Candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform that railed against the unitary executive--especially the Bush administration's attack on civil liberties in the form of such acts as warrantless wiretaps. Now however, it seems President Barack Obama's Department of Justice is not only continuing the Bush adminstration's alarming tactics, but has plans on expanding it even further. Welcome to Barack Obama's new-old police state. When we've collectively finished up the koo-laid and "ooohing" and "awwwing" over Michelle's wardrobe, we might stop to ask ourselves if this is the change for which we campaigned, donated and voted.
More after the fold...
It's been building now for a while. Lost in the mainstream news behind mega-billion dollar bank bailout outrage and significant victories like the closing of Guantanamo, the Obama administration's justice department under Attorney General Eric Holder has been engaging in some questionable legal tactics.
As mcjoan notes over at dailykos:In the past three months, in three separate cases, the Obama DOJ has used the same arguments that the Bush administration Justice Department used to attempt to stop judicial review of extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping.
Mcjoan points out that in the Mohamed v. Jeppesen extraordinary rendition case, the Obama administration used the Bush administration argument of "state secrets" to have the case dismissed. In the Al-Haramain v. Bush, a wiretapping case , Obama's DOJ invoked the Bush administration defense of "state secrets" again, to actually block access to information that could expose warrantless wiretapping. And now, mcjoan points out, the entire legal defense for illegal wireptapping is expanding.Late Friday, the Obama DOJ actually went the Bush administration one argument further, in a third case. In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is "suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records." The Obama administration filed its first response to the suit Friday, demanding dismissal of the entire suit.
It seems to many that the Obama DOJ, in its arguments, is going out of its way to protect the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), which has been accused of sweeping up masses of American citizens in a wiretapping dragnet. Further, the Obama DOJ argues that only "willful violation" by a government agent on any warrantless wiretapping would create a liability to the US. This effectively means that unless the government voluntarily provides information that it has been spying on you, it is immune from any legal action. The Electronic Frontier Foundation goes as far as to call Obama's illegal spying program "worse than Bush."
Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com examining the Obama DOJ brief concludes something similar:Every defining attribute of Bush's radical secrecy powers -- every one -- is found here, and in exactly the same tone and with the exact same mindset. Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President's DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President's actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts -- such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs -- would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because "its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets."
So the presidential candidate who campaigned on protecting civil liberties, is not only refusing to go after the Bush administration's illegal activities but attempting to push the invasion of privacy upon American citizens to new heights? What in the name of COINTELPRO is going on?
For some like Newsweek's Howard Fineman, it is an Obama administration attempting to placate a fickle intelligence community:Obama and his people in the White House do not want to antagonize the intelligence community because they need them to support them in the War on Terror and to get the President's job done in the world right now.
As Fineman puts it, the Obama administration is making this Faustian pact for larger motives--throwin civil liberties under the bus rather than reining in his intelligence community. But that doesn't seem to explain everything, something Fineman himself readily admits, as he points out a more troubling motive, one that many warned cheerleading Republicans during the Bush administration's power grab: no president is going to want to give up or return privileges granted, or seized by, a former president.
Glenn Greenwald warns that these are all basic elements of the unitary executive theory espoused by Bush and Cheney, refashioned for a new administration:What's being asserted here by the Obama DOJ is the virtually absolute power of presidential secrecy, the right to break the law with no consequences, and immunity from surveillance lawsuits so sweeping that one can hardly believe that it's being claimed with a straight face. It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior.
Mcjoan echoes much the same summary and warning:It's difficult to read the administration's brief in any other way than a reinforcement--even an inflation of--the unitary executive, or to attribute it to Bush holdovers. This is first of the cases in which the DOJ attorneys aren't carrying over arguments from the previous administration--they are initiating this case. And it appears that the promises of last summer and fall when FISAAA was being argued were pretty damned empty.
Of course, for the Obama DOJ, this may be perfect timing. Just as the American populace was reeling from the attacks of September 11th and easily pliable to accept or simply turn a blind eye to an assault on its civil liberties, so might an American citizenry beaten down by a spiraling economy, two wars and (for some) still drunk in euphoria over the Nov 4th victory, lull itself into a type of complacency as its government shifts and changes the Constitution to its liking. This must be what Naomi Klein meant by "shock" and those who would take advantage of it.President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties. But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a "secret" that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again.
--Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Some useful links:
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
http://www.eff.org/
Electronic Privacy Information Center- Wiretapping
http://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/
Obama, the ICRC Report and ongoing suppression
It is impossible for Obama to end the dark Bush/Cheney era if he is the prime agent preventing disclosure and accountability.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Obama's New-Old Police State
Monday, April 6, 2009
The Awakening of "The Surge"
Iraqi police survey the site of a recent car bombing in Baghdad, part of an upswing of violence in recent weeks.
"The surge worked!" What began as a Bush administration mantra was picked up by mainstream media and forced into the public consciousness through repetition rather than actual evidence. So "accepted" did this idea become that politicians that dared not say it were somehow being ridiculously stubborn and akin to dead-ender anti-war types. Dodging the issue for a long time, then presidential candidate Barack Obama was finally forced to repeat the words "the surge worked"--but offered caveats relating to the lack of a political solution, and a reminder that the war itself was wrong-headed from the jump. Still, despite what was readily availble information regarding the smoke and mirror behind the surge's "success"--ranging from bribed Sunni insurgents to ethnically cleansed neighborhoods that left little reason to continue the violence--the notion that the "surge worked" has hoisted itself into reality...or reality as some would like it. Even comedian/talk show host Bill Mahrer, who has a disturbing propensity for falling for right-wing talking points, declared last week that he's the first liberal that will admit the "surge worked."
Well, whatever the surge was--and wasn't--recent happenings in Iraq show just how tenuously it was weaved together. On Monday some 36 Iraqis died in a set of coordinated bombings, the most recent in a spate of acts that some are calling an unexpected uptick in violence. Worse still, they may be revealing old bribed and buried tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, aggravated to deadly effect by the US invasion, bubbling back to the surface.
More after the fold...
Independent journalist Dahr Jamail tracking just one case of this dissent locates fissures in the "surge" wrought peace, as the US-propped-up Shiite government finds itself at odds with a US-backed (and well-funded) Sunni militia group, The Awakening.Last weekend, the Iraqi government arrested an Awakening Group leader of a Baghdad neighborhood, then moved into the area. With the help of US occupation forces, they disarmed the militiamen under his control, but only after fighting broke out between US-backed Iraqi government security forces and the US-formed Sunni Awakening Group militia. This disturbing event is the realization of what most Iraqis have long feared - that the relative calm in Iraq today would eventually be broken when fighting erupts between these two entities.
For well over a year now, The Awakening has been praised by supporters of the surge, who have pointed to the success they have had in battling Sunni militias attacking US forces. "Insurgents are now allies" hailed an ABC news headline in December of 2007:Nearly 80,000-strong, paid by the Pentagon, and independent of the Iraqi government, these Sunni "awakening councils" are largely made up of former insurgents who have turned their guns on al Qaeda....President Bush has called them the hope of the future Iraq. "In Anbar, you're seeing firsthand the dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure," Bush said during a visit to Anbar province in September. "You see Sunnis, who once fought side by side with al Qaeda against coalition troops, now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al Qaeda," Bush added.
But as Dahr Jamail notes, this relationship of convenience and money was untenable from the very start. The so-called success of "the surge" was built around paying off one group that during the ethnic violence that reached its height throughout Iraq in 2005-2006, probably engaged in ethnic killings of masses of Shiites. Flare-ups between the two were only averted by money and a continued US presence. As both money and the US military can't possibly stay there indefinitely, the unresolved divisions created by the occupation are forcing their way back to the surface.The US policy that has led to this recent violence has been long in the making, as it has only been a matter of time before the tenuous truce between the groups came unglued. For it has been a truce built on a deeply corrupt US policy of backing the predominantly Shia Iraqi government forces while paying the Sunni resistance not to fight both government and occupation forces.
Even some who spoke glowingly of "the surge," like Times Online correspondent Martin Fletcher, spoke ominously of this situation as far back as September of 2007:America’s new Sunni allies still regard the [Shiite] Government with profound suspicion, as a puppet of Iran. Most Sunnis have come to rely – irony of ironies – on US troops for protection. At the same time an increasing number of Shias, especially in Baghdad, look to the al-Mahdi Army militia, not the hapless Mr al-Maliki, to provide security and basic services. ...the overstretched US military cannot sustain the surge much beyond next spring. That poses several questions in a capital and country that has increasingly become a patchwork quilt of deeply antagonistic, ethnically cleansed Sunni and Shia enclaves. Will the violence return as US troops leave? Has their presence merely driven the fighters into other areas? To what extent has al-Qaeda disappeared, or is it merely lying low? Is the slowly improving Iraqi Army anywhere near ready to take the strain? Will the new Sunni police forces and “concerned citizen” groups simply metamorphose into well-armed, well-trained militias?
As the Obama administration makes its move to pull occupation troops from Iraq, these simmering conflicts may begin to center stage. As Dahr Jamial notes:It was convenient policy to have set up the Awakening groups to temporarily quell overall violence in Iraq. Resistance fighters rushed to join the ranks for the paycheck, as well as US military protection from Shia militias, which now largely comprise the government security apparatus. Now, however, clearly the US has lost some of their interest in continuing to support the Awakening groups, and the Maliki government is ratcheting up its efforts to dismantle them. Predictably, members of the Awakening are fighting back - for without a paycheck, and with yet another broken promise by the occupation forces to spur them on, why should they sit back and allow themselves to be detained, killed or further betrayed?
We can only hope that as many cheer in relief to have US troops return home, if things turn more tragic in Iraq, that everyone will remember just how this nation helped sow the seeds of this turmoil.
For full article by Dahr Jamail, The Growing Storm, go here.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Amy Goodman and Glen Greenwald on Bill Moyers
This week host Bill Moyers interviewed two of the best journalistic icons of our time--Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald. Dedicated to neither political party or owned by corporate media, both speak their minds and (more importantly) provide news and perspectives that you won't hear on cable channels or major networks. An excerpt of the speech above, where they speak on everything from the rise of grassroots/alternative journalism, to US foreign policy and the need for a diverse news media to ensure democracy.
You can watch the entire interview here.
Amy Goodman- Democracy Now!
Glenn Greenwald- Salon.com
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Pulling the Curtain on the Conservative Freak Show
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
This week Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck got schooled. But if you're expecting they were taken to the whipping shed by their mainstream media news cohorts, think again. Instead, the prime-time and late-night comedians did the work journalists should have. MSNBC's David Shuster, sitting in for Keith Olbermann, provides the highlights of the conservative "blowhard lunatics" very bad week, as they are taken to task by David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Thursday, April 2, 2009
GOP April Fool's Budget
So after their disastrous rollout last week, where GOP luminaries brazenly put out a budget devoid of any numbers, they've decided to try again. Deciding that competing with the media spectacle of a popular and confident president meeting with the world's robber-barons...umm...I mean 20 strongest economies...to confront the global fiscal crisis (complete with photo-ops with world leaders and royal figures) wasn't enough of a challenge, the GOP decided to try their second hand at presenting an alternative budget plan on... April Fool's. Seriously, who can script this comedy?
More after the fold...
So what's in the budget? Oh, only a plan to privatize medicare, give tax-breaks to the rich, kill the popular (though probably under-funded) stimulus package and 1001 other things that have been tried and failed in the past. And did I mention that after all that belly-aching about deficits, this one will cost about $ 1 trillion?
To paraphrase Blade, some of these cats must enjoy trying to skate uphill.
Some reviews of the GOP's April Fool's Budget proposal...this time with numbers.Just in time for April Fools' Day, and in time for congressional debate on the Obama administration's non-pamphletized budget proposal, comes the "details" GOP members failed to supply last week. Virtually every element contained within is a bad rehash of all the failed Republican ideas from the last couple of decades. In short, it's like the return of a bad headache: smaller government, lower taxes, drill everything, and trust us.
--Williams Rivers Pitt "Fool's on the Hill." Truthout."...it was most appropriate that this thing came out on April Fools' Day because this thing is the biggest April Fools' Joke and cruelest that we have had in years. If you look at what they are doing ... they are calling for putting in a multi-trillion dollar additional tax cut for the highest income Americans, they are now talking about privatizing Medicare turning it into a voucher so that they can cut it substantially. That's not the reform of an entitlement - it is the gutting of a program."
--Austan Goolsbee, a member of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. Read here.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
You're Fired!"
Nothing like it has ever happened. The President of the United States, the elected representative of the people, has just told the head of General Motors -- a company that's spent more years at #1 on the Fortune 500 list than anyone else -- "You're fired!
Noted documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, quoted above, ponders the meaning behind President Barack Obama's "firing" of GM boss Rick Wagoner. Full article re-posted below.
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
"We the People" to "King of the World": "YOU'RE FIRED!" ...a letter from Michael Moore
Friends,
Nothing like it has ever happened. The President of the United States, the elected representative of the people, has just told the head of General Motors -- a company that's spent more years at #1 on the Fortune 500 list than anyone else -- "You're fired!"
I simply can't believe it. This stunning, unprecedented action has left me speechless for the past two days. I keep saying, "Did Obama really fire the chairman of General Motors? The wealthiest and most powerful corporation of the 20th century? Can he do that? Really? Well, damn! What else can he do?!"
This bold move has sent the heads of corporate America spinning and spewing pea soup. Obama has issued this edict: The government of, by, and for the people is in charge here, not big business. John McCain got it. On the floor of the Senate he asked, "What does this signal send to other corporations and financial institutions about whether the federal government will fire them as well?" Senator Bob Corker said it "should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise." The stock market plunged as the masters of the universe asked themselves, "Am I next?" And they whispered to each other, "What are we going to do about this Obama?"
Not much, fellows. He has the massive will of the American people behind him -- and he has been granted permission by us to do what he sees fit. If you liked this week's all-net 3-pointer, stay tuned.
I write this letter to you in memory of the hundreds of thousands of workers over the past 25+ years who have been tossed into the trash heap by General Motors. Many saw their lives ruined for good. They turned to alcohol or drugs, their marriages fell apart, some took their own lives. Most moved on, moved out, moved over, moved away. They ended up working two jobs for half the pay they were getting at GM. And they cursed the CEO of GM for bringing ruin to their lives.
Not one of them ever thought that one day they would witness the CEO receive the same treatment. Of course Chairman Wagoner will not have to sign up for food stamps or be evicted from his home or tell his kids they'll be going to the community college, not the university. Instead, he will get a $23 million golden parachute. But the slip in his hands is still pink, just like the hundreds of thousands that others received -- except his was issued by us, via the Obama-man. Here's the door, buster. See ya. Don't wanna be ya.
I began my day today in Washington, D.C. I went to the U.S. Senate and got into their Finance Committee's hearing on the Wall Street bailout. The overseers wanted to know how the banks spent the money. And many of these banks won't tell them. They've taken trillions and nobody knows where the money went. It certainly didn't go to create jobs, relieve mortgage holders, or free up loans that people need. It was so shocking to listen to this, I had to leave before it was over. But it gave me an idea for the movie I was shooting.
Later, I stopped by the National Archives to stand in line to see the original copy of our Constitution. I thought about how twenty years ago this month I was just down the street finishing my first film, a personal plea to warn the nation about GM and the deadly economy it ruled. On that March day in 1989 I was broke, having collected the last of my unemployment checks, relying on help from my friends (Bob and Siri would take me out to dinner and always pick up the check, the assistant manager at the movie theater would sneak me in so I could watch an occasional movie, Laurie and Jack bought an old Steenbeck (editing) machine for me, John Richard would slip me an unused plane ticket so I could go home for Christmas, Rod would do anything for me and drive to Flint whenever I needed something for the film). My late mother (she would've turned 88 tomorrow if she were still with us) and my GM autoworker dad told me in the kitchen they wanted to help and handed me a check for an astounding thousand dollars. I didn't know they even had a thousand dollars. I refused it, they insisted I take it -- "No!" -- and then, in that parental voice, told me I was to cash it so I could finish my movie. I did. And I did.
So on that March day in 1989, as I was driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, my 9-year-old car just died. I coasted over to the curb, put my head down on the steering wheel and started to cry. I had no money to take it in to be repaired, and I certainly had nothing to pay the tow truck driver. So I got out, screwed the license plates off so I wouldn't be fined, turned my back and just left it there for good. I looked over at the building next to me. It said "National Archives." What better place to donate my dead car, I thought, as I walked the rest of the way home.
Though it wasn't easy for me, I still never had to suffer what so many of my friends and neighbors went through, thanks to General Motors and an economic system rigged against them. I wonder what they must have all thought when they woke up this Monday morning to read in the Detroit News or the Detroit Free Press the headlines that Obama had fired the CEO of GM. Oh -- wait a minute. They couldn't read that. There was no Free Press or News. Monday was the day that both papers ended home delivery. It was canceled (as it will be for four days every week) because the daily newspapers, like General Motors, like Detroit, are broke.
I await the President's next superhero move.
Yours,
Michael Moore
(Go State!)
P.S. Please know that it has not been lost on any of us from the Rust Belt how our corporate bigwigs were treated (remember, the auto companies wanted a loan, not a handout) compared to how the titans of Wall Street got trillions of free cash, lunch at the White House and a photo op with the Prez. Trust me, we get it. And, if there is a God in heaven, the thieves of Wall Street will soon pay. Also... the sight of our president having to promise that he would back every GM warranty and give consumers a bonus if they trade in their old Grand Am for a hybrid, was alternately sad, hilarious, and just plain weird. This is what it's come to: the Commander in Chief of the Free World is now Mr. Goodwrench. Jeesh.
Monday, March 30, 2009
So Torture Doesn't Work...
What a surprise. After having to endure Bush-Cheney apologists blather on about television notions of the hypothetical "ticking time bomb," and other excuses for torture, the verdict is out (again)--it doesn't work. According to a recent article in the Washington Post:
When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an Al Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed....The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of Al Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida - chiefly names of Al Qaeda members and associates - was obtained before waterboarding was introduced....
What a surprise. Full article below.
Officials: Torture confessions not proven useful
White House pressured CIA to extract plots
WASHINGTON - When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an Al Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.
The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of Al Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.
In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida - chiefly names of Al Qaeda members and associates - was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.
Moreover, within weeks of his capture, US officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President Bush had publicly described him as "Al Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.
Read rest of article here.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The "Good" Empire
In the midst of all the good feeling about America during this new administration, it is good--perhaps very necessary--to remember that the project of "empire" while taken to unique heights during the reign of the neoconservatives, was not anything new. And, with rumblings of expanding colonial adventures in Afghanistan and Pakistan, any US leader is capable of going down that road. With dangerous talk of American exceptionalism being echoed even by those on the "left," a brief reminder above.
Beware blowback.
For more on the video, look here.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The "Good" War
A young Afghan boy stands among the ruined remains of his home after an August 2008 airstrike in Azizabad killed 33 civilians. Until UN and international pressure was brought to bear, the US military had previously claimed the number of dead was six.
Our war in Afghanistan began almost 3,000 days ago, on October 7, 2001. Our war in Afghanistan has lasted longer than World War I, World War II, the Civil War, the Korean War, the first Gulf War in Iraq and the second Gulf War in Iraq. If we are still fighting in Afghanistan a year from now, the war will have lasted longer than the American Revolution. Children who were born on the day the war began are now halfway through grammar school.
Sobering reflections like those offered by columnist William Rivers Pitt at Truthout speak to the ongoing unquestioned occupation and "war" of Afghanistan.
More after the fold...
That the hunt for al-Qaeda necessitated an invasion and regime change in the Central Asian country is at times so sacrosanct that to suggest otherwise is considered heresy if not treason. With the ruins of the twin towers and the broken hull of the Pentagon warship still smoldering in September of 2001, the US Congress rushed near unanimously to demand justice and vengeance, with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) the lone voice urging caution. And the repressive, über misogynist Taliban have only allowed the war's defenders to expand its mission beyond anti-terrorism, and instead as a crusade of democratic freedom and women's rights--which bombs that kill civilians should somehow bring about. The unthinkable notion that the war could expand, to include the unstable nuclear armed Pakistan, is now taken as normal. So common has this idea of Afghanistan as the "good war" become, that even the "progressive" think tank Center for American Progress has put out its own battle plans for how to bring "security" to Afghanistan--complete with a ramp up in military forces and an extended colonial occpuation well into a decade, or more.
Challenges to this "groupthink" have been made by the reasonable, but their voices are too often sidelined or ignored--particularly by the current administration, whose ears seem to be filled with the whispers of hawks who promise they can enforce peace. Never mind the current voices warning against "surges" in Afghanistan were the same warning against the Iraq War, while those urging more war in Aghanistan were cheerleaders or silent partners in 2003 for Bush's invasion plans; it seems in American foreign policy you can only fail up.
It leaves Pitt to ask a profound troubling question:
Is the Obama administration simply working with the hand it was dealt by George W. Bush, or are the same Bush administration mistakes about to be committed all over again?
I suppose time will tell.
Read the rest of the William Rivers Pitt article Enduring Freedom here.
Also check out Normon Solomon's These Colors Won't Run...Afghanistan that asks much the same.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The GOP's Empty Budget
After three months of braying and posturing any fiscal policy out of the White House as "wasteful" or even "socialist," the GOP leadership (a contested title by all accounts), out to prove it is not just the "part of no," today finally released an alternative budget plan. Well... sort of:
Thursday's press conference given by House Republicans was expected to be the unveiling of the GOP budget proposal; but the document announced by Representative John Boehner(R-OH) turned out to be a simple blue-print of conservative values, lacking any real budget numbers.
Say what?
More after the fold...
According to the AP:
House Republicans have released their response to President Barack Obama's deficit-laden budget, but their glossy pamphlet offers little beyond campaign-style talking points. One of the few hard bits of information is a promise to simplify the tax code and cut income tax rates to 10 percent for people making $100,000 or less down. They also promise to cut domestic spending below current levels but don't say whether they are exempting Social Security. It's impossible to determine the projected deficit based on their offering.
So already branded as the "party of no," the GOP's grand strategy is to come up with a budget plan that not only offers no numbers, but rehashes Bobby Jindal-ish talking points (tax-cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down-economics) that helped them lose the last two major national elections? Classic.
With this gem of a pass, it wasn't hard for DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan to go for the three point shot:
"After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate. While there had been talk that House Republicans were overriding their Senate counterparts to offer a budget alternative, it's clear after this announcement that neither of them have anything to offer but criticism."
Even their usual allies were left to scratch their heads in wonder:
"I was not the only reporter in the room during the delayed press conference who had expected to see some numbers," David Freddoso over at the conservative National Review commented, "at least ballpark."
And can you believe it gets better? Trying to fend off the questions that inevitably came with this lame rollout, the GOP has promised to unveil a more complete plan... on April 1st... that is, April Fool's Day.
Somebody let this mastadon sink into the tarpits already...
More from Keith Olbermann below:
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Not Your Bailout
On Monday Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled the Obama administration’s plan to finance the purchase of up to $1 trillion in so-called "toxic assets" from banks and other ailing financial institutions. The reaction on Wall St went from sour mumblings about the "socialist" in the White House, to jubilation--sending stocks up some 500 points. While corporate backers cheered, so too did corporate media, who hailed this move as a positive step. CNBC, fresh off its humiliation at the hands of John Stewart, called it a "game-changer." Over at the establishment blog Politico, Eamon Javers proclaimed the oft-embattled Geithner had "cleared the bar." And in the alternate-reality dimension that houses all things Rupert Murdoch, Fox-Business claimed the plan had "removed a huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over Wall Street." Isn't it amazing how the corporate world manages to find its bright, smiley happy face when you agree to evaporate their near worthless troubles with $1 trillion from the pockets of tax-payers? Go figure.
More below the fold...
Well, it seems not everyone is cheering. David Shuster who was pinch-hitting for Keith Olbermann Monday night probably put it best- "Wall Street loves what it hears—stocks up almost 500 points. But, is what‘s good for Wall Street also good for Main Street?" The answer from many economists and others either brave or not beholden to the whims of the corporate world have tragically answered with a resounding no. While fixing the dire banking institutions may be a part of rescuing a flailing economy, many are asking where is the bailout for the rest of us and when is enough of this corporate welfare *enough.*
On Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman bemoans that rather than seizing this moment for serious reformation and change of the financial sector, the Obama administration has given into what he terms "zombie ideas:"A zombie idea is an idea that you keep on killing, because it’s a bad idea, but it just keeps on coming back. And what this is is we’ve had this idea since Henry Paulson came out with his plan six months ago, the Bush administration, that the real problem is that the market is undervaluing all of these toxic assets, and what we need to do is have taxpayers go in and buy them at a fair price, and that will solve all of our financial problems. And that’s what happened. The Geithner plan is a complicated, disguised variant on the same idea. It’s the zombie that you keep killing, and it just keeps coming back.
Listen or read transcript of interview here.
Speaking before the plan was announced, a disgusted Matt Taibbi at the Rolling Stone warned that the global economic crisis wasn't a matter of money, but a matter of ensuring that the status quo--those with power--remain in power and more firmly tighten their grip. What was worse, the man people (and the world) helped elect to bring about change, is helping them do it. It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
Read full article here.
Brad Reed at Alternet shoots back at the "brain-dead economic reporting" that neglects to find any criticism of this bailout, highlighting the troubling relationship between journalism and the corporate world: Our press corps has discovered an important scoop: Rich people approve of using taxpayer money to help rich people....In case you haven't noticed, there's a common thread throughout all of this coverage, which is that Geithner's plan cannot be successful unless it wins the enthusiastic endorsement of the very rich people who drove the broader economy into the ground in the first place. Our press corps' primary gauge of measuring rich peoples' happiness is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which it uses as a general substitute for actual economic statistics.
Read full article here.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Forest for the Trees?
From the halls of Congress to the media punditry, all the news is about the AIG bonus scandal. Who did what? Who knew what? When did they know? Etc. Etc. Politicians get their chance to grandstand for the cameras, and everybody is allowed their moment of populism. But could everyone be missing the forest for the trees? And how is it that the former governor of NY Elliot Spitzer, sent into exile and disgrace following his prostitution bust, is the one who has the courage to point this out?
As the AP put it:
Spitzer says the AIG bonus issue is "penny ante" compared to the billions of the insurer's bailout money funneled to bad banks, and that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner owes America an explanation, quickly.
More after the fold...
Spitzer, in articles and interviews, points out that long ago, he was warning deaf ears about the money sucking black hole that has become AIG.
"We pursued AIG and Wall Street's structural failures in a way that others shied away from because it was politically unpalatable for them to address those issues," Spitzer told host Brian Lehrer Wednesday on WNYC Radio in New York City. "Now it is the flavor of the month. Everybody is jumping up and down serving subpoenas, beating their chests trying to be tougher than the next person."
On CNN Thursday, Spitzer said his initial probes came from AIG's "effort from the very top to gin up returns whenever, wherever possible and to push the boundaries in a way that would garner returns almost regardless of risk.
"Back then I said to people, AIG is the center of the web," he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
Whether his ability to find his voice in the midst of this mess will allow Spitzer some vindication is hard to say. But for now, he certainly gets to smugly say, "I told you so."
For more on Spitzer and the AIG debacle:
Crooks and Liars
In Eliot Spitzer's first interview since he resigned as New York's governor, he tells Fareed Zakaria that the problem with Wall St. isn't the individuals involved, but a culture that sought greater and greater returns without taking any of the risk. He also says he hopes Barney Frank will look more closely into the payments to Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout funds.
Watch video and read full article here.
Slate
It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full. Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars....So now we know for sure what we already surmised: The AIG bailout has been a way to hide an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received TARP money already.
For full article, see here.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Obama & Iran- Respectful Diplomacy ?
President Obama's taped speech to be broadcast to the Iranian people was a clear departure not only from the Bush administration's "Axis of Evil" designation, but from a dismal US foreign policy towards that nation in some two decades.
For the US, the souring of relations with Iran began with the hostage crisis of the 1970s--which would partially help usher in the Reagan Era, and usher out President Jimmy Carter--and Iranian support for nationalist groups (designated terrorists) which threaten US interests, like Hezbollah. But for Iranians, the beginning of those bad relations was at least twenty-five years earlier, when in 1954 the US CIA, along with British interests, enginerred the overthrow of the popular government of Premier Mohammed Mossaddeq. It was Iran's last democratically elected leadership, to be followed by a very unpopular western puppet in the form of the Shah, and later a socially repressive religious orthodoxy. During this time the US supported Iran's enemey Saddam Hussein (politically and militarily) in an aggressive war that would kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians, in the controversial 1988 Operation Praying Mantis, and have imposed sanctions against the existing regime. And though Iran would show profound sympathy for the US in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and provide key aid in the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, their blatant overtures of diplomacy were repeatedly rebuffed.
Obama's speech is far from anything resembling an apology for the US role in a past tumultuous relationship. Nor should it seen as a backing away from any possible sanction or military attack on Iran over an alleged nuclear program. The administration still loudly refers to an "Iranian Threat" that somehow looms over the world. Yet, it is at least a step away from the brash and thinly veiled hostility of past addresses. There are no calls here to overthrow the current rulers of Iran (something that should be left to the Iranian people to do, if that is what they want), nor the normal arrogance inherent of a "Johnny-come-lately" nation lecturing a country and people that can claim links to the ancient world. And in that, we can at least see a glimmer of hope.
Speech:
THE PRESIDENT: Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world.
This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with friends and family.
In particular, I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture. Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place.
Here in the United States our own communities have been enhanced by the contributions of Iranian Americans. We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world.
For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained. But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together. Indeed, you will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays -- by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope.
Within these celebrations lies the promise of a new day, the promise of opportunity for our children, security for our families, progress for our communities, and peace between nations. Those are shared hopes, those are common dreams.
So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.
You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.
So on the occasion of your New Year, I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek. It's a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce. It's a future where the old divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbors and the wider world can live in greater security and greater peace.
I know that this won't be reached easily. There are those who insist that we be defined by our differences. But let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi, so many years ago: "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence."
With the coming of a new season, we're reminded of this precious humanity that we all share. And we can once again call upon this spirit as we seek the promise of a new beginning.
Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Iraq War Turns 6
Late night March 19 and early morning March 20 of 2003 launched America's illegal and aggressive war against the Iraq. Six years on, through bombings, Abu Gharibs, displacement and a shattered infrastructure, it's uncertain whether this holy crusade was directed solely upon the Iraqi regime or the Iraqi people--who themselves have repeatedly called for an end to occupation and find shoe-throwers more heroic than US soldiers. The recent inheritors of this imperial ambition have declared the war will end...in time. Though it seems that with a sprawling embassy and a call for retaining residual forces, the imperial footprint of American hegemony never really plans on leaving completely.
So at 6 years, what have we got to show out of this colonial misadventure?
More beneath the fold...
Iraq at 6
Cost of war: $655 billion in allocated funds.
Documented civilian deaths: between 91,121 and 99,500.
Estimated Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion: 1.3 million.
Iraqi civilians killed in February 2009: 346 (including 11 children).
US casualties: 4,259 deaths: 31,131 wounded in action.
US troops deployed to Iraq since 2003: 513,000; deployed more than once: 197,000; deployed three or more times: 53,000.
US soldiers who committed suicide in January 2009: as many as 24, the highest monthly total since the Army started keeping those stats in 1980.
Iraqi unemployment rate: 18 percent; for men ages 15-29: 28 percent.
Iraqi female labor force participation: 17 percent.
Journalists killed in Iraq: 138
Estimated number of Iraqis displaced since 2003: 5 million, nearly 20 percent of the total population.
Iraqi prison population: 15,100 in US custody; 35,000 in Iraqi custody.
Average hours of electricity per day in Iraq: 13.3
*Information from The Nation April 6, 2009 edition.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Gods (Representative) Must Be Crazy
Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI gained headlines when during a tour of Africa, he pontiff claimed that condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and AIDS. In fact, according to Benedict XVI, condoms could make the problem worse. Speaking to journalists on a flight frm Cameroon, the Pope stated that while HIV and AIDS was a terrible affliction, it is in the end "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." Throwing science out the window, it's not certain what alternative means the Catholic pontiff is suggesting. And, deservedly so, he was swiftly rebuked by health officials, activists and others world wide. A rather good rebuttal posted below. And to think, it was written in 2003!
More after the fold...
Is the Pope Crazy?
By Katha Pollitt
www.thenation.com
There are many things to be said against condoms, and most people reading this have probably said them all. But at least they work. Not perfectly--they slip, they break, they require more forethought and finesse and cooperation and trust than is easy to bring to sex every single time, and, a major drawback in this fallen world, they place women's safety in the hands of men. But for birth control they are a whole lot better than the rhythm method or prayer or nothing, and for protection from sexually transmitted diseases they are all we have. This is not exactly a controversial statement; people have been using condoms as a barrier against disease as long as rubber has been around (indeed, before--as readers of James Boswell's journals know). You could ask a thousand doctors--ten thousand doctors--before you'd find one who said, Condoms? Don't bother.
But what do doctors know? Or the Centers for Disease Control, or the World Health Organization, or the American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar)? These days, the experts on condoms are politicians, preachers and priests, and the word from above is: Condoms don't work.
read full article here.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Covering Up the Past
In 1935 author Sinclair Lewis published It Can't Happen Here, a satirical novel that details the struggles of a lone reporter against fascist US regime that had come to power. Sinclair's novel, while verging on science fiction, was a warning that an oppressive government could sweep into power anywhere, if citizens and a watchful media were not vigilant. Recounting the last eight years under George Bush and the extent to which that administration sought to consolidating and abusing power, one is left to ponder just how close to Sinclair's alternate reality we may have all found ourselves.
Yet, despite all warning signs, our mainstream media culture ignored or downplayed the threat. And even now that the past regime is out of office, many seem reluctant to revisit the past. What's more, seeming numb in the face of power, most seem to have accepted the Obama administration's and Democratic leadership's timid approach to investigations.
The Democratic and Executive reasons for reluctance are clearly obvious, even if not always agreed with, and often stated. As journalist and media activist Eric Alterman points out, "Obama's calculation is clear: investigations would threaten the aura of bipartisanship he seeks in order to pass his ambitious agenda."
But exactly how does this stop the US media establishment from doing its job? Why is big media reluctant to go back and do its own investigation on possible past violations of our rights and liberties? Alterman may have hit the answer on the proverbial head: But in the case of the mainstream media, the motivation is simply the mindset: admit the dangers posed to our democracy by the Bush administration, and you're admitting that democracy's watchdog was sleeping (or cowering) just when he, and she, were most needed.
Could it be that our media establishment, fearful of its own silent complicity, willful negligence or even propagandizing, now wants to ignore the past--in the hopes that we all forget their role? If so, that's a tragic statement on the status of journalism, whose job it should be to print any past misdeeds into history if only to make certain we have a record--and perhaps ensure that it doesn't happen again. To not do so, and not shoulder their own responsibility, says perhaps that even after those last eight years they managed to learn nothing.
Read Alterman's full article here.
Monday, March 16, 2009
How El Salvador Just Defeated Reaganism
Throughout the 1980s, the FMLN of El Salvador (a coalition of rebel guerrillas) waged a long struggle against the US-backed military government. More than 70,000 people were killed during this war, the overwhelming majority of which the UN concluded were killed by military and paramilitary forces. A pet project of the Reagan administration, El Salvador became synonymous with shady CIA dealings and death squads. This past week however, Mauricio Funes, a one-time leader of the FMLN party, turned the tables on Reagan's legacy. In national elections, Funes won the country’s presidential election, taking 51 percent of the vote and defeating Rodrigo Avila of the ruling right-wing ARENA party. While the Bush administration had previously used bullying tactics that threatened repercussions upon the people of El Salvador for democratically choosing a leftist leader, the Obama administration has pledged itself to neutrality--congratulating the new president.
Will this change be a new beginning for US-El Salvador relations?
See more below the fold...I would just say—I’ll just quote a song that says, “Y que venga la alegria a lavar el sufrimiento”—“Let the joy come and wash away the suffering.” It’s something on an order I’ve never seen in my life. As a child of Salvadoran immigrants and as someone who’s spent time here and as someone who saw the Obama experience, I really can’t tell you what this is like, when you’re talking about ending not just the ARENA party’s rule, but you’re talking about 130 years of oligarchy and military dictatorship, by and large, that’s just ended last night. You’re talking about $6 billion that the United States used to defeat the FMLN, as you mentioned earlier. You’re talking about one of the most formidable—a formerly political military, now political forces, in the hemisphere, showing the utter failure of not just the ARENA party but of somebody in particular, too, who has a special place in many of our hearts: Ronald Reagan. This is the defeat of Ronald Reagan, nothing less.
The above quote is by Roberto Lovato, contributing associate editor with New America Media and a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine. He blogs at ofamerica.wordpress.com. His full interview on Democracy Now can be found here.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Watching the Watchmen
Watchmen -- the astonishing and reverent adaptation of Alan Moore's classic graphic novel -- brings to life a fascinating alternate world....Public fear is reaching a breaking point, and it appears that nothing and no one can prevent humanity's extinction. Not even our superheroes....Watchmen tells of the terrible consequences that can ensue when an individual or a nation assumes unwarranted and unlimited powers; for with the donning of the hero's cloak of righteousness, everything becomes permissible.--Michael Dudley, Alternet, America Is a Dangerous Vigilante, Heroes Are Sociopaths: The Not-So-Mythical World of 'Watchmen'
The much awaited film adaptation of the graphic novel Watchmen finally hit the movie screens. Judging by who you ask, it was either a disaster or pure genius. Myself, I fall into the latter camp. Not only did I find the film visually stunning (twice), but I thought the on-screen translation of the 1985 classic managed to retain enough of the original novel to remain true to its essence, and yet was not so slavish that it needed another hour (piled upon the already 2 hrs and 45 minutes) to tell the story in full. They even managed to make the much-awaited ending spectacular without a several tons of gigantic psychic squid. I was going to write my own review, but I could not figure out how to unpack all the philosophical and political elements the Watchmen lays bare--from the brutal ugliness of American Empire in the form of Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian, to the anti-hero misfit vigilante Rorschach, to Ozymandias' maniacal plan for global peace.
Thankfully, someone did so for me. Check out Michael Dudley's review at Alternet. Any other thought-provoking pieces will be added as they become available.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Our Death Squads
"No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."--President Gerald R. Ford's Executive Order 11905: United States Foreign Intelligence Activities, SEC. 5, (g).
Passed in 1976 by then President Gerald Ford, Executive Order 11905 clearly prohibits political assassination by agents of the US, as part of an attempt to reign in an out-of-control CIA. While the order had ambiguous success, as the 1980s saw the US directly involved in numerous death squads and assassination groups throughout the Americas, it did restrain Presidents and members of the executive office from directly endorsing and directing such activities. Or at least, until the Bush administration.
More after the fold...
In an interview for an upcoming book, investigative journalist Sy Hersh this week revealed what he described as an "executive assassination ring" that operated directly out of the Bush White House:"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called....They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office....They reported directly to him. Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on...they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.
If they stand up to the scrutiny they will certainly be put under, Hersh's stunning revelations reveal (once again) just how "dark" the days of the Bush administration had become. And they leave open a great deal of questions. Who was killed in these assassinations? How was this death squad created? How directly tied into this were the legal advisers to the administration? And, most alarmingly, who has control over it now? The accusations being put forth here are far beyond the purvey of Sen. Leah's proposed Truth Commission, meant to examine extrajudicial acts during the Bush administration. Murder and political assassination under the auspices of the US government being carried out directly from the executive office call for indictments and prosecutions. The Obama administration, so reluctant about dealing with the excesses of their predecessors, might find themselves forced to confront crimes too serious to ignore.
Read more below.
Seymour Hersh: "Executive Assassination Ring" Answered to Cheney, Had No Congressional Oversight
By Eric Black, MinnPost.com.
Investigative journalist Sy Hersh dropped a bombshell revelation on Monday about international killings ordered under Bush.
Read full article here.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Obama's Awkward Israel Problem
When veteran White House Press Corps reporter Helen Thomas asked President Obama point blank at his first press conference if he could name any country in the Middle East that currently possesses nuclear weapons back in early February, what followed was an awkward pivot and deflection. In the end, the question went unanswered. Because, as pointed out by one commentator, any answer would have been considered a "gaffe." It is almost amazing that the U.S., who threatens war on other nations for any *alleged* construction of nuclear weapons, cannot even be honest about its own allies WMDs. Dated protocols and strategic alliances turn usually soapbox standing politicians of all stripes dumb and mute whenever the question is raised. Stephen Zunes at Foreign Policy In Focus points out this goes deeper however, as acknowledgement of Israel's nuclear arsenal would put the U.S. in the odd bind of enforcing its own laws--namely the 1976 Symington Amendment, which restricts U.S. military support for governments which develop nuclear weapons.
But as the U.S. will continue to funnel some $3 billion each year for the next 10 years to the Israeli military machine, that law could cause more long awkward pauses. Below, Stephen Zunes writes about the current administration's close ties with the Israeli state, and its consequences.
Obama and Israel's Military: Still Arm-in-Arm
Stephen Zunes March 4, 2009
FPIF
In the wake of Israel's massive assault on heavily populated civilian areas of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, Amnesty International called for the United States to suspend military aid to Israel on human rights grounds. Amnesty has also called for the United Nations to impose a mandatory arms embargo on both Hamas and the Israeli government. Unfortunately, it appears that President Barack Obama won't be heeding Amnesty's call.
During the fighting in January, Amnesty documented Israeli forces engaging in "direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects in Gaza, and attacks which were disproportionate or indiscriminate." The leader of Amnesty International's fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip and southern Israel noted how "Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes." Amnesty also reported finding fragments of U.S.-made munitions "littering school playgrounds, in hospitals and in people's homes."
Malcolm Smart, who serves as Amnesty International's director for the Middle East, observed in a press release that "to a large extent, Israel's military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with U.S. taxpayers' money." The release also noted how before the conflict, which raged for three weeks from late December into January, the United States had "been aware of the pattern of repeated misuse of [its] weapons."
Amnesty has similarly condemned Hamas rocket attacks into civilian-populated areas of southern Israel as war crimes. And while acknowledging that aid to Hamas was substantially smaller, far less sophisticated, and far less lethal — and appeared to have been procured through clandestine sources — Amnesty called on Iran and other countries to take concrete steps to insure that weapons and weapon components not get into the hands of Palestinian militias.
During the fighting in early January, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization initially called for a suspension of U.S. military aid until there was no longer a substantial risk of additional human rights violations. The Bush administration summarily rejected this proposal. Amnesty subsequently appealed to the Obama administration. "As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights," said Malcolm Smart. "The Obama administration should immediately suspend U.S. military aid to Israel."
Obama's refusal to accept Amnesty's call for the suspension of military assistance was a blow to human rights activists. The most Obama might do to express his displeasure toward controversial Israeli policies like the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories would be to reject a planned increase in military aid for the next fiscal year and slightly reduce economic aid and/or loan guarantees. However, in a notable departure from previous administrations, Obama made no mention of any military aid to Israel in his outline of the FY 2010 budget, announced last week. This notable absence may indicate that pressure from human rights activists and others concerned about massive U.S. military aid to Israel is now strong enough that the White House feels a need to downplay the assistance rather than emphasize it.
Read rest of article here.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
That "S" Word...
Socialism. Chances are, the average American can't actually define it. In truth, it comes with many interpretations. The former Soviet Union called itself "socialist." Then again, aspects of socialism are also part of Sweden's economic model, along with other Scandanvian states. Like "capitalism," the term "socialism" remains open a host of social and contextual understandings. Too often however, in the US, the word has been monopolized by the right to crucify any form of progressive politics. Talk about wealth inequality, universal healthcare or government regulation, and you're suddenly advocating sending everyone out to communes and looking forward to breadlines. Yet these same purveyors of doom seem to have little problem when the "welfare state" they so callously malign gives tax-breaks to the rich or has to come to the aid of wealthy financiers, corporations and bankers. Socialism seems fine when it's going to those on the top. Those who would have found the nationalization of banks or government job creation unthinkable, are now adjusting their tune.
More below the fold.
Moving beyond this tired rhetoric and "Red Scare" tactic, Barbara Ehrenreich & Bill Fletcher Jr. at The Nation have set about a project they have titled "Reimagining Socialism:"The great promise of capitalism, as first suggested by Adam Smith and recently enshrined in "market fundamentalism," was that we didn't have to figure anything out, because the market would take care of everything for us. Instead of promoting self-reliance, this version of free enterprise fostered passivity in the face of that inscrutable deity, the Market. Deregulate, let wages fall to their "natural" level, turn what remains of government into an endless source of bounty for contractors--whee! Well, that hasn't worked, and the core idea of socialism still stands: that people can get together and figure out how to solve their problems, or at least a lot of their problems, collectively. That we--not the market or the capitalists or some elite group of über-planners--have to control our own destiny.
While not offering a pancea to the global economic woes, Ehrenreich, Fletcher and several other luminaries, offer alternative ways of looking at the current crisis--ideas that at the *least* need to have equal time at the table.
Reimagining Socialism
By Barbara Ehrenreich & Bill Fletcher Jr.
March 4, 2009
If you haven't heard socialists doing much crowing over the fall of capitalism, it isn't just because there aren't enough of us to make an audible crowing sound. We, as much as anyone on Wall Street in, say, 2006, appreciate the resilience of American capitalism--its ability to regroup and find fresh avenues for growth, as it did after the depressions of 1877, 1893 and the 1930s. In fact, The Communist Manifesto can be read not only as an indictment of capitalism but as a breathless paean to its dynamism. And we all know the joke about the Marxist economist who successfully predicted eleven out of the last three recessions.
But this time the patient may not get up from the table, no matter how many times the electroshock paddles of "stimulus" are applied.
Read full article here.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
CNBC's "Bad Behavior"
Watching CNBC over the past few years has been a grueling process. The all powerful financial network has at every conceivable turn done its best to protect the interests of rapacious free market capitalism and the economic ruin it has caused. As responsible economists warned of the dangers ahead, those wishing to escape reality, could always turn to CNBC to watch a host of pundits declare that all was fine, as an endless parade of financial spokesmen from AIG to Bear Stearns were afforded airtime to keep up their bluff. Without a hint of humility, CNBC has now decided to donate its time to scoffing at any form of progressive economic agenda--from greater regulation to health care reform. One of their latest gems was on Feb. 19, when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli launched into a raving attack on the Obama administration's mortgage recovery plan for foreclosed homeowners. Santelli accused President Obama of "promoting bad behavior," and led Wall St types behind him in a booing chorus. Mind you, this is the same Wall St that has been demanding trillion dollar bailouts from taxpayers, the ultimate reward for the ultimate "bad behavior." When Jon Stewart's The Daily Show invited Santelli he first agreed, then suddenly backed out last Friday--as if sensing the trap.
Not one to let those who put themselves up for public mockery off so easily, Jon Stewart decided to not only take on Santelli, but pull back the curtain on CNBC's history of spectacularly ill-informed predictions as well as their abetting role as an apologist mouthpiece for irresponsible financial giants.
The San Francisco Chronicle called it a "beatdown." Huffington post termed it an "evisceration." I just like to call it, just desserts that have been long overdue.
