Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

In congressional hearings after the election democrat parliamentarians were scathing in their questioning of "bailout" officials as to when money from the bailout would start flowing to home mortgagees and when officials would start forcing banks into rewriting loans to reasonable interest rates instead of the "criminal" levels that were normal in sub-prime loans. (I "..." criminal because they no doubt were legal in the eyes of most courts, even in NSW, but that's because "possession is 9/10ths of the law" in that the law's main role is to protect the ones who already possess the most capital.) The U.S. Congress seem to be in open revolt against the officials who were explaining the way the W Bush/Paulsen plan was being implemented and why little people would be helped last.

In a credit freeze, like this one, who you help first is more than crucial - it shapes and controls the end result. The W Bush/Paulsen team seem focused on helping the super banks and corporations - still pretending the trickle down effect will take care of everyone else. But those receiving the multi-billions (some $300 billion so far) are not lending them out (except to each other) - they're holding them, waiting to buy out smaller corporations that are rich in assets but short of liquidity (because the big banks are not lending). The ‘trickle down' will come as financial blood from the biggest dinosaurs gorging on the middle banks that haven't been bailed out yet. But this fight is happening on a glacier of defaulting home loans and at the bottom of the glacier there are tens of thousands of small buyers (in small boats) bidding for the homes as the foreclosures drop them off the edge into the ocean. W's team think this is how capitalism should work. "I'm a free market person" W said at the end of the G20 conference.

In the polar oceans off the glacier the warming sea is decreasing the numbers of krill, that whales and other sea animals feed upon, and is increasing the number of jelly-fish-like ‘bubbles', that help the absorption of excess CO2 but have no nutrient value. A bad-good reality. On TV last week we've seen the "Atmospheric Brown Cloud" the permanent pollution cloud stretching from New Delhi across India, Thailand, China, Japan, out past Hawaii. They say that it could be gotten rid of in just a few weeks but, then, the global temperature would jump by over one degree because the dirt in this cloud is shading vast areas of the planet. Another ecological bad-good reality. There'll be lots more of them.

But up top the giant corporate dinosaurs disregard the fragile nature of the glacier they are fighting over, disregard the 9,000 homes being auctioned off every day, disregard the small businesses that need operating loans, disregard the human misery created by poverty, even disregard shipping letters of guarantee (that allow trade to occur) and build their war chests for devouring bargains while the economy keeps collapsing. Look at Citibank they get a $300 billion guarantee to cover high risk loans and the same day say they're now going out to buy more high risk loans going cheap - as Pres W Magoo would say "ah, the smell of capitalism, that's what makes America great".

Over 9,000 homes a day in the USA but who's counting .... Well a lot of people actually. It's strange and sad that America is the worst and the best of countries (worst + best does not = best). There are so many intelligent and caring people but so many wrongs that it's daunting. Large numbers (000,000s) of loans have been renegotiated but vast numbers remain on their downward slide. Now America has the terrible inter-regnum where the worst president in modern history remains in charge destroying America's wealth and future. Hundreds of thousands of people will be evicted in the weeks before Obama takes over and that's why the US Congress was in revolt last week, attacking the "bailout" officials, desperate to not hear a president say "I'm a free market person".

Even no less a capitalist than Steve (Rich List) Forbes has said people should accept that Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac are now owned by the US govt and should start offering 4.5% interest loans to stabilize the housing market - help people at the bottom of the housing glacier create a bottom price to save their homes. Even if they're not paying off much capital and it's similar to renting at least they have their own home, it's not sitting empty, being wasted or looted and it's like the water can start to refreeze into sea-ice at the bottom of the glacier, protecting the rest of the glacier that hasn't already melted.

W won't do it because there's still too much money to be made by his friends in this crisis (like Citibank) but hopefully, after another hundred thousand homes are lost, Obama will. And after he gets that started he can get onto the real problem - stopping the real glaciers from sliding down into the oceans. Saving homes from foreclosure is easy compared to getting America and China (& a few others) to stop destroying the world.

Two victories in a single month. Amid the encircling economic gloom, it's hard to believe we deserve such good news. First, of course, Barack Obama's election win. And now Iraq's unexpected deal with the American government for the occupation to end at last.

Debated by the Iraqi parliament today, the agreement has been virtually ignored in many left-liberal circles as well as by most of the mainstream American media. We are so inured to thinking that the US will always get its way in Iraq, thanks to its enormous investment of troops and treasure, that any potentially contrary development is dismissed. The US has agreed to leave Iraq. "You must be joking," comes the response. "Why would they build 14 mega-bases if they didn't intend to stay for decades?" The US is allowing Iraqi courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by American troops. "Give me a break. You can't believe that," I hear the sneer.

Well, look at the agreement's text. It is remarkable for the number and scope of the concessions that the Iraqi government has managed to get from the Bush administration. They amount to a series of U-turns that spell the complete defeat of the neoconservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East.

The title gives the game away - Agreement on the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq and the Organisation of Their Activities during Their Temporary Presence in Iraq. Remember how Bush (and his ally, Gordon Brown) constantly rejected any "artificial timetables" for pulling out the troops. Everything had to be "conditions-based", meaning that no dates could be given in advance since all depended on whether Iraq's own forces were ready to fill the gap. It was an elastic formula that allowed Washington to delay a withdrawal for ever.

That has gone by the board. The agreement stipulates that "all US forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31 2011". More remarkably, all combat troops will leave Iraqi towns and villages and go back to base by the end of June next year. Pause for a moment and take that in. Six years and three months after the invasion, Iraqi streets will be a US-free zone again.

The drop in the ransom price has been confirmed by a number of sources, the discount is a bit less confirmed and the cut-rate by Amex is obviously false because American Express never gives a cut-rate on anything.

Part of the problem, for the pirates, is that Sydney and other cities have regained cheap petrol for a little while. However the general point is solid - the pirates have to reduce their ransom because the world economy, the oil price and even pirates faith in the future are all falling.

Before president-elect Obama's cabinet is named -- even before we know who the next Senators from Minnesota or Georgia will be -- jockeying for position on 2009 climate legislation is well underway on Capitol Hill.   Detailed intellectual cases and functioning coalitions are getting built now, not just for the idea that we need robust climate legislation fast - that's already widely accepted and anticipated in Washington - but for which specific mechanisms will deliver the biggest, fastest impact on carbon emissions and the economy. 

Significantly, these discussions aren't all taking place behind closed doors, but in full public view, for example at a public Hill briefing December 9 with carbon tax supporters like NASA scientist James Hansen, economists Gilbert Metcalf and Robert Shapiro, Canadian public affairs expert James Hoggan, and Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn., 1st district), who has just been elected chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and who introduced an early piece of carbon tax legislation into the House.  The public can attend, along with Congressional members and staff -- details here.

If introducing a new tax on carbon seems like a quixotic political battle in a time of historic economic and fiscal crisis, then you're out of touch.  The economic crisis has in fact given it a big boost, and in this crisis-ridden political environment, the carbon tax is an increasingly formidable competitor to cap-and-trade schemes.

The latter work by creating trillions of dollars' worth of complex, tradeable instruments, and public faith in market gurus to make such trading efficient, or in government agencies to regulate them, is at an all-time low. 

Critics point out lots of places to hide in the cumbersome trading scheme, witness 800-pages of special interest potlatches in the DOA Warner Lieberman bill, whereas a carbon tax is as inexorable as...taxes. 

Crisis-driven volatility in oil prices has proven what advocates of gasoline taxes and energy taxes have said all along:  price spikes may come and go, but if we don't somehow tax wasteful use of carbon fuels, the highs will just put windfalls in the pockets of oil producers and do nothing for American interests, either for energy independence or for getting control of our emissions.   A carbon tax would put an effective floor under the price of gas, help smooth volatility, cut into the windfall profits of producers during price spikes, and as prices fall off the highs, keep oil consumers from going, as president-elect Obama recently said, from shock back into trance.

Perhaps most appealing of all amid the economic crisis is the fact that a carbon tax could be kept revenue-neutral.  That would allow us to pay as we go to curb emissions; and wouldn't entail any huge government outlays or bureaucracies to get addicted to the revenue.  Along with the increase in energy prices, carbon tax revenues would be big, but the money would be given right back to taxpayers, whether in the form of direct payments like Alaskans get for oil production, or in the form of a progressive tax cuts like cutting or eliminating payroll taxes, as progressives like Al Gore and even conservatives like T. Boone Pickens have proposed. 

Payroll taxes are the biggest, most regressive taxes 80% of Americans pay, and a big drag on employment since they artificially raise hiring costs.  Cutting them would both put money back into the pockets of middle-class and working-class families, and take the self-imposed brakes off job creation. 

If you're President-elect Obama and you've promised to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, and to lower taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year, while finding the means for a meaningful economic stimulus and major reductions in carbon emissions, that has got to sound good. 

If you're a concerned citizen