In case it wasn’t made perfectly clear in recent months how the American political system actually operates on its uppermost levels, here we have an object lesson to consider: Upset by the notion that the Obama administration might be working on regulating the financial industry next, some of Wall Street’s bigwigs are now focusing their funding efforts on the GOP. —KA
The New York Times:
Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.
Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Stree... (continue reading)
In case it wasn’t made perfectly clear in recent months how the American political system actually operates on its uppermost levels, here we have an object lesson to consider: Upset by the notion that the Obama administration might be working on regulating the financial industry next, some of Wall Street’s bigwigs are now focusing their funding efforts on the GOP. —KA
The New York Times:
Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.
Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.
“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.
Read more
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February 8, 2010 Wall Street ‘Fat Cats’ Revolt, Send Money to GOP
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A Tired & Bankrupt Democratic Party & A Dysfunctional Administration
As 2009 has given way to 2010, chants of ‘Yes, we can’ have given away to groans of “What the hell?” There is no question the turn of events in the last month or two has dealt a severe blow to American liberalism. The Democratic Party, which thought itself on the verge of creating a new, lasting coalition after eight years of Republican misrule and the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 propelled them to power, now find themselves with their backs against the wall. Barack Obama simultaneously managed to dishearten his base while mobilizing his conservative opposition. This has led to a perfect political storm in which nothing of real substance has changed from the Bush years, yet somehow the fans of Rush Li... (continue reading)
A Tired & Bankrupt Democratic Party & A Dysfunctional Administration
As 2009 has given way to 2010, chants of ‘Yes, we can’ have given away to groans of “What the hell?” There is no question the turn of events in the last month or two has dealt a severe blow to American liberalism. The Democratic Party, which thought itself on the verge of creating a new, lasting coalition after eight years of Republican misrule and the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 propelled them to power, now find themselves with their backs against the wall. Barack Obama simultaneously managed to dishearten his base while mobilizing his conservative opposition. This has led to a perfect political storm in which nothing of real substance has changed from the Bush years, yet somehow the fans of Rush Limbaugh believe Socialism has been imposed on the nation.
Even though many progressives knew little about then-Senator Barack Obama, we were so disgusted with the Bush Administration and nearly thirty years of Republican domination (in one form or another) we were willing to give Obama a chance to bring his “change” to America. As it turned out, those of us who were so excited about the historic moment of electing America’s first African American President had seriously deluded ourselves. Nothing in Obama’s brief voting record as a U.S. Senator indicated he was a politician with any cojones whatsoever. Obama did not wait long to disappoint. Even before taking office, he began choosing for his staff and cabinet the same kind of people Hillary Clinton would have chosen. Then there was, of course, the Rod Blagojevich scandal, which reminded us all of the corrupt political culture that has pervaded the city from whence Obama cut his political teeth. Citing all the betrayals Obama, in my view, has made since taking office would take up too much space: From the choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary to Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff to the decision to conduct a surge in Afghanistan, Obama has really bent over backward to piss liberal voters off.
Republicans have a different view. Somehow, they think Obama’s stimulus plan constituted ‘socialism’, even though it was composed of only slightly more money spent than Bush’s bank bailout in 2008. The conservatives then screamed about a “government takeover of health care”, even though the health care plan proposed had far more input from insurance and drug companies than it did from followers of Marx or Lenin. The one issue the Republicans are correct about is that all the additional social spending has driven up the federal deficit, but it is quite odd the chronic deficits never bothered conservatives much when they were being run up by the previous Administration. Nevertheless, as little evidence as there is to support the conservative standpoint, their views have held out, especially amongst independents, who are flocking back to Republicans. The proof of the independent defection to the GOP was demonstrated by the political earthquake that occurred recently when the Massachusetts Senate seat left open by the death of Ted Kennedy went to a Republican, Scott Brown, effectively killing health care reform and putting Obama’s Presidency on life support. The loss signals a virtual slaughter of Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. If Obama goes by Bill Clinton’s playbook, he’ll soon choose a Dick Morris-style sleazebag political consultant and bend over backwards to Corporate America (as if he could bend anymore than he already has) in order to amass a war chest meant to destroy any serious competition. In the meantime, he’ll sign legislation further moving him and his Party from any pretense of progressive ideals. In other words, Obama will continue to sell us all down the river, only at a faster rate. Thus, the Democratic base that organized so well to help win Obama the election will be even further marginalized.
Adding insult to injury, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of cash to support or defeat candidates in elections. This means that, soon, politicians in the Democratic Party are to become even less likely to fight for real reform (if such a thing is possible), as they become cowed by the prospect of multimillion-dollar smear campaigns to defeat them, the likes of which happened to John Kerry in the 2004 election, only worse. Liberals will be implored to stay on board: We will be warned that America has turned rightward and more bellicose and we must support the Democrats as the most progressive choice that is politically possible.
This citizen, for one, has had enough and would rather engage in the audacity of real hope. Since I first cut my political teeth during the Iran/Contra days in the mid-80s, the Democrats have been putting out the same basic story year after year and election after election: “Vote for Democrats, because the Republicans are extremists.” The scare tactic has worked. Democrats have taken gobs of corporate money, screwed its electoral base on nearly every issue, and gotten away with it, election after election, simply because much of their voting base is scared to death of the big, bad GOP. But I’m not so sure they’ll be able to get away with it anymore. Progressive voters really have nothing more to lose by supporting a third party movement. We have finally seen what it would be like to have a Democratic majority in both Houses, including a filibuster-proof Senate. For all our trouble, all our organizing, precinct walking, letter writing and blog posting in support of Obama, we got nothing. Nada. No end to the war. No cuts in the military budget. No restoration of civil liberties. No accountability for Wall Street and no health care reform. Barack Obama has remained steadfastly loyal to the wealthy elite that largely funded his campaign.
Although it is easy to get discouraged, Obama’s failures might also be a prospect for long-term change. In some ways, these current times remind me of the fateful election of 1992, when Americans’ desperate cry for change almost led to the nation’s first independent President. That year, I supported former California Governor Jerry Brown, who ran for the Democratic Party nomination on a rather radical platform of taking no more than $100 from any single contributor. Frustration on the Left was expressed through the Brown candidacy; on the Right, anger was expressed via Patrick Buchanan. When Buchanan and Brown both flamed out, H. Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, seemed to unite the anger of Left and Right and Middle, and seemed a good bet to go all the way to the White House. Until just before the Democratic convention in July of 1992, the Texas billionaire was leading in the polls; then a series of political missteps led him to suddenly drop out of the race and virtually hand the election to Clinton. I was in New York at the time, and Perot’s timing could not have been better for the Democrats: When the dust had settled, a sluggish Democratic Party was re-energized and suddenly grabbed the mantle of reform, pulling a majority of Perot voters into their camp. Although Perot re-entered the race later that year, the damage had been done, and Clinton was elected President.
Being one of those progressives who swore never to vote for Clinton, I was virtually strong-armed by progressive friends that Bubba was the only real option. Having stained myself with the Clinton vote, I tried to make up for it by keeping up on my commitment for change within the Democratic Party. Working with other local volunteers from the Brown for President Campaign, we formed a political group- called We The People–that hoped to be a model for a national movement. Former Governor Brown himself attended several of our meetings, and at one of them, pitched to our group the idea of putting an initiative together for the City of San Francisco that would build on his Presidential bid and limit campaign contributions to $100 per individual. Our organization had some dedicated signature gatherers who had already collected enough signatures to put a public transportation initiative on the ballots for 1993, and we were confident they would have done so for the campaign finance initiative.
Unfortunately, the Jerry Brown, who ran against the Democratic Party establishment in 1992 eventually caved in to pressure from labor unions, who did not like the $100 initiative. It turned out, it was not only corporations that were against campaign finance reform, and this was a rude awakening for me. Brown, who is now once again a prolific fundraiser, soon convinced our We the People chapter we would be better off working in a coalition of labor and union activists to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He asked us to pull the petition and we the grassroots organizers foolishly obeyed the calculating politician. Against our better judgment, our organization steered away from the core issue of the corrupting influence of money in politics and became just another conventional political group making compromises. The dropped initiative caused a bitter internal battle, which eventually led to our dissolution. We’ll never know if the $100 campaign contribution initiative would have shaken up San Francisco politics because it was killed in its infancy.
The lessons I learned from the experiences of 1992 are many but one key lesson I took away is to not to always look for change to come from above. If ordinary citizens always depend on a Jerry Brown, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan or any one politician to tell us what we need to do, we are setting ourselves up for being betrayed. I initially found Obama’s grassroots organizing appealing, but later have come to realize that his people are too attached to his persona, and not to the ideals of the Republic. This is the one enticing aspect I find about the so-called “Tea Parties”: This movement is not attached to a single political personality, even though its origin may be more Astroturf than real grass roots activism. If something similar could percolate around a new progressive, antiwar movement, and would refuse to let itself again be co-opted by the hopelessly sleazy and corrupt Democrats, it might be a real force for change. Many of us screwed up badly by buying into the fantasy that the Democratic Party can be reformed. Hats off to those individuals who refused to drink the Kool Aid: Sibel Edmonds and Cindy Sheehan amongst them. The truth seems to be that change will only come, in the long term, if citizen activists, tens of thousands of us, remain detached from the mainstream parties and do not get caught in the game of strategic politics.
Will 2012 be the year a truly independent, reformist movement breaks loose in American politics? One can only hope so. Whether that is the case or not, I personally believe it is time to dump Obama and the Democrats and start working change from the outside. Jerry Brown, in one of his more lucid moments, told Frank Sesno of CNN in 1992 that when one is inside a fish house, it is nearly impossible to clean out the stench. Unfortunately, the stench of a cannery is like perfume compared to that coming from the tired, bankrupt Democratic Party and the dysfunctional Obama Administration.
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by Chris HedgesThe conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.( click title for more )
by Lisa karpova and Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey for Pravda.Ru
How things have changed. The People Power colour revolutions have spluttered and now faded away as reality starts to bite, as it becomes increasingly apparent that people are not easily duped by pie-in-the-sky promises and crucially, as it becomes blatantly obvious that each nation occupies a cultural space that has to be respected. It therefore comes as no surprise that Viktor Yanukovych has won the Ukrainian Presidential election against Yulia Tymoshenko. And even less of a surprise that the darling of the West, the pock-marked face of the Orange Revolution, outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko is a political nobody in no-man's land. The Ukrainians did not want to join NATO, the Ukrainians did not want to be colonised by the E... (continue reading)
by Lisa karpova and Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey for Pravda.Ru
How things have changed. The People Power colour revolutions have spluttered and now faded away as reality starts to bite, as it becomes increasingly apparent that people are not easily duped by pie-in-the-sky promises and crucially, as it becomes blatantly obvious that each nation occupies a cultural space that has to be respected. It therefore comes as no surprise that Viktor Yanukovych has won the Ukrainian Presidential election against Yulia Tymoshenko. And even less of a surprise that the darling of the West, the pock-marked face of the Orange Revolution, outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko is a political nobody in no-man's land. The Ukrainians did not want to join NATO, the Ukrainians did not want to be colonised by the European Union. They want jobs, they want schools, they want hospitals, they want to eat.
The first results from exit polls would indicate a clear victory for Viktor Yanukovych with around 49.42% of the vote, with Yulia Timoshenko garnering around 44.46%, a lead of five points. Will we once again witness a sea of protesters in Independence Square, Kiev, chanting "Razom nas bahato! Nas ne podolaty!" (Together we are many! We cannot be defeated!), as was the case in November 2004? In a word, no. Independence Square is empty, the Orange revolution has run out of steam; in fact it never came to the boil.
Why? Because it never amounted to anything more than hype created by meddlesome Western influences which wanted Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine and the Ukrainians were used by the arms lobby and Yushchenko was the pawn, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
President Viktor Yushchenko stepped on thin ice the final days of the campaign: He named a controversial nationalist a "Hero of Ukraine." Only after collecting a humiliating 5% of the vote in the first round of the elections did he make his declaration. In Ukraine's most avidly Western-leaning, anti-Russian city, news that the rare honor had been bestowed on Stepan Bandera was met with jubilation. Disgust and dismay swept the Russian-speaking provinces, where Bandera is remembered for what he really was: a Nazi collaborator.
In a letter to Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, the Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed "deepest revulsion" over the decision to honor Bandera, "who collaborated with the Nazis at the beginning of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others."
Yushchenko has been a petty, inept, corrupt dictator. He lost almost all voter support during a long series of feuds with prime minister and one-time ally,Yulia Tymoshenko. They both engaged in a competition of who could undo the other's actions. The result: total disaster and imminent economic collapse for Ukraine.
In the January election, President Yushchenko received less than six per cent of the vote. For some reason. Firstly, Viktor Yushchenko is an academic. He belongs behind the cloistered walls of a University, not in real life. His foray into the real world saw him destroy any political credibility and saw his power base shrink from half of the electorate to a handful of people with poor judgement. Hence his total isolation from the people, his isolation in parliament.
Viktor Yushchenko's idea for the Ukrainian people was to take pot-shots at Moscow, hoping in the process to carve out a national identity. Blind to the problems that his pro-NATO stance would cause not only with Moscow but among the Ukrainians themselves (66% of the population are strongly opposed to any notion of joining the Organization), blind to the effects his russophobic measures would have (33% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their mother tongue), blind to the fury his move to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol would cause, the result of his failed policies is staring him in the face.
Yushchenko's foolish policies saw Ukraine lose its energy subsidies from Russia and saw his country humiliated in the international community as the Ukrainians started stealing Russian energy supplies in transit to Western Europe. He armed Georgia in its murderous act of aggression against Russians, siding with the war criminal Saakashvili.
At home, he promised economic prosperity but shamefully mismanaged the economy to such an extent that the Hryvnia lost half its value and managed to become indebted to the IMF, receiving loans which always have neo-conservative and anti-social strings attached.
Where now?
Tymoshenko's calls of foul play have been dismissed as officials said they had not received any reports of serious violations during the voting. "The second round got underway smoothly, without blatant violations of public order," Volodymyr Mayevsky, the head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's public security department, told a news conference in Kyiv.
Petulant Tymoshenko called for street demonstrations, but apparently Ukrainians have had enough of her crying wolf constantly. The results of responding to her calls have turned out quite badly for them.
As all exit polls indicated no less than a 5 percent advantage for Viktor Yanukovich in the election, Tymoshenko's threats and sour grapes might throw the election into the courts. The Orange Revolution spelt five years of paralysis for Ukraine. It was an abject failure. ------- Commentary: this is yet another opportunity to appreciate the fate which Venezuela and Iran have avoided thanks primarily to the people of these two countries which, unlike the Ukrainians, did not buy into the propaganda of the US color-coded revolution machine (check out Eva Gollinger's latest piece Colored Revolutions: A New Form of Regime Change, Made in USA for more info on this). Does this mean that the era of color-coded revolutions is finally over? I think that such optimism is still very premature.
Under the Obomb'ya Administration all the "imperial" budgets (aggression, subversion, covert operations, terrorism, sabotage, etc.) have gone up, not down. Furthermore, the Empire already had two major successes in less than one year: Honduras and Chile have fallen back into the ranks of US client states. Add to this that both Venezuela and Iran are showing signs of economic difficulties (mainly due to the falling prices of oil) and the outlook looks bleak.
Frankly, I think that both Venezuela and Iran will be tough to crack as both countries have a powerful security establishment which is fully aware that it is the target to a total struggle for survival. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that the CIA is running a huge and systematic program to co-opt key figures in the security structures of Iran and Venezuela. Both Iran and Venezuela are hard to invade, so a direct military invasion does not seem a doable option. That does, however, not mean that all "kinetic" options are off the table. In Iran a military aggression could be justified by the "nuclear" canard, in Venezuela by "support for terrorism". One thing is beyond any doubt: the Empire is clearly taking all the necessary step to prepare the region around Iran and Venezuela for a major military clash. That does not mean that the Empire will necessarily strike out, but it does mean that this option is still very much on the table and executable at any moment. (show less)
I’m not the one saying it–that would be Robert Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post. The sole point of Samuelson’s recent opinion piece is that Ben Bernanke’s job is to increase confidence.
Like much but not all error, there is a grain of truth to this point. Thanks to John Maynard Keynes (whom Samuelson cites), George Akerlof, Robert Shiller, and any number of economics experiments, we know that confidence has an effect on behavior and hence on the economy. Too much overconfidence can fuel a bubble and too much pessimism can exacerbate a slowdown.
But to leap from there to the conclusion that the job of the chair of the Federal Reserve is to increase confidence–”Ben Bernanke has, or ought to have, a very simple agenda: improve confidence”–is just silly.
The Federal... (continue reading)
I’m not the one saying it–that would be Robert Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post. The sole point of Samuelson’s recent opinion piece is that Ben Bernanke’s job is to increase confidence.
Like much but not all error, there is a grain of truth to this point. Thanks to John Maynard Keynes (whom Samuelson cites), George Akerlof, Robert Shiller, and any number of economics experiments, we know that confidence has an effect on behavior and hence on the economy. Too much overconfidence can fuel a bubble and too much pessimism can exacerbate a slowdown.
But to leap from there to the conclusion that the job of the chair of the Federal Reserve is to increase confidence–”Ben Bernanke has, or ought to have, a very simple agenda: improve confidence”–is just silly.
The Federal Reserve has two important jobs: (1) set monetary policy and (2) regulate bank holding companies and enforce financial consumer protection statutes. These affect the real economy in very concrete ways, not just via their impact on confidence. Saying that the objective of bank regulation should be to improve confidence is not just silly, it’s destructive. If your goal were to improve confidence, you would never restrict predatory lending practices (since they are good for banks and for asset prices) or crack down on undercapitalized banks (since that would reduce confidence in the banking system). I would submit that the first item on Ben Bernanke’s agenda should be doing the job mandated by Congress.
Equally quarter-baked is the idea that Bernanke should go out and talk up the economy. Even if we agree that too much or too little confidence can be a bad thing, how do we know that the current level of confidence is too low? Samuelson says that 47% of Americans rated the economy as “poor” in mid-January–with unemployment at 10% (now 9.7%), I’d say that seems low if anything. Is it really a good thing for people to be more optimistic than the economic fundamentals warrant? That’s not a rhetorical question–think back over the past decade.
If Samuelson’s point is that Bernanke should do a good job because that will make people feel more confident in the Federal Reserve, then that’s virtually a tautology, and certainly not worth writing eight hundred words about. If his point is that Bernanke should seek to improve confidence as an independent objective (implied by everything in the article itself), then that’s nutty.
Then there are the additional bits of silliness, like this one: “The administration’s decision to push health-care legislation was a blunder. It sowed conflict and was so time-consuming that it paralyzed action on other issues. Business planning and the willingness to expand have suffered, because companies find it harder to predict their costs and returns.” Businesses are one of the major interest groups supporting health care reform, because they bear the brunt of increasing health care costs, and they face the tough choice every year between increasing their personnel costs and cutting back on health care benefits. Most companies would like nothing better than the development of a viable alternative to the employer-based health care system. And what data could possibly exist that would back up the assertion that businesses have expanded slower because of health care reform, as opposed to, say, reduced availability of credit?
But I’ve already given Samuelson’s column more time than it’s worth.
By James Kwak
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Bank of America Looks Like First of Many
Michael Collins
“This merger (Bank of America and Merrill Lynch) is a classic example of how the actions of our nation’s largest financial institutions led to the near-collapse of our financial system,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large. This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules. In the end, they committed an enormous fraud and American taxpayers ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds.” (Image)
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo’s complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court, County of New York agains... (continue reading)
Bank of America Looks Like First of Many
Michael Collins
“This merger (Bank of America and Merrill Lynch) is a classic example of how the actions of our nation’s largest financial institutions led to the near-collapse of our financial system,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large. This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules. In the end, they committed an enormous fraud and American taxpayers ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds.” (Image)
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo’s complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court, County of New York against the Bank of America and two former top executives has the potential to push that too big to fail entity off the edge of a very steep cliff. The charges of massive fraud are based on a compelling and exhaustive filing on February 4.
A trial will likely involve testimony by the current Bank of America CEO and President Brian Moynihan against defendants Kenneth Lewis, the bank’s former CEO and board chairman, former chief financial officer (CFO) Joseph L. Price, and the bank itself. Price is currently in charge of BofA’s credit card division.
The complaint charges fraud before, during and after the bank’s merger with struggling brokerage firm Merrill Lynch in late 2008. The fraud cost bank shareholders and citizens billions of dollars. This is the first major case brought against our nation’s largest financial institutions. These are the same financial institutions and executives that nearly destroyed the economy.
Cuomo’s press release states clearly that Lewis and the bank are examples of a much larger problem. It appears to be a leading indicator of future actions by the New York attorney general. Why else would Cuomo have generalized about institutions (plural) in his statement about this particular case?
If Cuomo succeeds in taking down one of the toughest guys on the block, he’ll make a point to the rest of the crew: you’re next, get ready to cooperate. Many of the key perpetrators are located in Cuomo’s jurisdiction, although Bank of America (BofA) is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Clearly, there are others in line for some New York style law and order.
Cuomo is joined in this action by Niel Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP provides the billions in bailouts to bogus bankers and corporations. There’s a credit line of $23.7 trillion should it be needed for even more bailouts. Ever wonder why you can’t get a loan? They’ve taken all the money.
Charges and remedies
The bank and the two named executives are charged with failing to inform the bank’s board of directors and shareholders of the major red ink on Merrill Lynch’s books prior to the merger. CEO Lewis, CFO Price, and other BofA officers and professionals chose to hide $16 billion of Merrill Lynch known pre tax losses prior to board approval. That’s fraud, plain and simple. Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009
The complaint also charges that the same parties with strong arming the federal government for $20 billion to cover Merrill’s debt by threatening to back out of the merger if the money wasn’t forthcoming. Then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had encouraged BofA to acquire Merrill, apparently without a rider that BofA would get billions in the process to cover their fraudulent business practices.
The lawsuit seeks two overriding remedies. The two named defendants and the entire Bank of America are enjoined from “any conduct, conspiracy, contract, or agreement, and from adopting or following any practice, plan, program, scheme, artifice or device similar to, or having a purpose and effect similar to, the conduct complained of above.”
In addition, the defendants and the bank are to “disgorge all gains, pay all penalties and pay all restitution and damages caused, directly or indirectly, by the fraudulent and deceptive acts complained of herein”
These and the other remedies promise a degree of justice and, quite frankly retribution for the mess caused by the defendants. An unnamed and unintended remedy could be serious damage to the good will value of the Bank of America. The spectacle of a conviction of the bank and a former CEO and current division head for fraud would have a devastating effect on public confidence. Too big to fail may be a notion upended once and for all by a guilty verdict.
Witness Lineup – It’s Bank of America versus Bank of America
Andrew Caffrey and Todd Wallach of the Boston Globe, hinted that Bank of America president and CEO, Brian T. Moynihan will be a key witness for the prosecution. The Globe article notes that the current BofA chief, “who was involved in negotiations (for the Merrill acquisition) as the bank’s general counsel, was not charged.” Later in the same article, they quote Cuomo as saying, Moynihan, “has been candid with our office with respect to the roles he played after becoming general counsel.”
Put simply, Moynihan was central to the merger, knew about the fraud, participated in it, but didn’t blow the whistle. All of that is established in Cuomo’s complaint. He cooperated with Cuomo and wasn’t indicted. His name will be at the top of the attorney general’s witness list, no doubt.
As if that’s not bad enough for the bank, defendant Joseph L. Price, former CFO, is currently heading up Bank of America’s credit card division.
Should Moynihan testify, we’ll see BofA’s current CEO helping Cuomo convict his predecessor of fraud. Moynihan’s testimony will also argue for a conviction of his current head of credit card operations. Since Bank of America is charged, we’ll also see its current CEO plus the “Relevant Parties” described in the complaint testifying that the corporation was also guilty of fraud. Many of the 35 Relevant Parties named are current or former BofA executives or board members.
Other key witnesses may include Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Barnanke and former Treasury Secretary and TARP architect Henry Paulson, They encouraged the Bank of America – Merrill Lynch merger as part of their efforts to prevent an alleged financial meltdown at the end of the Bush administration..
Charlie Gasparino of the Daily Beast reports that the defense counsel, former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, wants the case dismissed. If not, Gasparino says that “one person close to the defense” claims that White will call Paulson and Bernanke to testify. Cuomo has the facts and obviously believes Paulson and Bernanke on the sequence of events leading to these charges. Absent a “Perry Mason” moment by the defense, their testimony holds no surprises or benefits for the defendants. Mary Jo White has little or nothing at this point other than bluster.
Justice for the people?
It’s been ten years since Congress and President Clinton freed Wall Street and the major banks to open a big casino on Wall Street. That resulted in ruinous schemes like the real estate bubble. It’s been five years since Alan Greenspan told citizens to get an adjustable rate mortgage, cash out the equity in their homes, and jump into the stock market. It’s been over a year since Wall Street and the big banks nearly ruined the economy, cost citizens jobs, savings, retirements, and countless other hard earned gains through a variety of no-win schemes sold as solid investments.
Nothing of any importance has been done to regulate the financial industry since the bailouts. Prior to the Cuomo-Barofsky charges, there have been no major cases brought against the perpetrators of our current troubles.
Hopefully, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started what will become an era of accountability for those at the very top. This should be about more than just one case. It’s an example of top down accountability.
May the bank, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Price have the speediest of trials and the absolute maximum penalties should they be found guilty.
They knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
END
This article may be reproduced in full or part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.
Next Monday – Cuomo’s Lock Down – The Case in Detail
Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009
Rep. Kucinich Grills Ken Lewis on Fed Emails, June 11, 2009
Rep. Cummings Questions Brian Moynihan Regarding the BofA/Merrill Lynch Merger, Nov 17, 2009
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Whatever grim realities The Great American Future yields for influence-deprived nobodies like me, I'm just happy to not be The Pragmatic Shoeshine Boy for America's Torture Masters, a large, and - contrary to fussy assertions - bipartisan club with enthusiastic members in every branch of government.
By golly, this time next year, when I'm starving to death under a crumbling bridge, I can at least take comfort in knowing I never sunk so low as to assert the nation's most distinguished, accomplished criminals - my political overlords - should be exempt from justice. Optimism is hard work, but, like any other narcotic - except for, say, Darvocet - occasionally worth pursuing. Admittedly, as silver linings go, it's a shitty one. But it's something!
Whatever grim realities The Great American Future yields for influence-deprived nobodies like me, I'm just happy to not be The Pragmatic Shoeshine Boy for America's Torture Masters, a large, and - contrary to fussy assertions - bipartisan club with enthusiastic members in every branch of government.
By golly, this time next year, when I'm starving to death under a crumbling bridge, I can at least take comfort in knowing I never sunk so low as to assert the nation's most distinguished, accomplished criminals - my political overlords - should be exempt from justice. Optimism is hard work, but, like any other narcotic - except for, say, Darvocet - occasionally worth pursuing. Admittedly, as silver linings go, it's a shitty one. But it's something!
Joe Conason's latest article/proposal/capitulation/rationalization, PARDON THE BUSH MISCREANTS, has been a long time coming. Anyone who ever visited The Carnival of Horror more than once (you know, back when I used to come here myself) is already keenly aware of how all this sanctimonious fakery is destined to play out.
Conason, covering for Senator Pat Leahy and the rest of the millionaire Democratic Establishment, supports immunity for torturecrats if they spill the beans to a legislative body which is itself comprised of torturers, kleptocrats, war mongers and gutless fucking cowards who, by all rights, should be tried and jailed for their recklessness, fecklessness and all-around douchebaggery.
"We don't have the votes for total victory, so, uh, fuck it."
It's a familiar refrain - no, make that a mantra - among those on The Pseudo Left, i.e. the only Left in this nationalist gut heap we call a country. It includes all you sentimental fuckwits who got weepy on Inauguration Day. Hope-addled suckers. Abuse junkies. Perpetual victims. Deniers. Chumps. Friends. (Yes, I still love you. Even though you don't listen. Or look. Or learn. Anything. Ever. You gullible fucking morons.)
Having the votes or not having the votes is presented by The Serious People as the sole consideration for those "tough decisions" facing our elected demigods. In reality, it is something else entirely: a tried-and-true distraction from the moral bankruptcy which defines our collective authoritarian mindset; a factually correct lie. And whether the subject is torture or impeachment or subsidies for new flavors of ice cream, The Mantra is nothing more than a pathetic rationalization used to obscure Americans' tireless acquiescence to, and de facto support of, The Fascist Plague which continues to drive our delirious nation far beyond the boundaries of reason, sanity and redemption.
LETTER:
Shame On The Shameless Funny how polls are only relevant when they can be molded into a net plus for America's political elite. What disturbs me about the idea of so-called truth and reconciliation for Bush-Cheney, Inc. and its habitual enablers in the U.S. Congress is how predictable it is. I've seen this coming for years, and, yet, despite the complete lack of surprise, it is absolutely infuriating to watch this ridiculous charade. Same old bullshit to the Nth degree. There are those who govern and those who are governed, and, by God and Country, the former are intrinsically superior to the latter. Those Who Govern use the law to steal from us directly and indirectly. They pack off men and women to kill and be killed, either to enrich themselves or purely for political expedience. Their disdain for the rule of law to which the rest of us are subjected, often in brutal and ruthless fashion, is beyond dispute. They unleash their monsters of choice however they see fit, whenever they see fit. And they - Those Who Govern - do it all because there's always someone like Joe Conason, Et Al, to protect them from the just consequences of their crimes. This isn't just about The Bush Administration, Joe, and you damn well know it. If Leahy or anyone else on Capitol Hill - our State Actors who, for the last eight years, have perfected the art of moral theatrics and gutlessness - care to prevent the abuses which have stained and strained this country to its breaking point, they need only confess their own failures with a full acknowledgment of COMPLICITY. Sadly, Joe Conason, your brain - and, along with it, your sense of justice and basic human decency - is no less rotten than those of your Beltway pals. What you're advocating is not pragmatism. It's forfeiture. Some things are worth fighting for, even when the odds do not favor a painless victory - or any victory at all. You're an abject failure as an American citizen, Conason. As a journalist, you're about average. Draw your own goddamn conclusions. -- Arvin Hill [Read Arvin Hill's other letters] Permalink Thursday, February 12, 2009 08:13 PM PST
The Baader-Meinhof Complex inspired a terror double-feature over the weekend: The Weather Underground followed by Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. Fueled by absinthe and Raisinets, I marveled at how tactically stupid these domestic commandoes were. I'm sure there was a certain thrill to playing outlaw, at least until your comrades blew themselves up or were burned to death under a hail of automatic SWAT fire. Then it probably ceased being fun.
The conceit that a small band of armed ideologues could take on, much less defeat, the imperial state borders on insane, but there's plenty of delirium across the land, militant fantasies now largely in reactionary skulls. Still, these films took me back to when denunciations of imperialism, capitalism, and racism were highlighted on the new... (continue reading)
The Baader-Meinhof Complex inspired a terror double-feature over the weekend: The Weather Underground followed by Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst. Fueled by absinthe and Raisinets, I marveled at how tactically stupid these domestic commandoes were. I'm sure there was a certain thrill to playing outlaw, at least until your comrades blew themselves up or were burned to death under a hail of automatic SWAT fire. Then it probably ceased being fun.
The conceit that a small band of armed ideologues could take on, much less defeat, the imperial state borders on insane, but there's plenty of delirium across the land, militant fantasies now largely in reactionary skulls. Still, these films took me back to when denunciations of imperialism, capitalism, and racism were highlighted on the news, read by stern anchors seemingly confused by these crazy kids and their Che fixations. Lefty terrorists were part of the landscape. Paddy Chayefsky parodied this nicely in Network, showing that even the most dedicated anti-capitalist can fret about profit points and ratings books. Show biz as the great leveler.
Weather, and to a lesser degree the Symbionese Liberation Army, were boons to the domestic police apparatus, providing a handy pretext for the development and refinement of surveillance, interrogation, high-powered weapons and political control. Right wingers did their part during the Clinton years, as did environmental and vegan militants. But none have matched the 9/11 terrorists, who handed the American police state a sumptuous platter on which it continues to gorge.
There are those who maintain that Islamic militants seek to destroy the US government, and therefore we must smite them before they snuff us. Whatever their actual desires, these groups and cells are the American state's best friends and enablers; without them, the FBI would have to pump up some black-hooded animal rights army as The Latest Threat. White kids who eschew dairy products can terrify only so much. But Arabs, Persians and Pashtuns wearing beards and waving rifles -- now that's more like it. Bomb their relatives, torture their friends, occupy or threaten their countries and you've got a long-running narrative with no shortage of boogeymen and those devoted to their capture or destruction.
In a sense, the jihadists we armed and supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan have never stopped working with us. Back then, Carter and Reagan used Afghanistan as a prime reason to remilitarize the culture, from draft registration to proxy terrorism to festishizing the armed forces, casting them in a holy light. The Muslims who threw acid in women's faces, attacked co-ed schools, and razed any vestige of secularism were appreciated and applauded by numerous American reactionaries, from Reagan on down to clowns like David Horowitz, who has defended his pro-jihadist phase while claiming to oppose the children of his old pals. Hey, you gotta stay loose to keep pace with the imperial game.
(And this guy had the nerve to trash Howard Zinn. People in glass mental wards, and all that.)
Today, Islamic militants serve the same purpose, only instead of being compared to George Washington, they receive the time-honored Hitler designation. Round and round it spins. Who knows? If I live long enough, I might get to see a stateside revival of earlier jihadist love. We are a forgiving nation, after all.
Of the two terror films, I enjoyed the Patty Hearst saga more, partly for nostalgic reasons (I was 14 when Hearst was kidnapped), but mostly because the SLA is one of the craziest concepts of "rebellion" I've ever studied. The late conspiracy theorist Mae Brussell believed that the SLA was an undercover police operation, designed to justify violence and repression against domestic dissidents while smashing the rising political awareness and activism within the California prison system. Wouldn't surprise me. On the other hand, perhaps the SLA simply got lucky until the majority of them were incinerated by the LAPD. You can never really tell with stories like this.
Brussell did make a good point about the SLA's bank job on April 15, 1974. Why didn't they shoot the bank's cameras? Why were they so eager to show their faces? Militant vanity? Or was it meant to establish the SLA as a "genuine" threat, rebranding Patty Hearst as a committed revolutionary (which was part of the plan)? Again, I've no clue. Watch the robbery and decide for yourselves. I'll open another bottle of absinthe.
FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited
by Declan McCullagh
WASHINGTON–The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of wh... (continue reading)
FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited
by Declan McCullagh
WASHINGTON–The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.
FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.
As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.
Read more.
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On January 15, 2010, the Pentagon released the first ever list of prisoners held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main US prison in Afghanistan for the last eight years (PDF). An annotated version of the list is available here. In a previous article, “Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List,” I examined the stories of the foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries, and described the legal challenges mounted on their behalf, explaining how, last March, three of these men won their habeas corpus petitions in a US court, in a ruling that has been challenged by the Obama administration.
I also explained the use of a secret facility within Bagram as part of a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, and asked pointed questions about the whereabouts of a... (continue reading)
On January 15, 2010, the Pentagon released the first ever list of prisoners held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main US prison in Afghanistan for the last eight years (PDF). An annotated version of the list is available here. In a previous article, “Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List,” I examined the stories of the foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries, and described the legal challenges mounted on their behalf, explaining how, last March, three of these men won their habeas corpus petitions in a US court, in a ruling that has been challenged by the Obama administration.
I also explained the use of a secret facility within Bagram as part of a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, and asked pointed questions about the whereabouts of a number of men, known to have been held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, who are not on the list and whose apparent disappearance has never been explained — and also covered this topic in another recent article, “UN Secret Detention Report Asks, ‘Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?’”
In this second article based on the prisoner list, I look specifically at Bagram as a prison in a war zone, examining the murky relationship between the US and Afghan authorities regarding the detention of prisoners in wartime, asking whether the prison under President Obama conforms to the Geneva Conventions, and exposing new information about a network of secret prisons in forward operating bases and other locations around the country.
For those who fear that there are hundreds of prisoners in Bagram who have been have been held for many years, it should be noted that the limited information provided by the list is somewhat reassuring. Of the 645 prisoners listed, all but a hundred or so were seized in the last two years. There is a caveat, however. Based on the numbering system used, it appears that a total of 3,000 prisoners have been held at Bagram since the last of the regular prisoners was transferred to Guantánamo in November 2003, but although some have been freed — as part of an essentially inscrutable review process — it is not known how many others have been transferred either to Afghan custody (under a similarly inscrutable arrangement) or to Block “D” of Kabul’s main prison, Pol-i-Charki.
Refurbished by US forces in early 2007, Block “D” is where 45 of the 46 Afghan prisoners repatriated from Guantánamo since August 2007 have ended up. The one exception is Mohamed Jawad, released last August, who won his habeas corpus petition in a US court, but the other 45 have been subjected to equally opaque policies regarding their continued detention, and decisions about whether they should be tried or released, and, if the former, whether trials should be based on anything other than dubious “evidence” recycled from Guantánamo. The overriding question about Block “D” — which lawyers are hoping to test in US courts following the recent transfer of four Afghans from Guantánamo — is whether Block “D” is under Afghan or American control.
Despite these small reassurances about Bagram, I would not like to give the impression that all is well with the prison. The length of time that the majority of the 645 men have been held may appear to be quite reasonable — between one and two years — but this is supposed to be a prison in a war zone, and those detained should be screened on capture to make sure that they have not been seized by mistake, and then held for the duration of hostilities. Instead, there is every indication that prisoners are, in general, seized according to the defining characteristics of the “War on Terror,” as played out in both Iraq and Afghanistan — indiscriminate dragnets and raids based on often dubious intelligence — which not only fail to win “hearts and minds,” but also demonstrate a unilateral (and illegal) reworking of the Geneva Conventions.
The Geneva Conventions and the prevention of torture
If there is any doubt about a wartime prisoner’s status — because he is not wearing a uniform, for example — he is entitled to an Article 5 competent tribunal, held close to the time and place of capture, at which he can call witnesses. The US military pioneered these tribunals from Vietnam onwards, and was preparing to undertake them in December 2001, when the prisons at Kandahar and Bagram opened, until the orders came from on high that, in the “War on Terror,” they were unnecessary. In its extraordinary arrogance and contempt for the law, the Bush administration decided that no screening was required, and that it was sufficient for the President to declare that, on capture, all the men were “enemy combatants,” who could be held indefinitely without any rights whatsoever.
The purpose — as became apparent at Guantánamo, when President Bush declared that the Geneva Conventions did not extend to those held in the “War on Terror” — was not to keep men off the battlefield for the duration of hostilities, but to provide the lawless conditions in which they could be interrogated for “actionable intelligence.” The result, as has been chronicled as Guantánamo, at Bagram, at Abu Ghraib and in the secret prison network, was a torture regime, purportedly sanctioned by memos written by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which claimed to redefine torture for the use by the CIA, or, in the case of the military, through “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use at Guantánamo, which later migrated to Iraq.
In many ways, these techniques were first conceived at Bagram, where the use of sleep deprivation and brutal stress positions (the “strappado” technique, or “Palestinian hanging”) was widespread, and the regime was so brutal that, in 2002, at least two prisoners (and possibly as many as five) were murdered in US custody.
Despite official claims that the conditions at Bagram have improved in the years since, a BBC report in June 2008, based on interviews with men held in the prison between 2002 and 2008, found that only two “said they had been treated well,” while the rest complained that “they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs.” In “Undue Process” (PDF), a Human Rights First report published in November 2009, a distinction was made between those held in Bagram’s early years, and those held since 2006, when, as the report noted, ex-detainees “described significantly better treatment than those captured earlier, but some still told of being assaulted at the point of capture and being held in cold isolation cells for several weeks after their capture.”
Moreover, in October 2009, during a panel discussion following the launch of the new Guantánamo documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” former prisoner Omar Deghayes explained how his Pakistani brother-in-law was recently captured on a visit to Afghanistan and ended up in Bagram. As Omar described it, his brother-in-law’s wife, who was allowed to talk to her husband through a videophone system established by the International Committee of the Red Cross in early 2008, reported “how horribly and badly tortured he was, how he had marks on his eyes and was really badly battered.”
Importing Guantánamo-style reviews to Bagram
In an attempt to stifle dissent — and, it seems, as part of a cynical maneuver to encourage the Court of Appeals to reverse the habeas victories last March of the three foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries — the Obama administration announced last September that it was introducing a new review process for the Bagram prisoners. Submitted in court documents relating to the government’s appeal (PDF), the proposals allowed, for the first time, prisoners to call witnesses in their defense.
This was an improvement, because, until 2007, there was no formal review process at all, and as District Court Judge John D. Bates noted last March, when he granted the habeas corpus petitions of the three foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram, the system that was then put in place — consisting of Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Boards — “falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo” (the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the one-sided review process convened in 2004-05, which the Supreme Court found inadequate in Boumediene v. Bush, the June 2008 ruling granting the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights).
With incredulity, Judge Bates noted that the Bagram prisoners are not even allocated a personal representative from the military, as happened during the CSRTs at Guantánamo, and also noted that, although they are allowed to represent themselves:
Detainees cannot even speak for themselves; they are only permitted to submit a written statement. But in submitting that statement, detainees do not know what evidence the United States relies upon to justify an “enemy combatant” designation — so they lack a meaningful opportunity to rebut that evidence. [The government’s] far-reaching and ever-changing definition of enemy combatant, coupled with the uncertain evidentiary standards, further undercut the reliability of the UECRB review. And, unlike the CSRT process [which was followed by annual review boards], Bagram detainees receive no review beyond the UECRB itself.
In what appeared to be a direct response to Judge Bates’ damning criticisms, the Obama administration announced that, under the new rules, each prisoner would be assigned a US military official to represent him (as happened at Guantánamo), and that prisoners would also have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is “reasonably available” (as also happened at Guantánamo, even though no foreign witness was ever summoned to Cuba to testify).
It was also announced that the boards would determine whether prisoners should be held by the United States, turned over to Afghan authorities or released, but although the proposals included a promise that, “For those ordered held longer, the process will be repeated at six-month intervals,” the unilateral flight from the Geneva Conventions was confirmed not only in the decision to export Guantánamo’s discredited tribunal system to Bagram, but also in a section detailing how prisoners would be treated on capture.
As the submission explained, new prisoners would be subjected, on capture, not to Article 5 tribunals, but to cursory reviews by “the capturing unit commander” and by the commander of Bagram to ascertain that they “meet the criteria for detention.” Moreover, the DoD insisted that it was not merely holding prisoners “consistent with the laws and customs of war,” but was also holding those who fulfill the criteria laid down in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (the founding document of the “War on Terror,” approved by Congress within days of the 9/11 attacks), which authorized the President to detain those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” or those who supported them.
This is depressingly close to the “new paradigm” of warfare introduced by Bush and Cheney, and it is, perhaps, no surprise that, as criticisms began to mount, the administration strategically announced that it was in the process of transferring control of Bagram to the Afghan government. It remains to be seen how swiftly the proposed transfer will occur, but it is unsurprising that the announcement has been made, for two reasons: firstly, because it diverts attention from current US policy, and secondly, because, as with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in Iraq, it allows the US government to abdicate all responsibility for the mistakes it has made. Signed in November 2008, the SOFA in Iraq has led to the transfer of thousands of prisoners in US control to the custody of the Iraqi government, even though what awaits them is not a review of whether their detention by US forces was a mistake, but the chaos of the Iraqi judicial system.
Secret prisons
This is disturbingly cynical, of course, but what makes it even worse is a reasonable assumption that the transfer of Bagram to Afghan control will not include the transfer of any prisoners regarded as significant. For these men, the likelihood is that the US government will retain control of a secretive “black jail” within Bagram airbase, exposed by the Washington Post and the New York Times in November 2009, and will continue to seize men in nighttime raids, sending them either to this facility, or to one of nine “Field Detention Sites” on military bases, “often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families,” as Anand Gopal reported in a ground-breaking exposé last week, which revealed the extensive torture and abuse of those held.
Gopal’s account is not the only insight into the dark realities of current US detention policies in Afghanistan, beyond Bagram, beyond the Geneva Conventions, and, it seems, beyond the law. Late last year, a reliable Afghan source informed a lawyer friend of mine that there were, at the time, about two dozen secret facilities in Afghanistan, including three or four in Herat, four or five in northern Afghanistan, and three or four in Kabul. According to this source, the majority were US facilities, although a few were run by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan government’s domestic intelligence agency, and a few others were run by the Afghan Army. The source added, “They are all worse than Bagram. All contain a mix of combatants, criminals, and totally innocent persons. The main difference is that those at the US prisons are fed better. No one has any rights.”
In addition, just last week, in response to my recent articles, a military insider let me know that, “Not only were there facilities in Bagram, but in Kandahar and Salerno as well. Saw them first-hand between 2006 and 2009, but was told not to speak of the jails.” These, it was noted, were “unsanctioned facilities,” which were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
As eight years of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should have taught us, once you abandon the Geneva Conventions, all that lies beyond is secrecy and torture. The Obama administration has certainly tinkered with the Bush administration’s legacy, but as the stories of Bagram, the “dark jail” and the network of secret facilities demonstrates, tinkering threatens only to drive the dark truths further underground, and what is needed is the courage to thoroughly repudiate the brutal practices at the heart of the “War on Terror.”
A slightly edited version of this article was published exclusively on Truthout.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.(show less)
Every day, more left-of-center Americans conclude that Barack Obama doesn't represent their liberal values. Yet the mainstream media still treats President Obama's left-side critics as all-but-non-existent.
If you exist, and if you want others to recognize that Obama is mistaken to neglect the liberal base — both for our support and for the advantages of liberal policy — deck yourself out in 2L4O shirt!
When you order, be sure to specify which blog sent you here, and a portion of the proceeds will go to that blog.
Many thanks to Correntewire.com for being the first site to promote 2L4O merchandise! If you're interested in having your site participate, please drop me a line at vastleft AT vastleft DOT com. Notes:Use the order form in the right ... (continue reading)
[Latest update: 2/7/10 at 9:56AM ET. See below.]
Every day, more left-of-center Americans conclude that Barack Obama doesn't represent their liberal values. Yet the mainstream media still treats President Obama's left-side critics as all-but-non-existent.
If you exist, and if you want others to recognize that Obama is mistaken to neglect the liberal base — both for our support and for the advantages of liberal policy — deck yourself out in 2L4O shirt!
When you order, be sure to specify which blog sent you here, and a portion of the proceeds will go to that blog.
Many thanks to Correntewire.com for being the first site to promote 2L4O merchandise! If you're interested in having your site participate, please drop me a line at vastleft AT vastleft DOT com. Notes:Use the order form in the right marginShirts are $16 eachShipping (U.S. only at this time) is $4 for the first shirt; add $2 for each additional shirtPayPal account not required — just specify a major credit card during checkoutShirts are silk-screened, 100% cotton, with white printing on black Please allow 2-3 weeks for shipping (though we'll make every effort to ship your order out faster). We could do this faster using a site like Cafepress, but by ordering from a local firm, the quality is much better.E-mail confirmations aren't automatic; I'll send you one out manually once I see your order.Thanks, Vastleft
Update 2/7/10: Thanks to Mike Finnigan at Crooks and Liars for featuring 2L4O in "Mike's Blog Roundup"!
Update 2/5/10: Thanks to mystrbreeze at UN-Original Thoughts for putting in a nice word for 2L4O. Note: today is the Day of Shame anniversary.
Update 2/4/10: Thanks to Tennessee Guerilla Women for becoming the sixth 2L4O promotional partner! Also, 2L4O is preparing to order its next batch of shirts, which will be union/American-made apparel. We'll be donating a portion of the proceeds from the remainder of the first batch to a charity that helps the Haitian poor and working poor. Details to come.
Update 2/2/10:
Some potential customers have suggested that we use union-made / American-made shirts only. That suggestion rings especially relevant, because the first batch of shirts came in (even our vendor doesn't ordinarily know the manufacturer/origin of the shirts at order time) from Gildan, manufactured in Haiti.
Given concerns about the conditions at such manufacturers, we will be insisting on union-made (and probably American-made) goods for subsequent stock and will offer anyone who's already purchased a shirt from our first batch the option of:
* A refund * Receiving the items as made * Receiving a union-made shirt once they become available
It appears that the price will necessarily increase when we switch to union-made shirts, but we will honor the current price for prior purchasers who choose the third option.
Update 2/1/10:
The shirts have arrived! I'll be mailing them out tomorrow. Thanks to all you early supporters of 2L4O!
Update 1/31/10:
Thanks to Wampum, home of the legendary Koufax Awards, for helping promote 2L4O!
Update 1/30/10:
Thanks to montag at The Burned Over District for describing 2L4O as being "part of the vast majority of Americans." If the administration keeps pushing conservative policies and frames, more and more of the majority who voted to get leftward change will inevitably conclude that the president is to the right of their values and political agendas.
Update 1/27/10:
Thanks to Nomi at I Dreamed I Saw Grace P. Last Night for putting in a kind word for 2L4O, with commissions pledged to No Blood for Hubris.
Update 1/24/10:
Thanks to No Blood for Hubris for being the fourth 2L4O promotional partner!
Thanks to Blue Lyon for helping promote 2L4O! She has pledged her commissions to Doctors Without Borders.
Update 1/22/10:
Thanks to all the first-day purchasers!
Thanks to The Widdershins for being the second promotional partner for 2L4O. Madamab has been kind enough to pledge her commissions to Lambert at Correntewire.
And thanks to commenter Alex01 who had this nice thing to say at commondreams.org:
Have you seen the new t-shirts at CorrenteWire.com? They're wonderful! I can't get the graphic to post here, but it says:
"2L4O" Too Liberal for Obama
Of course, you have to see it, as this description does it no justtice. Here are the links to both CorrenteWire and the original blog for the shirts. I predict they will be very popular, based on the comments at CW!
When two of our activists were detained after exposing major corruption in the Japanese whaling industry - we knew the Japanese authorities breached internationally guaranteed human rights. Now, as these two activists prepare to take the stand and have their day, or more in court, the violation of their human rights has been confirmed by a UN working group.
Survivors of Haiti's devastating earthquake have hit the streets in the country's wrecked capital in protest against the mayor's hoarding of aid provided by relief groups.
Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians... (continue reading)
Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards."
This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. The city was marked for death after an angry mob mutilated four American mercenaries -- following a series of civilian killings by occupation forces in the preceding weeks: provocations that have been conveniently airbrushed from history (just like the U.S. massacre of Somalis that preceded the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident). An initial attack on Fallujah failed in the spring of 2004, largely due to political heat from the vast civilian suffering that was being reported from the city, chiefly from its medical centers.
But in the following months, the noose was tightened around Fallujah's neck. Tens of thousands fled the city to escape the coming second attack, which was well-publicized in advance. Story after story -- or rather, puff piece after puff piece -- about the preparations streamed from the embedded mainstream media reporters. The ostensible aim of the attack was to "eliminate" groups of "diehard terrorists" using Fallujah as a base. But of course, the months of PR about the looming operation meant that the putative targets had plenty of time to slip away. And they did.
Even so, as soon as George W. Bush's re-election was in the bag, the attack was launched. This time, the US brass were careful to eliminate the main source of bad press in the first attack: hospitals were a prime target. As I noted at the time:
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
And now Marjah is being readied for the Fallujah option. (For as we all know, your real tough hombres never take any option off the table.) As the Guardian reports:
Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year. The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths. ...
US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand's besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force which will spearhead the fight, has said he is "not looking for a fair fight." ...
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful".
Yes, it's always helpful to do some pre-winnowing of a densely populated area before you destroy it with mortars and air-to-ground missiles. But of course, while thousands of civilians flee, thousands more have "remained because they could not afford to leave," the Guardian reports. How many of these will be re-classifed as "enemy fighters" when their corpses are found in the ruins?
The Afghans themselves know the score:
A Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".
"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.
Slaughter, ruin, fear and exile: yeah, it's the Good War, all right! "The war we should be fighting," as our tough-guy libs kept telling us when putting their always serious, always "nuanced" objections to the Iraq "fiasco" in proper context. Well, they have it now, the war they always wanted. And who knows? Maybe soon they can have their own Fallujah! Won't that be a great apotheosis of Progressivism? (show less)
MONDAY’S OBAMATOON ~~ OLD AFGHAN PROVERB 8 Feb 2010desertpeace Image ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
click on image to enlage
Filed under: Afghanistan, Associate Post, Barack Obama, Cartoons
By Ramzy BaroudThe media's habit of revisiting certain issues at set intervals can be strange and even illogical at times. For example, many news outlets commented on President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, as well as on the anniversary of his election win, and then again one year after his inauguration day. With every new round number, more commentators joined in and discussions heated up between proponents and detractors of his government’s performance. I am not exactly sure why we like round numbers. Is it because they make valuations easy, even when the particular number is irrelevant? Some philosophers, Plato included, believed that order and symmetry are innate values in the human psyche. Perhaps. Or, perhaps, in the case of the media, numbers give us the sense, decepti... (continue reading)
By Ramzy BaroudThe media's habit of revisiting certain issues at set intervals can be strange and even illogical at times. For example, many news outlets commented on President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, as well as on the anniversary of his election win, and then again one year after his inauguration day. With every new round number, more commentators joined in and discussions heated up between proponents and detractors of his government’s performance. I am not exactly sure why we like round numbers. Is it because they make valuations easy, even when the particular number is irrelevant? Some philosophers, Plato included, believed that order and symmetry are innate values in the human psyche. Perhaps. Or, perhaps, in the case of the media, numbers give us the sense, deceptively, that we have a grasp over certain truths. We determine the order in which legacies such as Obama’s should be dissected. After a decided date, the subject can be ignored until the next round number arrives, bringing with it more useless chatter. Of course, this is a delusion. Like much of the media’s behaviour, it has no connection to reality. It’s all a mind game. A lie, even. For victims of US policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere, the attention given to round numbers is wholly illogical. The drones flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan, loaded with killing technology, care little for numbers, including the number of lives they destroy daily.Did Gazans starve less when we ‘examined’ Obama’s (pro-Israel) legacy after 100 days of his presidency? Where they better off one year from his election victory or one year from his inauguration? How about 273 days from his ascendancy to the White House? Was that a particularly chaotic day in Baghdad’s streets? Do soldiers take a break from killing on even days, and resume the slaughter on odd ones? But why should this discussion matter at all? It matters because we often buy into this folly, allowing the media to determine what is important and when a discussion is pertinent. Those involved in this charade express their views, agreeing politely and disagreeing loudly. The next day, the media returns to a state of complacency, as if the detrimental policies of Obama’s government ceased to exist; as if war was eradicated, and there was nothing left to talk about. But truly, do Palestinians in Gaza care much for round numbers? I doubt it. Nor do Iraqis, Afghanis, and, now, Yemenis. Misery is misery, any day, every day; war is an inferno. The smell of death, the scenes of blood in Kabul and Baghdad and Gaza, will remain the same on a Friday, or a Tuesday, 100 day into Obama’s presidency or 514 days later.Every minute in a victim’s or potential victim’s life counts. Those who have lived in war zones can comprehend this truth. That’s why Gaza wants to see the end of its misery now, instead of waiting for CNN’s next roundtable discussion assessing the next round number in Obama’s presidency. Iraqis and Afghanis similarly listen to words and judge deeds, caring little for numbers. Remember when Obama spoke to the “Muslim world” from Cairo on June 4th? That’s the date that Muslims - many still victimized, directly or otherwise, by the Obama administration’s policies – remember and recount. On that day, Obama made promises, speaking with ‘audacity’, and much hubris. Muslims listened. Some clapped and even cheered; others hesitated or expressed cynicism, but still hoped for change. Alas, none of those hopes have been fulfilled, as instead of change, there is only a continuation of the policies of his predecessor.“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect,” said Obama in Cairo. His deeds since then have reaped the opposite results: mistrust and disrespect. “Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan,” he said. Since then, he has ordered the surge of 30,000 additional soldiers to that already distraught country. The US, its allies and their drones have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians since that statement was made.“Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis,” he said. One fails to see evidence of a better future based on his administration’s conduct in Iraq in the last year or so. Little progress has been made in leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.Even in Cairo, he had the audacity to lecture Palestinians, the very victims of Israel’s brutal occupation, which is armed and funded by US money. “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build.” We must note that the US government continues to make these demands of Palestinians, ignoring the fact that Israel’s reign of terror has never ceased, including Israeli violence against Palestinian non-violent resistance in the West Bank.Still, Obama did state that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society.” Alas, the Obama administration faltered on its demand of a complete Israeli freeze, and is now harassing the ineffective leadership of Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank to return to the negotiation table without conditions. In addition, the hope of ensuring that “Palestinians can live, and work and develop their society,” is nothing but a pipedream, considering that Palestinians in Gaza teeter between chronic malnutrition and starvation. We cannot forget the fact that the siege on Gaza would not have been possible without US support.So before we giddily gather to discuss Obama’s legacy the next time another round number is celebrated on our television screens, let’s remember that for an Iraqi father, frantically searching for his son’s remains in a Baghdad street, numbers matter little, whether even, odd, round or in any combination. A massacre is a massacre, and a war of choice is a crime, any day, any time.- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), now available on Amazon.com.(show less)
Israel and the US preparing for Iran Part 1 - The Military Perspective 8 Feb 2010mas-jarour@hotmail.com (maysaa jarour) UK, February 8, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) -This year saw an Israeli-US joint exercise "Juniper Cobra 10" take place off the coast of Israel which involved the IDF and the US Navy 6th Fleet. The purpose of the exercise was to participate in countering simulated attacks by ballistic, medium-range and short-range missiles and rockets by Iran on Israel.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in some fearmongering on Iran on Sunday on Candy Crowley's CNN magazine show, State of the Union. Here is how the exchange went:
'CROWLEY: If you were to say to the American people, this country is the most dangerous to Americans and to the U.S., where is that country?
CLINTON: You know, Candy, in terms of a country, obviously a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat.
CROWLEY: And you're convinced Iran has nuclear...
CLINTON: No, no, but we believe that their behavior certainly is evidence of their intentions . . .
Kudos to Crowley for not letting that ridiculous assertion pass. To put Iran in the same category as North Korea in 2010 and to make it among the primary 'threats' challenging the United St... (continue reading)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton engaged in some fearmongering on Iran on Sunday on Candy Crowley's CNN magazine show, State of the Union. Here is how the exchange went:
'CROWLEY: If you were to say to the American people, this country is the most dangerous to Americans and to the U.S., where is that country?
CLINTON: You know, Candy, in terms of a country, obviously a nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran pose both a real or a potential threat.
CROWLEY: And you're convinced Iran has nuclear...
CLINTON: No, no, but we believe that their behavior certainly is evidence of their intentions . . .
Kudos to Crowley for not letting that ridiculous assertion pass. To put Iran in the same category as North Korea in 2010 and to make it among the primary 'threats' challenging the United States is just bizarre. The US intelligence establishment continues to doubt that Iran has or wants a nuclear weapons program. Tehran does have a nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran allows United Nations inspections of it nuclear facilities. Although Iran is not as transparent as the UN International Atomic Energy Agency would like, there is no dispositive evidence of a weapons program. For the Secretary of State to frame Iran as she did is just muddled or dishonest.
Clinton again repeated that the new facility near Qom is evidence that Iran intends to build a bomb. But then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed Elbaradei was invited to inspect it in late October and found a 'hole in a mountain' with no equipment or uranium on-site. The facility is too small to be an efficient producer of High Enriched Uranium for bombs, and is more likely intended to serve as a repository of equipment and know-how that cannot be bombed by the Israelis or Americans.
It is a trick of the Washington Establishment to scare apparently easily frightened Americans into a conviction that some small, poor, third world country is a dire threat to the most massively funded and armed military in the world. Repeating falsehoods is one way the Big Lie is implanted, that then allows US belligerence to be unquestioned at home.
Clinton did go on to defend the Obama administration's attempts to engage North Korea and Iran (again, placing them on the same plane), but not on the grounds of success in negotiations. Rather, she argued that attempting to engage the problem countries made it easier, when the negotiations failed, to convince countries such as Russia and China (in N. Korea's case) or Russia (in the case of Iran) to ratchet up sanctions at the UN. But if all engagement accomplishes is to make imposition of sanctions easier, it isn't really engagement, it is just posturing. Here is the video:
News from Iran will be spun by the US press to justify Clinton's fears. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made headlines Sunday by directing Iran's (regularly inspected) nuclear research establishment at Natanz near Isfahan to begin attempting to enrich uranium to 19.75% so that that country will eventually have the ability to supply its own fuel for its sole reactor that produces medical isotopes for treating, e.g., cancer. Any uranium enriched to 19.75% and fed through the reactor is transformed into isotopes and then used up.
Note that Iran is openly announcing this decision and is informing the International Atomic Energy Agency of it, in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran's PressTV reports on the Western reaction to the announcement:
But if all Iran does is enrich to 19.75% (the upper level of low-enriched uranium) for the isotope reactor and then use up the isotopes, this step is the least dangerous one it could take.
Iran in the past bought the enriched uranium for the isotope reactor from Argentina. So it would be nothing new if Iran came to possess that grade of LEU. Iran's government is horrible, but it is less dictatorial than that of the Argentinean generals of the 1970s and early 1980s who developed Buenos Aires' nuclear enrichment capabilities to the point where it really could have made a bomb. But the country foreswore any such ambitions despite its knowledge. Iran likewise denies it wants a bomb, and there is no good evidence to the contrary. It is just that Washington adored the far rightwing generals in Argentina who made people disappear in the thousands, and didn't care if they had the Bomb. And much of Washington is determined to lie about what is known of Iran's capabilities and intentions.
The list of other countries capable of producing LEU of 19.75% includes Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Holland, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There would be nothing extraordinary about Iran joining this list, and none of the others on it except N. Korea is being sanctioned-- and that is for constructing a bomb, which Iran is not doing. Argentina was sanctioned neither for enriching to 19.75% nor for selling that stock of LEU to Iran! And South Korea was never sanctioned for secretly enriching to 77%, near bomb grade, something Iran has never been accused of.
It is not dangerous for Iran to produce low enriched uranium, whether for reactor fuel for the nuclear electric plants it is building or for its small medical isotopes reactor (given to it in 1969 by the United States).
It would be dangerous if Iran determined to enrich to 95% to make a bomb. In order to do so, it would have to evade all US electronic surveillance, withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and throw out the UN inspectors. No country being actively and continuously inspected by the IAEA has ever developed an atomic bomb. The US National Security Agency can hear a walkie-talkie conversation in the jungles of Guatemala, and for Iran to hide a decision to make a bomb would be very difficult. The US has also been successful in enticing Iranian nuclear physicists into defecting, with insider knowledge and documents. The idea that Iran could conceal a major enrichment facility somewhere is far-fetched, because enrichment is a water- and electricity-intensive activity that can be detected. Even just the building activity for the new small facility near Qom showed up on US satellite surveillance.
Does the step Ahmadinejad announced on Sunday make sense for Iran? The answer is yes. Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation writes that:
'Iran has developed plans to use naturally occurring uranium as a “target” for producing an important medical diagnostic isotope of molybdenum, an isotope whose decay product can be used to scan for cancers in bone, heart, lung, and kidney. Iran already imports a sizable quantity of this pharmacological radionuclide but producing it indigenously would not only save Iran a considerable amount of money each year, much more than it would pay for the fuel for the reactor it would use to produce it, but also allow a more efficient use of this short lived isotope by preventing the decay of nearly half of the amount bought before it even reached the patients. Perhaps the biggest incentive indigenous production of 99Mo in Iran would be the encouragement of its entire nuclear medicine infrastructure; an infrastructure that might right the imbalance of medical isotopes into this developing country relative to other nations." '
>
Iran is already producing low enriched uranium for reactor fuel. That it has decided to produce a higher grade of it for its medical infrastructure is neither surprising nor a cause for panic. You'll know if Iran decides to build a bomb. It will throw out the inspectors or refuse them access, including to places the US detects a huge electromagnetic signature but which Iran declines to declare as facilities. None of that has happened. Until then, the world should relax.
Stand with the people of
Haiti! What the U.S. government isn't telling
you
We at the ANSWER Coalition extend our heartfelt solidarity to
all of our Haitian sisters and brothers, as well as to all those who have friends and
family there, as Haiti copes with the destruction and grief of the massive 7.0 magnitude
earthquake that struck yesterday.
All of us are joining in the
outpouring of solidarity from people all over the hemisphere and world who are sending
humanitarian aid and assistance to the people of Haiti.
At such a
moment, it is also important to put this catastrophe into a political and social
context. Without this context, it is... (continue reading)
Stand with the people of
Haiti! What the U.S. government isn't telling
you
We at the ANSWER Coalition extend our heartfelt solidarity to
all of our Haitian sisters and brothers, as well as to all those who have friends and
family there, as Haiti copes with the destruction and grief of the massive 7.0 magnitude
earthquake that struck yesterday.
All of us are joining in the
outpouring of solidarity from people all over the hemisphere and world who are sending
humanitarian aid and assistance to the people of Haiti.
At such a
moment, it is also important to put this catastrophe into a political and social
context. Without this context, it is impossible to understand both the monumental
problems facing Haiti and, most importantly, the solutions that can allow Haiti to
survive and thrive. Hillary Clinton said today, "It is biblical, the tragedy
that continues to daunt Haiti and the Haitian people." This hypocritical
statement that blames Haiti's suffering exclusively on an "act of
God" masks the role of U.S. and French imperialism in the
region.
In this statement, we have included some background
information about Haiti that helps establish the real
context:
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated today that
as many as 100,000 Haitians may be dead. International media is reporting bodies being
piled along streets surrounded by the rubble from thousands of collapsed buildings.
Estimates of the economic damage are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Haiti’s
large shantytown population was particularly hard hit by the tragedy.
As CNN, ABC and every other major corporate media outlet will be
quick to point out, Haiti is the poorest country in the entire Western hemisphere. But
not a single word is uttered as to why Haiti is poor. Poverty, unlike earthquakes, is no
natural disaster.
The answer lies in more than two centuries of U.S.
hostility to the island nation, whose hard-won independence from the French was only the
beginning of its struggle for liberation.
In 1804, what had begun as
a slave uprising more than a decade earlier culminated in freedom from the grips of
French colonialism, making Haiti the first Latin American colony to win its independence
and the world's first Black republic. Prior to the victory of the Haitian
people, George Washington and then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson had supported
France out of fear that Haiti would inspire uprisings among the U.S. slave population.
The U.S. slave-owning aristocracy was horrified at Haiti’s newly earned freedom.
U.S. interference became an integral part of Haitian history,
culminating in a direct military occupation from 1915 to 1934. Through economic and
military intervention, Haiti was subjugated as U.S. capital developed a railroad and
acquired plantations. In a gesture of colonial arrogance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was
the assistant secretary of the Navy at the time, drafted a constitution for Haiti which,
among other things, allowed foreigners to own land. U.S. officials would later find an
accommodation with the dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and then his son
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, as Haiti suffered under their brutal repressive
policies.
In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. policy toward Haiti sought
the reorganization of the Haitian economy to better serve the interests of foreign
capital. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was instrumental in
shifting Haitian agriculture away from grain production, paving the way for dependence
on food imports. Ruined Haitian farmers flocked to the cities in search of a livelihood,
resulting in the swelling of the precarious shantytowns found in Port-au-Prince and
other urban centers.
Who has benefited from these policies? U.S.
food producers profited from increased exports to Haitian markets. Foreign corporations
that had set up shop in Haitian cities benefitted from the super-exploitation of cheap
labor flowing from the countryside. But for the people of Haiti, there was only greater
misery and destitution.
Washington orchestrated the overthrow of the
democratically elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—not once, but twice, in
1991 and 2004. Haiti has been under a U.S.-backed U.N. occupation for nearly six years.
Aristide did not earn the animosity of U.S. leaders for his moderate reforms; he earned
it when he garnered support among Haiti's poor, which crystallized into a mass
popular movement. Two hundred years on, U.S. officials are still horrified by the
prospect of a truly independent Haiti.
The unstable, makeshift
dwellings imposed upon Haitians by Washington’s neoliberal policies have now, for many,
been turned into graves. Those same policies are to blame for the lack of hospitals,
ambulances, fire trucks, rescue equipment, food and medicine. The blow dealt by such a
natural disaster to an economy made so fragile from decades of plundering will greatly
magnify the suffering of the Haitian people.
Natural disasters are
inevitable, but resource allocation and planning can play a decisive role in mitigating
their impact and dealing with the aftermath. Haiti and neighboring Cuba, who are no
strangers to violent tropical storms, were both hit hard in 2008 by a series of
hurricanes—which, unlike earthquakes, are predictable. While more than 800 lives were
lost in Haiti, less than 10 people died in Cuba. Unlike Haiti, Cuba had a coordinated
evacuation plan and post-hurricane rescue efforts that were centrally planned by the
Cuban government. This was only possible because Cuban society is not organized
according to the needs of foreign capital, but rather according to the needs of the
Cuban people.
In a televised speech earlier today, President Obama
has announced that USAID and the Departments of State and Defense will be working to
support the rescue and relief efforts in Haiti in the coming days. Ironically, these are
the same government entities responsible for the implementation of the economic and
military policies that reduced Haiti to ruins even before the earthquake
hit.
The ANSWER Coalition has called for a mass
national march and rally in Washington, D.C., on March 20 to oppose the wars and
occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. We will also demand an end the foreign
occupation of Haiti and reparations to Haiti for the vast wealth that has been looted
from the country by foreign imperialist
countries.
Help build the March 20
March on Washington!
Endorse March
20
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Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They
Shock Again 14 Jan 2010mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!) Journalist and author Naomi
Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be
absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no
circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular
corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory.
They have done it again and again.” [includes rush transcript]
US Policy in Haiti Over Decades "Lays the Foundation for Why Impact of
Natural Disaster Is So Severe" 14 Jan 2010mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!) We discuss the situation in
Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake, as well as the history of Haiti, with two
guests who have spent a lot of time there: Bill Quigley, the legal director at the
Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for
Justice & Democracy in Haiti. [includes rush transcript]
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After Downing Street is a nonpartisan coalition working to expose the lies that create and sustain wars and occupations and to hold accountable those responsible. We have speakers available. If you register on this site, you will have the option to receive occasional Email updates from us. Please read our policy regarding posting comments on this site. Would you like to see ADS news every time you go to Google.com? Use this widget or this widget to put ADS news on any website. We're on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, and have an RSS feed.
We Need Government Funded Media 7 Feb 2010davidswanson By David Swanson
What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.
Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.
( click title for more )
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010)— Male homosexuality doesn't make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view. It appears that the trait is heritable, but because homosexual men are much less likely to produce offspring than heterosexual men, shouldn't the genes for this trait have been extinguished long ago? What value could this sexual orientation have, that it has persisted for eons even without any discernible reproductive advantage?
One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the "kin selection hypothesis." What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being "helpers in the nest." By acti... (continue reading)
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010)— Male homosexuality doesn't make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view. It appears that the trait is heritable, but because homosexual men are much less likely to produce offspring than heterosexual men, shouldn't the genes for this trait have been extinguished long ago? What value could this sexual orientation have, that it has persisted for eons even without any discernible reproductive advantage?
One possible explanation is what evolutionary psychologists call the "kin selection hypothesis." What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being "helpers in the nest." By acting altruistically toward nieces and nephews, homosexual men would perpetuate the family genes, including some of their own.
( click title for more )(show less)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2010) — The presumption that children need both a mother and a father is widespread. It has been used by proponents of Proposition 8 to argue against same-sex marriage and to uphold a ban on same-sex adoption.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Barack Obama endorsed the vital role of fathers in a 2008 speech: "Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation."
The lead article in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family challenges the idea that "fatherless" children are necessarily at a disadvantage or that men provide a different, indispensable set of parenting skills than women.
( click title for mo... (continue reading)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2010) — The presumption that children need both a mother and a father is widespread. It has been used by proponents of Proposition 8 to argue against same-sex marriage and to uphold a ban on same-sex adoption.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Barack Obama endorsed the vital role of fathers in a 2008 speech: "Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation."
The lead article in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family challenges the idea that "fatherless" children are necessarily at a disadvantage or that men provide a different, indispensable set of parenting skills than women.
( click title for more )(show less)
Tony Blair’s Great Game: Toying with the Chilcot Investigation 7 Feb 2010davidswanson By Charlotte Dennett
One of the most remarkable things about England’s ongoing “Iraq War Inquiry” is how little has been written about it in the U.S. Though many Britons believe the so-called Chilcot inquiry is a whitewash, there are important facts to glean from the testimony of high level officials who led Great Britain to the war in Iraq, facts which reveal contradictions in their official stories and bear comparison with the U.S. government’s version of what happened.
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By Sharon Tipton
Thirty protesters gathered on February 4th, in Dana Point, Calif., where George Bush received the prestigious Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Award from Legatus a Catholic business and civics leaders group, at its annual Summit. 9/11 Truthers from Los Angeles joined us, as well as members of ANSWER-LA who drove three hours in traffic to attend, and Dee Dee Miller, a Southern California activist, and Cindy Sheehan’s sister. We all came together for the same reason – to express outrage over the awarding a pro-life award to a war criminal! Aggressive, pre-emptive war is not "pro life." George Bush deserves conviction for the war crimes of launching a war based on lies, causing the death of over a million people, including thousands of US deaths, sanctioning torture, v... (continue reading)
By Sharon Tipton
Thirty protesters gathered on February 4th, in Dana Point, Calif., where George Bush received the prestigious Cardinal John J. O’Connor Pro-Life Award from Legatus a Catholic business and civics leaders group, at its annual Summit. 9/11 Truthers from Los Angeles joined us, as well as members of ANSWER-LA who drove three hours in traffic to attend, and Dee Dee Miller, a Southern California activist, and Cindy Sheehan’s sister. We all came together for the same reason – to express outrage over the awarding a pro-life award to a war criminal! Aggressive, pre-emptive war is not "pro life." George Bush deserves conviction for the war crimes of launching a war based on lies, causing the death of over a million people, including thousands of US deaths, sanctioning torture, violating the U.S. Constitution and international law, and smashing any hopes for world peace for the foreseeable future.
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http://healthcare4allpa.org
Lancaster – The Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee today unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for passage of single payer healthcare, Senate Bill 400 and House Bill 1660, also known as the "Family and Business Healthcare Security Act."
Given the healthcare reform deadlock in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania’s nation-leading status in the battle for state-based “Medicare for All,” is all the more significant.
“Not only does Pennsylvania now have the Democratic Party on board with the Single Payer healthcare for all,” said Healthcare for All PA executive director Chuck Pennacchio, “we also have the promised signature of our governor and the active support of Republican and Democratic leaders in both the State Senate and State House.”
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http://healthcare4allpa.org
Lancaster – The Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee today unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for passage of single payer healthcare, Senate Bill 400 and House Bill 1660, also known as the "Family and Business Healthcare Security Act."
Given the healthcare reform deadlock in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania’s nation-leading status in the battle for state-based “Medicare for All,” is all the more significant.
“Not only does Pennsylvania now have the Democratic Party on board with the Single Payer healthcare for all,” said Healthcare for All PA executive director Chuck Pennacchio, “we also have the promised signature of our governor and the active support of Republican and Democratic leaders in both the State Senate and State House.”
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Why We Can't Afford to Let Obama Give Bush's War Criminals a Free Pass
Punishing the guilty for deeds they committed in the past is the only way to show the world that we are truly on a new path.
By Charlotte Dennett | Alternet
In a week when one-year report cards on the Obama administration were piling up and not all the grades were good, Americans searching for the real change we heard so much about on Obama's campaign trail were hit with some news that would send his grades plummeting. Late last Friday, we learned that Obama's Department of Justice plans to go easy on John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- the two assistant attorney generals under Bush who penned the infamous torture memos. For those who have been working long and hard in the accountability movement to make sure no one -- not e... (continue reading)
Why We Can't Afford to Let Obama Give Bush's War Criminals a Free Pass
Punishing the guilty for deeds they committed in the past is the only way to show the world that we are truly on a new path.
By Charlotte Dennett | Alternet
In a week when one-year report cards on the Obama administration were piling up and not all the grades were good, Americans searching for the real change we heard so much about on Obama's campaign trail were hit with some news that would send his grades plummeting. Late last Friday, we learned that Obama's Department of Justice plans to go easy on John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- the two assistant attorney generals under Bush who penned the infamous torture memos. For those who have been working long and hard in the accountability movement to make sure no one -- not even presidents or their top advisors -- is above the law, this was a serious setback.
As part of that movement, I was appalled. Not just because I want to see those who committed crimes in office punished rather than excused. Not just because I want to see the Obama White House restore accountability to government rather than cover up crimes committed by the former administration. And not just because Yoo and Bybee memo'd-up legal opinions stating that torture techniques as egregious and illegal as waterboarding were acceptable. No, there is a deeper question in play here: Why were they really asked to render these opinions in the first place?
That's a question I had to grapple with while writing The People v. Bush, a book that shows how U.S. citizens might prosecute George W. Bush and his advisors for crimes committed in office. When President Obama ordered the release of more "torture memos" by Yoo and Bybee to the public in April 2009, I watched--with a mixture of horror and fascination--the repercussions unfold. First, came words of outrage from the CIA and leaders of the Republican Party about Obama "endangering America's national security." This was followed by indecision and capitulation to the right on the part of the Democratic Party leadership. And through it all, in what I call "the week from holy hell,' came brave calls for the lawyers' prosecution by bloggers, journalists, and even, tentatively, the New York Times. But no one was putting Yoo and Bybee's memos in their proper context, a context that would explain their actions and leave no doubt as to their culpability. Read more.
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Pretty amazing interview with Indiana congressman Mike Pence (posted by Matt Duss). This guy wants to run for president in ‘12 (the reason he decided not to run against Bayh this year — even though polls showed him ahead):
I think President George W. Bush got it right. The United States certainly wants to be honest, but we don’t want to be a broker. A broker doesn’t take sides. A broker negotiates between parties of equals… America’s on the side of Israel. And to send any other message than our unwavering support, that we will stand with what the sovereign government and the people of Israel decide is in their interest, I think represents a departure from where the heart of the American people are at.
Weiss adds: Note how similar Pence’s language is to someone on the other side of t... (continue reading)
Pretty amazing interview with Indiana congressman Mike Pence (posted by Matt Duss). This guy wants to run for president in ‘12 (the reason he decided not to run against Bayh this year — even though polls showed him ahead):
I think President George W. Bush got it right. The United States certainly wants to be honest, but we don’t want to be a broker. A broker doesn’t take sides. A broker negotiates between parties of equals… America’s on the side of Israel. And to send any other message than our unwavering support, that we will stand with what the sovereign government and the people of Israel decide is in their interest, I think represents a departure from where the heart of the American people are at.
Weiss adds: Note how similar Pence’s language is to someone on the other side of the aisle, Democratic power broker Ann Lewis. She was speaking to a Democratic Jewish audience in ‘08 (reported by Dana Milbank of WPost) when it was suggested that a president might choose to reflect liberal political opinion in Israel; "Lewis retorted: ‘The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties.’"
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I first picked up on Sri Lanka war crimes because Antony Loewenstein told me how they outweighed Israel’s actions in Gaza. Here’s his piece condeming the reports that Australia may grant asylum to the former head of the Sri Lankan army, Sarath Fonseka:
I have spoken to several individuals who were in the combat zone in the final months of last year’s war and they have detailed the government’s deliberate shelling and bombing of civilians and infrastructure, including hospitals. Human Rights Watch has demanded international accountability for countless violations.
Jake Lynch, director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has documented Canberra’s “official hand-wringing … accompanied by a notable pusillanimity” when faced with Sri Lanka’s crimes. Trade has trump... (continue reading)
I first picked up on Sri Lanka war crimes because Antony Loewenstein told me how they outweighed Israel’s actions in Gaza. Here’s his piece condeming the reports that Australia may grant asylum to the former head of the Sri Lankan army, Sarath Fonseka:
I have spoken to several individuals who were in the combat zone in the final months of last year’s war and they have detailed the government’s deliberate shelling and bombing of civilians and infrastructure, including hospitals. Human Rights Watch has demanded international accountability for countless violations.
Jake Lynch, director of Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, has documented Canberra’s “official hand-wringing … accompanied by a notable pusillanimity” when faced with Sri Lanka’s crimes. Trade has trumped human rights time and time again….
Of course, the issue of investigating war crimes should not be solely directed at leaders and officials in developing countries. The international legal system remains fundamentally deficient due to the highly selective nature of its usual mandate. Why, for example, aren’t there serious questions asked when senior Israeli ministers visit Australia, some of whom are accused by the UN Goldstone Report of committing war crimes in Gaza?
The aftermath of Sri Lanka’s recently disputed election puts even more pressure on Canberra to take its global responsibilities seriously. Failing to do so would simply add another chapter in the already dismal history of Australia allowing sanctuary to killers, brutes and generals.
Related posts:Tell the State Department to investigate Israeli war crimes in GazaWas there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill civilians?Goldstone attacks House resolution on his report as ’sweeping and unfair… devoid of truth’
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Several BDS groups, including Adalah-NY here, have called for boycott of the Israel Ballet’s tour to Florida and the Northeast this month. The groups say that the ballet is part of the government’s rebranding campaign–
The Israel Ballet, which receives around $1 million annually from the Israeli government, is being advertised as a cultural ambassador of the state by the Israeli Consulate in New York. The dance group also boasts holding “special performances” for Israeli soldiers.
and say that the ballet never condemns the occupation, and also make this argument, which is especially compelling:
[Ballet founder Berta] Yampolsky continued, “We don’t care what religion or nationality you are, as long as you are a good person.” Yet none of the dancers, board members, or staff liste... (continue reading)
Several BDS groups, including Adalah-NY here, have called for boycott of the Israel Ballet’s tour to Florida and the Northeast this month. The groups say that the ballet is part of the government’s rebranding campaign–
The Israel Ballet, which receives around $1 million annually from the Israeli government, is being advertised as a cultural ambassador of the state by the Israeli Consulate in New York. The dance group also boasts holding “special performances” for Israeli soldiers.
and say that the ballet never condemns the occupation, and also make this argument, which is especially compelling:
[Ballet founder Berta] Yampolsky continued, “We don’t care what religion or nationality you are, as long as you are a good person.” Yet none of the dancers, board members, or staff listed on the Israel Ballet website are Palestinian, though Palestinians comprise 20% of Israel’s citizenry. Furthermore, the Israeli government systematically discriminates against Israel’s Palestinian citizens, including providing less funding for Palestinian citizens’ cultural and educational activities. Palestinian artists in occupied Gaza and the West Bank fare even worse. The Ramallah-based Palestinian dance troupe, El-Funoun, must continuously contend with Israel’s ongoing occupation, and its members have faced military roadblocks, military curfews, random arrests, injury, performance closures and travel bans.
That’s not fair. That’s redolent of Jim Crow days. And certainly doesn’t seem very democratic.
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It is impossible to discuss the action of the Israel lobby in our foreign policy without acknowledging a sociological reality: Jews are big winners of the meritocracy, we are the richest group by religion in the U.S. I have to keep hitting this point because a, no one talks about it out of fear of pogroms, though everyone knows it to be true; b, meanwhile, a lot of people talk about this reality in the Arab world, where it fuels anti-Semitic broadbrush statements (Jews own Congress, a youth in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, said to me).
Sorry about the preamble. I’m never entirely comfortable writing about this, but it’s just too important. Lately, the New York Times reported on the donors lining up in opposing camps over the possible NY Democratic Senate primary race between Harold Ford Jr... (continue reading)
It is impossible to discuss the action of the Israel lobby in our foreign policy without acknowledging a sociological reality: Jews are big winners of the meritocracy, we are the richest group by religion in the U.S. I have to keep hitting this point because a, no one talks about it out of fear of pogroms, though everyone knows it to be true; b, meanwhile, a lot of people talk about this reality in the Arab world, where it fuels anti-Semitic broadbrush statements (Jews own Congress, a youth in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, said to me).
Sorry about the preamble. I’m never entirely comfortable writing about this, but it’s just too important. Lately, the New York Times reported on the donors lining up in opposing camps over the possible NY Democratic Senate primary race between Harold Ford Jr. and incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand. It appears that most of the names of the powerbrokers in the piece are Jewish: Kovner, Tisch, Cohn, Lerer, Frucher, Wolf, Perelman, Steve Rattner. The key figure in the story, hedge fund manager Orin Kramer, is said to support many Jewish causes, and bankrolled Obama. (Another big-money Jewish Obama backer, this one from Chicago, is now ambassador to the UK).
The Washington Post once estimated that 60 percent of the money in Democratic Party coffers comes from Jews. I once asked Steve Rabinowitz, a campaign consultant, about this; and he said that Jewish giving to Democrats was so high that if anyone did a study of it, it would fuel conspiracy theories.
I emphasize that my answer to this predominance is not in any way to deprive Jews of political access (though a certain WASPy voluntary declination of privilege might be in order, to make a little room for others…) but to urge a wider consciousness of social responsibility on my people. And yes, to fuel the critique of Zionism. With this much power, we must show greater consideration for others.
Related posts:Press Differs on Whether Emanuel Will Serve IsraelThere I Go Again, Counting JewsThe Times Insists on Talking About Jewish ‘Voters,’ Not Donors…
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The New York Times has published an exchange between its public editor Clark Hoyt, who says that Ethan Bronner should be taken off the Jerusalem beat (the outcome I thought would ensue when Bronner’s son entered the Israeli army and the fit hit the shan), and Bill Keller, the executive editor, who digs in his heels on Bronner’s behalf and protests too much. Keller makes the following statement:
If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary.
There are a couple of problems with this hypothetical. 1, It’s not a hypothetical: Th... (continue reading)
The New York Times has published an exchange between its public editor Clark Hoyt, who says that Ethan Bronner should be taken off the Jerusalem beat (the outcome I thought would ensue when Bronner’s son entered the Israeli army and the fit hit the shan), and Bill Keller, the executive editor, who digs in his heels on Bronner’s behalf and protests too much. Keller makes the following statement:
If we send a Jewish correspondent to Jerusalem, the zealots on one side will accuse him of being a Zionist and on the other side of being a self-loathing Jew, and then they will parse every word he writes to find the phrase that confirms what they already believe while overlooking all evidence to the contrary.
There are a couple of problems with this hypothetical. 1, It’s not a hypothetical: The Times has sent not one but two Jewish correspondents to Jerusalem! 2, I believe that Bronner is a Zionist. I’m not certain, but I believe that if he were at all honest about his ideas about the Jewish state–ideas that we as readers have a right to know about, given the place we’re all in in history right now, and the dual-loyalty issues that Zionism created, and that Arthur Hays Sulzberger the late publisher of the Times anticipated that it would create–then we would know him to be a Zionist. That was the vibe I got at his lecture the other day: he’s emotionally invested in the idea of a Jewish state. He should talk openly about this. Many, many American Jews are Zionists, and Keller shouldn’t put them on the defensive. Why is it an "accusation" to say someone is a Zionist? Many people think that’s a good thing; Dershowitz says supporting Israel is the secular religion of American Jews.
I think Keller’s decision not to move Bronner (for now; we still might get a trainwreck/climbdown) is defensible; but consider: both Jerusalem correspondents are Jewish, one is Israeli, and both are married to Israelis. That’s a lot of Israelness. I bet a few members of that menage are Zionists.
This controversy, and Keller’s stand, leave the Times with no choice: It must assign an Arab-American reporter to Jerusalem. Or not even an American. If it had any stones, it would seek to elevate Taghreed El-Khodary, the fabulous correspondent it has in Gaza. And I wonder what the Israelis would do when she applied to enter the country.
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Sarah Honig is the darling of Jerusalem Post readers, if the comments and ratings to her op-eds are any indication.
Her latest, Another Tack: Nessie and why Obama can’t, says that "Israeli-Arab peace" is a Loch Ness monster, i.e., a fantasy. Quite a few readers at Mondoweiss might agree with this analogy, but not with Honig’s outrageous propagandizing.
Honig goes after Obama for his unfair handling of Israel, blaming it on "postmodernist evenhandedness." It’s the usual hasbara: Netanyahu offered unprecedented concessions and was met only with unprecedented Palestinian demands.
I won’t regurgitate all of her shtick, but will call Honig out for the following mendacious garbage:
As our own region proves time and again, myths can be lucrative, self-perpetuating and more compelling than unp... (continue reading)
Sarah Honig is the darling of Jerusalem Post readers, if the comments and ratings to her op-eds are any indication.
Her latest, Another Tack: Nessie and why Obama can’t, says that "Israeli-Arab peace" is a Loch Ness monster, i.e., a fantasy. Quite a few readers at Mondoweiss might agree with this analogy, but not with Honig’s outrageous propagandizing.
Honig goes after Obama for his unfair handling of Israel, blaming it on "postmodernist evenhandedness." It’s the usual hasbara: Netanyahu offered unprecedented concessions and was met only with unprecedented Palestinian demands.
I won’t regurgitate all of her shtick, but will call Honig out for the following mendacious garbage:
As our own region proves time and again, myths can be lucrative, self-perpetuating and more compelling than unpleasant truth. The myth of an Israeli-Arab peace, like Nessie, is too good a moneymaker to let go of. Lots of folks make their living off it. They have a vested interest in keeping it alive, the consequences be damned.
NGOs worldwide rake in profits from their tireless “peace efforts.” What would they do without that little awful Jewish state? They churn out position papers, formulate proposals, produce damning documentaries to expose Israeli villainy, mold de rigueur opinions, raise funds for Hamas saints, dispatch activists and demonstrators against us, attract attention with assorted boycotts and initiate arrest warrants against our defenders and elected representatives. It’s a veritable industry and its business is booming.
So are its local subsidiaries. Miscellaneous left-wing outfits within Israel mushroom and thrive on handouts from foreign self-professed do-gooders. The inflow of cash buys friends, influences people and facilitates the takeover of airtime and tabloid pages. By dominating the media they dominate public discourse. They change mind-sets.
Which are the NGOs raking in profits from their Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts? Not the ones Honig ridicules. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are favorite targets of rabid Israeli supporters these days. What would AI and HRW do "without that awful little Jewish state"? Plenty, as even the slightest perusal of their activities and reports would demonstrate.
Honig is even more shrill than the usual supporter of an oppressive regime that finds itself criticized by a human rights organization. Whether it’s the defenders of the Soviet Union, Pinochet’s Chile, Communist China, Argentina of the Generals, Castro’s Cuba, Apartheid South Africa, or Iran of the Ayatollahs or the Shah, the tune is always the same. Such attacks on the messengers have been heard since the first HROs emerged in the sixties and seventies. NGOs are useful tools when they criticize your enemies, but become your enemy when they criticize your own bad behavior or that of your allies. Anyone who has worked for these organizations in a non-partisan manner knows the score.
It’s beyond chutzpah for Honig to be talking about individuals and organizations making money off of Israeli criticism. Who are the NGO leaders that earn salaries equal to the $600,000 plus that Abraham Fox of the ADL and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Weisenthal Center and Holocaust Museum pull down? For the Hiers it has become a family business – adding the income of his wife and son, the compensation exceeds $1 milion per year. David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, which runs a separate foreign policy for American Jews, and Howard Kohr, executive director of AIPAC, are comparable paupers taking only $450-460,000 per year.
I recently met an ex-IDF officer who is now a member of Combatants for Peace, a group of Palestinians and Israelis that "had taken an active part in the cycle of violence in previous years and later on decided to put down their arms. CFP is a bi-national movement committed to non-violent activism and conscientious objection." Trying to raise some funding, this Israeli-Palestinian NGO has a proposed budget of $222,000 with the highest salary for staff budgeted at $24,000. Frau Honig, where is the profit-raking in that? Could you bother to name those dedicated Israeli NGO members who are living the high life off illicit subsidies from such nefarious organizations as the EU, and the governments of Norway and the Netherlands?
Whereas the finances of the NGOs that Honig considers subversive and traitorous are fairly transparent, the finances of many of her Zionist allies are shrouded in secrecy and funneled through US NPOs in order to collect dubious tax deductions. Im Tirtzu, which orchestrated the recent attack on the New Israeli Fund, as much as admitted the tax dodge.
Thank God for the Jerusalem Post. According to Honig, the rest of the Israeli media has been infiltrated and bought off by Israeli NGOs fronting for foreign enemies.
Maybe Honig would be willing to tell us her income for her slavish defense of Israeli actions at the Jerusalem Post and other places. Those of us who contribute to Mondoweiss would be encouraged to learn that such dedicated Zionists as Honig were acting out of conscience and not pecuniary reward just like us. Is there anyone critical of Israel who isn’t aware that the earnings and opportunities are much greater if you serve the Israeli Lobby?
Is any party gaining more economic benefit from "the myth of an Israeli-Arab peace" than Israel itself? By holding out the possibility of this ever elusive peace, Israel gets its occupation funded by the rest of the world. Instead of having to pay for the welfare of the occupied as required by international law, Israel makes sure that its businesses get their cut for any goods imported into the territories and for any economic activity which is actually allowed in the Palestinian areas.
As a carrot to get Israel to take daring steps for peace, the EU, the US and every other Western economic institution have bent over backwards to grant Israel favorable access and status. For the same empty promises, Israel is rewarded multiple times.
Since Israel has "to feel secure" in order to make peace, America arms it to the teeth with generous military aid and the latest technology, and grants it unprecedented access to the US defense market where it competes on favorable terms with US firms. Moreover, the US buys off the repressive governments of Egypt and Jordan in order to keep them committed to the "peace" charade.
It appears the war against those critical of the Gaza invasion has only just begun. Sarah Honig shows how far mainstream Israeli supporters are willing to go to demonize these critics.
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Get two Jews in a room, you have three opinions! Not. 7 Feb 2010Philip Weiss A Melbourne synagogue has withdrawn its invitation to Naomi Chazan to speak in Australia. Scary. Because Chazan’s very-Zionist New Israel Fund has had the temerity to support human-rights groups in Israel.
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This is the blog of Jaron Gilinsky, the guy who did the video on the New York Times website attacking the nonviolent protests in the West Bank as theatrical. A glance at the blog tells you that Gilinsky believes that nonviolence is completely nonviolent, and that protesters in the West Bank are provoking the Israeli soldiers out of the publicity philosophy, "If it bleeds, it leads."
He’s wrong. First of all, it’s not leading; it’s not in the American press. And, put aside stone-throwing, which I’m against; nonviolent protest has the purpose of exposing repression and thuggery and violence and therefore risks violence. The nonviolent protest I went to in al-Masara a few weeks back was scary for just this reason; the nonviolent protesters by their very presence and questioning set off Isr... (continue reading)
This is the blog of Jaron Gilinsky, the guy who did the video on the New York Times website attacking the nonviolent protests in the West Bank as theatrical. A glance at the blog tells you that Gilinsky believes that nonviolence is completely nonviolent, and that protesters in the West Bank are provoking the Israeli soldiers out of the publicity philosophy, "If it bleeds, it leads."
He’s wrong. First of all, it’s not leading; it’s not in the American press. And, put aside stone-throwing, which I’m against; nonviolent protest has the purpose of exposing repression and thuggery and violence and therefore risks violence. The nonviolent protest I went to in al-Masara a few weeks back was scary for just this reason; the nonviolent protesters by their very presence and questioning set off Israeli craziness. Or as Joseph Glatzer, who has taken Gilinsky on in his comments section, writes: "When the civil rights protestors in the South got Bull Conner to unleash the dogs and firehoses on the innocent children marching… it was put on TV and it galvanized public opinion."
A year and a half ago, Norman Finkelstein published a wonderful paper on Gandhi that closely examined Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. Finkelstein demonstrated that a philosophy of nonviolence wasn’t a philosophy of passivity. His paper includes these passages:
Gandhi did not, however, unqualifiedly repudiate violence. Until and unless he converted others to his beliefs, Gandhi accepted the validity of current norms. Thus, while personally unable to condone it, he did acknowledge the legitimacy of resorting to violence in a righteous cause; “self-defense is everybody’s birthright." In the face of personal insult, and “if you feel humiliated, you will be justified in slapping the bully in the face or taking whatever action you might deem necessary to vindicate your self-respect." And although “not defending the Arab excesses” during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine, and although “wishing they had chosen the way of nonviolence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country,” Gandhi nonetheless maintained that “according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds."
However much he deplored violence, Gandhi did deem it much preferable to inaction in the face of injustice. Should one be incapable of nonviolently resisting an outrage, the only honorable option would be to resist violently, whereas flight would be wholly shameful. For, if there was one thing Gandhi detested more than violence, it was “mute submissiveness" and what was yet worse, such submissiveness masquerading as nonviolent resistance. He regarded not violence but pusillanimity and effeminateness as the most contemptible of personal failings while he prized the virtues—which a true satyagrahi perforce nurtured—of courage and manliness: “The fundamental thing to be borne in mind is that people should, under no circumstances, be cowardly or impotent”; “it is unmanly to run away from danger." Gandhi tersely defined the “aim of the satyagraha struggle” he led in South Africa as being “to infuse manliness in cowards." In a scalding denunciation of ersatz nonviolence, and in a passage that might easily have been cribbed from Nietzsche, Gandhi lectured:
"Nonviolence cannot be taught to a person who fears to die and has no power of resistance. A helpless mouse is not nonviolent because he is always eaten by pussy. He would gladly eat the murderess if he could, but he ever tries to flee from her. We do not call him a coward, because he is made by nature to behave no better than he does. But a man who, when faced by danger, behaves like a mouse, is rightly called a coward. He harbors violence and hatred in his heart and would kill his enemy if he could without being hurt himself. He is a stranger to nonviolence. All sermonizing on it will be lost on him. Bravery is foreign to his nature. Before he can understand nonviolence he has to be taught to stand his ground and even suffer death in the attempt to defend himself against the aggressor who bids fair to overwhelm him. To do otherwise would be to confirm his cowardice and take him further away from nonviolence."
Gandhi heaped praise on the “reckless courage” that soldiers displayed in battle and wanted “to learn…the art of throwing away my life for a noble cause."
…In addition, Gandhi rejected nonviolence borne of weakness as being politically ineffectual. If the votaries of nonviolence abjure force only from dread of violent retaliation, then the wrongdoer has every right to dread what might ensue should they attain power and acquire its instruments….
In any event, on both personal/moral and political/pragmatic grounds, Gandhi insisted that true nonviolent resistance had to be yet more brave and strong than violent resistance: only such nonviolence could redeem its votary and convert the wrongdoer. “An army of nonviolence exposes itself to all the risks that an army of violence does,” he declared. “Only the latter expects to retaliate even when it is not the aggressor. An army of nonviolence runs risks without the wish to retaliate."
I should note that Finkelstein imagined an army of protesters descending on the Israeli wall "with picks." Many of them would be killed, he said. I wonder what Gilinsky would say about carrying picks. I know what Gandhi would say.
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"Until Israel heeds US President Barack Obama’s call for the removal of all settlements, the Israelis must be under no illusion that Saudi Arabia will offer what they most desire — regional recognition."
The ‘67 borders are said to be the consensus position globally. Chomsky is for them. Daniel Levy is for them. Saudi is for them. Obama too, more or less. Why does Israel feel it has the power to defy world opinion? Where does this tiny nation derive its power?
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Obama adviser Samantha Power met with Israeli officials recently on Gaza and the Goldstone report. Haaretz:
Power did not hide her criticism of Israel’s handling of the Goldstone report; she asked whether Israel’s thinking on the issue was "strategic or tactical."
"Is the correct strategy fighting Goldstone on all fronts?" she asked.
A main message of the U.S. officials was that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was directly linked to the ability of Israel’s critics to push the Goldstone report forward and the ability to block the report’s consequences.
Note that Power co-edited a book on human rights with Graham Allison featuring an article by Richard Goldstone; and in her meeting she did not denounce or offer a ritualistic denial of the Goldstone report– which implies accept... (continue reading)
Obama adviser Samantha Power met with Israeli officials recently on Gaza and the Goldstone report. Haaretz:
Power did not hide her criticism of Israel’s handling of the Goldstone report; she asked whether Israel’s thinking on the issue was "strategic or tactical."
"Is the correct strategy fighting Goldstone on all fronts?" she asked.
A main message of the U.S. officials was that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was directly linked to the ability of Israel’s critics to push the Goldstone report forward and the ability to block the report’s consequences.
Note that Power co-edited a book on human rights with Graham Allison featuring an article by Richard Goldstone; and in her meeting she did not denounce or offer a ritualistic denial of the Goldstone report– which implies acceptance of the premise and conclusions. She instead asked whether Israel was going to respond strategically.
Remember that in days gone by, Power expressed empathy for the Palestinians and offered explict criticism of Israeli practices and of the fact that the US is joined at the hip to Israel. You can read some of her good stuff in this neocon denunciation of Power for her human rights advocacy.
Also: Goldstone is no stranger to Harvard and in 2008 gave a prestigious lecture on the 60th declaration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And he’s taught at Harvard Law School.
Related posts:Samantha Power Would Impose a Solution. And That’s a Bad Thing, Right?Rob Malley… Zbig Brzezinski… Samantha Power… Jimmy Carter… Chas Freeman… Mary RobinsonSamantha Power Has Done a Great Service by Naming Hillary
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Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilia... (continue reading)
Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards."
This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. The city was marked for death after an angry mob mutilated four American mercenaries -- following a series of civilian killings by occupation forces in the preceding weeks: provocations that have been conveniently airbrushed from history (just like the U.S. massacre of Somalis that preceded the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident). An initial attack on Fallujah failed in the spring of 2004, largely due to political heat from the vast civilian suffering that was being reported from the city, chiefly from its medical centers.
But in the following months, the noose was tightened around Fallujah's neck. Tens of thousands fled the city to escape the coming second attack, which was well-publicized in advance. Story after story -- or rather, puff piece after puff piece -- about the preparations streamed from the embedded mainstream media reporters. The ostensible aim of the attack was to "eliminate" groups of "diehard terrorists" using Fallujah as a base. But of course, the months of PR about the looming operation meant that the putative targets had plenty of time to slip away. And they did.
Even so, as soon as George W. Bush's re-election was in the bag, the attack was launched. This time, the US brass were careful to eliminate the main source of bad press in the first attack: hospitals were a prime target. As I noted at the time:
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
And now Marjah is being readied for the Fallujah option. (For as we all know, your real tough hombres never take any option off the table.) As the Guardian reports:
Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year. The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths. ...
US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand's besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force which will spearhead the fight, has said he is "not looking for a fair fight." ...
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful".
Yes, it's always helpful to do some pre-winnowing of a densely populated area before you destroy it with mortars and air-to-ground missiles. But of course, while thousands of civilians flee, thousands more have "remained because they could not afford to leave," the Guardian reports. How many of these will be re-classifed as "enemy fighters" when their corpses are found in the ruins?
The Afghans themselves know the score:
A Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".
"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.
Slaughter, ruin, fear and exile: yeah, it's the Good War, all right! "The war we should be fighting," as our tough-guy libs kept telling us when putting their always serious, always "nuanced" objections to the Iraq "fiasco" in proper context. Well, they have it now, the war they always wanted. And who knows? Maybe soon they can have their own Fallujah! Won't that be a great apotheosis of Progressivism? (show less)
Here's the way the game works. First you get the outright lie, then later, in dribs and drabs, you get a few, grudging crumbs of the truth.
For example, first you get: "No, there are no Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. None. That's just a conspiracy theory, terrorist propaganda. These kinds of lies just make it harder for us to do good in the region." Then later: "Well, yes, we do have Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. But, uh, we don't actually cut their checks directly in the Pentagon."
Or what about this more recent example? First: "The United States has no troops in Pakistan. None. We are not going to send troops to Pakistan. That's just wild talk, a conspiracy theory. And it makes it harder for us to do good in the region."
Then later: "Well, yes, we do have a few troops in... (continue reading)
Here's the way the game works. First you get the outright lie, then later, in dribs and drabs, you get a few, grudging crumbs of the truth.
For example, first you get: "No, there are no Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. None. That's just a conspiracy theory, terrorist propaganda. These kinds of lies just make it harder for us to do good in the region." Then later: "Well, yes, we do have Blackwater operatives in Pakistan. But, uh, we don't actually cut their checks directly in the Pentagon."
Or what about this more recent example? First: "The United States has no troops in Pakistan. None. We are not going to send troops to Pakistan. That's just wild talk, a conspiracy theory. And it makes it harder for us to do good in the region."
Then later: "Well, yes, we do have a few troops in Pakistan. All right, a couple hundred. But that's it. We promise. And they're just training their counterparts in Pakistan's military. Oh yeah, and also working alongside paramilitary militias in the frontier regions. And maybe, you know, following up on some of our drone strikes. That is, our alleged drone strikes, because we are not, as you know, officially admitting that we are carrying out an ever-accelerating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, although if we were, these strikes would be very surgical, and the hundreds of people who might have been killed in just the past few months by these strikes, if they happened, would have all been vicious savage murdering 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! terrorists. But other than these 200 troops we have in Pakistan now, we have no troops in Pakistan. Never have. Except, of course, for the 12 American troops who have been killed in, well, battle, in, er, Pakistan since 2001. But that's it. Look me in the eye; would I lie to you?"
Yes, yet another aspect of what must be the most unsecret secret war in history has been rumbled. American troops are on the ground in Pakistan – and getting killed there. As the world now knows, three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing (which also killed six Pakistanis, as if anyone cares) in a remote frontier province in Pakistan this week. The bombing took place in an area that had supposedly been cleared in the savage, swoopstake "counterinsurgency" operations launched by Pakistan at America's insistence. (Operations which, we were told at the time, had no American involvement whatsoever.)
Yet as the Pakistani paper The News points out, this massive "clearing" operation – which cleared more than a million people from their homes as they fled the fighting – could not stop the insurgents from placing a huge 70kg bomb "in an area that had reportedly been 'cleared' and moreover plant it on such a high-profile target that should have been guarded as closely as possible given that 'foreign visitors' were on their way. Nobody noticed a 70kg bomb being buried in the road?"
All this might suggest to a cynic that our much-ballyhooed "counterinsurgency doctrines" (and they are indeed treated as holy writ, handed down by St. David Petraeus) are not, perhaps, as entirely effective as they might be – especially considering the vast cost in innocent life they exact, and the hatred and extremism they engender.
Noel Shachtman at Wired has a couple of useful roundups (here and here) on the latest revelations of our sure-enough war in Pakistan. But equally revealing are some of the remarks he passes along from readers, and his own response: exchanges which demonstrate that, sadly, it is not only our elites who are marinated in "a sense of imperial entitlement and dominance" (as we noted here the other day).
Shachtman notes how the new revelations give the glaring lie to the solemn promises made by Obama's "special envoy" to the region, Richard Holbrooke. Speaking in Brussels last May, Holbrooke declared:
"The heart of the problem for the West is in western Pakistan. But there are not going to be US or NATO troops on the ground in Pakistan. There is a red line for the government of Pakistan and one which we must respect," he said.
(Parenthetically, isn't it rather strange that the "heart of the problem" for our militarist mandarins always seems to lie outside the borders of the country they are ravaging? So the "real problem" in Afghanistan lies in Pakistan. And, as we were told repeatedly for years, the "real problem" in Iraq was actually Iran, whose nuke-mad mullahs kept stirring up our lazy, docile darkies in Iraq. Tony Blair stuck to this line, well, religiously in his recent canard-o-rama at the Iraq inquiry in London. It was Iran who caused all our problems in Iraq, he said over and over; in fact, he mentioned Iran 58 times in the course of his testimony, much of which was aimed at fomenting new war fever against Tehran.)
Shachtman also notes the fact that the Americans killed in Pakistan this week were not, by the Pentagon's own admission, super-duper secret agents, but part of a straightforward "counterinsurgency" program: "a widening war," as he says, rightly.
Then comes a pushback from various warbloggers. First, the pseudonymous Islamophobe armchair warrior "Rusty Shackleford" (I guess cowardice in the service of virtue is no vice, eh, Rusty?) weighs in:
“Admitting that we have troops on the ground engaged in combat roles would — literally — lead to a civil war in Pakistan. .. It is a catch-22, ironic, and duplicitous: but calling this a war is the same thing as losing it. Me, I’m willing to be called two-faced for sake of winning a war. Those that prefer consistency over victory are misguided.”
This is wilful ignorance with a vengeance. Obviously, Pseudo-Warrior believes that Pakistanis are too stupid to notice foreign troops fighting on their own soil. So as long as we don't admit "that we have troops on the ground engaged in combat roles," then those dumb Pakis will never know! Man, that's some crafty, subtile strategy there.
Shachtman then gives us the views of "Uncle Jimbo" at Blackfive:
It is fair to point out that the ops in Pakistan are more tightly tied to a shooting war than many others, but does that mean we should take them and shine a bunch of bright lights on them? … There is plenty of oversight operating where it belongs in classified briefings… The political environment in Pakistan is delicate as Hell so we properly tread lightly. A bunch of breathless stories about the mere possibility that we are cooperating more w/ Pakistan or that heaven forbid the evil Blackwater mercenaries are helping load drones doesn’t make doing any good there easier… It is smart and a proper use of Special Forces. Now let’s stop making their jobs harder by acting like something nefarious is going on.
Shachtman replies, reasonably, that, as noted, the Pakistanis already know what's going on in their own country, and that "secrecy is only fueling the paranoia and conspiracy theories — not to mention depriving Americans of their right to know how their blood and treasure is being spent." Shachtman also, perhaps out of courtesy, refrains from commenting on Jimbo's touching naiveté that our always wise and competent leaders will provide all the necessary "oversight" in their secret briefings.
But despite this display of common sense, Shachtman feels compelled to establish his own "tough realist" credentials. In response to Jimbo's claim that telling the truth about the U.S. war in Pakistan "doesn’t make doing any good there easier," Shachtman hastens to reply:
I hear that. And if this were some other, relatively small-scale SF operation (cough Yemen cough), I’d agree 100%.
And there you have it: the quintessential, unconscious response of the fully marinated modern American. Shachtman is not at all opposed to imperial agents carrying out deadly attacks in foreign lands at peace with the United States. The principle of unlimited violence -- the right of America to kill people anytime, anywhere in the world -- is never questioned. The only argument that "serious" people can have concerns the application of this principle; i.e., is it in our best interest to kill these people now, or wait until later, or maybe kill some other people instead, or build a few more schools while we're killing people or -- and this is as radical as our "serious" discourse allows -- should we even maybe hold off on killing people for just a little while, to let the lesser breeds cool down a bit, and rebuild our busted finances?
As we noted here the other day:
Our elites and their courtiers [and their commentators] literally cannot imagine life without a permanent war for global dominance, fueled by a gargantuan war machine spread across hundreds and hundreds of bases implanted in more than 100 countries.
And so these debates between chest-beating militarists and more thoughtful "moderates" over the proper application of imperial violence in foreign lands will go on. Because until the empire is dismantled -- until we bring America home -- there will be no end to these wars and op and "interventions," secret, open, two-faced or otherwise. And no end to the blowback of violence and retrogression they produce. (show less)
The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.
Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it a... (continue reading)
The American elite's unbounded, unquestioned, indeed unconscious sense of imperial entitlement and dominance -- based ultimately on war, the threat of war and the profit from war -- is one of the defining characteristics of our age. And if you would like to see a glaring example of this attitude in action, look no further than the front page of Tuesday's New York Times, where one David Sanger gives us his penetrating "news analysis" of the Administration's just-announced $3.8 trillion budget.
Sanger focuses on the huge, continuing deficits that the budget forecasts over the next decade. Completely ignoring the plain truth that his own expert source tell him later in the story -- that "forecasts 10 years out have no credibility" -- Sanger boldly plunges forward to tell us just what it all means. You will not be surprised to hear that the upshot of these big deficits is that neither Obama nor his successors will be able to spend any money on "new domestic initiatives" for years to come. But let's let Sanger, savant and seer, tell it in his own words:
In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.
The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.
But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. ...
For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.
What is most interesting here, of course, is not Sanger's noodle-scratching over imaginary numbers projected into an unknowable future, but his total and apparently completely unconscious adoption of the mindset of militarist empire. For as he puzzles and puzzles till his puzzler is sore on how in God's name the United States can possibly find any money at all to spend on bettering the lives of its citizens over the next 10 years, it becomes clear that Sanger -- like the rest of our political and media elite -- literally cannot conceive of an end to empire. Our elites and their courtiers literally cannot imagine life without a permanent war for global dominance, fueled by a gargantuan war machine spread across hundreds and hundreds of bases implanted in more than 100 countries.
And so this consideration, this possible outcome, does not figure in Sanger's "analysis" because it cannot: it lies far outside the scope of his consciousness. The only possible alternative he can conceive to the empire's bloody and bankrupting business as usual is some kind of divine intervention, "miraculous growth" or some "miraculous political compromise."
And make no mistake: the "miraculous political compromise" he is talking about has nothing to do with ending or even trimming the empire. A "compromise" on this issue could only be posited if there was some present conflict over it. But both parties are deeply committed to increasing spending on the wars and the war machine.
No, by "compromise" Sanger means some sort of "Grand Bargain" between the parties to cut Social Security and Medicare, along the lines of the "blue-ribbon panel" of entitlement cutters now being pushed by the Obama Administration. An effort to impose this kind of elitist, unaccountable commission failed in the Senate a few weeks ago -- although the Republicans have proposed such panels before, they didn't like this one because Obama proposed it -- but the idea will keep coming back. Sanger and the elite will doubtless get their "miracle" of slashing the remaining bits of the safety net to shreds in due time.
For these are the only possibilities for deficit-cutting that Sanger can even remotely contemplate: some whiz-bang new techno gizmo -- or maybe some hot new "financial instruments" cooked up by Wall Street -- that will goose the economy with a bright new bubble ... or else finally telling our old, sick, vulnerable and unfortunate to just crawl off and die already. That's it. That's all that our elite can envision.
Yet the ending of the imperial wars and the dismantling of America's global military empire -- and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance.
This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens.
This is no utopian vision. Many problems, much suffering would remain. But it would be a better society -- more humane, more just, more secure, more peaceful, more prosperous than it is now. Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about.
But such a society is precisely what our elites cannot -- or, to be more accurate, will not -- imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire -- a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance.
And on a more prosaic level, the end of empire would mean an end to the horrendous economic distortion wrought by our war-profiteering industries. Other businesses would inevitably come to the fore, economic activity would be sp( click title for more ) evenly across more sectors. And so, yes, those who have feasted so gluttonously for so long on blood money would not be quite as rich as they are now.
A better world -- again, not perfect, by no means perfect, but much better -- is entirely possible. We could easily dismantle the empire -- carefully, safely, with deliberation -- over the next ten years. It is a reasonable, moderate, serious option. It would not require violent revolution or vast social upheaval. But our elites do not want this. They can no longer fathom life without the exercise -- and worship -- of unrestricted power that empire entails. They will not accept -- or even contemplate -- any alternative to it.
And thus every option and policy we are offered -- whether from right-wing Republicans or "progressive" Democrats, or from "serious" news analysts on "serious" papers -- must fall within these pathetically cramped, constricted mental horizons. Empire -- the imposition of dominion by violence and threat of violence, and the financial and moral corruption this breeds, the malevolent example it sets at every level of society -- is the canker in the body politic. Until it is dealt with, there will be no healing, no hope, no change -- just more degradation and disaster all down the line. (show less)
Even as progressives were savoring Barack Obama's "masterful" – indeed, "brain-searing" – performance at the House Republicans' retreat last Friday, their dazzling champion was busy applying himself with renewed and reckless vigor to that most un-progressive of occupations: saber-rattling around the world. The last few days have certainly seen a remarkable display of bellicosity by the Obama Administration, putting almost every tool in the militarist kit to use: nukes, ships, missiles, money, proxies and war-profiteering. With just a few flicks of the imperial wrist, Obama sent waves of destabilization through some of the most volatile regions on earth.
There was the sale of $6.4 billion in military hardware to Taiwan: a bumper crop of boodle for America's war-profiteering community, ... (continue reading)
Even as progressives were savoring Barack Obama's "masterful" – indeed, "brain-searing" – performance at the House Republicans' retreat last Friday, their dazzling champion was busy applying himself with renewed and reckless vigor to that most un-progressive of occupations: saber-rattling around the world. The last few days have certainly seen a remarkable display of bellicosity by the Obama Administration, putting almost every tool in the militarist kit to use: nukes, ships, missiles, money, proxies and war-profiteering. With just a few flicks of the imperial wrist, Obama sent waves of destabilization through some of the most volatile regions on earth.
There was the sale of $6.4 billion in military hardware to Taiwan: a bumper crop of boodle for America's war-profiteering community, but a hard slap to the Chinese – who have responded to this stirring of hair-trigger cross-strait tensions by "canceling talks between senior Chinese and US officials on strategic security, arms control and nuclear non-proliferation," as the Guardian notes. Well, if there's one thing the world needs less of today, it's more cooperation on strategic security, arms control and nuclear non-proliferation, right?
Especially the latter. In fact, so unconcerned is Obama with nuclear proliferation that he is asking Congress to increase funding for the nation's nuclear arsenal by $5 billion, as McClatchy reports (via Antiwar.com). Much of this extra money will be spent on new facilities that will enable the government to build new nuclear warheads whenever it chooses. "There is no question that some counties, friends and foes, will see the increased spending as a sign of U.S. hypocrisy," said arms control expert Joseph Cirincione, in an obvious bid for the "Understatement of the Year" award. But this kind of higher hypocrisy is meat and drink for the American establishment, whose guiding motto for the earth's lesser breeds has ever been: "Do as we say, not as we do."
Obama was also busy slaughtering a few more villagers in Pakistan with his ever-accelerating "drone" attacks. The latest attack was Saturday night, which killed nine people in North Waziristan. This capped a month in which American drones killed "123 innocent Pakistanis," as The News of Pakistan reports. Ten of the 12 raids "went wrong and failed to hit their targets," but the robots did manage to assassinate three men alleged, by someone somewhere on some kind of evidence, or not, to be "al-Qaeda leaders."
The News also notes that the increase in drone killings by the United States (123 civilians killed this January in contrast to "only" 36 killings in January 2009) seems due in large part to "revenge attacks" by the U.S. in retaliation for the December 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents at a border base in Afghanistan. Everyone knew the American security organs would be stern in their reprisals for the attack; after all, the U.S. killed a million Iraqis as "payback for 9/11," to quote the rationale for war most often quoted by American soldiers as they stormed into Iraq in 2003. So at this point, 123 for seven seems almost a model of restraint. But it's early days yet; the Reprisal-by-Robot campaign will no doubt harvest much more blood fruit in the months to come.
II.
But of course, the centerpiece of Obama's wild warmonger weekend was the leaked-on-purpose news of the deployment of a bristling "missile shield" to four countries in the Middle East, along with the dispatch of even more warships to join those already poised with minatory intent around the Persian Gulf. The ostensible aim of this sudden outpouring of ordnance to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait is to "protect" these nations from an attack by Iran – a nation which has not attacked anyone for centuries, but which is itself under relentless, open, repeated threat of attack from, er, the United States, and one of its regional proxies, Israel.
Word of the new deployment came just hours after the U.S. Senate voted to impose even more draconian sanctions on Iran: crippling measures that will only make life much more wretched and dangerous for millions of ordinary Iranians. The Senate measures are aimed chiefly at strangling Iran's supplies of gasoline --- a truly noble act of "humanitarian intervention," which, if successful, would see deliveries of essential food and supplies grind to a halt, fire trucks and ambulances parked, schools closed, mass business failures across the country, with the subsequent loss of jobs, homes, health and opportunity. The Iranian ruling elite will of course be spared any of these discomforts – just as our own ruling elite forever escapes even the slightest unpleasant consequence of its actions.
Some observers seem to regard the Senate move as some kind of rebuke to Obama, "taking Iran policy out of his hands" by force; but the deployment of the new war machinery to the region – which was accompanied by sales of military upgrades to the savagely oppressive religious extremists in Saudi Arabia – shows that the American political elite is, as usual, marching in lockstep when it comes to "projecting dominance" and threatening grave punishments (up and including "obliteration," because, as we all know, "all elements of national power" are always "on the table" at all times) for any rogue nations that fail to follow the Potomac line. (And a comparison between the repressive regime in Iran and the far more repressive regime in Saudi Arabia shows us clearly that it the line-following, not lack of freedom, that determines whether a nation is "rogue" or not.)
But we should not see this weekend's machinations in the Persian Gulf as moving the United States closer to war with Iran. The United States has been at war with Iran for a long time now, running and/or assisting armed terrorist groups inside the country to kill scores of people year after year, as we noted here last year. No, what we are seeing now is just another "surge" in the barely covert war with Iran – a war that in some ways has been going on for decades, and flares up any time a government in Tehran fails to show due obeisance. As I noted in that earlier piece, which came out just before the disputed Iranian election, and just after yet another terrorist attack in Iran:
Because the ultimate aim -- the only aim, really -- of the militarists' policy toward Iran is regime change. They don't care about "national security" or the "threat" from Iran's non-existent nuclear arsenal; they know that there is no threat whatsoever that Iran will attack Israel -- or even more ludicrously, the United States -- even if Tehran did have nukes. They don't care about the suffering of the Iranian people under a draconian, repressive and corrupt regime. They are not worried about Iran's "sponsorship of terrorism," for, as we've seen, the militarists thrive on -- when they are not actively fomenting -- the fear and anguish caused by terrorism. This fear is the grease that drives the ever-expanding war machine and 'justifies' its own ever-increasing draconian powers and corruption.
No, in the end, the sole aim of the militarist policy is to overthrow Iran's current political system and replace it with a regime that will bow to the hegemony of the United States and its regional deputy, Israel. There is no essential difference in aim or method between today's policy and that of 1953. (Except that the regional deputy in those days was Britain, not Israel.) What they want is compliance, access to resources and another strategic stronghold in the heart of the oil lands -- precisely what they wanted, and got, with the installation of the Shah and his corruption-ridden police state more than a half-century ago.
They play the long game, our militarists. For example, they agitated openly -- and plotted covertly -- for the invasion of Iraq for almost 10 years before they finally got their way. They have worked for 30 years now to restore a client regime in Iran, and today, with the relentless bipartisan demonizing of the Iranians -- and the "mushroom cloud" fearmongering over a non-existent nuclear weapons program -- they are as close as they have ever been to their goal.
The obscene folly of all this is so self-evident that it seems not only redundant but downright insulting to point it out. Yet in a land so marinated in its own myths, a nation whose imperial sense of entitlement runs so deep, embedded in so many unconscious, unquestioned assumptions that even its "progressives" cannot see the howling evil being done by their leaders (as long as those leaders make even the slightest "progressive" noises now and then), this redundant, insulting task remains an unfortunate imperative.
III.
And no one has laid out the case against attacking Iran with more depth, power, eloquence and persistence than Arthur Silber. What's more, Silber has offered practical steps that even those obsessed with retaining their "serious" and "politically savvy" cred could employ. Of course, most of these steps were first offered back in the bad old Bush days, when "progressives" were castigating the government for its reckless warmongering toward Iran -- not to mention its drone attacks on civilians in Pakistan, its plans for "modernizing" the nuclear arsenal, and its war-profiteering sale of death machinery in every volatile region on earth. Back then, you could still hope -- or pretend -- that the dissent against Bush's rapacious and criminal policies was more principled than partisan, and thus that reasonable suggestions for lowering the war fever might gain some traction.
These days, alas, we find that to many progressives, actions that were considered rank crimes and national shames under Bush have been magically converted into "tough choices," "necessary evils," "practical politics" or even far-seeing "11-dimensional chess" when they are committed by Obama. So the anti-war row is now a lot harder, and longer, to hoe.
But some hardy cultivators, like Silber, are still out there hacking away at the flinty soil, planting seeds of truth in the almost-but-quite-yet-impossible hope that they will bear good fruit some day, in some way, somewhere down the line. And so I urge readers to set themselves to school on some or all of these remarkable Iran-related articles by Silber, while following up on the wealth of links each one provides: here, here, here, here, here, and here.
(*And while you're there, consider contributing something to the tip jar, if you can. Silber continues to suffer from catastrophic health problems, and the website is his only means of support.*) (show less)
We are the San Patricios, a brave and gallant band
There'll be no white flag flying within this green command
We are the San Patricios, we have but one demand,
To see the Yankees safely home across the Rio Grande...
This looks like something worth looking for on the radar: "San Patricio," an upcoming release by The Chieftains and Ry Cooder:
‘San Patricio' (the Spanish name for St. Patrick) tells the nearly forgotten story of the brave San Patricio battalion - a downtrodden group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the U.S. Army in 1846 to fight on the Mexican side against the invading Yankees in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).
Although the members of the San Patricio Battalion were reviled as traitors and deserters in the U.S., Chieftains' founder and frontman Pad... (continue reading)
We are the San Patricios, a brave and gallant band
There'll be no white flag flying within this green command
We are the San Patricios, we have but one demand,
To see the Yankees safely home across the Rio Grande...
This looks like something worth looking for on the radar: "San Patricio," an upcoming release by The Chieftains and Ry Cooder:
‘San Patricio' (the Spanish name for St. Patrick) tells the nearly forgotten story of the brave San Patricio battalion - a downtrodden group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the U.S. Army in 1846 to fight on the Mexican side against the invading Yankees in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).
Although the members of the San Patricio Battalion were reviled as traitors and deserters in the U.S., Chieftains' founder and frontman Paddy Moloney says, "the men of the San Patricio Battalion are remembered by generations of Mexicans to this day as heroes who fought bravely against an unjust and thinly veiled war of aggression." ‘San Patricio' brings their story to life through heart-stirring ballads and effervescent dance songs from both countries, including traditional "sones" that the San Patricios might have heard while in Mexico, and Irish airs and reels that evoke the homeland they left behind. ....
‘San Patricio' showcases a brilliant roster of Irish, Mexican and American guest artists including Linda Ronstadt, actor Liam Neeson, Los Tigres del Norte, legendary 92-year-old Mexican ranchero singer Chavela Vargas, Van Dyke Parks, and Lila Downs, among many others. It will be released March 9 on Fantasy Records/Concord Music Group.
Dissident Voice
a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice
AIG-Gate: The World’s Greatest Insurance Heist 7 Feb 2010Ellen Hodgson Brown Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:
Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs ( click title for more )
Haiti and Media Censorship 6 Feb 2010William Blum In America you can say anything you want — as long as it doesn’t have any effect.
– Paul Goodman
Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people. This disregard ( click title for more )
Apartheid: Stigmatizing Israel? 5 Feb 2010Kim Petersen Israel defense minister Ehud Barak has spoken to apartheid in Israel.
As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.1
Israeli media ( click title for more )
Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine 5 Feb 2010Stephen Lendman Founded in 1972, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is its leading human and civil rights organization through activities involving litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach. Each year it publishes an annual report covering flagrant violations, positive trends, if any, and “significant human rights-related processes” affecting Israelis and Palestinians.
Its latest December 2009 ( click title for more )
The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind 5 Feb 2010Maidhc Ó Cathail Worried about the global economic crisis? It’s all in your head, says a leading financial expert.
And that’s the problem, according to Jeff Gates, author of the highly-regarded Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street, a sequel to The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. The latter book ( click title for more )
Jack Straw prepares to testify again, St. Tony of the Fan Rags plays Drama Queen 8 Feb 2010Common Ills In London, the Iraq Inquiry continues today and among the witnesses will be Jack Straw who will be providing testimony for the second time. ITN notes, "Jack Straw will return to the Iraq Inquiry later to answer questions about why he rejected advice from Government lawyers that the war would be illegal." BBC News reminds of his last appearance before the committee:By his own account, Mr Straw
A march, a War Criminal and more 8 Feb 2010Common Ills On Feb. 1 President Barack Obama asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2011. The budget calls for a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon's base budget to $549 billion, plus $159 billion to fund the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.But citizens aren't sitting by while the Pentagon's budget balloons. On March 20, just after the seventh anniversary of
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Stuffed Shirt" 7 Feb 2010Common Ills Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "The Stuffed Shirt." Barack declares, "Good news Americans. Last month only 1 in 5 of you approved of my health reform. So instead of dropping it, I'm going to push it again. Some might call me anal but I'm just a stuffed shirt. Did you catch me on CBS tonight in my 'Superbowl casual.' No tie! Starched pants, starched dress shirt but no tie!" Isaiah
And the war drags on . . . 7 Feb 2010Common Ills March 7th, elections are supposed to take place in Iraq. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. At this point everything's up in the air except for one candidate who will not be running. That candidate is Suha Abdul Jarallah. AFP reports she was shot dead tonight outside a relative's Mosul home. Death is the ultimate 'ban' in Iraqi elections. She was a member of the National Dialogue Party -- a
US citizen kidnapped in Baghdad 6 Feb 2010Common Ills There are two possible scenarios when talking about the specter of a coup in Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S. occupation of the country.The chaos, which some described as "creative", was in their eyes a means to put the house in order. They believed partial or total destruction leads to reconstruction.This is what armed groups fighting under the umbrella of resistance might resort to do as part
What to Say to Those Who Think Single Payer Advocates Are Wacko 8 Feb 2010by Paul HochfeldWhat do we say to our more conservative friends, who genuinely think
that the Single Payer solution to our health care crisis would be a
disaster? Try what follows. In the end, you may simply agree to
disagree. That's O.K., but what follows may give them pause to think.( click title for more )
Globalization Is Killing The Globe: Return to Local Economies 8 Feb 2010by Thom Hartmann Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class. Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren't making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.( click title for more )
The Sex Ed Bait and Switch 8 Feb 2010by Amanda Marcotte
Big news last week for the "sex is evil and should be
avoided" crowd -- big media organizations all over the country trumpeted
that abstinence-only education "works". Naturally, I was skeptical that the sex-phobes had actually
produced a curriculum that convinced young people to put off sex for the 15
years between the onset of puberty and getting married, and indeed, a quick
perusal of the story demonstrated that the program in question only delayed the
onset of sexual activity for 2 y( click title for more )
Political Prayer Breakfasts Are Bad Religion 8 Feb 2010by James CarrollThere are only three things wrong with the National Prayer Breakfast: the past, the present, and the future. Last week, President Obama presided at the annual Washington event before what the New York Times called “a bipartisan array’’ of national and international figures. “I assure you,’’ he told them, “I’m praying a lot these days.’’ The president went with the flow of public piety, singing prayer’s praises as a source of calm, strength, and civility. It “can touch our hearts with humility,’’ he said.( click title for more )
America Is Not Yet Lost 8 Feb 2010by Paul KrugmanWe’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.
What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland. ( click title for more )
A Worthy Goal: Feeding All Our Children 8 Feb 2010by Laura RubinThe Obama administration has pledged to end childhood hunger in the U.S. by 2015. Meeting that goal will depend on whether Congress expedites or undermines this ambitious endeavor. And it has to act soon.
The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act (CNR) is up for renewal, probably by May. As its name suggests, the bill funds all federal programs that feed children and eligible adults, including school breakfast and lunch, the summer feeding program, the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program, and the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program (CACFP).
( click title for more )
Operation Breakfast Redux 8 Feb 2010by Pratap ChatterjeeSitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and
7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers
gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness.( click title for more )
The Terror-Industrial Complex 8 Feb 2010by Chris HedgesThe conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.( click title for more )
I'm So Proud of You, Robin Cook 7 Feb 2010by Margaret CookFor nine weeks, they have been making their solemn way to the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in Westminster to account for their actions - or inactions - in the build-up to war.More than 70 witnesses have given evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry; among them the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and many of his closest ministers and acolytes.One by one they have sought to justify their own role in what many regard as the greatest foreign policy failure of the modern era.( click title for more )
Journalists Examine Teapot Tempests as Real Glaciers Melt 7 Feb 2010by Jim NaureckasCurtis Brainard of CJR's Observatory blog (1/29/10) complains about the lack of coverage of what he calls "Glaciergate":( click title for more )
Hey Congress - Stand up to Wall Street! 7 Feb 2010by Robert ReichSenator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending "an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms" needed by the public. "The fact is," Dodd said, "I am frustrated, and so are the American people." He charged that Wall Street's intransigence was the reason for Congress's failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street.( click title for more )
Why Food Inc. Should Make Us All Retch 7 Feb 2010by Charles CloverA two-year-old boy called Kevin ate a hamburger on holiday with his family. Ten days later he died, his organs overwhelmed by a mutant form of the E coli bacterium found mostly in feed lots or so-called concentrated animal-feeding operations - vast animal-fattening centres, without a blade of grass, where cattle stand up to their ankles in muck all day. These are where America now produces much of its beef.( click title for more )
Wars Sending US into Ruin 7 Feb 2010by Eric MargolisU.S. President Barack Obama calls the $3.8-trillion US budget he just sent to Congress a major step in restoring America's economic health.In fact, it's another potent fix given to a sick patient deeply addicted to the dangerous drug - debt.More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.( click title for more )
Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet 7 Feb 2010by Frank Rich A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark.John McCain, commandeering the spotlight as usual, did fulminate against the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." But the press focus on McCain, the crazy man in Washington's attic, was misleading. His yapping was an exception, not the rule.( click title for more )
Just Gimme Some Truth 7 Feb 2010by David Michael GreenThe layers of the American political pathology are so multiple and so deep, it's sometimes hard to know where to start. It's not so much that we're a country with problems. Every country has its challenges, and compared to much of the rest of the world I'd take our particular batch hands-down. It's just that so many of ours are self-inflicted. ( click title for more )
Violence Against Women Is a Global Struggle 6 Feb 2010by Humaira Shahid and Ritu SharmaEight years ago, Nasreen (not her real name) walked into the office of the Daily Khabrain newspaper in Lahore, Pakistan, and demanded justice. She stripped off her clothes, revealing a black and blue body covered with wounds and cigarette burns. She'd been gang raped. With tears in her eyes, she said, "My husband hired three men and got me raped in front of him because I was tired of his abuse and demanded the divorce that Islam gave me a right to. He didn't even respect me as the mother of his children. . .. I just want justice in the name of God.''( click title for more )
The Double Standard at CBS 6 Feb 2010by Derrick Z. JacksonThere are already at least two Christian broadcasting channels, so there is no need for CBS to be a right-wing revival tent for the Super Bowl.( click title for more )
An Old Prayer for Clean Coal: Strip-Mining Jesus 6 Feb 2010by Jeff Biggers"And upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew: 16:13-18.
Declaring his intent to chart a path toward "clean coal," President
Obama announced the establishment of an Interagency Task Force on
Carbon Capture and Storage this week, along with his goal of bringing 5
to 10 commercial coal-fired demonstration projects online by 2016.
All politics aside, I pray for the day our President declares his intent to chart a path toward a coal free future.( click title for more )
Repubs, Dems, Blue Dogs and Tea Partiers: Everybody Loves Medicare 6 Feb 2010by Donna SmithPresident Obama keeps torturing himself and the 111th Congress by trying to come up with new ways to work together and a single healthcare reform effort that all could embrace politically, morally and fiscally. He need not struggle so hard, as the leaders in each of the groups clamoring for leadership on the issue have stated unequivocally that they love Medicare and want to protect Medicare.( click title for more )
No matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns.
- Finley Peter Dunne, The Supreme Court's Decision( click title for more )
Counterpunch
CounterPunch is the bi-weekly muckraking newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Twice a month we bring our readers the stories that the corporate press never prints. We aren't side-line journalists here at CounterPunch. Ours is muckraking with a radical attitude. Out Of Bounds magazine calls us "America's best political newsletter".
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Wall Street ‘Fat Cats’ Revolt, Send Money to GOP
In case it wasn’t made perfectly clear in recent months how the American political system actually operates on its uppermost levels, here we have an object lesson to consider: Upset by the notion that the Obama administration might be working on regulating the financial industry next, some of Wall Street’s bigwigs are now focusing their funding efforts on the GOP. —KA
As 2009 has given way to 2010, chants of ‘Yes, we can’ have given away to groans of “What the hell?” There is no question the turn of events in the last month or two has dealt a severe blow to American liberalism. The Democratic Party, which thought itself on the verge of creating a new, lasting coalition after eight years of Republican misrule and the near collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 propelled them to power, now find themselves with their backs against the wall. Barack Obama simultaneously managed to dishearten his base while mobilizing his conservative opposition. This has led to a perfect political storm in which nothing of real substance has changed from the Bush years, yet somehow the fans of Rush Li... (continue reading)
Michael Collins
On January 15, 2010, the Pentagon released the first ever list of prisoners held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main US prison in Afghanistan for the last eight years (PDF). An annotated version of the list is available here. In a previous article, “Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List,” I examined the stories of the foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries, and described the legal challenges mounted on their behalf, explaining how, last March, three of these men won their habeas corpus petitions in a US court, in a ruling that has been challenged by the Obama administration.
I also explained the use of a secret facility within Bagram as part of a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, and asked pointed questions about the whereabouts of a... (continue reading)
click on image to enlage
Filed under: Afghanistan, Associate Post, Barack Obama, Cartoons 
UK, February 8, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) -This year saw an Israeli-US joint exercise "Juniper Cobra 10" take place off the coast of Israel which involved the IDF and the US Navy 6th Fleet. The purpose of the exercise was to participate in countering simulated attacks by ballistic, medium-range and short-range missiles and rockets by Iran on Israel.
We at the ANSWER Coalition extend our heartfelt solidarity to
all of our Haitian sisters and brothers, as well as to all those who have friends and
family there, as Haiti copes with the destruction and grief of the massive 7.0 magnitude
earthquake that struck yesterday.
Journalist and author Naomi
Klein spoke in New York last night and addressed the crisis in Haiti: “We have to be
absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no
circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular
corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory.
They have done it again and again.” [includes rush transcript]
We discuss the situation in
Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake, as well as the history of Haiti, with two
guests who have spent a lot of time there: Bill Quigley, the legal director at the
Center for Constitutional Rights, and Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for
Justice & Democracy in Haiti. [includes rush transcript]
Yushchenko has been a petty, inept, corrupt dictator. He lost almost all voter support during a long series of feuds with prime minister and one-time ally,Yulia Tymoshenko. They both engaged in a competition of who could undo the other's actions. The result: total disaster and imminent economic collapse for Ukraine.
Cuomo’s press release states clearly that Lewis and the bank are examples of a much larger problem. It appears to be a leading indicator of future actions by the New York attorney general. Why else would Cuomo have generalized about institutions (plural) in his statement about this particular case?
If Cuomo succeeds in taking down one of the toughest guys on the block, he’ll make a point to the rest of the crew: you’re next, get ready to cooperate. Many of the key perpetrators are located in Cuomo’s jurisdiction, although Bank of America (BofA) is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. Clearly, there are others in line for some New York style law and order.
Cuomo is joined in this action by Niel Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). TARP provides the billions in bailouts to bogus bankers and corporations. There’s a credit line of $23.7 trillion should it be needed for even more bailouts. Ever wonder why you can’t get a loan? They’ve taken all the money.
Charges and remedies
The bank and the two named executives are charged with failing to inform the bank’s board of directors and shareholders of the major red ink on Merrill Lynch’s books prior to the merger. CEO Lewis, CFO Price, and other BofA officers and professionals chose to hide $16 billion of Merrill Lynch known pre tax losses prior to board approval. That’s fraud, plain and simple. Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009
The complaint also charges that the same parties with strong arming the federal government for $20 billion to cover Merrill’s debt by threatening to back out of the merger if the money wasn’t forthcoming. Then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had encouraged BofA to acquire Merrill, apparently without a rider that BofA would get billions in the process to cover their fraudulent business practices.
The lawsuit seeks two overriding remedies. The two named defendants and the entire Bank of America are enjoined from “any conduct, conspiracy, contract, or agreement, and from adopting or following any practice, plan, program, scheme, artifice or device similar to, or having a purpose and effect similar to, the conduct complained of above.”
In addition, the defendants and the bank are to “disgorge all gains, pay all penalties and pay all restitution and damages caused, directly or indirectly, by the fraudulent and deceptive acts complained of herein”
These and the other remedies promise a degree of justice and, quite frankly retribution for the mess caused by the defendants. An unnamed and unintended remedy could be serious damage to the good will value of the Bank of America. The spectacle of a conviction of the bank and a former CEO and current division head for fraud would have a devastating effect on public confidence. Too big to fail may be a notion upended once and for all by a guilty verdict.
Witness Lineup – It’s Bank of America versus Bank of America
Andrew Caffrey and Todd Wallach of the Boston Globe, hinted that Bank of America president and CEO, Brian T. Moynihan will be a key witness for the prosecution. The Globe article notes that the current BofA chief, “who was involved in negotiations (for the Merrill acquisition) as the bank’s general counsel, was not charged.” Later in the same article, they quote Cuomo as saying, Moynihan, “has been candid with our office with respect to the roles he played after becoming general counsel.”
Put simply, Moynihan was central to the merger, knew about the fraud, participated in it, but didn’t blow the whistle. All of that is established in Cuomo’s complaint. He cooperated with Cuomo and wasn’t indicted. His name will be at the top of the attorney general’s witness list, no doubt.
As if that’s not bad enough for the bank, defendant Joseph L. Price, former CFO, is currently heading up Bank of America’s credit card division.
Should Moynihan testify, we’ll see BofA’s current CEO helping Cuomo convict his predecessor of fraud. Moynihan’s testimony will also argue for a conviction of his current head of credit card operations. Since Bank of America is charged, we’ll also see its current CEO plus the “Relevant Parties” described in the complaint testifying that the corporation was also guilty of fraud. Many of the 35 Relevant Parties named are current or former BofA executives or board members.
Other key witnesses may include Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Barnanke and former Treasury Secretary and TARP architect Henry Paulson, They encouraged the Bank of America – Merrill Lynch merger as part of their efforts to prevent an alleged financial meltdown at the end of the Bush administration..
Charlie Gasparino of the Daily Beast reports that the defense counsel, former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, wants the case dismissed. If not, Gasparino says that “one person close to the defense” claims that White will call Paulson and Bernanke to testify. Cuomo has the facts and obviously believes Paulson and Bernanke on the sequence of events leading to these charges. Absent a “Perry Mason” moment by the defense, their testimony holds no surprises or benefits for the defendants. Mary Jo White has little or nothing at this point other than bluster.
Justice for the people?
It’s been ten years since Congress and President Clinton freed Wall Street and the major banks to open a big casino on Wall Street. That resulted in ruinous schemes like the real estate bubble. It’s been five years since Alan Greenspan told citizens to get an adjustable rate mortgage, cash out the equity in their homes, and jump into the stock market. It’s been over a year since Wall Street and the big banks nearly ruined the economy, cost citizens jobs, savings, retirements, and countless other hard earned gains through a variety of no-win schemes sold as solid investments.
Nothing of any importance has been done to regulate the financial industry since the bailouts. Prior to the Cuomo-Barofsky charges, there have been no major cases brought against the perpetrators of our current troubles.
Hopefully, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started what will become an era of accountability for those at the very top. This should be about more than just one case. It’s an example of top down accountability.
May the bank, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Price have the speediest of trials and the absolute maximum penalties should they be found guilty.
They knew exactly what they were doing every step of the way.
END
This article may be reproduced in full or part with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.
Next Monday – Cuomo’s Lock Down – The Case in Detail
Complaint filed by New York Attorney General, Feb 4, 2009
Rep. Kucinich Grills Ken Lewis on Fed Emails, June 11, 2009
Rep. Cummings Questions Brian Moynihan Regarding the BofA/Merrill Lynch Merger, Nov 17, 2009
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.
