Bernanke Paulson to work with Congress through the weekend

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke plan to work through the weekend with Congress on a comprehensive plan to deal with toxic bank assets choking the financial system, a Treasury spokeswoman said on Thursday."

How did we get here? All kinds of finger pointing and blame abound, but it appears to have started with too much money in the market and consumers tried to capitalize on that to buy the American Dream- a home of their own, thus driving the prices on housing sky high. Then mortgage and a lot of other companies started drafting all kinds of impossible instruments which actually made it harder for consumers to pay in the end, resulting in massive defaults.

Add to the mix complex derivative default swaps, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1851200120080919 and you have an incendiary situation, which is where we are now.

Meanwhile, businesses separate from banking finance and housing feel some of the crunch from consumers taking major hits, but as a whole they remain ok.

The sky may seem to be falling, but really, its not.

News on the Blue Marble

Is there a way out of this mess?

"By Eduardo Garcia

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - At least eight people were killed as violent anti-government protests flared in Bolivia on Thursday, creating havoc in the natural gas industry and raising tensions with the United States.

Opposition activists shot dead seven peasant farmers in the remote Amazon region of Pando, a government official said, describing the incident as a massacre. An employee of the opposition-led regional government was also killed.

"We're talking about a real massacre and the person responsible is the Pando governor," said Deputy Minister of Social Movements Sacha Llorenti.

President Evo Morales' leftist government blames the unrest on rightist governors who control four of the poor country's nine regions.

The opposition demands greater autonomy and energy revenue and opposes plans by Morales, a former coca farmer and Bolivia's first indigenous president, to rewrite the constitution and distribute land to the poor.

Washington ordered out the Bolivian ambassador on Thursday a day after Morales, a close ally of Venezuela's fiery leftist leader Hugo Chavez, expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg.

Morales accused Goldberg of fanning the protests.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement that Washington "officially informed the government of Bolivia of our decision to declare Ambassador Gustavo Guzman persona non grata."

Here we have old wounds that never seem to heal. Historically we have supported the landowners and upper classes at the expense of the poor, which has given the communists political ammunition to shoot at the US.

Is there a way to work out a compromise here so that vast numbers of the poor are served while preserving the property rights of the landowners? In the end creating a better economy can help everyone. It may be naive but aligning with one group at the expense of the other groups and engaging in violence only makes things worse.

News on the Blue Marble

Response to Al Qaeda by any other name AC360

"Perhaps the most significant change to have occurred over the last seven years of fighting the War on Terror is that we are no longer battling a terrorist organization called al Qaeda. We are now fighting a global social movement called al Qaeda.


The truth is al Qaeda was never the coherent, global entity it is so often imagined to be – an organization with an easily identifiable leadership structure and a systematic ideology. That al Qaeda existed only in the imaginations of those of us desperate for the days when America’s enemies were nations that could be assuredly defined and armies that could be conventionally overcome. It is no wonder that word al Qaeda continues to be rendered into English as “the base.” A base implies something concrete and conquerable, something that can be defended or assailed.

But the word al Qaeda also means “the rules” or “the fundamentals,” and is used by Arabs most often to refer to the basic teachings or creed of Islam. In that light, it may be somewhat appropriate to consider al Qaeda an Islamic form of fundamentalism, in so far as that word implies puritanical adherence to the elemental doctrines of a religion. But it is imprecise, and even dangerous, to consider al Qaeda the operational seat of global Islamic extremism.

al Qaeda is more like an ideological nerve center – a kind of brain trust propagating a series of simple propositions whose purpose is to classify the world into Good and Evil. Friend and Foe. Us and Them. As al Qaeda’s chief ideologue Abu Musab al-Suri said, “al Qaeda is not an organization…It is a call, a reference, a methodology.”

al Qaeda as methodology may be hard to swallow. Methodologies do not kill people; people kill people.

But when bin Laden refers to al Qaeda’s attacks on America as “messages” to America, he is conveying a fundamental truth about the tactic of terrorism. These are not necessarily actions in pursuit of specific political or social ends. They are symbolic statements of power directed at a carefully selected audience. Indeed, it is the audience that can be regarded the principal victims of terrorism. Perverse though it may seem, terrorism’s actual victims – the bloodied, maimed, and murdered – are merely tools through which the terrorist’s “message” is delivered. What is that message? It is simply this: We are powerful, we are aggrieved, and we will not be ignored.

That is a message that has resonated with a wide spectrum of people – particularly young people – across the world (and not just the Muslim world). It is a message that cuts across all boundaries of religion, culture, class, and ethnicity. It is a message that has fed off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the larger War on Terror: the use of torture; extraordinary renditions; the flaunting of international laws. It is a message that has become far more important than the messenger.

Of course, you can’t shoot a message (especially when you can’t even shoot the messenger)."

In response to Reza Aslan's blog

Yes it is difficult to fight an "ideology" as well as a "methodology". In addition you cannot ignore the many issues al Qaeda raise as fodder for the "cause".

But perhaps like the fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of al Qaeda will not occur by force of arms, but by the weight of its oppressive nature. History has shown that all intolerant totalitarian regimes eventually fail, and al Qaeda whether a "methodology" or "ideology" will also fall.

At the same time the US can and should do several things. Continue its military operations in a more intelligent fashion (we are learning that in Iraq and Afghanistan), while at the same time seriously helping Islamic countries' development, and indeed the development of the third world. Finally, Israel and the Palestinians must find a meaningful resolution of all the issues and move forward towards peace together.

A tall order, and by no means easy.

News on the Blue Marble

Toxic Ayurvedic 'Cures'

Yahoo News/Live Science

"Ayurveda, a healing tradition from India, is as old as the hills. And apparently ayurvedic medicine available through the Internet contains as many toxic metals as the hills, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.


A team from Boston University found that more than 20 percent of nearly 200 samples of various ayurvedic cures contained dangerous amounts of lead, arsenic and mercury. Sometimes the presence of metals was a result of sloppy manufacturing; other times the metals were added deliberately as part of the cure.


The authors - who are advocates of alternative medicine and include an ayurvedic practitioner as well as a lead poisoning expert from India - said they hope their report can help separate wheat from chaff, that is, the useful elements from the ayurvedic tradition from the real whacky stuff.


Problems with ayurveda


India is proud of its ayurvedic tradition, which dates back over 7,000 years and likely predates Traditional Chinese Medicine. By 1000 BCE, when Europeans were still living in mud and beating each other with clubs, Indian doctors used the principles of ayurveda to drain fluids, sew wounds, remove kidney stones and even perform cosmetic surgery.


For the most part, the ayurvedic tradition - which incorporates yoga, meditation and diet - makes for a healthy lifestyle.


But the safety and efficacy of some ayurvedic cures are questionable, because often they incorporate chants and are based on astrology, personality traits, pulse readings, a supposed imbalance of three bodily humors (called vata, pitta and kapha, like China's yin and yang) and other discredited beliefs. Your herbal cure for, say, a bad cough might be different from the next person's as a result of your birthday and Mars being aligned with Jupiter.


Among these odd elements of ayurveda, the JAMA report targets a practice called rasa shastra, which uses mercury and other metals as curatives. Nearly half of the rasa shastra remedies tested had dangers levels of metals; several were 10,000 times over the U.S. safety limit.


Regardless whether you are a Leo or a Capricorn, that's not healthy. So the authors called into question the entire practice of rasa shastra.


India strikes back


Some folks in India didn't take the JAMA report lightly. The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a press release last week that stated:


"It needs to be emphasized that as per the directions issued by Department of AYUSH, herbo-metallic compounds are not being officially exported because of heavy metal concerns and only purely herbal Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha medicines are being exported from India with effect from 1st January 2006 after certification of heavy metals below the permissible limit by the manufacturing unit."


Read between the line, and this implies (a) herbo-metallic compounds still exist in India as part of the ayurvedic tradition; (b) herbo-metallic compounds are being unofficially exported; and (c) and herbo-metallic compounds used to be exported until European and American researchers exposed the practice.


The lead author on JAMA report, Robert Saper, was in fact one of the pesky researchers in 2004 who revealed the fact that more than 20 percent of imported ayurvedic cures in Boston's South Asian grocery stories had illegal levels of toxic metals.


Know your source


Ayurveda has gained popularity in the United States with promoters such as Deepak Chopra, who charges thousands of dollars for seminars about how ayurveda can improve your golf game. The tradition has become somewhat elitist in the United States, with ayurvedic spas, soaps, candles and other luxury items.


Many likely don't know nor want to know about the idiosyncrasies of ayurveda. (We haven't addressed the use of cow urine and dung.) Ayurveda, after all, has much going for it.


But when experimenting with traditional medicines, particularly when you are outside of that culture, it's prudent to understand what you are getting into. The Boston University team is one group of alternative medicine advocates who want to legitimize useful ancient therapies not because they are ancient but because they work. "

News on the Blue Marble