San Antonio, Tx July 6, 2002: - Rain, rain and now more rain to come. After dumping up to a year's worth of rain on some communities in just the past six days, the storm that broke the drought — and some hearts — is maddeningly slow to leave the region, and there's another right behind it. A military helicopter departs from Bandera after the city was cut off by rising floodwaters. The Medina River rose over the Texas 173 bridge Friday for the second time since flooding started. Water rushes over the Canyon Lake spillway. Six feet of water was pouring Friday down the spillway of the lake's dam into the Guadalupe River. "The forecast is for more rain," said Ken Widelski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Braunfels. "Our forecasts through Sunday show a 40 percent chance of rain. "And, not to scare anyone, but at the end of next week, it looks like we could have another system just like this one coming in, and that would mean tons of rain on super-saturated soil," he said. That was bad news for the people near Medina Dam, which officials said late Friday could be in peril. "It's been in the back of our minds, that might be a problem with the dam," Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said. "People below Medina Dam should move and get out of harm's way." An inspector with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission reportedly spotted cracks and seepage in the concrete dam, prompting the Department of Public Safety to issue a warning at about 9 p.m. Engineers were expected to check the dam this morning. With 30 inches of rain having already fallen on some areas, all area rivers are approaching record crests. Six feet of water now is pouring down the spillway of Canyon Lake Dam into the Guadalupe River.
In Bandera, Castroville, LaCoste, New Braunfels, Seguin and elsewhere, thousands of people have fled their homes. Downstream residents in Gonzales and Cuero are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the flood crests. So far, eight people have died since the storm began, including an 11-year-old boy who fell into Apache Creek on Monday and was pronounced dead Friday afternoon. It's feared a San Antonio man who was swept into the Menger Creek early July 4th may be the ninth victim. In the Hill Country, the damage now is being compared to the flood of 1978, a flash flood created by a sudden 18-inch rainfall that killed 26 people. In Bandera, the Medina River crested at 31.1 feet early Friday afternoon. "We've been fighting this for five days," said Richard Evans, the Bandera county judge. "We're tired. But so far we haven't lost anyone, knock on wood." In New Braunfels, residents hope they'll face only a slower, tamer version of the catastrophic flood of 1998 that killed 29 people around the region and caused $1 billion in damage. But with Canyon Lake full and forecasters calling for more rain, the flow out of the spillway into the already raging Guadalupe River could double by today, said Paul Rodman, an engineer with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built and maintains the reservoir. By midday Friday, more than 50,000 cubic feet per second was gushing out of the spillway, officials said. The result has been more than 2,000 evacuations within New Braunfels and more than 200 homes destroyed or severely damaged there, Mayor Adam Cork said. Comal County Judge Danny Scheel said another 2,000 campers were evacuated from River Road, a popular camping area between New Braunfels and Canyon Lake, as well as thousands of local residents. Traffic all around New Braunfels became a gridlock as the rain stopped and thousands took to the streets. Moving vans and pickups full of furniture inched along Interstate 35. Many slowed down on the Guadalupe River bridge to see the raging waters.
Residents living along the Guadalupe River, who lost their homes in 1998, thought it might happen again, but not so soon. "I figured it would be at least another 15 years or so, even 100," said Mauricio Tornal, who rebuilt his riverfront home after the last flood. "I don't think we're going to be able to go through this another time. We're moving after this." Cork predicted more evacuations. Scheel seemed awestruck. "I've lived here 54 years," Scheel said. "I've watched this river all my life. And I've never seen anything like this before. Ever." In Castroville, residents watched as the Medina River rose and fell and then rose again. More than 70 percent of the city was evacuated and those who remained had neither power or water. "By the time the water goes down, it comes back again. We'll get the highways cleaned and then the water comes back again," said Sgt. B. Portis of Medina County Sheriff's Department. At a shelter at McDowell Middle School in Hondo, Catherine Tschirhart, 80, sat wrapped in a sheet in the gymnasium, glad to be out of her Castroville home. "When I arrived here last night, I was a nervous wreck," she said, "But I didn't have to worry about sleeping in the water last night." To the north in D'Hanis, Florentino Garcia, 42, stood by the bank of a tributary of the Seco Creek, which snapped and crackled like a hot fire. "What worries me now is that it might take the bank and then part of the trailer house will start sinking. They said it was going to rise like crazy," said Garcia. At the Star Ranch in Ingram, four campers and two of their counselors had to be rescued by helicopter Friday after becoming stranded by high water while on an overnight camping trip. The four youths, ages 7 through 14, were never in serious danger, said the camp's program director, Paul Brouse. Camp Waldemar, a facility in Hunt designed for more than 300 kids, remained unreachable by road Friday because of low water crossings. That left countless parents in area motels, unable to pick up their children at the end of a monthlong session, camp director Meg Clark said.
Perhaps only in Gruene, home of the oldest continuing dance hall in Texas, did the show go on. At mid-afternoon Friday, "The South Texas Jug Band," took the stage and dancers took the floor. "We're fortunate to be on the high side of the river," said Mary Jane Nalley, owner of the dance hall and five other businesses in Gruene. But here, as everywhere, there was destruction. "We have huge financial losses, hundreds of thousands of dollars," said Sheryl Rivers, co-owner of the Double Rockin' R Tube Rentals, which saw six of its seven locations in Comal County destroyed by the flood. Down river in Gonzales and Cuero, which were hit hard in 1998, officials watched anxiously, but said they did not expect a repeat of that disaster.While the situation remained bleak for several areas outside the Alamo City, San Antonio District Fire Chief Tommy Thompson said the city was doing "pretty good" Friday. "Things are fairly calm," he said. But in the Grey Forest suburb, officials asked residents to voluntarily evacuate out of fear that an earthen damn on private property there would break. American Red Cross volunteers from across the country started pouring into the region on Friday and more are expected through the weekend. A team from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which began arriving in San Antonio earlier in the week, was making plans to set up a more permanent office, where it plans to administer aid for the next several months. In Falls City in Karnes County, some residents already had left Friday and volunteer firefighters were anticipating the floodwaters that are expected to rise from the San Antonio River early next week. Some locals are flood veterans, having weathered the 1998 inundation that destroyed at least one house. Michelle Pawelek, 34, her husband and two young daughters, were preparing for the worst. As did many others in this hamlet of nearly 600 people, they began moving furniture out of their home Thursday along the Marcelinas Creek. "If it happens it happens," she said. "We'll deal with it. What can you do?"
San Antonio, Tx July 5, 2002: - With heavy rain falling again, surging floodwaters ripped houses off their foundations Friday and pushed up against dams already straining to hold back swollen rivers across central and south Texas. Hundreds of people fled their homes, joining more than 4,000 who have been forced out by high water in the past week. Flooding has killed at least seven people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. The extent of the damage — including how many homes, businesses and how much property has been lost — is still being assessed. The Medina River jumped its banks Friday near Bandera, a community battered by days of flooding. Judge Richard Evans said more than 100 houses and businesses have been damaged. "We hope it crests out pretty soon," he said of the river. "We're losing houses every foot it rises." Floodwaters poured down a narrow canyon and into the small city of New Braunfels, 30 miles northeast of San Antonio. The murky, roiling water was filled with debris — huge tree trunks, empty tires and inner tubes, even a six-foot propane tank dancing back and forth in the swirling current. Sticking out of the water were the tops of home. In some places entire homes floated by stunned bystanders. Standing under an umbrella Dan Ackerman pointed to the spot where a house built on stilts had stood about an hour earlier. Now there was nothing but the river. "It's just gone," Ackerman said. "It got washed away in 1998 and they rebuilt it. But it's gone again."
The Guadalupe River — which overflowed the spillway of an upstream dam — was coursing through New Braunfels at about 70,000 cubic feet per second Friday; the normal rate is 300 cubic feet per second. Just northwest of San Antonio, a small dam burst and another one downstream on Chimney Creek was straining to hold back some 20 acres of water 30 feet deep. Travis Lorton, a spokesman for the Helotes Fire Department, said officials were trying to get state and federal agencies to inspect the dam to determine its strength. Hundreds of homes below the dam were evacuated as a precaution. A region 100 miles by 150 miles has been swamped by rain for a week and 10 counties have been declared federal disaster area. The National Weather Service said up to 4 inches of rain an hour was possible through the weekend in some places. Thousands of residents of Castroville and LaCoste, west of San Antonio, were allowed to return to their homes Friday after being ordered out the night before. Medina County Sheriff Gilbert Rodriguez said they might have to leave again. "We're not out of the woods yet," he said. "We thought we were, but not any more." In New Braunfels, Shari Kasberg watched floodwaters swamp her home for the second time in four years. The water was up to the roof. "My children are safe, my animals are safe; we'll be OK. It's just material possessions," Kasberg said, choking back tears. "But, you know, it is your home. It's where you have birthdays, it's where you have Christmas."
Washington June 21, 2002: - The FBI is advising law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for terrorists who possibly are plotting to use fuel tankers to attack Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues, a federal law enforcement official said Friday. This official, who asked not to be identified, said the warning was sent out to local police agencies Friday. Another official, also speaking on grounds of anonymity, said the warning was not based on a specific threat, but on interviews with captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who indicated such a plot had been discussed. The interviews with detainees did not reveal a target city or time, this official said. "Even if unconfirmed, we analyze incoming information as quickly as possible and if we think there is any chance it could be helpful, we make the decision to send it," one official said.
A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the warning concerns potential attacks against U.S. interests in America or abroad. The notice to law enforcement agencies also said: "Law enforcement agencies are encouraged to make contact with appropriate Jewish community representatives and officials and trucking and fuel delivery facilities that operate fuel tanker trucks or commercial fueling stations and emphasize the need to report suspicious activities or persons." Bush administration officials stressed that the information is as unspecified and as uncorroborated as intelligence that led to similar alerts concerning shopping malls and banks in recent weeks. The nation's overall alert status is still unchanged from code yellow, which is the third-highest stage of alert. Since September 11, administration officials have struggled to strike a balance with the alerts. They have been accused of both withholding information from the public and giving so many warnings that Americans might let down their guard. The law enforcement official said the latest advisory was sent across the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an electronic system that allows the FBI to send alerts or messages to police in all 50 states simultaneously. The Homeland Security office approved the message before it was sent, according to the official. The FBI's 56 field offices also were made aware of the advisory. The United States believes al-Qaida has used fuel tankers as weapons before.
In Tunisia, a man named Nizar Naouar is believed to have blown up a gas truck near the historic Ghriba synagogue last month. Eighteen people were killed, many of them German tourists. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks, is suspected of ties to the bombing, a U.S. official has said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The FBI has initiated several nationwide efforts to disrupt possible terrorist plots in recent weeks. FBI agents have been contacting hundreds of scuba diving shops out of concern the next wave of terrorist attacks could be carried out by divers. The FBI said it is looking into whether al-Qaida operatives have been taking scuba training in order to blow up ships at anchor, power plants, bridges, depots or other waterfront targets. Also, a maintenance worker who said he wanted to buy a replica ambulance for tool storage triggered an FBI warning in two states that terrorists might try to use emergency vehicles in an attack. After interviewing the man, the FBI found he had no such plan.
Florissant, Colorado June 12, 2002: - With the largest wildfire in Colorado's history blazing outside Denver, firefighters moved into position ahead of the flames Wednesday to try to block its path toward the city's southwestern suburbs. The wind-driven blaze was moving slowly to the northeast and had gotten to within about 35 miles of Denver. The fire, which covered about 136 square miles or 87,000 acres, had destroyed 21 homes and threatened 2,500.
Fire crews were set to start building fire lines and setting backfires a few miles away from the northern side of the blaze, fire information officer Dianna Barney said. Earlier, the blaze had been considered too dangerous to allow firefighters onto its northern fringes — between the flames and homes in Douglas County, one of the fastest-growing areas in the country. Firefighters also were trying to defend houses threatened by the blaze on its southeast side in Teller County, where 400 people were evacuated Tuesday. More evacuations were ordered in the Tarryall area in Park County, on the fire's northwestern edges. "It's building back up again. It's burning," said Kevin Mosher, who watched the blaze Tuesday from Florissant after he and his wife left their three-story log home on the edge of the Pike National Forest. "I'd wish you'd quit saying that," said his wife, Lynn, her face strained with worry. The blaze, which was sparked by a campfire in the Pike National Forest, was within seven miles of Roxborough, a small town on the far southwest edge of the metro area. It was one of at least eight fires in Colorado, including a 10,600-acre blaze that destroyed 28 homes near Glenwood Springs, about 150 miles west of Denver. About 540 people were working on the fire, and 800 more firefighters were requested.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency ( news - web sites) has approved 11 grants for Colorado fires this year, the latest one on Tuesday for an 8,300-acre fire near Durango. On Tuesday, shifting wind helped clear a dense, smoky haze that had blanketed Denver for three days. "I don't know of another situation where we've had this much smoke emission that you could associate with a single fire," said Steven Arnold of the state Health Department's air pollution control division. Investigators continued to search for the owner of a vehicle seen near the illegal campfire believed to have started the fire Saturday near Lake George, about 60 miles southwest of Denver. Fires are banned in national forests and most counties because of Colorado's drought. The Pike National Forest has been closed to the public. Near Glenwood Springs, lower temperatures and lighter wind helped quell the fire there and thousands of people were allowed to return home — with a warning that they should be prepared to flee at a moment's notice. The fire had grown to some 10,600 acres. Containment was still estimated at 5 percent, said Betsy Friesen, fire information volunteer.
Elsewhere: _California firefighters worked in steep, rugged terrain near the Oregon line to combat a 600-acre wildfire that threatened homes and animals Tuesday. _New Mexico firefighters battling flames on 96,000 acres were helped by calmer wind and rising humidity. National Fire Center Site
New York May 21, 2002 3:56 ET: - Losses in the equity market accelerated, with renewed worries of terrorist attacks throwing cold water on any hope for a rebound. A severe decline in Home Depot shares following the company's earnings report dogged the Dow throughout the trading day. Even brokerage stocks couldn't strengthen on news that Merrill Lynch had reached a settlement with the New York State Attorney General. "This is very discouraging action since we started the day higher. Tuesday's news background did not warrant this kind of sell-off," opined Donald Selkin, director of equity research at Joseph Stevens. Broad market sellers concentrated on retail, biotech, airline, and oil service issues while defensive areas of the market like gold, natural gas and utilities continued to fare well. And the tech sector was held down by declines in the software, Internet and chip sectors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average subtracted 130 points, or 1.3 percent, to 10,099. Enlisted among the decliners were shares of Home Depot, Intel, Microsoft, Walt Disney and Wal-Mart.
Moscow April 12, 2002: - Death and destruction in the Holy Land. War in the mountains of Afghanistan. Christian armies massing for the doomsday assault on ancient Babylon (now known as Iraq). Anthrax killers still roaming the land. The masterminds of September 11 still free to plot new strikes. Unemployment on the rise. Historic bankruptcies wiping out billions of dollars in pensions. Budget plunging deep into the red. Government teetering on the edge of financial default. Roads, schools, hospitals crumbling as coffers dry up, bled by tax cuts doled out to the rich. Millions going hungry. Millions going under. Millions working longer, earning less. Families cracking from the strain. That's how things stand with the American Empire in this spring of 2002. A pretty full plate, you might think; more than enough to keep a government busy. But instead, what do we find preoccupying the minatory minions in King George's court? What is the most powerful regime in the history of the world spending its precious time and resources upon during this dark passage in the nation's life?
Why, the banquet behavior of a newspaper columnist, what else! Yes, it appears that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist who has long savaged the Bush administration's pretzel logic on matters monetary, was not sufficiently enthusiastic when the Dear Leader and his warrior chieftains appeared at Washington's annual "Gridiron Dinner" last month -- and his offense has been duly noted at the highest reaches of government. So says the Cybernetic News Service this week, and they ought to know: the hard-right propaganda funnel heard from both a "senior White House official" and a "senior Pentagon official" lambasting Krugman for the heinous crime of -- brace yourself -- failing to applaud when the President appeared! What's more, the outraged officials charged that Krugman disdained to rise when the rest of the assembled journalists and politicos gave the Dear Leader a standing ovation. Finally, and most treasonously, they said the evildoer did not even clap when the generals of god's avenging army flashed their brass on the podium. "To show that kind of disrespect just floors me," said the high Pentagon source. "An awful lot of people are still talking about that." (Or did he mean "a lot of awful people" are still talking about it?) Apparently, tongues are a-wagging over the back fences in the Pentagon.
Krugman denied denying the archons their proper tribute. "I doubt that's accurate," he said of the accusations. But the Cybernauts -- ever on the lookout for that telltale semen stain or wobbly word that might bring down a foe of god's Own Party -- were quick to pounce on this response, noting that Krugman did not "explicitly deny" the charges: ergo, he is guilty as charged. Poor chump, he didn't realize that you must now scrupulously remember and publicly account for every twitch and mutter that might possibly be construed as an affront to the majesty of the Leader and his praetorians -- especially if you're one of the few mainstream media figures to speak plainly about the lies said Leader is shoveling down the throats of his captive people. So look for more mud to be heaped on Krugman in days to come -- whispered calumnies, anonymous leaks, income tax audits, the whole Nixonian schmeer -- until he recants publicly with a heartfelt "Ode to the Leader" -- or else takes up residence on Guantanamo Bay.
But really now, who wouldn't want to bend the knee to an all-wise ruler like the Oval Appointee, who brought his own very special touch to the roiling rivers of blood flowing through the Holy Land this week? Hearken ye to this pearl of great price, recorded by the New York Times. It happened during the down-home "summit" between the Dear Leader and his provincial dogsbody, Tony "Yippity-Yappity" Blair. Bush, more accustomed to the fuzzy balls of cotton wool normally tossed at him by the groveling American press, got stroppy when the less-supine British hacks kept pressing him on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, asking him to look beyond the brutal stupidities of those murderous old geezers, Sharon and Arafat, and encompass a broader range of voices and viewpoints on the conflict. "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance," Bush sputtered crossly. "My job is to tell people what I think!" Well, no nuance is good nuance, they say. And certainly, Mr. Deep Thinker betrayed no hint of nuance in his "plan" to halt the Middle East violence. (Halt it, until he launches more Middle East violence against Iraq, that is.) As the body count mounted, Thinker boldly told the warring parties that "enough is enough," and demanded that Israel immediately withdraw its troops from the West Bank. To underscore the importance of his initiative, he dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region. Once the headlines and sound bites had duly registered the Deep One's firm command of the situation, however, the "urgency" suddenly disappeared. When the cameras were off, Bush let it be known that "immediately" didn't really mean immediately immediately, but just, you know, sometime or other. And Powell took a most leisurely approach to his "urgent" mission, ambling his way through Morocco, Spain, Egypt and Jordan before landing in Israel at week's end. Of course, this delay only gave the murderous old geezers a chance to pile up even more bodies in the interim -- but hey, let's not bother with silly nuances like that. Click here for more!
Washington March 7, 2002: - There was ample evidence to charge and probably convict Bill Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice over the Monica Lewinsky affair, the final report by the the last independent counsel to investigate the former president declared yesterday. Only on 19 January 2001, his penultimate day in office, did Mr Clinton finally escape the prospect of a trial, thanks to a deal between his lawyers and the independent counsel Robert Ray. Under the agreement, criminal charges would not be brought, but Mr Clinton was forced to admit making false statements under oath and to surrender his law licence for five years.
In a 237-page postscript to an affair that led to the first presidential impeachment in 130 years, Mr Ray fired some wounding parting shots. Mr Clinton's offences, he wrote, had damaged the community and "substantially affected the public's view of the legal system". Mr Ray concluded that "sufficient evidence existed to prosecute and that such evidence would 'probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction ... by an unbiased trier of fact". But he decided against pressing the case because "non-criminal alternatives" were enough. Thus ends the longest and most expensive investigation by special counsel. The Lewinsky affair grew out of the investigation of the failed Whitewater land deal, which began in 1994. Over seven years, $70M of public money was spent, including $12.5M for the Lewinsky segment alone.
The report found that Mr Clinton "impeded the due administration of justice by testifying falsely under oath ... that he could not recall being alone with Ms Lewinsky, and had not engaged in sexual relations with her." "I did not have sex with that woman," Mr Clinton famously asserted after the scandal broke in January 1998, and he maintained that story in testimony to a federal grand jury. In fact, he had had a sexual relationship with the White House intern – with trysts in his private study off the Oval Office – that lasted from November 1995 to early 1997. The report will be another stroke to the much tarnished Clinton image. Having left office amid a storm over some controversial last-minute pardons, Mr Clinton was later barred from pleading cases before the Supreme Court. Today he spends his time making speeches at $100,000 a time, working on his memoirs for which he received a $10M advance, and quietly furthering the political career of his wife, Hillary, now a New York senator. But if his finances have been restored, his reputation has not.
New York February 4, 2002: - They came in solidarity with this terror-wounded city. But since they arrived, speaker after speaker at the World Economic Forum has lambasted America as a smug superpower, too beholden to Israel at the expense of the Muslim world, and inattentive to the needs of poor countries or the advice of allies. With the forum wrapping up its five-day session Monday, some of the criticism has been simple scolding by non-Western leaders. But a large measure has come in public soul-searching by U.S. politicians and business leaders. U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., cited a global poll that characterized Americans as selfish and bent on arranging the global economy for their own benefit. ``We've not done our fair share to take on some of the global challenges'' like poverty, disease and women's rights, Clinton said Sunday. ``We need to convince the U.S. public that this is a role that we have to play.''
Microsoft Corporation Chairman Bill Gates warned that the terms of international trade were too favorable to the rich world, a disparity that feeds resentment. ``People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us,'' Gates said. ``I think it's a healthy sign that there are demonstrators in the streets. They are raising the question of 'is the rich world giving back enough?''' In Kofi Annan's planned speech at the forum's closing session Monday, the U.N. secretary general said there is ``greater urgency'' than ever for businesses and governments to provide financing to combat poverty. ``The perception, among many, is that this is the fault of globalization, and that globalization is driven by a global elite, composed of - or at least, represented by - the people who attend this gathering,'' Annan was to tell the forum, according to a prepared text of the speech obtained by The Associated Press. ``I believe that perception is wrong - and that globalization, so far from being the cause of poverty and other social ills, offers the best hope of overcoming them,'' he said.
At a press conference at the forum Monday, representatives of humanitarian groups had differing views on how much their messages were resonating with corporate and political leaders. ``Today I think there is broad recognition that no business concerned with its brand name can afford to be indifferent to human rights and social issues,'' said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch Group. Others said that the rich and powerful are listening to the needs of the poor, but that it's unclear whether the forum will prompt any changes. ``We are swimming against the tide within a meeting like this...especially when you're talking about the rights of homeless children, but at least we are swimming in the same river,'' said Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza, a Costa Rica group that helps street children. Held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in its first 31 years, sponsors decided to move this year's forum to New York to show support for the city after the September 11 terror attacks. About 2,700 corporate and political leaders, clergy and celebrities came to discuss the world's problems, and have spent much time dissecting U.S. foreign policy, its possible role in breeding terrorism and the potential harms of globalization.
Few protesters turned up Sunday near the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, site of the forum, on the fourth day of the conference. But mostly peaceful demonstrations miles from the hotel generated 159 arrests - the largest in a single day since the conference started - and one case of vandalism was reported. The total arrested so far during the meeting grew to over 200, mostly for disorderly conduct. Two demonstrations were planned Monday afternoon by a group promoting a wide range of causes, from environmental protection to the cancellation of developing countries' debts. In a curious convergence, the titans of business and politics at the meeting have seized on many of the same socially liberal issues that they have been accused of ignoring at past gatherings. The forum's agenda may have taken some of the steam out of street protests, which were sparse except for Saturday's turnout of about 7,000 demonstrators, and has even paralleled issues under discussion at the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization conference under way in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In Brazil, speakers on Saturday condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, with one comparing the practice to apartheid-era South Africa's creation of ``Bantustans,'' which were economically poor areas designated as homelands for blacks. In New York, guests heard a similar message Sunday.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, warned that Palestinian violence risked evolving into large-scale urban terror, while Israel's response ``will slide into a pattern of behavior that resembles the South Africans.'' Jordan's King Abdullah II called for ``international intervention to help steer the parties from the brink,'' arguing that the ``burning injustice of Palestine'' had ``fed extremism around the world.''
U.S. Editorial January 16, 2002: - In New York City last year, about 3,000 people died in the attack on the World Trade Center. In New York City last year, 30,000 people came to the new federal limits on welfare. Another 19,000 will lose assistance this year. New York has lost 95,000 jobs since September 11. It lost 75,000 jobs in the year before that. There are now 30,000 people in the city shelters. Now find the numbers for your town. In Austin, the only organization that provides help to women with breast cancer and no health insurance has just cut its staff from 30 to six, with an equal impact on the help that can be offered. Homelessness is up, shelter populations are up, food distribution centers, and soup kitchens are overwhelmed.
And all this is happening in a cruel synergy of inattention, indifference and the final fraying of the social safety net. Charities are overwhelmed and suddenly vastly underfunded in large part as a consequence of the complete focus on the victims of September 11. The federal government, largely under Republican control, is dealing with war, terrorism and recession. State governments, with far less attention, are out of money, running into deficits and cutting services across the board. At the beginning of the 1990s, the states raised their taxes, and toward the end of the '90s, they cut their taxes. But the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, they didn't cut the same taxes they had raised. "Increases in regressive taxes - that is, taxes like the sales tax, which bear most heavily on lower- and moderate-income families - by and large were never reversed," economist Paul Krugman reported. "Instead, states cut taxes that bear most heavily on upper-income families. The end result was a redistribution of the tax burden away from the haves toward the have-nots. "A family earning, say, $30,000 per year pays considerably more in state taxes than a family the same constant-dollar income did in 1990, while a family earning $600,000 per year pays considerably less."
But attention is not being paid. The media, with their One Big Story obsession, just got off the war in Afghanistan long enough to start reporting Enron. Networks still devote daily remembrance to the traumas of September 11, effectively obliterating other needs. And there is something else happening as well. Thirty-eight percent of the tax cut of last April went to benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers. We are at a curious point in our political debate where anyone who points that out is accused of "fomenting class warfare." Actually, reporting that the wealthiest 1 percent got 38 percent of the benefits is not fomenting class warfare - passing a tax cuts that gives 38 percent to the wealthiest 1 percent is fomenting class warfare. Likewise, proposing an "economic stimulus package" of which 92 percent of the benefits are tax cuts for huge corporations is fomenting class warfare. And this is a country that needs to be a little nervous about class warfare as economic pain bites in.
There have been some stories pointing out that this recession is an oddity in that, unlike a normal recession, it is hitting all classes - largely because of the dot-com bust. Bright college graduates lose jobs and have to move back in with Mom and Dad. But that's not the same as the working poor losing their jobs, is it? Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, is in fiscal crisis. According to The New York Times, overall Medicaid spending went up by 11 percent last year, just as the states face huge deficits. We live in a society in which the bad stuff flows downhill, and the people on the bottom are drowning in it. This is not a story to which the corporate media pay attention. Bad demographics doesn't attract advertisers - not upbeat, no patriotism, too busy with Russell Crowe's love life.
As anyone who is involved in raising money for a nonprofit organization these days knows, the flying bombs that hit on September 11 also landed on every helping organization in America with a huge impact. Budgets, staff, services, facilities - all slashed. And at the top, those with the power, those who make the decisions, are too far away even to see what is happening in the streets, insulated by multiplying multiples of their incomes. After six years as governor of Texas, George W. Bush was infuriated by a federal report ranking Texas No. 1 in hunger. "You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas," he said. Well, Texas had been No. 1 in hunger since the feds started keeping count in the 1960s - it's a permanent condition here, but the governor had never seen it.
Washington November 20, 2001: - The U.$. military hopes that Afghans seeking a $25 million reward, not American soldiers, will creep through caves hunting for top al-Qaida terrorist leaders. The bounty offered for Osama bin Laden and his top aides, plus additional reward money from the CIA, should encourage ``a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves, looking for the bad folks,'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday. U.$. special forces and CIA operatives for some time have been spreading the word on the ground that money would be given to Afghans who cooperate with the campaign to get bin Laden and Taliban leaders. Starting Sunday, the rewards also were publicized on Air Force radio broadcasts and in leaflets dropped over Afghanistan, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Tuesday.
The U.$. hunt for terrorist leaders has already met with some success. The Nov. 14 airstrike on a building south of Kabul that killed al-Qaida's military chief, Mohammed Atef, also killed another 50 al-Qaida members, several senior Taliban officials, and an undisclosed number of Taliban fighters, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. At a Monday news conference, Rumsfeld also said the United $tates would not allow Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to leave his hometown of Kandahar, even if the anti-Taliban forces surrounding the city offer him safe passage. Rumsfeld added that he hopes Taliban and al-Qaida fighters holding the northern Afghan town of Kunduz are killed or captured, not released. ``The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect,'' he said. ``So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner.''
Speaking on the 44th day of U.$. bombing in Afghanistan, President Bush said the military was closing in on bin Laden, the chief suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks. ``The noose is beginning to narrow,'' Bush said. ``If our military knew where Mr. bin Laden was, he would be brought to justice,'' Bush said following a Cabinet meeting. Asked whether he had evidence that U.$. forces were closing in on bin Laden, Bush said, ``It's going to be hard to tell you that without compromising the search, except I can point to the map of Afghanistan, where more and more territory are now in friendly hands.''
Rumsfeld was more cautious: ``As enemy leaders become fewer and fewer, that does not necessarily mean that the task will become easier,'' he said. ``People can hide in caves for long periods. This will take time.'' He denied reports that U.$. intelligence has defined a narrow search area for bin Laden and his associates. ``To try and think that we have them contained in some sort of a small area I think would be a misunderstanding of the difficulty of the task,'' he said. If the job of finding bin Laden falls to the U.$. military, it will require different kinds of troops than the special operations forces now in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said. He did not elaborate, but other officials have said an infantry unit like the Army's 10th Mountain Division might get the assignment. Rumsfeld said the special forces in Afghanistan - now numbering several hundred - had not yet pursued any Taliban or al-Qaida leaders into neighboring Pakistan. ``If one of those folk that we particularly wanted was known'' to be crossing a border, ``we might have an early intensive consultation with the neighbors,'' he added. To spread word of the $25 million reward for getting bin Laden and a ``select few'' of his lieutenants, the U.$. military is dropping local-language leaflets over Afghanistan ``like snowflakes in December in Chicago,'' Rumsfeld said.
Intelligence officials believe bin Laden is in a rural area of the country, not under northern alliance control - meaning either southeast of Kandahar or around cities like Jalalabad in the east. In the past, bin Laden has traveled with at least a small, armed security force, and he's believed to now use people as couriers, because he knows the United $tates can eavesdrop on his phone conversations. Although bin laden might try to flee Afghanistan, many believe he is more likely to go underground. During the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, he spent millions from his personal fortune to create a network of underground hide-outs and fortified bunkers out of an ancient network of water trenches. Rumsfeld said he would travel to Fort Bragg, N.C., home of the Army Special Operations Command, on Wednesday to receive a briefing on special operations and talk with troops.
Peshawar November 9, 2001: - "Air campaign"? "Coalition forces"? "War on terror"? How much longer must we go on enduring these lies? There is no "campaign" - merely an air bombardment of the poorest and most broken country in the world by the world's richest and most sophisticated nation. No MiGs have taken to the skies to do battle with the American B-52s or F-18s. The only ammunition soaring into the air over Kabul comes from Russian anti-aircraft guns manufactured around 1943. Coalition? Hands up who's seen the Luftwaffe in the skies over Kandahar, or the Italian Air Force or the French Air Force over Herat. Or even the Pakistani Air Force. The Americans are bombing Afghanistan with a few British missiles thrown in. "Coalition" indeed.
Then there's the "war on terror". When are we moving on to bomb the Jaffna Peninsula? Or Chechnya, which we have already left in Vladimir Putin's bloody hands? I even seem to recall a huge terrorist car bomb that exploded in Beirut in 1985, targeting Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the spiritual inspiration to the Hizbollah - who now appears to be back on Washington's hit list - and which missed him but slaughtered 85 innocent Lebanese civilians. Years later, Carl Bernstein revealed in his book Veil that the CIA was behind the bomb after the Saudis agreed to finance the operation. So will US President George W. Bush be hunting down the CIA murderers involved? The hell he will.
So why on earth are all my chums on CNN and Sky and the BBC rabbiting on about the "air campaign", "coalition forces" and the "war on terror"? Do they think their viewers believe this twaddle? Certainly Muslims don't. In fact, you don't have to spend long in Pakistan to realise that the Pakistani press gives an infinitely more truthful and balanced account of the "war" - publishing work by local intellectuals, historians and opposition writers along with Taleban comments and pro-Government statements as well as syndicated Western analyses - than the New York Times; and all this, remember, in a military dictatorship. You only have to spend a few weeks in the Middle East and the subcontinent to realise why Tony Blair's interviews on al-Jazeera and Larry King Live don't amount to a hill of beans. The Beirut daily As-Safir ran a widely praised editorial asking why an Arab who wanted to express the anger and humiliation of millions of other Arabs was forced to do so from a cave in a non-Arab country. The implication, of course, was that this - rather than the crimes against humanity on September 11 - was the reason for America's determination to liquidate Osama bin Laden.
Far more persuasive has been a series of articles in the Pakistani press on the outrageous treatment of Muslims arrested in the US in the aftermath of the September atrocities. One such article should suffice. Headlined "Hate crime victim's diary", in the News of Lahore, it outlined the suffering of Hasnain Javed, who was arrested in Alabama on September 19 with an expired visa. In prison in Mississippi, he was beaten up by a prisoner who also broke his tooth. Then, long after he had sounded the warden's alarm bell, more men beat him against a wall with the words: "Hey bin Laden, this is the first round. There are going to be 10 rounds like this." There are dozens of other such stories in the Pakistani press and most of them appear to be true. Again, Muslims have been outraged by the hypocrisy of the West's supposed "respect" for Islam. We are not, so we have informed the world, going to suspend military operations in Afghanistan during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. After all, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict continued during Ramadan. So have Arab-Israeli conflicts. True enough. But why, then, did we make such a show of suspending bombing on the first Friday of the bombardment last month out of our "respect" for Islam? Because we were more respectful then than now? Or because - the Taleban remaining unbroken - we've decided to forget about all that "respect"?
There is another disturbing argument I hear in Pakistan. If, as Bush claims, the attacks on New York and Washington were an assault on "civilisation", why shouldn't Muslims regard an attack on Afghanistan as a war on Islam? The Pakistanis swiftly spotted the hypocrisy of the Australians. While itching to get into the fight against bin Laden, they have sent armed troops to force destitute Afghan refugees out of their territorial waters. The Aussies want to bomb Afghanistan - but they don't want to save the Afghans. Pakistan, it should be added, hosts 2.5 million Afghan refugees. Needless to say, this discrepancy doesn't get much of an airing on our satellite channels. Indeed, I have never heard so much fury directed at journalists as I have in Pakistan these past few weeks. Nor am I surprised.
There were the disgraceful words of Walter Isaacson, the chairman of CNN, to his staff. Showing the misery of Afghanistan ran the risk of promoting enemy propaganda, he said. "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ... we must talk about how the Taleban are using civilian shields and how the Taleban have harboured the terrorists responsible for killing up to 5000 innocent people." These words will do more to damage the supposed impartiality of CNN than anything on the air in recent years. Perverse? Why perverse? Why are Afghan casualties so far down Isaacson's compassion list? Or is he just following the lead set down for him a few days earlier by White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who portentously announced to the Washington press corps that in times like these "people have to watch what they say and watch what they do". Needless to say, CNN has caved in to the US Government's demand not to broadcast bin Laden's words in toto lest they contain "coded messages". But the coded messages go out on television every hour. They are "air campaign", "coalition forces" and "war on terror".
Afghanistan November 9, 2001: - While Palestinians continue to carry the bodies of their slain in endless funeral processions, American planes launch their fiercest strikes on the Afghan people. How can we expect US President George W. Bush to condemn the Israeli invasions, occupation, and bloodbaths of the Palestinian people when American planes bomb to oblivion the already war-torn and poverty stricken Afghanis?
As Apache helicopter gunships strafe Palestinians fleeing their homes from the Israeli military’s door-to-door search and kill operations, American planes bomb Afghan hospitals, mosques, rest homes, bazaars, apartment buildings, homes and tents. They also blow to pieces buses and trucks loaded with people trying to escape the carnage. Weeks of US air strikes have reduced Afghan cities to piles of rubble, dust and desecration. Fly infested hospitals cater to the hundreds of wounded, to crying bleeding babies, to injured bewildered children, to stunned adults. Whole families have been murdered in the name of “Enduring Freedom” while sleeping in their homes or eating their first meal of the day. Apparently the freedom that is to endure was never meant for Afghan infants or women or the elderly. And while warmonger Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, claims that the relentless bombing of Afghanistan is surgically specific and accurate and though he denies that over a thousand innocent Afghanis have been ruthlessly killed, there is no evidence to the contrary that what America is really doing is waging a genocide against a helpless people. Are we to really believe that this one man Ben Laden is the reason for this massive bombing?
One atrocity among the many that occurred recently was when 20 people were killed including 9 children while they were trying to flee on a tractor and trailer during the American attack on the town of Tirin Kot. The injured were left screaming for help after the tractor was bombed on a small remote road. Surely a caravan of fleeing civilians should not have been a target of US vengeance. The world is presently apathetic and immune to the suffering of the victims of injustice unless those victims are American. No one is really concerned about how many Afghans needlessly die or how many Palestinians are murdered on a daily basis. There are now 6 million Afghan refugees who are in dire need of emergency food and aid. There is an even greater number of Afghans who are too poor to escape the wrath of cluster bombs or smart bombs in a desert country where drought and famine were already threatening the lives of the Afghan inhabitants. What the Afghanis really needed instead of bombs was food and help.
There are 3 million Palestinians under siege, under curfew, under attack. They are bombed, shelled, staffed, shot at, bulldozed, burned out and hunted down. The most Bush can say about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s reign of terror is, “I hope that the Israelis remove their troops as quickly as possible.” He is not willing to demand or insist that Israel withdraw its troops because he does not have the power to do so as it is not America who controls what Israel does, but Israel who controls what Washington does. Palestinian children are shot in their schools, beaten and tortured on their way to and from school, mothers are murdered when they step out of their homes to buy some milk for their children, fathers are slain when they venture out to buy bread for their families, civilians are shot at by Israeli settlers while they drive their cars from one Palestinian point to another and at every minute Israel assassinates whoever it wants to whenever it wants. But how can we expect mercy from the American government when it has none? How can we expect Bush to act with conscience when he has none? In the meantime, the bloodbath on both fronts continues unabated.
Washington November 8, 2001: - A look at some reports on estimates for how much the war against terrorism is costing the United States. The Pentagon isn't saying, but defense experts estimate the armed services are spending more than $2 billion a month on the war in Afghanistan. That doesn't include damage to the economy. An estimated $10 billion is the cost for property damage, cleanup, and rebuilding from the September 11 attacks. That's just a fraction of the damage done to the overall economy in lost production and revenue and doesn't include the added costs of security.
London October 19, 2001: - As the bombs rained down on Afghanistan and political leaders in Washington closed down the Senate because of scares about anthrax, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the body representing the world's richest 30 countries, predicted that this year economic growth would be as low as 1% and would be only 1.2% next year. At the same time, capitalist economists forecast that global economic growth this year and next would be the worst for 30 years. The great economic recession of the early 21st century is under way.
Given that the OECD and other capitalist forecasters have always been late in predicting downturns and are always far too optimistic, we can only assume that it's going to be even worse than they now predict. Only last May, the OECD was predicting near 3% growth for 2002. This capitalist slump means even more hell for the world's poor. The World Bank notes that the downturn in growth is likely to push thousands of very poor people over the brink. As many as 40,000 children under the age of 5 will die, it estimates. It is the powerhouse of capitalist prosperity in the 1990s, the US, which is leading the world into recession, and probably even long-term depression. America's job losses in September were up 77% over August and are now four times the level of a year ago. Recession is a "done deal", as the chief economist of the IMF put it. Warren Buffett, the billionaire US investor, predicts that it will be like winter... longer and deeper than most people can imagine. What is the cause of this calamity? The single most important feature of economic development in the US over the past few years has been the steep drop in profits. Profitability started to fall at the pinnacle of the economic boom in 1997. Profits as a share of business turnover in America reached 13% in 1997. Now it is down to 8%. Now, not just the profit per unit of investment is falling, but the mass of profits too. Indeed, the latest figures for the third-quarter of this year show US company profits falling 25% from this time last year. It's the downturn's one key cause. Everything else - the protracted plunge of stock prices, the savage cuts in business capital spending and the shrinkage of consumer income growth - is but a consequence of the profit carnage.
The great hi-tech revolution of the 1990s, that supposedly created a New Economy incapable of developing boom and bust cycles as in the past, has been exposed as a fraud. In a startling new report, the management consultants, McKinsey, found that the great economic boom of 1995-2000 did lead to a shift up in US productivity growth, but that new technology played a minor role in achieving that. Nearly all the post-1995 jump in productivity was in just six sectors - retail, wholesale, securities, telecoms, semiconductors and industrial machinery and equipment (mainly computers), representing about 31% of the non-farm private sector economy. In these six sectors, a number of factors contributed to the improvement - of which information technology was just one. In most sectors of the economy large increases in IT investment did not produce any improvement in productivity. 53 sectors, representing 69% of the economy, contributed just 0.3% productivity growth. Yet these 53 sectors accounted for 62% of the acceleration in IT spending. Many of them actually experienced productivity deceleration! As Marx would have explained, under capitalism, new technology may boost the productivity of labour, but it does not necessarily lead to increased profitability for all who invest in the capitalist market. Sure, those who use it first gain an advantage. But once everybody gets into the game, competition drives down prices and squeezes profits. And worse, everybody starts investing huge amounts of capital because they have to compete. The combination of innovations and massive over-investment leads to excessive borrowing and excess capacity. Profitability starts to fall. Share prices fall and companies cut back investment. As sales slow, competition drives prices down, which in turn pushes profits down even more. The boom turns to slump.
The great recession of 2001 onwards is a product of the desperate efforts of capitalists and their banks to keep the boom going even though profitability was falling. That has produced a huge credit bubble that is now bursting. Indeed, there are four bubbles. The first was hi-tech investment in dot.com and internet companies. That has well and truly burst. The second was the collapse of the stock market that financed all those internet start-up companies. Share prices around the world are now down 30-60% from their peaks in March 2000. But there's more to come. The third bubble is still expanding: namely, the property market. American and British households, in particular, having had their fingers badly burnt by investing in the stock market continue to push cash and borrow more to buy bricks and mortar - the safe investment. That bubble has still to burst. And further down the road is the bubble of paper currencies, in particular, the dollar. The dollar reigns supreme still. But its days are numbered. Once it collapses, the world will spiral into deeper depression. This unsettling new environment guarantees that we are about to experience more than an economic slowdown, more than a mere recession. We are about to witness the deepest stock market crash and depression since the 1930s. Please don't misunderstand: Things will not fall straight down. The most powerful institutions and central banks in the world will do everything in their power to prop up their economies and stimulate temporary stock market rallies.
But there is one big difference between this bust and previous busts of capitalism in the last 100 years. In the 19th century capitalism had agriculture as its dominant sector, with movements in farm prices being key to boom and slump. During most of the 20th century, it was manufacturing that was the engine of capitalist expansion. But now, capitalism has exhausted its productive capabilities. It depends on financial markets and transactions for its health. As I've argued before in this column, never before in the history of capitalism have stock markets been more important. Take the US. When the crash of 1929 began, the value of shares in the US stock market had reached 81% of annual production. In March 2000, the peak for share prices, the US stock market was valued at 183% of annual output - truly a massive bubble, wildly overvaluing the productive potential of capitalist production. Today it is still valued at 130% of GDP, or nearly three times the average of the last 75 years. In 1975, the technology sector accounted for 10% of all capitalist profits in the US, while financial services generated 5%. Now the financial sector generates 25%, while technology's share is unchanged. Corporate America is no longer General Motors but more like the Bank of America. Increasingly, US companies have made their profits not from making things or even providing services, but from investing in other companies and hoping their share prices rise. Of course, this is impossible indefinitely. Even worse, once share prices start falling, because of the huge modern role of the stock market, so do the profits of companies. Then the whole world starts to spiral down. The American consumer has been living in an increasingly smaller and more lonely world, shielded from reality by credit cards, home equity loans, a couple of SUVs, and the nearest shopping malls. Until late August, consumers were still spending freely despite the bad economic news. Home sales were holding firm. Retail sales were still okay. But all that ended when the Twin Towers collapsed. The thin thread of consumer confidence was cut, irreversibly and irretrievably severed. Everywhere in America today, consumer confidence is gone.
Above all, most Americans have no cash. In the past, whenever they needed cash, they just grabbed the nearest credit card or took out still another loan on their home. No more. Indeed, defaults on debt are at a 29-year high. One out of 10 mortgage loans have late payments. Providian, the fifth largest credit card issuer in the US, announced that more and more people are defaulting. Even though GM and Ford are offering zero-percent financing for new cars, the dealers are getting no takers. And don't forget the mass selling still coming in the stock market. In September, the average American stock market punter withdrew a record $32bn from their investments. Many investors called their brokers to sell. They didn't want to seem "unpatriotic." So they mumbled sheepishly that they were doing it "only because they had to". This is just the beginning of the forced liquidations in the stock market to raise desperately needed cash. America's 10 largest great corporations, before the Crash of 1929, used to keep as much as $2 in cash on hand for every dollar of current liabilities (bills and debts coming due within 12 months). Now many of those same companies are down to a dime on the dollar.
US corporations are quickly burning through cash. Nervous lenders have already cut back sharply on lending to upstart companies and those with heavy debt loads. Companies are sinking in their own debt. The leading airlines in America were equally cashless. They were estimating losses of $2.5 billion for the year before the September 11 tragedy. Now, they say their losses in 2001 will be many times larger. They asked Mr. Bush and Congress for close to $25 billion; they're getting "only" $15 billion. But giving them money is like throwing salt into the sea. Even after 115,000 layoffs and even after flight bookings begin to pick up, they'll still be running way below capacity. The $15 billion will be gone like a puff of smoke. But don't panic, says the US government and Chairman Greenspan of the US Federal Reserve. Help is at hand. The government plans to spend hugely on arms and on tax cuts, while Mr Greenspan continues to cut interest rates to all-time lows. After 1929, the Fed cut interest rates rapidly from 6% to 2% by early 1930. Greenspan has been pushing on a string too. Rates have been cut from 6.5% to 2.5%, with results comparable to those of 1929. The bottom line throughout 300 years of capitalism is that economic expansion, no matter how handled, is, at the end of the day, like a balloon. When production has filled warehouses with unsold goods, when credit is at its limit, when the consumer is mired in debt, when big media advertising can no longer con or beat the consumer into spending more money, and the most ambitious marketing plans (at home and abroad) have gone awry, the balloon bursts or is rapidly deflated. Usually, the greater the expansion, the more severe the contraction. President Franklin Roosevelt's WPA and deficit financing policies proved in the end to be just as futile. In 1940, the economy was still in depression. Only Pearl Harbor saved the economic day with the need for massive war production. Many hope for a repeat of Pearl Harbor on the economy. Those who urged Japan to build bridges to stimulate its economy seem to believe that destroying bridges will be just as good. And where once they looked with pride on a budget surplus, they now cast their eyes appreciatively upon deficits and an open Congressional cheque book. If the taxpayers won't spend their own money, they reason, government will spend it for them. And those who never saw an economic downturn approaching now see it going away, thanks to the stimulus provided by the Fed and Congress. But this time such is the size of the bubbles created by capitalism in the last ten years, the bursting is going to last a long time. Nature, in her magisterial simplicity, suggests the next phase: the huge wave will be followed by a huge trough.
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