International Sex Worker Rights Day

Two issues that easily become conflated, especially when there is an ideological anti-sex bias. One issue is the right to practice sex work, not just prostitution and pornography production but especially those two. The second is the oppressive enslavement of some sex workers, such as those caught up in sex slavery or child pornography. (Children can never give free assent to their use in pornography production. They are below the age where we recognize their freedom to make ANY contractual obligation.)

However, there are many sex workers who choose that profession as freely as another person might choose to be an insurance salesperson, real estate professional, and probably more freely than someone might choose to clean public toilets, or other jobs which are necessary but distasteful work and pay very poorly. Sex work is frequently well paid and would be even better if the law did not work in a way that many sex workers can be preyed upon by pimps and police alike.

Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance is the source of this story. Woodhull states it’s mission as follows:

… is to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, working towards a world that fulfills the words of the United States Supreme Court that

“…our laws and tradition afford constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.

Tomorrow is International Sex Worker Rights Day.

SEX AND POLITICS

BY RICCI J. LEVY | MARCH 2, 2012

Saturday, March 3^rd, is International Sex Worker Rights Day, which is being celebrated around the world by groups and individuals who seek to recognize and defend the rights of sex workers.

According to Woodhull’s Executive Director, Ricci Levy:

“Research has demonstrated that the criminalization of sex work is associated with violence against sex workers, decreased access to health care, barriers to reporting human rights abuses, and disempowerment in condom negotiation (whether a sex worker’s wishes regarding condom use are respected). Governments should recognize and address the relationship between laws criminalizing sex work and the human rights violations that result from these laws. 

We see the affirmation and defense of the rights of sex workers as an integral part of our work to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right.   International Sex Workers Rights Day isn’t just about securing the rights of sex workers; it’s about securing human rights.”

In the “State of Sexual Freedom in the U.S., 2010 Report”, Melissa Ditmore poignantly explained the ways in which the rights of sex workers are threatened:

“Sex workers’ human rights have been violated in a variety of ways including violence but also by making sex workers invisible and not recognizing their input into issues that affect them, leading to situations in which sex workers’ concerns are sacrificed for propriety. Rights-based programming counters the two great pitfalls of programming with sex workers: not admitting that sex workers’ have agency and denying sex workers of their agency.”

2011 has been a particularly challenging, though exciting, year for organizations working to affirm the agency and rights of sex workers in the United States. Toward the end of 2010, demands from grassroots organizers were included in the U.N. Human Rights Committee’s official recommendations to the Obama Administration as part of their Universal Periodic Review. Among the more than 200 recommendations was recommendation #92.86, known as Recommendation #86, which asked the administration to “Ensure access to public services paying attention to the special vulnerability of sexual workers [sex workers] to violence and human rights abuses.”

Woodhull was one of the many groups that supported a policy brief that outlined concrete ways in which the government “can show progress in addressing human rights abuses against sex workers.” These included:

1. Building capacity for states to address human rights violations through research and dialogue.
2. Modifying or eliminating existing federal policies that conflate sex work and human trafficking and prevent sex workers from accessing services such as healthcare, HIV prevention and support.
3. Investigating and preventing human rights abuses perpetrated by state agents, such as law enforcement officers.
4. Investigating the impact of criminalization, including state level criminal laws, on sex workers and other groups.

The United States fully accepted UPR recommendation #86 and, in the report released to the United Nations, the U.S. states “We agree that no one should face violence or discrimination in access to public services based on sexual orientation or their status as a person in prostitution, as recommendation [#86] suggests”.

Woodhull is the first organization to ever get the issue of sexual freedom as a fundamental human right “on the table” at the United Nations, and we were especially happy to note that the Obama administration is taking human rights abuses against sex workers seriously, and is willing to stand up for what is right.  It was particularly significant because this was the first time the United States accepted that sex workers’ rights are a different issue from human trafficking victims and that sex workers’ rights are human rights.   

Today we’d like to recognize the work that is being done in D.C. and throughout the country to protect the rights of sex workers, and reaffirm our commitment to achieving the goals outlined above.  If you’d like to read more about the groups working on sex worker rights, check out this site.  Also, Best Practices Policy Project, HIPS, and Different Avenues.

 

Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the Providers, Red States Are the Parasites

The New York Times published an enlightening article about the states which  contribute more than they take and those which take more than they give in taxes to the federal government for public education and health care and other state functions. The results are in. The right-wing, red states are sucking the blood out of the blues. (This article is from AlterNet.)

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on February 29, 2012, Printed on February 29, 2012
Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long time ago. It’s now well-understood that blue states generally export money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.

TPM [Talking Points Memo] published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution works:

(click for larger version) Progressives believe in the redistribution of wealth, so we’re not usually too upset by this state of affairs. That’s what it means to be one country. E pluribus unum, and all that. We’re happy to help, because we think we’ve got a stake in making sure kids in rural Alabama get educations and seniors in Arizona get healthcare. What’s good for them is good for all of us. We also like to think they’d help us out if our positions were reversed. It’s an investment in making America stronger, and we feel fine about that.

But maybe it’s time to admit that we’re being played for chumps, and that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it’s now a stone fact that the blue states and cities are the country’s real wealth creators. That’s why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that money to the red states in the first place. We’re working our butts off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages together, tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good.

So we’ve got every right to get good and angry about the fact that, by and large, the people who are getting our money are so damned ungrateful — not to mention so ridiculously eager to spend it on stuff we don’t approve of. We didn’t ship them our hard-earned tax dollars to see them squandered on worse-than-useless abstinence-only education, textbooks that teach creationism, crisis-pregnancy misinformation centers, subsidies for GMO crops and oil companies, and so on. And we sure as hell didn’t expect to be rewarded for our productivity and generosity with a rising tide of spittle-flecked insanity about how we’re just a bunch of immoral, godless, drug-soaked, sex-crazed, evil America-hating traitors who can’t wait to hand the country over to the Islamists and the Communists.

Ironically, the conservative movement’s favorite philosopher had some very insightful things to say about this exact situation. Ayn Rand’s novels divided the world into two groups. On one hand, she lionized “producers” — noble, intelligent Übermenschen whose faith in their own ideas and willingness to take risks to achieve their dreams drives everything else in society. And she called out the evil of “parasites,” the dull, unimaginative masses who attach themselves to producers and drain away their resources and thwart their dreams.

Conservatives love this story. They’re eager to claim the gleaming mantle of the producers, insisting loudly that their tax money is going to support people (mostly in blue states and cities, it’s darkly implied) who won’t or can’t work as hard as they do. If you want to arouse their class and race resentments, there are few narratives that can get them rolling like this producers-versus-parasites tale.

But the NYT story and that map up there prove beyond arguing that the conservative interpretation of events is 100 percent, 180-degrees, flat-out wrong. America’s real producer class is overwhelmingly concentrated in the blue cities and states — the regions full of smart, talented people who’ve harnessed technology and intellect to money, and made these regions the best, most forward-looking places in the country to live.

And the real parasites are centered in red states (the only exceptions being states with huge resource reserves, like Alaska and Texas) — the unimaginative, exhausted places that have clung to a fading past, rejected science, substituted superstition for sense, and refused to invest in their own futures. It’s not unfair to say that those regions are simply feasting off the sweat of our ennobling labor, and expecting us to continue supporting them as they go about their wealth-destroying ways.

And we producers have had enough.

Progressives Go Galt!

If you’re a conservative who thinks Ayn Rand called it true with this producers/parasites thing, then by all means: let’s go there. All the way there — and then some. But fair warning is in order: you may not like where we end up.

By way of a modest proposal, I hereby declare the birth of a new Progressive Objectivism — a frankly producerist personal-responsibility crusade aimed at getting these whiny red leeches off our collective blue hide. If they think they can get by without us, let’s not stand in their way. What these people need from us, at minimum, is some tough talk — the kind of stern, grown-up verbal whoop-ass the conservatives wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to unload on us if the roles were reversed.

The time has come for blue America to go Galt. Our farewell rant — long and epic, as Rand’s turgid writing style would have required — might sound a bit like this:

First off, dear Red Staters: If your town’s economy depends on a nearby dam, canal, harbor, airport, military base, interstate highway, national park or monument, or prison, just STFU. Because you are, in every way possible, a parasite, living off something the rest of us paid to build.

Second: If you are a homeowner who takes a mortgage interest deduction — which is how the rest of us subsidize your house, and with it your status in the middle-class — we don’t want to hear another word from you about how you made it all on your own. And that goes for those of you who got your education via the GI Bill, or took out an SBA loan, or went to well-funded public schools back when such things existed. You are what you are because we believed in you, and invested in you. And we’re deeply insulted that you refuse to even acknowledge that fact.

Third: Don’t come crawling to us to support those kids you couldn’t afford to have, but refused to allow contraception or abortions or actual fact-based sex education to prevent. It’s just that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off in every way that matters because we plan our families. A failure to plan on your part does not create an obligation on ours. Your policies force women to have kids, even when they’re patently not ready to have them. Now (as you’re so fond of telling women who find themselves unhappily pregnant), you get to live with the consequences of those choices.

Fourth: Don’t ask us to pay to educate your kids if you’re not willing to have us teach them what we know about the world. We believe in free, comprehensive, rigorous and reality-based public education because it’s done more than any other government service to make us rich, powerful and successful; and we want the same for you.

We realize some of you aren’t too keen on public schools. It’s great that you want to take on more personal responsibility for educating your own kids. Just be warned: if you don’t teach them real science and real history — including evolution, climate change and the actual contents of the US Constitution — we’re probably not going to hire them. So we hope you’re also ready to take responsibility for that, too, which will probably mean supporting your grown kids in your basement until you die.

Fifth: Between federal water reclamation projects and farm subsidies, we are paying you zillions of dollars to grow stuff we’d actually rather not eat. Don’t look now, but those of us in blue cities and states are moving away from your petrochemical-saturated GMO-bred CAFO-grown industrial “food” products as fast as we possibly can. There aren’t enough organic and community-supported farms to feed all of us yet — but we have taken responsibility for this, and are working hard on the problem. You can either get on this train, or holler at it while it flattens you. What you cannot do is yell at us because we don’t want to eat what you choose to grow.

Notice, too, that the only reason we’re having to subsidize you in the first place is that the all-holy free market does not bless you with profits on this crap. In your own book, that makes you a capital-L Loser. In ours, we’ll settle for “parasite.”

Sixth: We are so over your bigotry. Again: we know from our own long experience that including women, gays and minorities makes us not only culturally richer; it also makes us more economically productive as well. And the recent economic meltdown has shown us that monocultures run exclusively by rich white men tend to stagnate into breeding pools for all kinds of social and financial parasites, who then come forward to prey on those least able to resist — like you.

Diversity isn’t just an idealistic fetish for us: we do it because we think it makes us richer on every front that matters. If “parasite” is just another word for “people who willfully make bad choices that keep them poor and ignorant,” then your prejudices by definition make you parasites. And we are not, therefore, obliged to deal with you.

And finally: If you want to pretend global warming isn’t happening, you do not get to come whining to us when you get hit with droughts or floods. We’re not going to send FEMA to bail you out. We’re not going to build canals to give you our water. We’re not going to fund your levees. If you’re so sure God will provide, go ask him to keep your reservoirs full and your cities dry. Because we resign.

But will we come back?

Yep. It all sounds really ugly. But that’s the point of going Galt: it’s a big fat tantrum designed to prove just how important you are in the grand scheme of things. (The tactic is also not unfamiliar to any mother who’s gone on a protracted housekeeping strike to gain appreciation from an uncooperative family.) If others have to suffer hardship to learn the lesson — well, that’ll teach ‘em. The emotionally satisfying goal is to get the parasites to come back, begging on their knees for your vital help and resources. They know now, in a way they didn’t before, that they cannot survive without you.

So: if that fantasy moment were to come, what would it take to convince us Progressive Objectivists to emerge once again from our cool blue producerist enclave, and take responsibility for the chastened masses once again? We have just five simple demands:

1. Stop taking more money from the federal government pot than you put into it. If you believe in paying your own freight, then do it. If you can’t, that’s fine — we’ll go back to helping you out — but you have to let go of that producerist superiority crap, because you’re simply not entitled to it.

2. Admit that we were right. Admit that nobody in America ever makes it on their own, and that we are all in this together, and that there’s such a thing as the common wealth and the common good. Admit that regulation is necessary to keep the unprincipled strong from preying on the weak. Admit that there has never in history ever been any such thing as a free market: markets are created by governments, and need to be overseen by them. And finally: admit that your conservative leaders got us into this economic mess, and don’t know squat about how to get us out of it.

3. Join the reality-based world. Accept that America’s prosperity utterly depends on how well-educated its kids are, especially on topics like science and history. Accept that evolution happened, and that climate change is happening now. Embrace nuance. Learn something about how to assess evidence and think rationally, without a pre-determined conclusion. Remember that God only helps those who’ve gained the real-world skills to help themselves.

4. Admit that we love our country every bit as much as you do — and that, given our much greater success at creating strong families, productive 21st-century industries and excellent places to live, we might actually know more that you do about how to make it work better in the future.

5. Last but by no means least: Knock off the hate-mongering, threats and name-calling. Your heroine, Ms. Rand, predicted rightly that parasites invariably despise the producers they feed on; you should be embarrassed that your own behavior bears her out so clearly. And, just once, say thank you to us for all the contributions we’ve made (or, at least, tried to make) toward your well-being. We don’t ask for much, but a little gratitude now and then wouldn’t hurt.

Five easy steps. Do this, and we’ll come back and work with you as co-creators of an America we all can love. Until then, though, you can pay your own bills. We’ve decided we have better things to invest that money in — upgraded schools, single-payer healthcare, expanded college systems, mass transit, sustainable technology investments, and forward-looking research to launch new industries that will make us richer yet. And you’ll have a choice, too: you’ll either learn what it takes to produce like we do, or you’ll get to find out what real poverty feels like.

Would that we had the guts to go Galt. We probably don’t; it’s just not in our natures to tell people who are hurting to go to hell, or leverage our economic might to get the political upper-hand. But there’s nothing stopping us from pointing out, loudly and often, exactly who is really who in this producers-versus-parasites relationship. We didn’t draw that ridiculous battle line — but maybe it’s time for us to accept their terms of engagement, stake our rightful claim as the country’s actual producer class, and show them just how tall and proud we are to stand on our far more fertile ground.

Sara Robinson is a trained social futurist and the editor of AlterNet’s Vision page. Follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to AlterNet’sVision newsletter for weekly updates.

© 2012 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154338/

Republican Congressional Candidate Says ‘Holocaust Never Happened’

It’s hard to believe that someone who is a Holocaust denier would be running for congress. But here is a guy who is also a declared neo-Nazi. These people are shameless. 

Art Jones, who hopes to challenge Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District, neither denies nor repudiates his past affiliation with the neo-Nazi Party.

• By Lorraine Swanson

    

A congressional candidate running as a Republican in the upcoming Illinois primary says the “Holocaust never happened.”

Arthur Jones, 64, a Lyons, IL, insurance salesman who organizes family-friendly, neo-Nazi events around Adolf Hitler’s birthday, hopes to be the Republican candidate chosen to run againstDemocratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3^rd Congressional District.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews,” Jones said. “It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV.

“The more survivors, the more lies that are told.”

A member of the Nationalist Socialist Party in his younger days, Jones took part in the Nazis’ march on Chicago’s Marquette Park in 1978. While he doesn’t deny nor repudiate his “past affiliations,” he says he votes Republican “90 percent of the time.”

“Philosophically, I’m a National Socialist,” Jones said. “Officially, I don’t belong to any party except my own, the America First Committee.”

Jones hopes three’s a charm after blowing his retirement savings on two prior congressional runs. He hopes to win the Republican primary and go on to challenge Lipinski this November. The 3rd District covers portions of Chicago’s South Side and a large swath of the south suburbs.

Part of the reason he’s jumping in again is what he describes as Lipinski’s strange affiliation with the American Israel Pro Israel Affairs Committee.

“(The committee) was bragging on their website how (Lipinski) is ‘spearheading’ the effort in the House of Representatives with a Jewish congressman from Virginia named Frank Wolf,” Jones said. “The two are spearheading an effort in the House to get tough with Iran, including closing off any oil exports to China that could lead to World War III.”

While Jones said Wolf was Jewish, he is Presbyterian.

Jones compares today’s conditions in the United States to Germany following the end of World War I.

“Our country is falling apart economically, politically, culturally, militarily,” he said. “We are going down.”

A veteran of the Vietnam War with all of its modern horrors, he sees the same betrayal in the “so-called War on Terrorism.”

“These war-mongering fools in congress like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—we can’t let Iran have one nuclear weapon but we let Israel have all the nuclear weapons they want,” Jones said. “This is ridiculous.”

Jones is on the ballot against Jim Falvey and Richard Grabowski in a district that has sent a conservative Democrat to Congress for decades. The district includes sizable ethnic populations, primarily the descendants of Irish, German, Polish and Czech immigrants.

In his Patch candidate questionnaire, Jones submitted that he’s not been convicted of a felony but has been arrested for “minor street skirmishes with Leftists.”

Editor’s Note: Story has been updated to reflect that Congressman Frank Wolf is Presbyterian and not Jewish.

Apple, Proview iPad Trademark Feud Highlights Faded Tech Firm’s Woes

Apple has a long history of stealing ideas and technologies. When they can’t do that the litigate competitors out of the market. When even that fails they buy them out. Very few of Apples products is really original. The graphics interface and the mouse came from Palo Alto Research Center and were open to the public. The physical design of the ipad came from the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey. The name iPad came from a Chinese company which is now suing Apple for an invalid contract it made with a subsidiary and then claimed legitimacy.

SHANGHAI — The battle between an ailing Chinese electronics maker and Apple Inc. over the iPad name is just as much a tale of obsolescence in the fast-moving global technology industry as it is a legal row over a trademark.

When businessman Rowell Yang Long-san launched his own iPAD-branded device in 2000, a decade before Apple unveiled its hit tablet, he declared it received an “overwhelming market response.”

“We are confident that we will be one of the major players in the new post-PC era – the information appliance era,” Yang said in the announcement of his new Internet Personal Access Device, which was jointly developed with National Semiconductor.

But unlike Apple’s iPad, introduced in 2010, Proview’s version failed to hit the market sweet spot that might have made it a hit. Today, the company is deeply in debt and threatened with removal from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

But Proview still claims ownership of the trademark in China and is waging its fight on multiple fronts: court cases, asking commercial authorities to ban iPad sales in dozens of Chinese cities, and seeking a ban on exports of iPads from China where Apple supplier Foxconn employs about a million people in manufacturing the sleek tablet computer.

There has been no sign yet of intervention from Beijing but top officials are unlikely to allow serious disruption of a business that employs a significant number of people.

Proview Electronics Co., a unit of Proview International Holdings, filed a lawsuit against Apple’s use of the trademark in mainland China at the Santa Clara Superior Court on Feb. 17. An attempt by Proview to win an injunction to stop Apple from selling iPads in Shanghai was foiled last week when a court there rejected the case pending the resolution of a similar lawsuit in a higher court in China. Other court cases in China are pending.

Proview International, the Hong Kong-listed parent company of the group, was once one of the world’s leading makers of bulky cathode ray tube computer monitors, with sales in 50 countries and as many as 10,000 employees in factories in Taiwan and China.

But the company’s fortunes waned along with the headwinds battering the world economy and rapid advances in the consumer technology business that it failed to adapt to.

The Taiwan arm of the business once thrived on low-cost manufacturing for major brand names, until evaporating demand and surging costs put paid to that. It lacked Apple’s forte in designing and generating consumer demand for slick new products and online applications.

“Proview’s products failed because they were not significantly differentiated from the competition and did not offer new features that consumers were interested in,” said Ben Cavendish, an analyst at China Market Research Group in Shanghai.

Proview’s iPAD included a 15-inch CRT monitor, keyboard and mouse and promised “one-click access to email, online applications, chat, shopping and search engines,” the company said. It also offered “a simple and intuitive means of accessing the Internet without the cost and complexity often associated with personal computers,” according to a PR release from August 2000.

But Yang, speaking to reporters in Beijing recently, conceded that Proview’s iPAD was pricey and had technical problems that prevented it from functioning very smoothly.

Just as Proview geared up to sell its “iFamily” line of products, including the iPAD, iTerminal and others, the dot.com bubble burst. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

As the CRT monitors that once were Proview’s bread-and-butter business gave way to LCD monitors and televisions, Yang segued into LCD production, vastly expanding the business.

Then came the 2008 global financial crisis.

Proview’s annual reports and its filings to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange chart its downward trajectory, as profits shrank, costs rose and accounts went unpaid. Bankruptcy proceedings started in 2009 but have since halted. Creditors have been selling off buildings, equipment and vehicles owned by subsidiaries, scraping money together bit-by-bit.

The company is in the midst of restructuring. Asked if Proview could supply a sample of its iPAD to test, company spokeswoman Alice Wang said that in 2009 it shifted into making LED lights instead of computer monitors. The company faces a June 29 deadline to meet stock exchange requirements or be delisted.

The companies are battling over whether Proview sold the mainland Chinese rights to the iPad trademark to Apple in a 2009 deal. Proview claims that sale, by its Taiwan affiliate, was invalid. Proview has not challenged the sale of other worldwide rights to the iPad trademark to Apple in the 35,000 British pound ($55,000) deal.

Apple contends that Proview included the mainland Chinese trademark in the sale and says it violated that contract by failing to transfer the trademark rights to Apple.

Proview’s lawyers have indicated their company is open to settling its claim to the trademark. In the meantime, the two sides have engaged in legal skirmishes in Hong Kong and in southern China’s Guangdong province.

There, lower courts have sided with Proview in two cases. The Guangdong High Court is due to hear Apple’s appeal of the first decision on Feb. 29.

According to documents from the High Court of Hong Kong, where Apple has sued Proview for breach of contract, mainland banks have sought “asset preservation orders” to secure control of the China iPad trademark.

Those documents say Proview has sought to sell the iPad Chinese trademark to Apple for $10 million.

Proview appears keen to wring a settlement out of Apple. Though its lawyers say Apple could incur huge losses if mainland courts rule in favor of Proview, the U.S. company has shown no signs of moving toward settling out of court.

In Apple’s lawsuit against Proview in Shenzhen, which it lost and is now appealing, Apple sought 4 million yuan ($635,000) in damages. That’s far less than the amount that may be at stake if it loses the right to sell the iPad in China, but more than the 10,000 yuan in expenses Proview asked for as it sought and failed to win an injunction to stop iPad sales by Apple stores in Shanghai.

Pressed by the judge for an estimate of how much damage Proview claims to have suffered from the Apple iPad’s huge success, its lawyers said they didn’t know.

___

Revealed: Corporation-Courting Imperialist Thomas Friedman

An article from Truthout, the progressive news and opinion resource.

---

Friday 24 February 2012

by: Aaron Leonard , Truthout | Interview

 

A review of “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” by Belén Fernández, published by Verso in its new series Counterblasts, dedicated to “challenging the apologists of Empire and Capital.”

“The Imperial Messenger” is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week [3] and is available directly from Truthout for a minimum contribution by clicking here. [3]

“The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work”
Belén Fernández
Verso Books, 2011

Verso Books recently inaugurated a series it calls “Counterblasts,” which “aims to revive the tradition of polemical writing inaugurated by Puritan and leveller pamphleteers in the seventeenth century.” Its most recent entry is a book about The New York Times columnist and advocate for all things having to do with US power in the Middle East, Thomas Friedman. This short book shreds any sense of integrity that Friedman might have for the uninitiated, and provides plenty of substance for those needing the polemical ammunition to challenge this powerful spokesman. I recently interviewed the book’s author Belén Fernández [4] via email.

Aaron Leonard: You write about Thomas Friedman’s “Institutionalized habit of self-contradiction.” Can you give some examples?

Belén Fernández: For one thing, he was a cheerleader for the Iraq war without being able to keep track of his rationale. He went from arguing that the war was “partly for oil” to insisting “U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil,” to blaming drivers of Hummers [in the US] for U.S. troop deaths in Fallujah. He also defined the war as part of a “neocon strategy” and “the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched.” On the Israel/Palestine issue, he observed during the second Intifada in 2002 that Palestinian “nonviolent resistance, à la Gandhi … would have delivered a Palestinian state 30 years ago.” This stands absurdly against what he wrote in “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” on the first Intifada in 1987, that Palestinian stone throwing was compatible with “the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi” and that it indicated a belief in “massive non-lethal civil disobedience.” During his intermittent attempts at environmentalism, he goes from strongly advocating for biofuels to opposing biofuels to supporting the idea of clean coal to rejecting the idea of clean coal to resurrecting the idea of clean coal.

AL: How does he get away with this and still be taken seriously?

BF: I’ve long been perplexed by this. I suppose if one reads him sparingly enough one might not pick up on the contradictions. He actually boasts in Longitudes and Attitudes that the “only person who sees my two columns each week before they show up in the newspaper is a copy editor who edits them for grammar and spelling.” For the duration of his column at the Times he has “never had a conversation with the publisher about any opinion I’ve adopted – before or after any column I’ve written.” Obviously the newspaper of record does not view as a problem the fact that its most widely-read columnist is incapable of maintaining a coherent discourse.

AL: You recount a conversation Friedman had with Charlie Rose about a so-called “terrorism bubble.” It is particularly appalling; could you talk about that?

BF: This refers to the “terrorism bubble” that has emerged in “that part of the world.” Friedman told Rose in May of 2003:

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad, um, and basically saying: “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society; you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna let it grow? Well. Suck. On. This.

This is a statement consistent with his persistent dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims – whom he portrays as “backward,” disproportionately angry and violent, in need of forced civilization by the West. His demeaning portrayal of the Arab/Muslim world enabled him to write off the loss of human life in the region as an effect of Arab/Muslim defects rather than of U.S. bellicosity. As late as 2011, Friedman still ludicrously asserted that the U.S. had acted as a “credible neutral arbiter” in Iraq.

AL: Why does The New York Times, arguably the most influential newspaper in the world, have a Thomas Friedman?

BF: Friedman is far from alone when it comes to providing a veneer of independent validation to state and corporate hegemonic endeavors – ones in which they are entirely complicit. He just happens to enjoy a special symbiosis with centers of power. He is sought out by Barack Obama to explain phenomena like the Arab Spring (which Friedman obligingly determines was in fact propelled by five “not-so-obvious forces,” among them Obama himself). He receives awards from Goldman Sachs for writing about how important corporate globalization is for human progress. He boasts of plugging the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) without perusing its contents beyond the two words “free trade.” He emits grating corporate-military slogans like: “Attention Kmart shoppers: Without America on duty, there will be no America Online.” The New York Times itself is nothing but a mouthpiece for empire and capital. When considered from that perspective, it makes perfect sense that the Times would have a Friedman. And as long as there is no overwhelming uproar over his stupidity, there’s no reason they should dismiss him; it’s a winning partnership.

AL: From your book one gets a sense that Friedman is really a guerrilla marketer for the hotel industry. Could you talk some about his style?

BF: Yes, guerrilla marketer not only for hotels but also computers (e.g., “when I was done interviewing the mayor, I thanked him and started to pack up my IBM ThinkPad laptop)”; airlines (“As I was boarding my Emirates Air flight from Dubai to Pakistan the other day)”; etc.

People often joke that the only normal human beings Friedman converses with – outside his usual circle of CEOs and national leaders – are cab drivers. In fact Friedman has a certain insistence on speaking on behalf of the world’s inhabitants without actually speaking to them first. Readers are instructed to “just ask any Indian villager” for confirmation that U.S.-directed globalization is desirable, and are informed in 1999 that it is “stupid” to oppose globalization: “The [anti-WTO] Seattle protesters need to understand that. The people of Sri Lanka already do.” The latter insight is gleaned from Friedman’s chat with the owner of a Sri-Lanka based Victoria’s Secret underwear factory, who obviously does not qualify as “the people of Sri Lanka.”

AL: What about Thomas Friedman writings on Israel?

BF: Friedman received his first Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Sabra and Shatila, this was where several thousand Palestinians were massacred by Israel’s Lebanese allies in an affair overseen by the Israeli military. He professes in “From Beirut to Jerusalem” to initially take the event “seriously as a blot on Israel and the Jewish people” and to “boil … with anger – anger which I worked out by reporting with all the skill I could muster on exactly what happened in those camps.” The disillusionment, however, is by no means permanent, and Friedman declares in the same book (published in 1989): “I’ll always want [Israel] to be the country I imagined in my youth. But what the hell, she’s mine, and for a forty-year-old, she ain’t too shabby.” The phrase “she’s mine” also raises some questions, given that Friedman opposes the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

He nonetheless advertises himself as a serious critic of Israel, though his criticism is primarily limited to the issue of the settlements – which he only criticizes because he wants to avoid a situation in which Palestinians seek equal rights in a single multiethnic democracy (“If American Jews think it’s hard to defend Israel today on college campuses, imagine what it will be like when their kids have to argue against the principle of one man, one vote”).

AL: At one point you remark, “Reality is accorded minimal importance in Friedmanomics.” We actually see that a lot these days – and its not just the irrational Republicans – it feels like we are paying the price for all this post-modernist thinking. Ideologically and politically how would you characterize someone like Thomas Friedman?

BF: Friedman consistently writes on behalf of the corporate elite, which would naturally locate him on the right of the ideological spectrum, yet it does not stop him from endeavoring to portray himself as a “Social Safety Netter” concerned with the plight of the non-elite and a “liberal on every issue other than” the Iraq war. At a presentation at a university in Istanbul in 2010, he announced that he preferred to eschew classification as a Democrat or a Republican, instead defining himself as a believer in billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s theory that “everything I got in life was because I was born in this country, America, at this time, with these opportunities and these institutions.” This would be a good place to reiterate that Friedman happened to marry into one of the 100 wealthiest families in the U.S. Essentially his primary ideological commitment boils down to maintaining U.S. dominance over the globe, which in his view will enable perpetuation of his personal privileged status.

Belén Fernández is an editor and feature writer at Pulse Media. Her articles also have appeared on Al-Jazeera, Al-Akhbar English, CounterPunch, Palestine Chronicle, Palestine Think Tank, Rebelión, Salem-News, Tlaxcala, Electronic Intifada, Upside Down World and Venezuelanalysis.com, among others. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a concentration in political science from Columbia University in New York City.

Threat List, Macintosh

From http://www.iantivirus.com/threats/  The blog format makes reading more difficult. Go to the original to view it more easily.

All threats | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z 116 threats found. Name Threat Level Description Adware.OSX.Cosmac Adware.OSX.Cosmac is a proof-of-concept adware sample for Mac OS X. This malware can be installed without requiring root privileges and can hook into every application so that everytime the user access these applications, Cosmac will launch the Safari web browser. Application.OSX.BackTrack BackTrack is a keylogger program from Modesitt Software. This program stores user activity in an SQLite database file. In addition to being a keylogger, this program also tracks user activity and records such as application name, window name, date and time. It is able to create separate databases for every application and window used. This program is portable and it does not require installation. Application.OSX.EasyCrack Application.OSX.EasyCrack is iAntiVirus detection for EasyCrackwithJohn application. This is a password cracker and the author describes it as a utility to crack a password of a user of another connected Mac. Application.OSX.eWatch Application.OSX.eWatch is a keylogger and also a remote access tool designed to remotely monitor users’s computer activity. It can capture screenshots, log all users’ keystrokes, enumerate all running processess and monitor internet browsing activities. Application.OSX.KeyboardSpy Keyboard Spy a keylogger from AlphaOmega Software. This keylogger can record all keystrokes and save them to a log file. Keyboard Spy is portable and does not require installation to function. Application.OSX.KeyloggerX KeyloggerX is freeware keylogger program designed to work in OS X. This application usually arrives as KeyloggerX.dmg.sit (768,805 bytes) which contains the KeyloggerX executable, Disclaimer.rtf and Read Me.rtf. The document explains that this application will create log files in the User Preference folder. However, upon execution this program stays in the background and fails to create the said folder and files. Application.OSX.KeyRecorderX KeystrokeRecorder X is a keylogger created by CampSoftware. This keylogger can record users’ keystrokes and capture screen shots. It has a stealth feature making it invisible from the dock, invisible in the force quit menu and invisible in process viewer. It can also encrypt the log files, plus send log files and screen shots through email and track active applications. Application.OSX.LogKext Application.OSX.LogKext is a powerful freeware kernel base keylogger in Mac OS X. It has a full stealth capability, where its user can controll its functionality by a command-line client called logKextClient. This keylogger is capable to log every single keystrokes of the user. Application.OSX.Loselose.A Application.OSX.Loselose.A is a gaming application for the Mac which also deletes files on your hard drive as you kill aliens. Application.OSX.MonitorerX Monitorer X is a keylogger created by Burning-Bytes. This keylogger can discreetly record every single keystroke into a log file. It has also an option to capture screen shots, and this feature can be triggered or activated through user specified keywords. So it will capture the current screen everytime the user types in one of the specified keywords. Application.OSX.MonitorerXMan Application.OSX.MonitorerXMan is a managing application that helps the user organize all text logs and screenshots created by MonitorerX Pro. This tool is currently distributed as freeware. Application.OSX.MonitorerXPro MonitorerX Pro is a keylogger and spyware tool created by Burning-Bytes. This software can record every single keystroke in background. Its stealth features include invisibility from the dock, invisible in the force quit menu and invisible at startup. It creates a log file everytime the user starts the computer and organizes these files according to date and time. It can also capture screen shots everytime the user types in a specific keyword. This version is called “Pro” because of the MonitorerX Pro Manager feature, where it manages all the log files and screenshots by user and date. Application.OSX.RemoteControl MacRemoteControl is a freeware application designed to work as a remote access and administration tool. This application can remotely access another macintosh using the TCP/IP protocol. Once it is connected, this tool can list all running process, quit or launch applications, restart, shut down or sleep the machine and activate OSXvnc. This tool was initially designed for personal use by the author but later it was made available to the public. Application.OSX.Spy Spy is a freeware application from SilverNetworks.net. This application has a server component which allows a user to remotely access a macintosh through a normal web browser. It also has Spy Tracker where it can list, see and access all Spy servers. Another feature of this tool is that it can log information, display remote computer information and handle file transfers. Application.OSX.SpyMe SpyMe is a remote management tool from Readpixel.com. This software allows you to manage and monitor multiple remote macintosh machines simultaneosly. It employes a client-server technology, where the server is installed on remote computers and the client component is on the managing side. This SpyMe client can send keyboard and mouse actions, capture screenshots, automatic wake up the server, handle file transfers and control multiple SpyMe servers. It also has an optional SpyMe Daemon which requires root privileges to run in background. A feature of this tool is to silently launch the server component every each login or fast user switch. The latest version of this software has an Internet Caf Application.OSX.TypeAgent TypeAgent is keylogging software from TypeAgent.com. This software can track and record all keystrokes entered into Instant Messaging, Browsing Activities, Emails, Documents and more generally any application running on your Mac. Furthermore, the user has an option to set the logs directory, activation hot key, password protection, uninstallation and option to run in hidden mode. Application.OSX.TypeRecorderX TypeRecorder X is keylogging software produced by Rampellsoft.com. This keylogger can discreetly monitors and records every keystroke in a log file. The vendor describes this software as essential backup tool in the event of system failure, power loss, or if any work is accidentally deleted or modified. Backdoor.MacOS.Sub7Server Backdoor.MacOS.Sub7Server is the SubSeven server component for Mac OS classic. This application is usually installed on the victim’s machine. Once installed, it opens a port allowing any subseven attacker to gain remote access to the system and perform various tasks. Backdoor.OSX.CarbonKeys CarbonKeys is an open-source program that employs client-server technology. The server component handles keystroke monitoring, it records all entered keystrokes and waits for a remote connection from the client program. The client component communicates with the server and is able to download keystroke logs as well as screen shots on command. The server component is usually found on the victim’s computer, while the attacker communicates through the client program. Backdoor.OSX.HellRaiser HellRaiser is a backdoor trojan. This tool employs standard backdoor client-server techniques. The server is usually installed on the victim’s computer while the client controls the server. The installation package also contains a configuration plugin where the remote controller can specify initial server parameters such as port number, password, smtp settings and other behaviour. The server component runs in background and it is hidden from the dock. Backdoor.OSX.IService.a Backdoor.OSX.IService.a has the capability of connecting to a remote server over the internet. Once installed, it may download additional components to an infected Mac. Backdoor.OSX.IService.b Backdoor.OSX.IService.b has the capability of connecting to a remote server over the internet. Once connected, it may receive commands from the remote attacker which may then be executed on the affected Mac. Backdoor.OSX.IService.c Backdoor.OSX.IService.c has the capability of connecting to a remote server over the internet. Once installed, it may download additional components to an infected Mac. Backdoor.OSX.Sub7Client Backdoor.OSX.Sub7Client is the SubSeven OSX client component. This client tool allows the user to remotely connect and control another computer in the network. It has a graphical interface where user has to input the IP address and specify the port number of the server. This component is usually installed on the attackers machine. Backdoor.OSX.Termite Termite is a client-server terminal tool designed to remotely execute unix commands. This software package contains the Terminte server for OSX and OS9. These server programs come with another binary included which is called ServerEdit. ServerEdit manages the users’ settings such as port number and the password. Termite servers can be remotely accessed using the Termite client for OSX and Windows. The server component can be easily installed since it is portable and does not require installation. The remote controller (Termite client) can manage and access multiple macintosh machines simultaneously and perform remote tasks using unix commands. Backdoor.OSX.Winjack Winjack is a freeware client-server remote administration tool from DigitalCalamity.org. This tool allows Mac OS X users to remotely access Windows based machines. The client component runs on OS X while the server is installed on the remote Windows machine. This tool has a powerful feature where it can manipulate files, applications and even the registry. It can also send messages, open URLs, create folders, shut down and restart the machine, capture screen shots, view running processes and transfer files. The Winjack server creates a registry entry to automatically launch itself at every system startup. Backdoor.OSX.Xover Xover is a freeware client-server remote administration tool from DigitalCalamity. The server component is usually installed on the target machine allowing a remote user to access the computer. DDoS.OSX.CometShower DDoS.OSX.CometShower is a client-server program designed to perform distributed denial of service attack to a specific IP address. The client program is the host attacker while the server component can be installed and run to multiple machines and different networks whoever wishes to participate on the attack. The server connects to the client program and the host sets the IP address and port of the targetted machine. Both the server and client program works in Mac OS X. Eicar_Test_Files The European Institute of Computer Anti-virus Research (EICAR) together with Antivirus and Internet Security vendors around the world has developed a standard test file which customers may use to test their antivirus installation. The detection name Eicar_Test_File is NOT A VIRUS. It a harmless test file designed to help customers check whether their antivirus product is properly installed and working. Email-Flooder.OSX.Mema Email-Flooder.OSX.Mema is a powerful and distructive mail-bomber used to perform Denial of Service attacks. This tool can mail-bomb multiple email addresses and connect to multiple SMTP servers simultaneously. It can open up to 500 simultaneous connections. The user can also set annoymous mode or use random names. It can also construct its own subject, message body and file attachment. The mail-bombing parameters define the number of emails from 1 to never ending mail-bombing and specify specific date and time of attack. Email-Flooder.OSX.Propaganda Emal-Flooder.OSX.Propaganda is a powerful email flooder/spammer that can connect to a list of SMTP servers and create up to 500 multiple connection at a time. The tool provides an option to construct the content of the email body, create arbitrary recipient names and add multiple attachments. Email-Flooder.OSX.Torrent Email-Flooder.OSX.Torrent is an email bomber/flooder tool designed to work in Mac OS X. The tool provides the attacker an option to construct email content, specify SMTP Server, add multiple attachment and specify the number of email attack that will be sent. Since this tool can only perform targetted attack, it is also possible that some security analysts may use this tool for penetration testing. Exploit.EvilGrade.a Exploit.EvilGrade is a multiplatform exploit tool that allows it to take advantage of poor upgrade implementations by injecting fake updates. Exploit.Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-0059 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-0059 is a proof of concept code that exploits a flaw in Apple Quicktime 3 to 7.1.3′s quicktime movie (.mov) file with an HREF track (HREFTrack). Exploit.Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-6166 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-6166 is a proof of concept code that exploits a flaw in Apple Quicktime versions before 7.3.1′s RTSP response handling of long content type headers. Exploit.OSX.ARDAgent Exploit.OSX.ARDAgent is iAntiVirus’ detection for malicious code that exploits a vulnerability in Apple Remote Desktop.It takes advantage of a flaw in ARDAgent, a component of Apple Remote Desktop, and allows malicious programs to execute code when run locally, or remotely as root. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2003-0201 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2003-0201 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2003-0201 vulnerability. It exploits the buffer overflow found in Samba versions 2.2.0 to 2.2.8 and it is capable of exploiting Mac OS X PowerPC systems. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2004-0430 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2004-0430 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2004-0430 vulnerability. It exploits a stack overflow in the AppleFileServer service found in Mac OS X. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2004-0695 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2004-0695 is a proof of concept code that exploits a flaw in the FTP service for 4D WebSTAR 5.3.2 and earlier which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long FTP command. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2005-0043 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2005-0043 is a proof-of-concept code that exploits a security flaw in Apple iTunes 4.7 which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a long URL in .m3u or .pls playlist files. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2006-0848 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2006-0848 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2006-0848 vulnerability. It exploit Safari’s “Safe file” feature which is a bug in Apple Mac OS X metadata handling. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-0395 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-0395 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2007-0395 vulnerability. It exploits a command execution vulnerability found in Mail.app application and affects Mac OS X 10.5.0. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-2446 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-2446 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2007-2446 vulnerability. It exploits LSA RPC service of the Samba daemon. Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-5863 Exploit.OSX.CVE-2007-5863 is iAntiVirus detection for malicious code that exploits CVE-2007-5863 vulnerability. It exploits the feature Distribution Packages used in Apple Software Update. Exploit.OSX.Evasion.a Exploit.OSX.Evasion.a is a proof-of-concept code that exploits a known vulnerability in MAC OS X’s Java Virtual Machine. It allows malicious code to execute outside of the Java sandbox with the permissions of the executing user. Exploit.OSX.Small Exploit.OSX.Small is a proof-of-concept program that exploits Mac OS X’s /usr/bin/passwd. Exploit.OSX.Smid.b Exploit.OSX.Smid.b is an expolits that takes advantage of the CVE-2009-3867 vulnerability. It allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. Hacktool.MacOS.UGMPortScanner Hacktool.MacOS.UGMPortScanner is designed to scan and list target machines open and active ports. This tool is designed to work only with classic Mac OS. Hacktool.OSX.AimSniff Hacktool.OSX.AimSniff is a small utility tool designed to capture AIM user IP address running in Mac OS X. Hacktool.OSX.BrutalGift Hacktool.OSX.BrutalGift is a powerful ftp and pop3 brute force cracker designed to work in Mac OS X. It can scan and crack up to 500 connection at the same time. This tool may also be used by some security analysts for penetration testing. Hacktool.OSX.Cyanide Hacktool.OSX.Cyanide is a hacking tool with multiple featues such as email bomber, port attacker, IRC flooder bot, FTP brute force attacker and port scanner. This tool also has network utility functions such as ping, lookup, traceroute and whois. It can also protect itself by watching certain ports for possible attacks. Hacktool.OSX.Heirophant Hacktool.OSX.Heirophant is a network utility tool designed to work in Mac OS X. It is capable to scan websites for web links, scan and ping specific IP address for open ports, create remote connection through telnet, proxy tool, construct crafted strings and use it to perform port flooding attack over TCP protocol. This tool may also be used by some security analysts for penetration testing. Hacktool.OSX.iChatSniff iChatSniff is a program that extracts iChat audio sessions from a pcap-formated packet dump. A malicious user is able to use this tool to eavesdrop on iChat audio sessions. Hacktool.OSX.macKrack macKrack is a freeware password cracker for Mac OS X. It supports Crypt, MD5, SHA-1 and Salted SHA-1 algorithms. It uses both dictionary and keyspace brute force attacks to recover passwords. The latest version supports the cracking of zip archive passwords. Hacktool.OSX.MacSmurf MacSmurf is a tool used to perform Denial of Service attacks on a network. It does this by sending a large volumes of ICMP echo requests, and broadcasting them to machines on the network. The attack can invisibly redirect the broadcast ICMP packet to a targetted host. This tool may also be used by some security analysts for penetration testing. Hacktool.OSX.ManOfTheMiddle ManOfTheMiddle is a tool used to perform man-in-the-middle attacks, allowing the user to monitor and potentially tamper with data flowing between 2 hosts. Although this tool can be used for malicious purposes, some security analysts legitimately use this tool to perform penetration testing. Hacktool.OSX.SYNer Hacktool.OSX.SYNer is a malicious tool designed to perform SYN flood exploit in TCP protocol. This tool uses a series of spoofed SYN-tagged TCP packets to hide the attacker real identity. The attack attempts to overload the target network which causes it to stop accepting incoming connection. Hacktool.OSX.UnderHand Hacktool.OSX.UnderHand is a client-server program that can connect and communicate to its victims’ machine through its trojan server component. The trojan server has an option to run in hidden mode. Once the server is installed, the client can execute arbitrary shell command to the victims’ machine. Hacktool.OSX.ZapAttack Hacktool.OSX.ZapAttack is a hacker tooll design to perform denial of service attack. It has multiple features such as Mass Connector, Muti Flooder, Port Flooder, UDP Flooder, Port Scanner, Port Checker and IP Resolver. The amplification server is a component program usually installed to another machine. It aims to assist the attacker amplify the attack. Perl.OSX.RSPlug.a Perl.OSX.RSPlug.a is a malicious PERL script targeted for MAC users. It downloads and runs another malicious script in the victim’s computer. Port-Flooder.OSX.Tsunami Port-Flooder.OSX.Tsunami is a small utility tool designed to remotely connect to a specific port, construct crafted packet and peform port flooding attack. The attacker can either use TCP or UDP protocol. RogueAntiSpyware.OSX.Imunizator RogueAntiSpyware.OSX.Imunizator is a rebranded version of RogueAntiSpyware.OSX.MacSweeper. This version contains exactly the same functionality and looks of MacSweeper except the name was changed to Imunizator. Rogue application which uses deceptive sales and marketing techniques to get onto the users’ system. It poses no threat and it does not have the capability to propagate or spread itself. However, rogues usually arrive as an advertisement which redirects the user and forces a download of the file/installation package. RogueAntiSpyware.OSX.MacSweeper RogueAntiSpyware.OSX.MacSweeper is a rogue application which uses deceptive sales and marketing techniques to get onto the users’ system. It poses no threat and it does not have the capability to propagate or spread itself. However, rogues usually arrive as an advertisement which redirects the user and forces to download file/installation package. Rootkit.MacOS.Weapox Rootkit.MacOS.Weapox is a kernel based rootkit designed to work on Mac OS X (both PowerPC and Intel-based) machines. This tool can execute a root shell, elevate processes euid to 0, hide specified ports from netstat and hide login info from w and who commands. Trojan-PSW.OSX.Corpref.A Trojan-PSW.OSX.Corpref.A is a password stealing Trojan masquerading as a poker game program. It targets Mac OS X users. Trojan.MacOS.ChinaTalk Trojan.MacOS.ChinaTalk is a destructive trojan which deletes all user directories. It usually arrives disguised as a MacinTalk sound driver. It’s code contains the following strings “A Phalcon/Skzm production”. Trojan.MacOS.Nvp Virus.MacOS.Nvp is a malicious trojan that disguises itself as an application called ‘New Look’ in order to get onto the user’s system. Once installed, this trojan modifies the system and prevents vowels from being entered using the keyboard. The malicious code contains strings, indicating the names of tha authors. Trojan.MacOS.Tetracycle Trojan.MacOS.Tetracycle is a malicious trojan secretly installed by Virus.MacOS.Mbdf.A. Trojan.MacOS.Tweesh.a Trojan.MacOS.Tweesh.a is a malicious trojan horse that may represent security risk for the compromised system. Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger Trojan.OSX.DNSChan is a malicious trojan that uses social engineering techniques to entice users to manually install the program. This trojan disguises itself as a video codec and associates itself with shared and free download videos. It was first seen and linked to porn sites but later it was also linked to funny videos. The mode of delivery of this trojan is typically via spam blogs (splogs), malicious banner Ads, poisoned Google search results and pay-per-install programs. Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.C Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.C is a malicious trojan that entices the user to download and manually install a fake video codec. Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.D Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.D is a trojan that entices users to download and install a fake video codec. Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.E Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.E is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.F Trojan.OSX.DNSChanger.F is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.HellRTS Trojan.OSX.HellRTS has the capabilities to perform malicious backdoor routines, and is built using RealBasic. Trojan.OSX.Lamzev.a Trojan.OSX.Lamzev.a is a Trojan horse that opens a back door on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.A is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.B Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.B is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.C Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.C is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.D Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.D is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.E Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.E is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.F Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.F is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.G Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.G is a Trojan horse that modifies the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of the affected system. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.K Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.K is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.M Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.M is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.N Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.N is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.O Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.O is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.P Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.P is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.Q Trojan.OSX.RSPlug.Q is a Trojan horse that changes the DNS settings on the compromised computer. Virus.MacOS.Anti Virus.MacOS.Anti is self-replicating virus that infects application files on System 6. Virus.MacOS.Cdef Virus.MacOS.Cdef is a self-replicating virus which infects desktop files used by System 6. Although this virus does not have any destructive payload, the infection can affect the system causing it to slow down and consequently crash. Virus.MacOS.Code1 Virus.MacOS.Code1 is a destructive virus which infects Mac OS classic system files and applications. This virus has known payload which renames the user’s infected hard drive to Trent Saburo on the 31st of October of every year. Virus.MacOS.Code252 Virus.MacOS.Code252 also known as D-Day Virus is a malicious program that infects Mac OS classic system files and applications. It carries a non-destructive payload where it can perform certain tasks like displaying a text message, opening a window or even removing itself. This payload is triggered every 6th of June and 31st of December. Strings indicate a message will be displayed when the payload is activated “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha You have a virus Now erasing all disk! P.S. Have a nice day (Click to continue!)”. Virus.MacOS.Code32767 Virus.MacOS.Code32767 is a malicious program that infects files found on Mac OS system classic. This virus was named Code32767 because it modifies the infected file to point to its malicious code which is at code 32767. Virus.MacOS.Code9811 Virus.MacOS.Code9811 is malicious program which infects ‘APPL’ type applications found on Mac OS classic. This virus carries a non-destructive payload where it draws a worm all over the users’ screen at a specific time and date. Code indicates that this virus will display this message “You have been hacked by Praetorians!”. Virus.MacOS.Flag Virus.MacOS.Flag is a self-replicating virus that infects application files on Mac OS classic. Virus.MacOS.Init17 Virus.MacOS.Init17 is a destructive virus that infects Mac OS classic system and application files. The virus resides in INIT 17 resources. Virus.MacOS.Init1984 Virus.MacOS.Init1984 is a destructive virus that infects all .INIT files found on Mac OS classic. This virus carries a destructive payload where it attempts to rename all files to random names and also change file information on every Friday which falls on the 13th day of any month. Virus.MacOS.Init29 Virus.MacOS.Init29 is a destructive virus which tries to infect Mac OS classic systems, applications and data files by adding or overwriting the INIT 29 resource. Virus.MacOS.Init666 Virus.MacOS.Init666 is a destructive virus that infects classic Mac OS system and application files. Virus.MacOS.Init9403 Virus.MacOS.Init9403 is a destructive virus that infects classic Mac OS system applications and the Finder. Upon execution, this virus creates a file named “Preferenze” in the Extensions folder. This allows the virus to execute at every system start up. After a certain number of infections, it overwrites the startup volume and disk information. Virus.MacOS.InitM Virus.MacOS.InitM is a destructive virus that infects all .INIT files found on Mac OS classic. This virus carries a destructive payload whicht attempts to rename all files and folders to random names and changes file creation and modification dates to January 1, 1904. Virus.MacOS.Mbdf Virus.MacOS.Mbdf is a destructive virus that infects classic Mac OS system files and applications such as Finder. This virus does not have a malicious payload, instead it searches for system files and appends MBDF resources with IDs of 0 and 1. The infection takes time to infect all system files, but the machine will start to show non-responsive behaviour which subsequently resolves to a forced restart. This action will damage system files, and the only solution is to reinstall the affected files. This virus was first seen on the internet associated with shareware games such as “Ten Tile Puzzle” and “Obnoxious Tetris”. Virus.MacOS.Mdef Virus.MacOS.Mdef is a self-replicating virus that infects classic Mac OS files. It does not have a malicious or destructive payload, instead it infects macintosh resources that is responsible for drawing menus. The infected machine will start to show non-responsive behaviour once a pull down menu is clicked. Virus.MacOS.Nvir Virus.MacOS.Nvir is a destructive virus which infects classic Mac OS system files and applications such as Finder. The infection causes system slow down, hangs and crashes. Virus.MacOS.Scores Virus.MacOS.Scores is a malicious program that infects Mac OS classic system files and applications, specifically Notepad and Scrapbook. After a number of infections, this virus will start infecting any application when it is opened. The infection causes the system slowdowns and crashes. Virus.MacOS.Sevendust Virus.MacOS.Sevendust is a self-replicating virus that infects classic Mac OS applications and system files. Some variant of this virus carries a non-destructive payload where it attempts to delete all non-executable application from the StartupItems during a specific time and day of the month. It appends MDEF resource to all infected application and INIT resource for the system files. Virus.MacOS.T4 Virus.MacOS.T4 is a destructive virus that infects System 7 system files, applications and the Finder. The infection causes system slowdowns and crashes. After a certain number of infections, the payload will display this message “Application is infected with the T4 virus”. Virus.MacOS.Wdef Virus.MacOS.Wdef is a self-replicating virus that infects desktop files used by the System 6 Finder. Although this virus does not have any destructive payload, the infection can affect the system causing it to slow and consequently crash. Virus.MacOS.Zuc Virus.MacOS.Zuc is a self-replicating virus that infects application files in classic Mac OS. This virus carries an annoying payload where the cursor will display unusual behaviour after a certain period of time of infection. Virus.OSX.Leap Virus.OSX.Leap is an instant messaging worm which propagates via the iChat application, and also a destructive virus which tries to infect other binary files by overwriting their code. This malware was designed to work on Mac OS X running on PowerPC machines. Worm.iPhoneOS.Ikee.b Worm.iPhoneOS.Ikee.b is a worm that spreads through jailbroken iPhones by using the default SSH password. It steals sensitive information on the compromised device and has the capability to connect to a BotNet server. Worm.MacOS.Autostart Worm.MacOS.Autostart is a malicious worm that propagates by infecting the boot sector of removable volumes. Some variants of this worm drop a file named DB on the infected removable media and make a copy of themselves named Desktop Print Spooler in the Extentions folder, allowing it automatically run during system startup. This worm was designed to work on classic Mac OS (PowerPC). Worm.OSX.Inqtana Worm.OSX.Inqtana is a proof-of-concept worm that exploits a Mac OS X BlueTooth Directory Traversal Vulnerability. Worm.OSX.Renepo Worm.OSX.Renepo is also known as “Opener”. This is a malicious bash shell script design to work on Mac OS X. This worm installs and copies itself to StartupItems. It then disables the built-in OSX firewall, prevents Apple updates and disables accounting applications. It can also turn on services and gathers detailed user information pasword hashes, user name from netinfo, keychain files and system configuration information. It also modifies limewire settings, deletes log files, creates an additional admin user, creates cron jobs and more. It also connects to the infernet to download hacktools such as John The Ripper and Dsniff. This worm propagates by dropping a copy of itself to shared folders. Worm.OSX.Tored.a Worm.OSX.Tored.a is a MAC OSX worm written in RealBasic which attempts to spread via email and network shares. It also opens a backdoor on the compromised computer.

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Mac malware evolves – time for Apple owners to wake up

Please pass this info on to your Mac friends. Mac users tend to be complacent believing that Macs are impervious to malware/viruses/trojan horses/worms. That is not so. The Mac’s safety from these was largely based on the small market presence, especially in business. Now that Mac sales are approaching 7-10% of the market (Depending whose figures) the bad guys are beginning to target Macs and they are vulnerable. Here’s an article from Sophos’ Naked Security.

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by Graham Cluley on October 19, 2011 | Comments (14)

Mac users have once again been reminded not to be complacent about the malware threat, with the discovery that cybercriminals have enhanced an existing Trojan horse to disable the rudimentary anti-virus protection Apple has built into Mac OS X.

Despite the growth of Mac malware in the last 12 months, many users are still not protecting themselves from the threat. This is despite there now being industrial-strength free Mac anti-virus software available.

Our friends at F-Secure blogged today that they had noticed a new variant of the Flashback backdoor Trojan – which poses as an update to Adobe Flash – disables XProtect.

XProtect isn’t really comparable to a real anti-virus product on your Mac, but it does provide a limited amount of protection.

The fact that Mac malware is now being written to prevent XProtect from updating itself with new security definitions underlines that cybercriminals are keen to infect Apple computers because of the potential financial rewards.

The good news is that Sophos’s Mac anti-virus products (including our free anti-virus for Mac home users) has been detecting the malware as a member of the OSX/FlshPlyr malware family since October 12th.

The SHA1 checksum for this Mac malware sample is 627813f62ed32dfe083df8e6b04ad5b28300912d.

Update: An earlier version of this article claimed that Mac OS X’s built-in virus protection was not detecting this malware. We are happy to confirm that our test results were incorrect, and Mac OS X can detect this malware when downloaded. Read this article for more insight as to the differences between XProtect and a full anti-virus product.

Clearly the Mac malware authors are not resting on their laurels. Maybe if you have a Mac you shouldn’t be too laid back about the genuine threat that exists also?

If you need any further convincing – maybe you should check out our short history of Mac malware (which, after today, needs updating.. sigh)

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week. Just tell the truth

From Haaretz, Bradley Burston reports on one of the leading lights of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. (MyPresbyterian denomination is in the process of promoting this libel. The proposed pronouncement–we call it an overture–is being promoted by people who have been duped into believing that Hamas and Hezbollah are legitimate players.)

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is mounting its annual Israeli Apartheid Week. Yet this year, there is something different – people have begun telling the truth about BDS.

By Bradley Burston

It’s that time again. On campuses the world over, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is mounting its eighth annual Israeli Apartheid Week.

In the past, this has been a time for hardline pro-Palestinians and hardline pro-Israelis to rumble, counter-accuse, hurl half-truths and, often as not, scrum to an ineffectual draw.

Not this year. This year there’s something distinctly unfamiliar in the air. People have begun telling the truth about BDS.

The door was opened by author and lecturer Norman Finkelstein. Earlier this month, Finkelstein, one of Israel’s harshest critics, rocked the BDS movement with a critique devastating in its candor.

Finkelstein said he loathed the movement’s duplicity and disingenuousness in hiding the fact that a large part of its membership “wants to eliminate Israel.”
“I support the BDS,” Finkelstein said, but “it will never reach a broad public until and unless they’re explicit in their goal. And their goal has to include the recognition of Israel, or it’s a nonstarter.”

Instead, he said, the movement insists that it’s “agnostic” on whether or not Israel should exist. “No, you’re not agnostic! You don’t want it! Then just say it! But (BDS leaders) know full well, that if you say it, you don’t have a prayer of reaching a broad public … And frankly, you know what, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public, because you’re dishonest.”

Though BDS constantly claims successes, “it’s a cult, where the guru says ‘We have all these victories’ and everyone nods their head,” Finkelstein said. “People promote it as if it’s proven itself and we’re on the … verge of a victory of some sort. It’s just sheer nonsense. It’s a cult. And I, personally, I’m tired of it.”

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week. You can tell the truth. About BDS. And about Israel as well. It’s not the robust and vibrant democracy that’s hailed by the right, even as the right works to curb freedoms. It is a troubled democracy, a compromised democracy, under threat from within, under threat from its own government, eroded by war and internal strife and external threat and the human and moral costs of the religion of manifest destiny.

Not unlike the United States at age 64, a country pursuing the brutal occupation of a native population in order to protect ever-expanding settlements, a nation divided over the millions of people in its midst deprived of basic liberties and rights. A work in progress.

But like the United States, Israel is a work in progress which deserves a chance to find its way, to foster and deepen democracy. A work in progress which needs support for efforts at democracy, and recognition when it works.

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week. You can tell the truth. There is something in the air here, something distinctly unfamiliar. Something good. A whiff of democracy. A dim horizon of light. The stirrings of hope. And all from the most unlikely of places.

This week alone, in an extraordinary expression of the power of non-violence, a 68-day hunger strike by one jailed Palestinian forced Israelis, for the first time, to truly face and begin to debate the carefully hidden practice of administrative detention, imprisoning Palestinians without trial, criminal indictment or other due process.

This week, under threat of a possible High Court order, and with an international media spotlight on the case, officials struck a deal under which the prisoner, Khader Adnan, will be freed in April.

This was a week in which Israeli society as a whole began to re-examine itself. In the Prime Minister’s Office, the unthinkable occurred: an untouchable, Netanyahu-bosom, backroom boss actually resigned in response to harassment allegations brought by colleagues. In Tel Aviv, the decades-old ban on public transportation on the Sabbath was overturned, in what may prove to be a step of more symbolism than substance – but this in a country where symbol be more weighty by far than substance.

And, in a move that could have profound implications for Israeli democracy, the High Court quashed the law which exempts the ultra-Orthodox from universal military service. More significantly, the court ordered that a new law on the issue be everything that the satin-coated racketeers of theocratic blackmail have come to fear most: egalitarian, proportionate, and consistent with the principles of the laws of a democracy.

It’s Israel Apartheid Week 2012. Time for people who support Israel to tell the truth. Yes, the settlements are an obstacle to peace. Yes, the occupation, which exists to protect the settlements, is the opposite of democracy. Yes, the present government speaks of two states in theory alone.

In the democracy that was the United States in the year 1840, there were those who said that slavery was essential, irreversible, eternal, God’s will. And that people of color and women of all races should not, and therefore would not, be granted the freedoms and rights of full citizenship, that the only good Native American was a dead one.

And, at the same time, there were those who believed that democracy and equality would become law, however dreadful and protracted the process might be, and they were right.

It is 2012. America’s freedoms, its promises of opportunity and openness to immigrants and minorities, are still under attack, still being tested. The answer is not to dismantle America, but to strengthen its freedoms.

All Americans deserve democracy and self-determination. So do both of the native peoples of the Holy Land, Palestinians and Israelis alike. Just as in 1840 America, in this Holy Land there are people working on both sides, quietly, continually, toward that goal. Not freedom for one people at the expense of the other, but freedom and independence for both.

This is the lesson that BDS has yet to learn. And this is why BDS, and Israeli Apartheid Week, are failures.

Without comment. This from the Washingon Post.

Report: Debt will swell under top GOP hopefuls’ tax plans

By Lori Montgomery, Updated: Thursday, February 23, 2:01 AM

The national debt is likely to balloon under tax policies championed by three of the four major Republican candidates for president, according to an independent analysis of tax and spending proposals so far offered by the candidates.

The lone exception is Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who would pair a big reduction in tax rates with even bigger cuts in government services, slicing about $2 trillion from future borrowing.

According to the report — set for release Thursday by U.S. Budget Watch, a project of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich would do the most damage to the nation’s finances, offering tax and spending policies likely to require trillions of dollars in fresh borrowing.

Both men have proposed to sharply cut taxes but have not identified spending cuts sufficient to make up for the lost cash, the report said. By 2021, the debt would rise by about $4.5 trillion under Santorum’s policies and by about $7 trillion under those advocated by Gingrich, pushing the portion of the debt held by outside investors to well over 100 percent of the nation’s economy.

The red ink would gush less heavily under former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the report said — at least under earlier Romney proposals that paired $1.35 trillion in tax cuts with $1.2 trillion in spending reductions and would leave the debt rising on a trajectory that closely tracks current policies.

But that probably changed Wednesday, when Romney tacked to the right and proposed to cut federal income tax rates by an additional 20 percent for all earners — an idea that could easily slash federal revenues by another $3.5 trillion over the next decade, said Edward Kleinbard, a University of Southern California law professor and former chief tax analyst for Congress.

In a late-night addendum Wednesday, analysts for U.S. Budget Watch set a slightly lower price for the new tax provisions, suggesting that Romney’s entire budget framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021.

Only Paul emerged as a fiscal conservative in the report. His policies would cut tax revenues by more than $5 trillion over the next decade, the report said, but the revenue loss would be offset by more than $7 trillion in spending cuts, including deep reductions in defense and federal health programs.

The report marks the first independent attempt to gauge the overall impact of policies proposed by the GOP candidates on the nation’s $15.4 trillion debt.

“As we enter the thick of the campaign season, no one can ignore the debt issue,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which works actively to support debt-reduction efforts in Washington. “This report is designed to inform the public on the fiscal policies put forward by each of the Republican candidates and stimulate debate on this crucial topic.”

The report does not include an analysis of President Obama’s latest budget request, which claims to reduce borrowing by $3 trillion over the next decade. The group plans to do its own analysis of Obama’s request in a future report. The group said it also plans to update the GOP proposals as they evolve and add details.

The report does not seek to offer support to any candidate, and its authors have gone to great lengths to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. For example, the report offers three scenarios for each candidate: a “low-debt scenario” based on the most generous assumptions about vague changes in policy and a “high-debt scenario” that gives credit only for specific policy proposals.

The numbers cited above are taken from the report’s “intermediate-debt scenario,” which “gives credit for non-specified changes to certain part of the budget (for example, reducing non-defense discretionary spending by a percentage)” even if the candidate has not identified specific policy changes.
© The Washington Post Company

 

The Radical Center We Don’t Need

Thomas Friedman is the ultimate central conservative. It does not surprise that he thinks Obama is a leftist. Or that he thinks of himself as a centrist. But his ideas have sold out the American middle-class before and why not again. Furthermore David Walker is from the Peter Peterson Foundation founded to promote the ideas of Peter G. Peterson, a Nixon cohort and former chair of Lehman Bros. who has been writing and promoting extreme austerity (For the poor and middle class, of course.)

Given the failures of Friedman’s ideas, there is no reason to consider his opinion when we have Joe Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and numerous other better economists.

Posted: 02/19/2012 9:39 pm

 Robert Kuttner, Co-founder and co-editor, ‘The American Prospect’

 

Tom Friedman of the New York Times is at it again, claiming that what America needs to fix our economic and political mess is a radically centrist third party. Radical in this case means conservative when it comes to belt-tightening. Friedman in Sunday’s Timesurges a third party “to fill the space between the conservative Santorum (or even Mitt Romney) and the left-of-center Barack Obama.”

Friedman has written this column before.

This time, he has a coyly undeclared candidate, David Walker, formerly president of the austerity-mongering Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Walker, who served in a previous life as head of the General Accounting Office, has been barnstorming around the country, denying that he is running for anything, blaming America’s woes on Social Security, Medicare, and Federal deficits.

Walker even campaigned hard for votes in Politico’s third party preference poll last October, contending that his personal campaign was only to drum up support for the idea of budgetary prudence, and coming in second. But it sure looks to me like the fellow is running for something. And nice to have Friedman as a cheerleader.

Normally, a single-issue crusader like Walker would not get to first base. But this time, a dubious group of Wall Street multi-millionaires has created a vehicle for the likes of Walker called Americans Elect, to reserve a third party spot on the ballot, with the candidate to be selected later. They claim that the goal is to enhance democracy and break partisan deadlock. They also count Friedman as a big booster.

Americans Elect has already raised $22 million, and has qualified its yet-to-be named candidate for the ballot in 14 states including California. With some 6,000 paid and volunteer canvassers, they hope to gain a ballot slot in every state. Later this spring, its 350,000 members will vote via the Internet for their choice of nominee.

However, if the self-appointed steering committee of hedge fund private equity magnates doesn’t like the public’s choice (Bernie Sanders? Ron Paul?), they get to override it. As Ronald Reagan once memorably said, I paid for this microphone. The brand name is Americans Elect, but it might as well be Money Talks.

If anything, Americans Elect and David Walker epitomize all that’s wrong with American democracy. Americans Elect is the creature of multi-millionaires and billionaires, who now have the ability to spend infinite money putting their thumbs on the scales of American democracy thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Walker himself enjoys his enlarged megaphone thanks to the billion dollars that retired private equity mogul Pete Peterson put into the austerity crusade.

The deadlock preventing solutions to America’s real problems is not the result of a symmetrical partisan stand-off. Republicans are surely farther to the right than any mainstream party in American history, but today’s Democrats are hardly left-wing. The policy stalemate is simply the consequence of Republicans blocking everything Obama proposes.

We already have a centrist party. It’s called the Democrats. Obama’s Democrats are to the right of Richard Nixon on most domestic economic issues. If Democrats had not joined Republicans in financial deregulation, we never would have had the economic collapse of 2008.

Contrary to the claims of Friedman, Peterson, and Walker, what ails America is not the long term budget projections of Social Security or even Medicare, but the continuing knock-on effects of the financial collapse of 2007-2008. The weakness of the housing sector, combined with lagging wages and persistently high unemployment, is leading to a prolonged period of deflation. More fiscal austerity would only make things worse.

If you want to balance Social Security’s books long term, the solution is to increase wages — the source of payroll taxes. Had wages increased with the economy’s productivity for the 30 years after 1979 as they had for the 30 years before, Social Security would be in surplus forever. Alternatively, raise the ceiling on which payroll taxes are levied. Social Security has nothing whatever to do with the current economic crisis. And if you want to fix Medicare, fix the rest of the health system, which is the world’s most inefficient because of the dominance of commercial interests.

A secretive independent party financed by hedge fund and private equity plutocrats is not only a blight on the democratic process. It could end up being a dangerous wild card in a momentous election.

If Rick Santorum is the Republican nominee, it’s reasonable to expect an Obama win, maybe even by a landslide. Santorum is just too far to the right of most Americans. But if a Wall Street financed independent is on the ballot, running as a conservative on fiscal issues and a moderate on social issues, there’s no telling how the election might play out. Such a candidate might draw off Republican votes — or could attract independents who would otherwise back Obama.

Ross Perot, the last fiscal conservative to run as a pseudo-populist, was running first for several weeks in the spring of 1992. And he was a lot weirder personally than David Walker. As things worked out, the Perot vote helped Bill Clinton, but it could have gone the other way. In 2000, of course, Nader helped throw the election to George W. Bush.

As the Friedman column suggests, a lot of the pundit class laps up this “radical-center” malarkey. The Washington Post editorial page has been an ongoing commercial for fiscal austerity, and Walker has generally gotten a very respectful press. It was the influence of the deficit hawks that pushed Obama into appointing the late and little-lamented Bowles Simpson commission, which in turn compelled the president to waste nearly a year obsessing about budget balance when he should have stayed focused on recovery.

Austerity, as we see in Europe, is absolutely the wrong economic policy. It feeds on itself, driving the economy deeper into a hole. As GDP sags, wages and tax receipts sag with it, making budget balance a vanishing mirage. The more you cut the deficit, the more the economy falters, and the cycle repeats.

The combination of bad economic advice, a ballot slot bought and paid for by secretive private equity and hedge fund players, and a candidate who became a media figure courtesy of Peter G. Peterson, epitomizes everything messed up about our politics. How fitting that Tom Friedman should be its tribune.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril.