance. We don't regulate speech in the abstract. We only regulate when money is spent," she said. "One of the great things about the Internet is that it's really cheap, and if people are not spending money, then it's really none of our business. Most of the time when people are sitting at their home computers, blogging, e-mailing -- whatever they're doing -- there really isn't any money being spent."

Some longtime FEC observers said they believed the commission would tackle a relatively narrow slate of issues.

"I don't think this is going to be as broad a rulemaking as some are threatening," said Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel who now runs the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. "I think what the FEC is going to focus on is political activity undertaken by campaigns, by political committees, by possibly corporations and labor unions on the Internet . . . how you regulate that, how you make sure that's reported."

The commission is not expected to reveal its agenda until later this month, when it releases its "notice of proposed rulemaking." The FEC is scheduled to then invite public comments on that draft, hold a public hearing on the proposed rules and, later this summer, vote on the final regulations.

Print This Article

E-Mail This Article

Things Fall Apart; the Center Cannot Hold

Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:50:12 GMT

My favorite Republican has provided a hard-hitting analysis of the current balance of trade situation and why it isn't a no brainer situation. Its well worth reading, and th next issue should be a dozzy too cause he's going to talk about - gasp! - why Bush and the congressional republicans are making it worse.....

Thoughts From The Frontline
John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter

Bretton Woods, Part Two
by John Mauldin
February 18, 2005

Bretton Woods, Part Two
A Beautiful Equilibrium
Staying Vigilant Against Complacency
Things Fall Apart; the Center Cannot Hold
Stability Breeds Instability
Why Long Term Rates Are So Low
Connecticut, Florida and Guacamole

"Another G-7 meeting has come and gone. And what has been accomplished? Next to nothing, in my view. The club of the world's wealthiest nations has punted on the big issues facing the global economy - namely, unprecedented current-account imbalances, currency misalignments, mounting trade tensions, and the liquidity- prone biases of central banks. The G-7's latest communique is emblematic of the increasingly vacuous rhetoric of globalization. This is a perilous course of inaction for a global economy beset with record imbalances." (Stephen Roach, Chief Economist, Morgan Stanley)

In his talks to Congress this week, Chairman Greenspan dropped in these words, which did not make the highlight reels, but nonetheless should be listened to: "People experiencing long periods of relative stability are prone to excess. We must thus remain vigilant against complacency."

The record imbalances which Roach alluded to are inherently unstable. They are the proverbial unsustainable trend. Yet things seem to be rocking along just fine. One of America's finest theoretical economists, Hyman Minsky, gave us this great quote, "Stability is unstable." What he meant by that is that the longer things remain the same, the more we expect them to remain the same and the more complacent we get. Thus, when things actually do change, the shock is much greater. Few have "remained vigilant." The long-term stability of trends is the seedbed for asset and credit bubbles of all types.

This week, we begin a multi-part series on that most unsustainable of all trends, the US trade balance. While the game can go on for much longer than reason would dictate, there will be an end to it. Will it be the soft landing with nations agreeing to work together to find a sort of Nash equilibrium; or, the hard landing where the "vacuous rhetoric of globalization" masks the reality of each nation going its own way, in a kind of "devil take the hindmost" world?

A Beautiful Equilibrium

In game theory, the Nash equilibrium (named after John Nash) is a kind of optimal strategy for games involving two or more players, whereby the players reach an outcome to mutual advantage. If there is a set of strategies for a game with the property that no player can benefit by changing his strategy while (if) the other players keep their strategies unchanged, then that set of strategies and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium. John Nash, the Nobel laureate in mathematics was featured in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." (Highly recommended, by the way.)

The US is living, many say, on the kindness of strangers. If it were not for the willingness of Chinese and Japanese central banks, along with their smaller Asian counterparts, to finance our trade deficit, we would be in perilous circumstances. If Asian currencies saw the dollar fall by 33%, they stand to lose over $600 billion in buying power due to their massive $1.8 trillion US dollar reserves. That is a massive amount of confidence.

Yet it works both ways. Exports to the US alone accounted for about 12% of China's GDP, and that was up from 9% in 2000. At current growth rates, US imports could be responsible for 20% of China's GDP by 2008. It may be that China is depending upon the kindness of strangers, in this case US consumers. Other Asian countries have similar, if not as dramatic, dependence upon US consumers. And many of them ship materials to China which eventually find their way to the US.

The elephant in the world economic room is the now $660 billion US current account deficit. At least $465 billion of that comes from foreign central banks. It is an odd Nash equilibrium. They take our paper, which they know will one day be worth less than it is today, in order to be able to sell us products which keeps factories growing. How long can the game continue? In the case of China, it may continue until the have established their own internal equilibrium of jobs for the hundreds of millions of peasants moving from the farms looking for a better life.

It is not a matter of things staying the same. There is in fact no Nash equilibrium into which the world has settled. We are still "playing the game" and some players may be opting to take advantage of others. The system itself is inherently unstable, as we will see. And if you have trouble understanding how the game is played, then take comfort in the fact that a US Senator, whose staff at least should know better, clearly does not understand the basics of how the economy works. I quote this from good friend Dennis Gartman:

"Secondly, we are now firmly convinced that Sen. 'Debbie' Stabenow (D-Michigan) is an utter and complete idiot. Why mince words, for clarity is what we are after here, and in her questioning of Mr. Greenspan yesterday Sen. Stabenow removed any and all possibilities that she is not an idiot. Taking a page from the manners of H. Ross Perot and waving a piece of paper upon which one of her staff had obviously listed the foreign buyers of US treasury securities, Sen. Stabenow roared before the television audience and wondered aloud what Mr. Greenspan was going to do about this problem!

"Sen. Stabenow was indignant that so many 'foreigners' owned US treasury securities, and she hoped that Mr. Greenspan would somehow come to his sense and prohibit them from doing so in the future... or at least expose this as a problem that must needs be addressed immediately.

"Mr. Greenspan, visibly torn between laughing aloud at the Senator's idiocy and between disdain, but summoning up all of the will power necessary to answer her properly, said that he knew of no laws that these 'foreigners' had broken; that he knew of nothing he could do to stop them from making investments that they thought were well advised and reasonable; that without their purchases US interest rates might well have been a good deal higher than they are, and that there seems to be no movement on their part to create an untoward market circumstance by selling those securities presently. The only comment he missed making and one we wish he had made is that their purchases are a huge 'vote of confidence' in the US economy, not an indictment of same. Sen. Stabenow proved the wisdom of the old aphorism that it is far better to remain silent and thought of as an idiot than to say something and remove all doubts. In her case, there were few doubts before her appearance; now there are none."

As a prelude to a paper we are going to examine in detail in the next few weeks, there is reason to believe that long term interest rates might be at least 1% higher and perhaps as much as 2% without foreign buying of US government debt. 10 year treasuries at 6% would mean that 30-year mortgages would be well over 7%. That would create quite a slowdown in housing construction and at least put a lid on the rise in home values, if not reverse the trend. That would certainly slow the economy down.

While it is doubtful the Senator would wish for such an economic slowdown, this illustrates that there are consequences for individual investors to the "international trade game" that we will be discussing. It is not played in a vacuum.

Staying Vigilant Against Complacency

What I want to do over the next few weeks is to show you why Greenspan is right. You must remain vigilant against complacency. The last "Big Thing" to come upon the world was the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000-2002. There was a new paradigm. The next Big Thing is likely to be the fallout from the rebalancing of global trade. You do NOT want to be on the wrong side of that trade. The good news is that we will muddle through. It is not the end of the world. However, the transition will not be fun. It will affect your bonds, your stocks, your home values and maybe your job. Assuming that tomorrow will be like today is a complacency that you cannot afford.

To start us off, I want to quote a few paragraphs about what Hyman Minsky wrote about financial balance.

"...Minsky characterized the financial balance along a scale of running from 'fragile' to robust.' 'Fragile finance' refers to states in which cash commitments are relatively heavy compared to cash flows, so that there is some danger of widespread failure to meet commitments, failure that might cause general breakdown in coherence. 'Robust finance' refers to states in which commitments are relatively light compared to cash flows, so that the danger of incoherence is relatively remote. The emphasis on the threat of incoherence is one way of reading the scale.

"Viewed more positively, what is so appealing about a state of 'robust finance' is that it leaves open many different possible future paths for subsequent social freedom. What is so tragic about a state of 'fragile finance' is that previous commitments leave open only very few possibilities for the future, and maybe no possibilities at all that are consistent with existing commitments. Fragile finance is a state of social constraint. The degree of fragility or robustness in the economy as a whole ultimately depends on the fragility or robustness of financing arrangements at the level of the constituent economic units." (Perry Mehrling, The Vision of Hyman P. Minsky, 1998)

Or put more simply, if you have cash, you have more options. It would seem that the United States has fewer options, as we are the borrower, not the lender. But that is not entirely the case. While Europe does not feel the need to build up dollar reserves, thus lowering the values of their currency and financing our trade deficit, clearly Asia does. While they may have "cash." They also have "existing commitments," as Minsky put it, to support export growth as a way to increase employment and improve their national well-being.

What would happen, do you think, if China were to see their exports to the US decrease? What about all the spare capacity and who would use it? What about the bank loans made that are predicated on the kindness of US consumers being willing to forego savings and purchase Chinese goods? What about the expectations of the masses of poor who are looking for jobs, not to mention the loss of jobs from those currently employed? The Chinese must feel an existing commitment to be willing to take dollars that they surely must know will not be worth as much in the future.

Things Fall Apart; the Center Cannot Hold

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned." - William Butler Yeats

Yeats was not describing what has come to be called Bretton Woods 2, but it seems apropos to start with that quote. The first Bretton Woods system came about when representatives of most of the world's leading nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 to create a new international monetary system. Because the US at the time accounted for over half of the world's manufacturing capacity and held most of the world's gold, the leaders decided to tie world currencies to the dollar, which, in turn, they agreed should be convertible into gold at $35 per ounce.

Under the Bretton Woods system, central banks of countries other than the US were given the task of maintaining fixed exchange rates between their currencies and the dollar. They did this by intervening in foreign exchange markets. If a country's currency was too high relative to the dollar, its central bank would sell its currency in exchange for dollars, driving down the value of its currency. Conversely, if the value of a country's money was too low, the country would buy its own currency, thereby driving up the price.

The dollar became the world's reserve currency. Yet there were limits. Each country had to police its own reserves and currency or be forced to revalue. And the US was constrained because the dollar was fully convertible into gold. This changed in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

Now we have what many are coming to call a Bretton Woods 2 system. That is where much of the world, but primarily the Asian countries, have more or less informally agreed to peg their currencies to the dollar. They do this in order to maintain their relative competitive ability to sell their products to the world and specifically to the US.

But this system is inherently more unstable than the first Bretton Woods. There is no gold conversion constraint upon the reserve currency. The US has few reasons to protect the value of the currency, and many reasons why they should want it to drop. And there is no formal agreement among the nations. Any nation at any time could begin to act unilaterally to change. Russia has specifically said they would start to have a larger euro component to their growing national reserves. Thailand has said the same, and indications are that they are putting actions behind their words.

For the rest of today's letter, and probably much of next week's, we are going to look at a rather remarkable paper called: "Will the Bretton Woods 2 Regime Unravel Soon? The Risk of a Hard Landing in 2005-2006" It is by Nouriel Roubini of the Stern School of Business at New York University and Brad Setser, Research Associate Global Economic Governance Programme at University College, Oxford University. It was done for a symposium held this month in San Francisco sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and University of California - Berkley. The symposium was called "Revived Bretton Woods System: A New Paradigm for Asian Development?"

Let's look at a few paragraphs from the introduction that helps us get our bearings to the problems that Roubini and Setser want to point out:

"The defining feature of the global economy right now is the $660 billion US current account deficit. The world's largest economy - and the world's preeminent military and geo-strategic power - is also the world's largest debtor. The current account surpluses of most other regions of the world are the mirror image of the US deficit. The US absorbs at least 80% of the savings that the rest of the world does not invest at home. Barring an economic slump in the US or a major fall in the dollar, the US current account deficit looks set to expand significantly in 2005 and 2006.

"The defining feature of the current international financial and monetary system is that it finances the United States' enormous external deficit - and the associated fiscal deficit -- at low interest rates. The world's central banks, not private investors, provide the bulk of the financing the United States needs to sustain its deficits.

"...Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber, in a series of influential papers, have argued that the nations of the Pacific have constituted a new Bretton Woods system. In the original Bretton Woods system, Europe and Japan tied their currencies to the dollar; today the industrialized - and rapidly industrializing - Asian economies formally or informally tie their currencies to the dollar. Dooley, Folkerts-Landau and Garber, argue that this system of fixed and heavily managed exchange rates is fundamentally stable, and the intervention required to prevent Asian currencies from appreciating will continue to provide the bulk of the financing the US needs to run ongoing current account deficits.

"For countries on the periphery, the benefits of stable, weak exchange rates exceed the costs of reserve accumulation. China relies on rapid export-led growth to absorb surplus labor of hundreds of millions of low-skill poor workers from its vast agricultural sector into the modern, industrial and traded sector. Continued reserve accumulation by Asian - and other - central banks, in turn, allows the US to continue to rely on domestic demand to drive its growth, and to run the resulting large current account deficits. Indeed, the external deficits financed through a new renminbi-dollar standard are far larger than any deficits associated with the original gold-dollar standard or the original Bretton Woods system.

"Initially, Garber, Dooley and Folkerts-Landau suggested the new system of fixed and quasi-fixed exchange rates would last a generation, until China's agricultural labor surplus was absorbed in a new urban industrial sector. More recently, Peter Garber backed off a bit, but he still maintained that the new Bretton Woods system would last another eight years. Michael Mussa has suggested it will not last another four years. We believe it may have difficulty lasting for another two years.

"...we argue that there is a meaningful risk the Bretton Woods 2 system will unravel before the end of 2006."

Stability Breeds Instability

They find several sources of instability. Let's look at a few of them briefly. (I will try to find a web link for the paper by next week.)

First, as alluded to above, they see a tension between the growing need for financing by the US and the "large losses that those lending to the US in dollars are almost certain to incur as part of the adjustment needed to reduce the US trade deficit."

The world's central banks hold roughly $2.5 trillion of the $3.8 trillion worth of reserves in dollars. Asian central banks have roughly $1.8 trillion in dollars. If Asian currencies were to depreciate by 33%, that means Asian central banks would lose $600 billion, which is not a small sum. And it cannot be dismissed as merely a paper loss.

Most of the countries "sterilize" their dollar holdings in order to maintain the relative value of their currency and maintain control of their money supply and thus inflation. "To the extent that central banks have to sterilize their reserve accumulation, their dollar assets are offset by local currency liabilities that have to be paid. Central banks can always be recapitalized by taxpayers, but the new government bonds given to the central bank to make up for exchange rate losses have to be serviced out of the government's budget. That is a real cost."

Let's see if I can explain this. A business sells $ billion dollars worth of widgets to the US. When it comes back to the country, the business needs local currency to pay suppliers and employees, so they convert it to the local currency. This increases the money supply. At some point, that is inflationary, so the local central banks issues government debt to soak up the excess cash and try and maintain a stable money supply. That local debt has to eventually be paid. It is a real cost. If the dollar goes down, so does the value of its reserves, yet its debt in local currency has stayed the same. Someone (read taxpayer) has to make up the local currency losses.

For some smaller economies, these losses can be significant. As they point out in a footnote: "As Higgins and Klitgaard (2004) note, reserve holdings of some Asian economies are so large that the losses for some central banks from even small moves in their exchange rate as significant: a 10% appreciation of the Singapore dollar might reduce the local currency value of Singapore's reserves by 10% of GDP; a 10% move in the Taiwanese dollar would generate local currency losses of 8% of Taiwan's GDP." This is just one more reason why central banks would be reluctant to see the dollar drop.

Of course, that could change. What if Singapore started to move it reserves out of the dollar and into yen and euros? At some point, it makes sense to do so. But when? And if one country starts, do others follow? Is there some new Nash equilibrium out there?

Why Long Term Rates Are So Low

"Developing a clean test of the impact of central bank demand on interest rates is hard, and estimates of the impact vary substantially. Goldman Sachs (2004) has presented an analysis suggesting that central banks intervention is narrowing Treasury yields by only 40bps; Sack (2004) provides a similar estimate.13 Truman (2005) notes that sustained intervention from central banks is similar to a sustained reduction in the fiscal deficit: his ballpark estimate suggests a $300 billion in central bank intervention might have a 75 bp impact. Research from Federal Reserve suggests a 50 to 100 bps impact (see Bernanke, Reinhart and Sack (2004)); PIMCO's Bill Gross puts it at closer to 100 bps, and Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach puts it at between 100 and 150 bps."

Since 2000, Roubini and Setser tell us that all of the net new supply of Treasuries has been bought by non-residents, and that between 80-90% has been by central banks. One last quote and then I will wrap up for this week:

"Central bank demand made it easier for the US Treasury to shorten the maturity of the US debt stock, and thus to reduce relative supply of long term US Treasuries. By eliminating the 30 year bond and supplying very little of the 10 year bond, the US reduced the share of ten year and longer Treasuries in the overall marketable stock from 40% in 2001 to 31% at the end of fiscal 2004. The overall stock of marketable treasuries went up by $931 billion in FY 2002-04, but the stock of ten-year notes and longer-term bonds went up only by $35 billion. Had the share of longer term Treasuries in stock stayed constant, the increase would have been closer to $365 billion. Central banks clearly are not just buying short-dated bills and two and three year Treasury notes: US data indicates that they have been important participants in the five and ten year note auctions. Consequently, the stock of ten-year notes in private US hands has presumably gone down over the past few years despite the large increase in the overall Treasury stock. Treasuries of different maturities are a close substitutes, but the relative scarcity of the ten-year note and other longer dated Treasuries could nonetheless have had an impact on its yield.

"Consequently, the 40bp [basis point] Goldman estimate seriously understates the effects of the Asian intervention on the market. Considering the size of recent central bank purchases, the indirect impact of central bank intervention on private demand for Treasuries, the interaction between central bank reserve accumulation and Treasury debt management policy and the effects of Asian reserve accumulation on inflation and growth (general equilibrium effects), we would bet the overall impact would be closer to 200bps."

Part of the reason they think the affect is higher is that such large purchases by foreign central banks distorts the value of the dollar and inflation, as well as US GDP and trade. These all have an impact on interest rates, and are usually not taken into account by those who look at the impact of foreign currency buying upon US interest rates.

Yes, with a much lower dollar, the trade deficit would be lower. We would be investing in industry which would make things for trade, as we would be more competitive. Fewer jobs would go offshore.

But we would also be paying much higher prices for nearly everything. Inflation would be a problem, or the Fed would be fighting it with higher interest rates. That means a much slower economy, and the increase in value in your house? Forget about it.

There are no economic free lunches. There is a trade-off for everything. I prefer the market to make those decisions, but we do not have a free market in currencies. It is manipulated by Asian central banks, and that distortion is going to cause pain down the road.

The interesting exercise for us is to try and understand how all the "players" in the game will act. What kind of odd Nash equilibrium will they settle into? Will they all share some pain so as to lessen the total amount of pain, or will they seek to avoid as much personal pain as possible thereby causing more pain for everyone else? I am not entirely optimistic, given the current level of the "vacuous rhetoric of globalization." But one can always hope. It will take more than a few beautiful minds to work this equilibrium equation out.

But that's enough for this week. There is a lot more to come the next few weeks on this topic.

And just for fun and a little surprise, next week I will tell you why the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans are making the problem worse. It is not a pretty picture.