The Daily Beast reports on the latest shopping trend among those wealthy few who haven’t been seriously affected by the economic downturn:

“…Anyone who can still afford, say, the three cashmere throws at $2,225 each that Mrs. Fuld bought when she stopped by the store that day isn’t likely to advertise it. Instead, the city’s most extravagant shoppers are ferrying their purchases home in unmarked bags; delegating delivery to assistants; or manipulating credit card bills to disguise their spending from outsiders—and their spouses…”

Read the rest.

In his article, “Israel’s Crime Against Humanity,” Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges speaks with the former US ambassador to Jordon, Richard N. Veits:

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

Hedges concludes by wondering whether this contemporary tragedy will breed a new generation of militants and radicals.

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

Read the complete article at AlterNet.

BBC’s environmental correspondent reports:

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.

It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.

Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.

Capital losses

Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.

“It’s not only greater but it’s also continuous, it’s been happening every year, year after year,” he told BBC News.

“So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today’s rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.”

The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.

The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.

Stern message

Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.

So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.

Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.

The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.

The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.

Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into the political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their policy choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will lay open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the slide in biodiversity.

“The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to reality,” said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest preservation.

“Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we run by not valuing it adequately.”

A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade, although it is clearly very early days.

Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of the services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that decades of trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic worth of nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.

Whether Mr Sukhdev’s arguments will find political traction in an era of financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection are the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review.

But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.

“Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago, their eyes would glaze over.

“Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so how do you calculate this, how can we monetize it, what can we do about it, why don’t you speak with so and so politician or such and such business.”

The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the date by which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological Diversity to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.

Today marks the 5 year anniversary of Edward Said’s passing. A true activist for peace and conflict resolution between Israel and Palestine, now more than ever his efforts must be remembered.

Said was passionately against Palestine being turned into an isolated prison wherein Israel repeatedly attacked mostly defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s. Born in West Jerusalem in 1935. Exiled in December 1947. Said was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1991, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow and blood. At 6:45AM on September 25, 2003, he succumbed (at age 67) after a painful courageous 12 year struggle. Tributes followed and resumed a year later. In a testimony to his teacher, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi called him “indefatigable, incorruptible, a humanist and devastatingly charming… leav(ing behind) legions of followers and fans in every corner of the world. I am lost without him… I miss him so.”

Chomsky called his death an “incalculable loss.” A year later, Ilan Pappe said “his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year… another terrible (one) for the values (he) represented and causes he defended.” Tariq Ali referred to his “indomitable spirit as a fighter, his will to live, (my) long-standing friend and comrade,” … [more by Stephen Lendman]

Global justice activists, environmentalists, union members, farmers, students, anti-capitalist activists and countless others helped shut down the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November of 1999. It was a defining moment for the movement against corporate globalization. The historical Seattle protests have now been turned into an independent fictionalized film. Democracy Now! spoke to the film’s writer and director, Stuart Townsend, as well as David Solnit, one of the key organizers of the WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO People’s History project:
[via DemocracyNow.org]

STUART TOWNSEND: One thing that’s happened is, since Seattle, because of Seattle’s success, you know, it’s very hard now to actually protest, have real dissent, because there’s two-mile exclusion zones. The Navy is out there in Cancun stopping protesters. And every event, every G8 event, any World Trade Organization meeting, now has massive security. And at the RNC and the DNC, where I was there, as well, I mean, it was very hard to really have any form of real dissent. So I think that’s a problem that, you know, you guys have to deal with as activists.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your hopes for this film?

STUART TOWNSEND: My hope is to inspire people, particularly a young and new audience, who—you know, most people don’t remember this event. And I was shocked when I sort of found it—you know, like found it. I was like, this is an incredible, important event about so many important issues. You know, even look at the financial crisis of two days ago, that’s the same system that people were fighting against in ’99. And, you know, we’re now reaping those—you know, the whirlwind of that.”

Today Pakistan celebrates its 61st independence day amid numerous tensions: President Musharraf headed for impeachment, Kashmir protesters getting shot, “the gray lady of Bagram”, suicide bombings, military operations in northwestern Pakistan’s tribal regions, food and economic crisis … and many more.

60 years ago… Life magazine ran the story: “Pakistan Struggles for Survival: religious warfare and economic chaos threaten the newly born nation of 70 million moslems” … not much different from what Pakistan is facing today. Here are some pictures that ran with the story:

Many hope that with President Musharraf gone democracy will follow and things might change but Pakistan has seen many dictators go only to return some other day. The following is by Tariq Ali, is the author of The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, talking about Musharraf quitting in a couple of days and what we can expect after it (Link: Guardian):

There is never a dull moment in Pakistan. As the country moved from a moth-eaten dictatorship to a moth-eaten democracy the celebrations were muted. Many citizens wondered whether the change represented a forward movement.

Five months later, the moral climate has deteriorated still further. All the ideals embraced by the hopeful youth and the poor of the country – political morality, legality, civic virtue, food subsidies, freedom and equality of opportunity – once again lie at their feet, broken and scattered. The widower Bhutto and his men are extremely unpopular. The worm-eaten tongues of chameleon politicians and resurrected civil servants are on daily display. Removing Musharraf, who is even more unpopular, might win the politicians badly-needed popular support, but not for long.

As the country celebrated its 61st birthday today, its official president, ex-General Pervez Musharraf, was not allowed to take the salute at the official parade marking the event, while state television discussed plans to impeach him. Within a few days at most, Musharraf will resign and leave the country. Pakistan’s venal politicians decided to move against him after the army chief, Ashfaq Kayani, let it be known that there would be no military action to defend his former boss.

Washington followed suit. In Kayani they have a professional and loyal military leader, who they imagine will do their bidding. Earlier John Negroponte had wanted to retain Musharraf as long as Bush was in office, but they decided to let him go. Anne Patterson, the US ambassador, and a few British diplomats working under her, tried to negotiate a deal on behalf of Musharraf, but the politicians were no longer prepared to play ball. They insisted that he must leave the country. Sanctuaries in Manhattan, Texas and the Turkish island of Büyükada are being actively considered. The general would prefer a large estate in Pakistan, preferably near a golf course, but security considerations alone would make that unfeasible. There were three attempts on his life when he was in power and protecting him after he goes would require an expensive security presence. Had Musharraf departed peacefully when his constitutional term expired in November 2007 he would have won some respect. Instead he imposed a state of emergency and sacked the chief justice of the supreme court who was hearing a petition challenging Musharraf’s position.

Now he is going in disgrace, abandoned by most of his cronies who accumulated land and money during his term and are now moving towards the new powerbrokers. Amidst the hullabaloo there was one hugely diverting moment involving pots and kettles. Two days ago, Asif Zardari, the caretaker-leader of the People’s party who runs the government and is the second richest man in the country (from funds he accrued when his late wife was prime minister) accused Musharraf of corruption and siphoning US funds to private bank accounts.

Musharraf’s departure will highlight the problems that confront the country, which is in the grip of a food and power crisis that is creating severe problems in every city. Inflation is out of control. The price of gas (used for cooking in many homes) has risen by 30%. Wheat, the staple diet of most people, has seen a 20% price hike since November 2007 and while the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation admits that the world’s food stocks are at record lows there is an additional problem in Pakistan.

Too much wheat is being smuggled into Afghanistan to serve the needs of the Nato armies. The poor are the worst hit, but middle-class families are also affected and according to a June 2008 survey, 86% of Pakistanis find it increasingly difficult to afford flour on a daily basis, for which they blame their own new government.

Other problems persist. The politicians remain divided on the restoration of the judges sacked by Musharraf. The chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, is the most respected person in the country. Zardari is reluctant to see him back at the head of the supreme court. A possible compromise might be to offer him the presidency. It would certainly unite the country for a short time. And there is the army. Last month, the country’s powerless prime minister, Yousuf Gilani, went on a state visit to the US. On July 29 he was questioned by Richard Haass, president of Council on Foreign Relations:

Haass: Let me ask the question a different way, then – (laughter) – beyond President Musharraf, which is whether you think now in the army there is a broader acceptance of a more limited role for the army. Do you think now the coming generation of army officers accepts the notion that their proper role is in the barracks rather than in politics?

Gilani: Certainly, yes. Because of the February 18 election of this year, we have a mandate to the moderate forces, to the democratic forces in Pakistan. And the moderate forces and the democratic forces, they have formed the government. And therefore the people have voted against dictatorship and for democracy, and therefore, in future even the present of – the chief of the army staff is highly professional and is fully supporting the democracy.

This is pure gibberish and convinces nobody. Over the last 50 years the US has worked mainly with the Pakistan army. This has been its preferred instrument. Nothing has changed. The question being asked now is how long it will be before the military is back at the helm.

Today is the anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and the lies live on. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. (Except an independent Australian journalist named Wilfred Burchett).

“No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” declared the front page of the New York Times.

The following is by John Pilger:

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.” Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”. For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus “war on terror”, the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current “threat”. But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America’s Defence Intelligence Estimate says “with high confidence” that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media “fact” that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country’s political and military establishment, threatened “an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland”. This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

I Met the Walrus by Josh Raskin

Can a revolution happen without violence? What do you think?

SavetheInternet.com: Historic Win for Net Neutrality!

The FCC has ordered Comcast to stop secretly blocking legal Internet traffic. Get all the gory at here.

Q: The Earth’s Crisis - How Bad Is It Really?

It was good to see that generally everyone we spoke to had some idea of the situation’s severity. To what degree they understand it is the question. As denizens of the western world, it is clear that a sort of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ effect is happening.

Q: What Is Your Greatest Concern?

One thing I can say for sure is that people love animals. Other than that, specific concerns vary from person to person. Maybe that’s the problem. There are so many concerns that it’s difficult to get people focused on a particular action.

Q: Will Humanity Survive?

I found this question to be frustrating. The word, ‘adaptable’, was thrown around quite a bit. Many seem to have this idea that our ‘adaptability’ will save us from any oncoming catastrophes. That sounds like a huge cop-out, an excuse to remain stagnant.

Q: What Needs to Change?

The Earth’s problems are myriad, and so are the possible solutions. I liked what a couple of these folks had to say about the need to change minds. There are things that need to happen on both a personal and governmental level. So now that we know what needs to be done, it’s time we moved away from this theoretical discussion phase, and moved into one of serious action. We need to act.

Over the weekend, I was reading Susan D. Moeller’s essay on “Media and Democracy”and she pointed out that one of the paramount problems with the mainstream media is that they have failed to show the human costs of war.

From September 1, 2004 to February 28, 2005, 559 American soldiers and Western allies died but not a single picture got published in the seven elite U.S. newspapers. Among these elite: New York Times, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. During this time period, there were two significant news events: the U.S. led assault on Fallujah and the January 2005 elections in Iraq.

Times have changed. Life magazine published grim pictures of the Spanish Civil War in 1938 with these words:

Once again Life prints grim pictures of War, well knowing that once again they will dismay and outrage thousands and thousands of readers. But today’s two great continuing news events are two wars — one in China, one in Spain… Obviously Life cannot ignore not suppress these two great news events in pictures. As events, they have an authority far more potent than any editors’ policy or readers’ squeamishness. But Life could conceivably choose to show pictures of these events that make them look attractive. They are not, however, attractive events… Americans’ noble and sensible dislike of war is largely based on ignorance of what modern war really is… The love of peace has no meaning or no stamina unless it is based on a knowledge of war’s terrors… Dead men have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them.. [Emphasis mine]

Photo: Alex Majoli (Courtesy of Magnum Photos)

Today its even easier to ignore war’s terrors as the U.S. officials actively try to make it hard for journalists to get the reality out of the afflicted areas. Embedded Photojournalist, Zoriah was barred for publishing photos of Marines killed in a suicide bombing last month. In his blog post, he wrote:

What I saw was abhorrently graphic, yet far too important for the world to ignore. I present images that provide an uncensored view of a terrible event, and some small measure of dignity to those who lost their lives.

You can see all images here and decide for yourself… if these images should be published? Do they, as Zoriah says, give some dignity to those who lost their lives? or are the politicians using this absence of reality to portray the illusion of victory in places like Iraq?

On his way back to Gaza after receiving the Martha Gellhorn Prize for journalism, Mohammed Omer, was strip searched and physically abused by Israeli security officials. Well, that’s nothing new… as Jan Wijenberg (former Dutch ambassador) said about the incident:

“This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life… I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

In April, Fadel Shana, 23, was killed while reporting for Reuters. Here is his last clip: