Venezuelan tax authorities have ordered 118 McDonald’s restaurants to shut down through Saturday because of ‘inconsistencies’ in the chain’s financial records. According to AP,
Arcos Dorados — ‘golden arches’ in Spanish — said it has obeyed Venezuelan laws and regulations and is abiding by the sanctions. It said the order stemmed from ‘formal issues affecting purchasing and sales records.’
Embargo Russia? America Had Best Get A Clue
Stanislav Mishin, Pravda
[…] For Russia, there will be a loss of business, sure, but it is a minor loss, as the US still employs the Jackson-Venik Act to block most Russian imports into the US. However, those that do come through tend to be the most critical varieties. By 2007 statistics, America is only 4.8% of the Russian export market of $365b, of which most is petro products. This comes out to a bit more than $17b. Now, Russia will of course retaliate with its own embargo in this new US trade war, which will cost $9.4b or so to America. The key difference here is, most of what Russia exports to the US is oil/petro products. Russian finished goods are minimal to America, again under the Jackson-Vanik Act. These petro products have a huge, worldwide market, and are assured to sell instantly. The US, however, exports finished goods, and the only sector of the US economy so far, besides government of course, that has not suffered from the US recession, has been export manufacturing. The US imports from Russia :
Oil & other petroleum products …$10 billion
Aluminum … $1.8 billion
Semi-finished iron & steel products … $1.5 billion
Nuclear fuels … $866.3 million
Finished metal products other than steel … $852.9 million
Precious metals … $697.6 million
Nickel … $645.3 million
Steelmaking materials … $635.6 million
Fertilizers, pesticides & insecticides … $395 million
Fish & shellfish … $375.3 million
Military aircraft & parts … $10.4 million
Railway transportation equipment … $50.3 million
Civilian aircraft parts … $42.4 million
Generators, transformers & accessories … $8 million
So, from a US import ban on Russian products, who will be directly affected? First, US drivers and consumers of petroleum products such as heating oil. Then, the airline companies should have to pay more for parts. Next will suffer US manufacturing, export manufacturing to be exact, with a loss of $5.4b in high-quality, low-priced imports of metal and metal products. Europe will more than happily suck up that additional capacity and further out-compete the US. Next will be the American drive for nuclear power and additional electrical capacity. That’ll be a loss of a combined $874m. Then the cost of fertilizer will go up quite a bit, as the Chinese or Europeans will happily buy up the extra capacity created by the US embargo of $400m. On top of this, what is not mentioned is :
(1) The loss of Russian transport planes to fly US/NATO troops, equipment and supplies to Afghanistan ;
(2) The loss of Russian sea transports that carry more than half of the US military equipment worldwide ;
(3) The US nuclear industry has already lost the ability to partner with Russia, and will instead have to compete against Russia on the world market for nuclear power generators. The last generator Russia built was last year, the last one America built was 25 years ago ;
(4) US commercial satellites will now cost almost double as much to send to orbit, riding on EU instead of Russian rockets ;
(5) US cosmonauts will continue flying the space shuttle, with its now 1 in 12 chance of exploding, rather than Russian rockets. Furthermore, the shuttles will become more and more expensive, maintenance on old equipment being an upward curve ;
(6) The US satellites will no longer get Russian ion engines, and thus NASA’s bills for engines will more than double in price.
Now let us see what US suppliers to Russia will lose. Note, the lack of goods from the US will not hurt Russia, as there are hundreds of European and Japanese suppliers ready to suck up US market share, what little there is :
Meat, incl. poultry … $636.7 million (poultry has already fallen victim)
Passenger cars … $399.3 million
Civilian aircraft … $384.3 million
Oil field drilling equipment … $319.6 million
Excavating machinery … $170.7 million
Computer accessories … $155.1 million
Agricultural machinery … $148.1 million
Service industry machinery … $125.2 million
Trucks, buses & special purpose vehicles … $117 million
Materials handling equipment … $98.6 million
Iron & steel products … $2.9 million
Railway transportation equipment … $18.7 million
Engines & parts … $70.1 million
Coal … $3.8 million
Synthetic rubber … $3 million
So, first off, the struggling US auto industry is set to lose a further $490m in exports. But since they will be getting bailed out for $50b in US taxpayer monies, they can just add this right on top of it. Airbus will also thank America for giving them an extra $340m in business. As a matter of fact, all US-provided goods are absolutely substitutable for by European goods, with the possible exception of coal, and Abkhazia has large coal deposits, which it will be more than happy to export to Russia. But beyond all this is even a greater issue for America. It would seem that Russia is the eighth largest financier of America. That’s right, America is now threatening its own financiers, though “a beggar with pride is a hungry beggar.” The Russian government as such holds $65b in US government debt, never mind the billions extra held by Russian companies. The most obvious thing that the Russian government should then do is liquidate this debt. If nothing else, a fire sale of this proportion will cause a major downward pressure on all other US debt, costing the US far more than those $65b, and throwing into doubt their ability to finance further activities without seriously raising interest rates. The final card in the Russian economic arsenal is of course the most devastating. Russia, as the world’s second largest oil exporter and the world’s largest gas exporter, can refuse the $ outright. This will have the effect of removing the only reason why the $ is a reserve currency : to buy and sell petroleum products. […]
Security Minister Lord West has said there is “another great plot building up again,” and said the terrorist threat to Britain was “rising.” Lord West was addressing peers the day after they threw out government plans to extend terror detention limits. “The threat is huge,” he said, adding that “large, complex plots” had dipped for a while, but were now on the rise. Several peers criticised the home secretary’s implication that 42-day opponents took security “lightly.” Lord West said Jacqui Smith had not meant the comments “in exactly the way they have been taken,” to protests from peers who said he should “disassociate himself” from the comments which they said had caused “enormous offence.” He told peers that while some measures had been taken over the past 15 months to make Britain safer “this does not, I’m afraid, mean we are safe.” He said:
The threat is huge. The threat dipped slightly, and is now rising again, with the context of severe, large, complex plots, because we unravelled one, the damage it caused to al-Qaeda actually faded slightly. They are now building up again. There is another great plot building up again, and we are monitoring this.
Later he denied claims that people were being detained arbitrarily for up to 28 days — the current pre-charge detention limit — telling peers suspects were not just “dragged off the street.” He said:
This is an absolute nonsense. We have had the security services, GCHQ, SIS, SO15 — these people have been monitored, tracked, listened to, spotted, seen who are they talking to.
Lord West also said he thought “we’d done rather better” during the debate in the Lords on Monday about the bid to extend terror detention limits to 42 days, and was “horrified” at the scale of the government’s defeat — the measure was thrown out by 309 votes to 118. Within two hours of the Lords debate on Monday, the government announced it was dropping the 42-day proposal from the Counter-Terrorism Bill. But the home secretary said she had written the plan into a separate one-page bill which could be pushed through Parliament quickly in the case of a national emergency. Earlier, David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who stepped down in protest at the measure, and was returned as an MP after a by-election on the issue of civil liberties, said he had been ‘vindicated’:
It has failed miserably and I don’t think anybody sensible would revisit it.
– BBC
Ayers and the McCain-G. Gordon Liddy Symbiosis
Carl Bernstein, HuffPost
Does John McCain “pal around with terrorists?” Certainly McCain’s continuing “association” and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign. In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for McCain’s senatorial re-election campaign — the two posed for photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy’s syndicated radio show. Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host’s values. During the segment, McCain said he was “proud” of Liddy, and praised Liddy’s “adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.” From the program:
LIDDY: Your experience in the Hanoi Hilton is remarkable. I mean, I put in five years in a prison [for masterminding the Watergate burglary, and associated crimes], but it was here in the United States, and they didn’t torture — the only torture that I had was being forced to listen to rap music from time to time.
McCAIN: Well, you know, I’m proud of you. I’m proud of your family. I’m proud to know your son, Tom, who’s a great and wonderful guy. And it’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon. And congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.
Which of Liddy’s “principles and philosophies” was McCain referring to? Liddy’s advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations? Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and Hillary? During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention. In Liddy’s “continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great,” did McCain mean to include Liddy’s instructions to listeners of his radio show in 1994 (around the time Ayres and Obama were on a board together discussing education programs and other plots) on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (aim for the head)? If ATF agents attempt to curtail a citizen’s gun ownership, Liddy counseled,
Well, if the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests.
More recently, Liddy explained making the Clintons objects of shooting practice:
I did relate that on the 4th of July of last year, when I and my family and some friends were out firing away at a properly-constructed rifle range and we ran out of targets, and so we — I drew some stick figure targets and I thought we ought to give them names. So I named them Bill and Hillary, thought it might improve my aim. It didn’t. My aim is good anyway. Now, having said that, I accept no responsibility for somebody shooting up the White House.
Bush hardliners outgunned in North Korea deal
Kirsty Needham, Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 15 2008
THE US’s weekend move to drop North Korea from its list of sponsors of terrorism — sparking outrage from Japan, South Korea and some quarters of Washington — was the result of the negotiator Christopher Hill outmanoeuvring hardliners in a Bush Administration attempting to clean up its foreign policy legacy. But Mike Chinoy, the former CNN chief Asia correspondent and author of Meltdown: The Inside Story Of The North Korea Nuclear Crisis, said the late shift back to diplomacy did not abrogate six years of failed and confrontational US policy that culminated in North Korea’s 2006 underground nuclear test. Chinoy, now a senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, based Meltdown on 200 interviews and published it in August. He said that a “civil war over North Korea policy” had consumed the Bush Administration, even as late as July, when a non-proliferation faction within the State Department imposed “extremely intrusive” conditions for verification and inspections on a deal that Hill had negotiated with North Korea for its delisting. The fallout last week led to North Korea threatening to reactivate the plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor it had shut down last year and bar international inspectors, firing a couple of short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea for good measure. Chinoy said:
The North Korean response was: ‘There was nothing in the language of any of the agreements that we signed that requires us to agree to an intrusive verification protocol before you take us off the terrorism list; you are in effect moving the goalposts.’ Technically, the North Koreans were right, and I have heard senior American officials acknowledge as much. While the conventional narrative was ‘Oh! It’s the untrustworthy North Koreans cheating again,’ the reality was, the Americans had gotten the declaration that was accepted by them and the six parties, and added a new condition. When pushed, the North Korean side doesn’t cave in, it pushes back twice as hard. All the attempts at coercion have ended up having the opposite of the intended result. The ultimate example is the nuclear test.
In a parallel with the US intelligence failing in Iraq, Chinoy says 2002 intelligence about North Korea’s uranium procurement attempts was “spun into such an imminent danger” by Bush hardliners. “There has never been, to my knowledge, credible intelligence that North Korea ever had a uranium-enrichment facility, and it is a crucial distinction,” he said. Hill, a source for the book, argued the main objective was to stop the Yongbyon reactor churning out weapons-grade plutonium. The deal announced at the weekend by the US was described by former UN ambassador John Bolton as “a 95% victory for North Korea.” It does not allow inspectors access to suspected sites beyond Yongbyon without ‘mutual consent’. “It was a compromise that got them off the hook,” Chinoy said. The pressure was on to stabilise a dangerous situation for the new presidency. The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, has been an advocate of military action against North Korea, and his advisers have been highly sceptical of the deal. Chinoy sees a McCain presidency taking a “pretty tough approach … possibly revisiting these deals.”
Niqnaq 