[Ugnet] What U.S. owes to other countries
In the book titled I.O.U.S.A by Addison Wiggin Kate Incontrera, former Comptroller General of United States does argue that: *the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility.* He may be right if the figures stated hereunder are to believed. Admittedly debt as a percentage of GDP is not at unreasonable levels it will need to be fixed before it becomes a serious problem. Semei = With all of the bailout and deficit spending talk during the Presidential election, American voters became (painfully) aware of the debt the U.S. owes to other countries.China was mentioned several times during the debates and currently the U.S. owes them a cool $541 billion. Certainly not good on the surface and even worse when you discover that China is neither the only country we owe or the most amount of money we owe. So who else is on the list? Japan holds U.S. debt in the amount of $586 billion. United Kingdom holds U.S. debt in the amount of $307 billion. OPEC* nations hold U.S. debt in the amount of $179 billion. Caribbean Banking Centers hold U.S. debt in the amount of $147 billion. Russia holds U.S. debt in the amount of $74.4 billion. *OPEC includes Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, among others. No Free Ride… The debt is in the form of U.S. Treasury securities. In a nutshell meaning it must be paid back and it must be paid back with interest. Sooner or later a large amount of money must leave the U.S. to pay back the creditor countries. The government and the American economy have yet to put a hold on this deficit spending. It has grown dramatically over the past 8 years. For example, today's debt to China ($541 billion) was $61 billion in 2001. Like a young couple that has gotten out of hand with a credit cards the U.S. spending needs to be reigned in and immediately controlled or stories about U.S. being foreclosed on will no longer be farfetched jokes on late-night television but a painful reality. ___ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---
Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA
*One thing Obama learned as a community organiser in Chicago is to run for office to win. His initial motivation was to continue the work of Dr King. He seems to have narrowed this to running for office. Not just running but, running to win. If in his view, visiting say, a mosque, is not helping him win, he will not visit the mosque. It may be the ethical thing to visit a mosque, but he is after winning, not ethics. If you miss this about him you are going to be disappointed. As for him committing to Israel, we Africans must form pressure groups to for push our causes. There is not any do-gooder out there to look out for our interests. It is no time to go to sleep. It will be only us to raise our profile. It is a dogie dogie world out there !! Ralph Nader is a Lebanese. He is already pushing for his region's interest. * On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Mulindwa Edward [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC* 11-5-8 Open Letter To Barack Obama Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning...adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism). *Between Hope And Reality* By Ralph Nader Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words hope and change, change and hope have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not hope and change but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas. Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state. During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967
Re: [Ugnet] What U.S. owes to other countries
Credit/Deficit spending is for building assets, not consumption--maybe true for individuals and nations. I know from experience with my first Amex a long time ago!! Clinton had a surplus that was blown off in ill-advised war. Odiya Odiyatalks --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Semei Zake [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Semei Zake [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ugnet] What U.S. owes to other countries To: ugandanet@kym.net Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 7:21 AM In the book titled I.O.U.S.A by Addison Wiggin Kate Incontrera, former Comptroller General of United States does argue that: the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Pakistan, but our own fiscal irresponsibility. He may be right if the figures stated hereunder are to believed. Admittedly debt as a percentage of GDP is not at unreasonable levels it will need to be fixed before it becomes a serious problem. Semei = With all of the bailout and deficit spending talk during the Presidential election, American voters became (painfully) aware of the debt the U.S. owes to other countries.China was mentioned several times during the debates and currently the U.S. owes them a cool $541 billion. Certainly not good on the surface and even worse when you discover that China is neither the only country we owe or the most amount of money we owe. So who else is on the list? Japan holds U.S. debt in the amount of $586 billion. United Kingdom holds U.S. debt in the amount of $307 billion. OPEC* nations hold U.S. debt in the amount of $179 billion. Caribbean Banking Centers hold U.S. debt in the amount of $147 billion. Russia holds U.S. debt in the amount of $74.4 billion. *OPEC includes Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, among others. No Free Ride… The debt is in the form of U.S. Treasury securities. In a nutshell meaning it must be paid back and it must be paid back with interest. Sooner or later a large amount of money must leave the U.S. to pay back the creditor countries. The government and the American economy have yet to put a hold on this deficit spending. It has grown dramatically over the past 8 years. For example, today's debt to China ($541 billion) was $61 billion in 2001. Like a young couple that has gotten out of hand with a credit cards the U.S. spending needs to be reigned in and immediately controlled or stories about U.S. being foreclosed on will no longer be farfetched jokes on late-night television but a painful reality. ___ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. --- ___ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---
Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA
Ma brotha, Politics by definition is about winning. If you can't win, you can't implement your agenda. Not visiting a mosque for political implications, depending on the context, is not unethical. It is just that the mosque will not help you get to where you want to go--it is that simple. As to Africans; I have found that everything is local and about voting. This does not involve much out-of-pocket expenditures. Just volunteer, as a group, to canvass and help out during elections and vote. It will be noticed, and then you can plug in your agenda. The alternative is to become aggregators of contributions--an unlikely tall order. Odiya Odiyatalks --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Mitayo Potosi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Mitayo Potosi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ugnet] RALPH NADER WRITES TO OBAMA To: The First Virtual Network for friends of Uganda ugandanet@kym.net Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008, 10:34 AM One thing Obama learned as a community organiser in Chicago is to run for office to win. His initial motivation was to continue the work of Dr King. He seems to have narrowed this to running for office. Not just running but, running to win. If in his view, visiting say, a mosque, is not helping him win, he will not visit the mosque. It may be the ethical thing to visit a mosque, but he is after winning, not ethics. If you miss this about him you are going to be disappointed. As for him committing to Israel, we Africans must form pressure groups to for push our causes. There is not any do-gooder out there to look out for our interests. It is no time to go to sleep. It will be only us to raise our profile. It is a dogie dogie world out there !! Ralph Nader is a Lebanese. He is already pushing for his region's interest. On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Mulindwa Edward [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nader On Obama's Subservience To AIPAC 11-5-8 Open Letter To Barack Obama Uri Avnery described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning...adding that Obama is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests (to Zionism). Between Hope And Reality By Ralph Nader Dear Senator Obama: In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words hope and change, change and hope have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not hope and change but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo. Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man? To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans. You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an undivided Jerusalem, and opposed negotiations with Hamas--the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected news- paper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored direct negotiations with Hamas.
[Ugnet] WE ARE ON REBOUND WITH OBAMA
Rebounding With Obama After suffering through an abusive relationship, many people will fall in love on the rebound. They finally escape the clutches of an ogre only to jump, often without looking, into the embrace of another person, any other person. This leap of love is sometimes a lucky one, sometimes not. The last seven years of the Bush administration were indeed abusive. And the rebound effect has been so strong that even a good number of alpha-male conservatives - Colin Powell, Francis Fukuyama, Christopher Buckley - fell into the Obama embrace. The incoming president has seemed like such a good match. He's a good listener. He's patient. He shows grace under pressure. He's good with little kids. What a catch! Beyond these attributes of a sensitive executive, Obama promises to repair some of the damage done by our last bad choice. He is already getting ready to tackle global warming. He will likely roll back the dangerous subversion of the U.S. constitution known as the unitary executive, which the previous president used to bypass congressional checks and balances. He has indicated a healthy regard for nuclear abolition. On the economy, the president-elect leans in the direction of FDR at a time when the current crisis has put just about everyone in touch with his inner New Dealer, as Steve Coll writes in The New Yorker. So, what's not to like? Alas, our deep state of infatuation with Barack Obama tempts us to look the other way when he does or say things that are, frankly, unlovely. For instance, when he talks about change and brings in a bunch of Clinton-era Old Dealers, including the unrepentant Lawrence Summers, we wax rhapsodic about a smooth transition and the return of experienced hands. When he talks about the need to redirect our attention from Iraq to Afghanistan - even when the latter conflict is going just as poorly as the former - we thrill that he will fight the Good War. When he talks about maintaining our military capacity - even as we spend a budget-popping $700 billion on senseless wars, obsolete weapons systems, and unpopular military bases - we talk about the need for Democrats to stand tall and protect their flanks from patriotism-impugning conservatives. This isn't love. Nor is this, strictly speaking, a honeymoon period. Instead, we are in limerence. Limerence, a term coined some years ago, defines a state often mistaken for love. Those overtaken by limerence experience obsessive longing for another person. They subject the other person to often irrationally positive evaluations. They develop a degree of emotional dependency on the object of their obsession. And they interpret even the slightest sign of affection in the other as a declaration of reciprocal love. But the love is imaginary. Obama promised to bring a puppy dog to the White House. We are that puppy dog. How else can we explain such an outpouring of affection for such a cool customer as Barack Obama? He's a policy wonk who deflected most questions during the campaign with vague pronouncements of change (a wise strategy but not exactly love-connection material). The ugly emotions of the minority of Obama-haters, stoked by that malign cheerleader Sarah Palin, can be easily explained by racism and various strains of fundamentalism. But the love for Obama, so visible on the Internet and in the faces of celebrants on Election Day, cannot be explained by his rhetorical brilliance alone. As Freud might say, something else is going on here. And it's not just Americans. After all, the Bush administration had an abusive relationship with just about everyone in the world. (Well, perhaps the relationship with Tony Blair was a little bit kinkier.) The international community - and the U.S. elections created, for a brief time, a truly international community - is on the rebound as well. We're all, from sea to shining sea and from the axis of evil to the community of democracies, in a state of limerence. I'm sure Obama is a nice guy. But he's a politician. And politicians respond not to puppy love but to pressure. We began Foreign Policy In Focus during the dog days of the Clinton administration, when idealistic multilateralism had descended into naked unilateralism. Then, too, we were on the rebound. Then, too, we had felt abused by the previous lords of misrule. Then, too, Monica aside, we fell out of love. This time around, we will applaud Obama for every wise foreign policy decision he makes, not because we love him but because he has done the right thing. And if does the wrong thing, as inevitably he will, we will not let limerence stir our hearts and cloud our vision. Such is the respect that our president-elect demands and deserves. As a democrat, rather than the leader of a personality cult, Obama would have it no other way. What Would Obama Do? The list of crises facing the new U.S. president is so daunting that only a madman or a former editor of
[Ugnet] OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY -NO SHARP BREAK FROM BUSH
Obama's Foreign Policy - No Sharp Break From Bush By Jim Lobe Inter Press Service 11-11-8 While much of the world and many of his U.S. supporters are expecting a sharp break with his predecessor's foreign policy after President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20, they may be surprised by the degree of continuity between the two administrations. That continuity which would be made more concrete if, as expected, Pentagon chief Robert Gates is asked to remain at his post has less to do with Obama's hesitation in following through on his more sweeping campaign promises than with the fact that President George W. Bush, has quietly if grudgingly moved key U.S. policies in directions that are largely compatible with Obama's own intentions. Obama will no doubt announce a series of steps during or just after his inauguration to reaffirm to his supporters and, in the words of his victory speech Tuesday night, to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, [that] our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. Those steps will be designed to contrast his commitment to multilateralism and diplomatic engagement with Bush's fabled unilateralism and reliance on military power. They will probably include an immediate and comprehensive ban on the use of torture and a promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility at an early date. In addition, Obama will likely move quickly to improve ties with two governments toward which Bush proved unremittingly hostile: Cuba, where he is expected to repeal Bush-imposed restrictions on the freedom of Cuban Americans to visit their homeland and send money to their relatives as a down payment toward further normalization; and Syria, where he will dispatch an ambassador to signal his interest both in renewing anti-terror cooperation and encouraging the resumption of Turkish-mediated peace talks between Damascus and Israel, if not a broader peace process. At the global level, Obama is expected to pledge full U.S. participation in any successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol, including binding reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, he may well announce his intent to gain Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and several other long-pending treaties opposed by Bush, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. He will also restore funding to another Bush target, the UN Population Fund. He may even indicate a willingness to negotiate a Bretton Woods II, as proposed by key U.S. allies in Europe, that would strengthen global financial watchdogs and allocate significantly more power to emerging markets in the Third World in international economic agencies long controlled by the West. In addition to earning Obama great goodwill overseas, all of these steps will help dramatize the contrast between his more open and inclusive approach to the world and that of his predecessor, whose unilateralism and cowboy image have brought Washington's standing among foreign publics to an all-time low. To be fair, however, that image so richly earned during his first term when neoconservatives and other hawks ruled the roost is somewhat outdated. Chastened by the Iraq war and guided step by halting step by the foreign policy realists, notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Gates, and his top military commanders, who have come to dominate the last two years of his presidency, Bush has essentially if not explicitly laid the groundwork for Obama's new dawn, especially with respect to key crisis areas that are certain to figure near the top of the new president's agenda. Despite loud protests and repeated efforts by hawks around Vice President Dick Cheney to deep-six the process, for example, Bush has stuck by Rice and her top Asia aide, Christopher Hill, in making the necessary concessions to keep the Six-Party Talks to de-nuclearize North Korea alive. Similarly, Bush broke his own diplomatic embargo on Iran along with Pyongyang, the last surviving member of the Axis of Evil by sending a senior State Department official, Undersecretary of State William Burns, to sit down with his Iranian counterpart as part of a larger meeting including other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany last summer. Significantly, Burns will serve as the State Department's chief liaison with Obama's transition team. The administration also appears close to announcing that it intends to set up an interests section in Tehran even before Obama takes
[Ugnet] Barack Obama's ascendance
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-081028-obama-all-pg,0,6564040.photogallery ___ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---
[Ugnet] Re: BUT WHO OWNS OBAMA?
Aterere OJ Is this a posting of negatives or a posting of some information we dearly miss about this man? I get very concerned that we have spent an entire two year span simply singing and singing and singing about this man, and I wonder why it is criminal to ask questions about him, for you see he might be black but he is still a politician. And I am not only concerned for he is a politician but he came with a term I have heard about before, For Obama's campaign ran under an umbrella called We need a fundamental change OJ I have seen these terms before and I have seen what such governments deliver. I believe that we must have a right to discuss any political issue regarding this administration, and I take an offence on any one trying so hard to curtail our rights, and as a member of the communication group I want to assure you that we will critique Obama's presidency as we have done on all others. And let me assure those Africans that have decided to let their guard down, that a successful Obama's administration will not affect us as blacks, but if he looses control of this government, if the promises fails to be fulfilled, we all as blacks will be held responsible for his failure. We will not only be held responsible but we will have to pay another 50 to 60 years to get another black standing up to contest for that presidency, because we will always be told how we got a chance and we blew it. It is very frightening that Africans have decided to spend all heir time in drinking for a black man is a president, some of us thought that this was a good time to raise and make matters that are important heard. I guess we were wrong all the way. So I am not taking this election lightly, a very reason I have to put all these facts on the table so that we all understand where we are comming from, better yet where we are heading to. And I state that any one to stand up and state that we must stop to critique this government for Obama is black, it is a very irresponsible statement, literary childish and out right plain stupid. Can you imagine if all whites refused to debate the past American governments for they took a stand that the president is our own? May be the democracy we have used to get Obama elected would have been chocked off already. OJ okay let us all agree that no African debates Obama's government, let all of us go to the streets and be childish as Kenyans that shut down the entire damn state, all that is very good. But suppose the next president is African American as well, and the next one, let us say 5 presidents ahead of Obama are blacks and we do not debate their governments for they are all one of us. Where would this democracy be 10 15 years down the road? Let us grow up and stop being this stupid. EM Toronto The Mulindwas Communication Group With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy Groupe de communication Mulindwas avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie - Original Message - From: Oryema Johnson To: m e ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 10:30 PM Subject: RE: BUT WHO OWNS OBAMA? Mukulu Mulindwa, recently in one of the postings someone suggested that the Mulindwa Communications should be changed to anti-Obama communications..I think they are right considering how the communications picks up only the negative stuff being posted about this young son of Luo clan from Panyimur, Zeu County, West Nile District, Northern Uganda, in East Africa and paste them here.. Whatever these folks say, Obama is a man of his own, he won the election square and clear and we Republicans have accepted it and have began regrouping for the next fight..For now, as civilized citizens of the world, as Bush did when he welcomed and showed Obama around his bedroom at the White House this week, we are handing the power to him and wish him luck..He fought a hard battle from start to finish he deserves the support he needs and I would offer a brotherly advice that perhaps it is time for the Mulindwa communications to join the rest of the world in welcoming the Obama family to the White House..If of all people, Bush can do it, why not others..You know how negative Obama was throughout his compaign about George W. Bush..Had it been our type of politics, instead of Obama touring his next resident before the present tenant has packed and moved out, Rwoth Obama would have ended up in the Nile as a guest of the crocodiles Amin style Now personally, what I do not understand are these other people who still curse the white man for what he did to the Negro race and are saying finally we can show him that we are also somebody because a blackman is now going to be the president of the United States..Lord, for all these centuries it appears the negro has done nothing that it can show the
