Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
U.S.-Pakistan: Teh Scam In Teh Works?
On the one hand, you get news like this, that, this, this or that, or reports like this, and/or analyses like this or that.
And then, something like the following comes along - making you wonder just what the Hell is going on here ...
And then, something like the following comes along - making you wonder just what the Hell is going on here ...
Pakistan and U.S. Have Tacit Deal On Airstrikes
By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick
The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.
The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.
The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.
Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al-Qaeda figures in strikes last month.
Zardari said that he receives "no prior notice" of the airstrikes and that he disapproves of them. But he said he gives the Americans "the benefit of the doubt" that their intention is to target the Afghan side of the ill-defined, mountainous border of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), even if that is not where the missiles land.
Civilian deaths remain a problem, Zardari said. "If the damage is women and children, then the sensitivity of its effect increases," he said. The U.S. "point of view," he said, is that the attacks are "good for everybody. Our point of view is that it is not good for our position of winning the hearts and minds of people."
A senior Pakistani official said that although the attacks contribute to widespread public anger in Pakistan, anti-Americanism there is closely associated with President Bush. Citing a potentially more favorable popular view of President-elect Barack Obama, he said that "maybe with a new administration, public opinion will be more pro-American and we can start acknowledging" more cooperation.
The official, one of several who discussed the sensitive military and intelligence relationship only on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S-Pakistani understanding over the airstrikes is "the smart middle way for the moment." Contrasting Zardari with his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the official said Musharraf "gave lip service but not effective support" to the Americans. "This government is delivering but not taking the credit."
From December to August, when Musharraf stepped down, there were six U.S. Predator attacks in Pakistan. Since then, there have been at least 19. The most recent occurred early Friday, when local officials and witnesses said at least 11 people, including six foreign fighters, were killed. The attack, in North Waziristan, one of the seven FATA regions, demolished a compound owned by Amir Gul, a Taliban commander said to have ties to al-Qaeda.
Pakistan's self-praise is not entirely echoed by U.S. officials, who remain suspicious of ties between Pakistan's intelligence service and FATA-based extremists. But the Bush administration has muted its criticism of Pakistan. In a speech to the Atlantic Council last week, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden effusively praised Pakistan's recent military operations, including "tough fighting against hardened militants" in the northern FATA region of Bajaur.
"Throughout the FATA," Hayden said, "al-Qaeda and its allies are feeling less secure today than they did two, three or six months ago. It has become difficult for them to ignore significant losses in their ranks." Hayden acknowledged, however, that al-Qaeda remains a "determined, adaptive enemy," operating from a "safe haven" in the tribal areas.
Along with the stepped-up Predator attacks, Bush administration strategy includes showering Pakistan's new leaders with close, personal attention. Zardari met with Bush during the U.N. General Assembly in September, and senior military and intelligence officials have exchanged near-constant visits over the past few months.
(Keep reading ...)
By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick
The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don't-ask-don't-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days.
The officials described the deal as one in which the U.S. government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan's government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes.
The arrangement coincided with a suspension of ground assaults into Pakistan by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview last week that he was aware of no ground attacks since one on Sept. 3 that his government vigorously protested.
Officials described the attacks, using new technology and improved intelligence, as a significant improvement in the fight against Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Officials confirmed the deaths of at least three senior al-Qaeda figures in strikes last month.
Zardari said that he receives "no prior notice" of the airstrikes and that he disapproves of them. But he said he gives the Americans "the benefit of the doubt" that their intention is to target the Afghan side of the ill-defined, mountainous border of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), even if that is not where the missiles land.
Civilian deaths remain a problem, Zardari said. "If the damage is women and children, then the sensitivity of its effect increases," he said. The U.S. "point of view," he said, is that the attacks are "good for everybody. Our point of view is that it is not good for our position of winning the hearts and minds of people."
A senior Pakistani official said that although the attacks contribute to widespread public anger in Pakistan, anti-Americanism there is closely associated with President Bush. Citing a potentially more favorable popular view of President-elect Barack Obama, he said that "maybe with a new administration, public opinion will be more pro-American and we can start acknowledging" more cooperation.
The official, one of several who discussed the sensitive military and intelligence relationship only on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S-Pakistani understanding over the airstrikes is "the smart middle way for the moment." Contrasting Zardari with his predecessor, retired Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the official said Musharraf "gave lip service but not effective support" to the Americans. "This government is delivering but not taking the credit."
From December to August, when Musharraf stepped down, there were six U.S. Predator attacks in Pakistan. Since then, there have been at least 19. The most recent occurred early Friday, when local officials and witnesses said at least 11 people, including six foreign fighters, were killed. The attack, in North Waziristan, one of the seven FATA regions, demolished a compound owned by Amir Gul, a Taliban commander said to have ties to al-Qaeda.
Pakistan's self-praise is not entirely echoed by U.S. officials, who remain suspicious of ties between Pakistan's intelligence service and FATA-based extremists. But the Bush administration has muted its criticism of Pakistan. In a speech to the Atlantic Council last week, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden effusively praised Pakistan's recent military operations, including "tough fighting against hardened militants" in the northern FATA region of Bajaur.
"Throughout the FATA," Hayden said, "al-Qaeda and its allies are feeling less secure today than they did two, three or six months ago. It has become difficult for them to ignore significant losses in their ranks." Hayden acknowledged, however, that al-Qaeda remains a "determined, adaptive enemy," operating from a "safe haven" in the tribal areas.
Along with the stepped-up Predator attacks, Bush administration strategy includes showering Pakistan's new leaders with close, personal attention. Zardari met with Bush during the U.N. General Assembly in September, and senior military and intelligence officials have exchanged near-constant visits over the past few months.
(Keep reading ...)
G20 = New Era Of Global Governance?
I'm not so sure (and then some) ... although the positive potentials are there nonetheless.
From G8 to G20: the end of exclusion
The Washington summit of the G20 nations represents the opening to a new era of global governance
By Larry Elliott
Despite all the pre-match hype, yesterday's gathering was never going to be a second Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that laid the foundations for the international economic order of the postwar era.
The first Bretton Woods took two and a half years to prepare and was dominated by the United States. Countries have had barely a month to prepare for the gathering convened by George Bush in the midst of the financial markets' meltdown and, predictably enough, they have different views on what needs to be done.
Some - Germany and Canada in particular - are wary of letting borrowing rip in order to fund tax cuts. Washington, despite the huge problems caused by the reckless lending of banks, is hostile to the heavy regulation of big finance favoured by the French and Germans.
Barack Obama cast a long shadow over the talks, even though the President-elect carefully allowed Bush to hog the limelight on his last big set-piece occasion. Obama is thought to favour a bigger package of tax cuts and is open to ideas such as clamping down on tax havens, but these decisions will not be taken until after his January inauguration. The summit was Hamlet without the prince.
(Keep reading ...)
The Washington summit of the G20 nations represents the opening to a new era of global governance
By Larry Elliott
Despite all the pre-match hype, yesterday's gathering was never going to be a second Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that laid the foundations for the international economic order of the postwar era.
The first Bretton Woods took two and a half years to prepare and was dominated by the United States. Countries have had barely a month to prepare for the gathering convened by George Bush in the midst of the financial markets' meltdown and, predictably enough, they have different views on what needs to be done.
Some - Germany and Canada in particular - are wary of letting borrowing rip in order to fund tax cuts. Washington, despite the huge problems caused by the reckless lending of banks, is hostile to the heavy regulation of big finance favoured by the French and Germans.
Barack Obama cast a long shadow over the talks, even though the President-elect carefully allowed Bush to hog the limelight on his last big set-piece occasion. Obama is thought to favour a bigger package of tax cuts and is open to ideas such as clamping down on tax havens, but these decisions will not be taken until after his January inauguration. The summit was Hamlet without the prince.
(Keep reading ...)
President-Elect Obama And Gitmo, Torture: Renewed Pledge At Last
From back here and there - I finally got a post-election clear and definitive answer:
(Now, about renditions, military commissions, indefinite detentions, indiscriminate domestic spying and restoring habeas corpus ... ?)
Obama Pledges To End Torture To Help ‘Regain America’s Moral Stature In The World’To which I respond: bravo, Mr. President-elect, for such unambiguous and definitive, post-election pledge renewal to end torture and close Gitmo. Thank you, sir, indeed!In recent weeks, there has been rampant media speculation that President Barack Obama would back off his campaign pledges to end torture.
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote, “President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies.” In addition, some in the blogosphere have raised concerns about the fact that a key intelligence adviser to Obama has supported the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
Tonight, in his interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Obama bluntly and directly clarified his incoming administration’s position:
CBS: There are a number of different things you can do early on pertaining to executive orders.
OBAMA: Right.
CBS: One of them is to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?
OBAMA: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.
Watch it:
Obama also emphasized that “capturing or killing” Osama bin Laden is a critical aspect of his national security strategy of stamping out al Qaeda. “He is not just a symbol, he is also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” Obama said of bin Laden.
(Now, about renditions, military commissions, indefinite detentions, indiscriminate domestic spying and restoring habeas corpus ... ?)
U.S. $700B Bailout: What Was It For, Again?
A very à propos question, especially when considering this little bit of news:
Not so fast:
Of course, you know where I'm going with this:
Any questions?
(Cross-posted at TWWL)
U.S. financial giant Citigroup to cut 53,000 jobsDoing badly indeed, no?
Citigroup Inc. is shedding approximately 53,000 more employees in the coming quarters as the banking giant struggles to steady itself after suffering massive losses from deteriorating debt.
The New York-based bank, which has already reduced its assets by about 20 per cent since the first quarter of the year, also plans to trim expenses by 19 per cent in 2009 from third-quarter levels, to US$50 billion.
The plans, posted on the company's website, were discussed by CEO Vikram Pandit at the company's town hall meeting in New York Monday with employees.
The company said it is shrinking its work force by 20 per cent from its 2007 peak of 375,000. The company had already announced in October that it was eliminating about 22,000 jobs from that level.
About half of the expected work force reductions will come from business sales; Citigroup already announced that it was selling Citi Global Services and its German retail banking business, accounting for about 18,000 jobs. Citi is planning to sell other businesses, too, but has not announced them yet, a spokesman said.
The other half of the work force reductions will come from layoffs and attrition, the spokesman said.
The New York-based bank has posted four straight quarterly losses, including a loss of $2.8 billion during the third quarter.
Not so fast:
In an effort to instill confidence in the company, Citigroup emphasized in its presentation Monday that its Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, is 10.4 per cent after a $25 billion investment from the government -- part of the $700 billion financial rescue package passed by Congress last month. That ratio is higher than peers Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., after their purchases of Merrill Lynch and Wachovia Corp., respectively.Ri-ight. I thought so.
Citigroup also stressed that it has doubled reserves in a year to $24 billion; that its revenues are stable; and that Citigroup has lower exposure to U.S. consumer mortgages than JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Of course, you know where I'm going with this:
It is always the same story - "give us tax breaks or we will have to close down and folks will lose their jobs"; "give us some bailout monies or we'll have no choice but to close down and folks will lose their jobs"; "deregulate or it will cost us too much and we'll have no choice but to reorganize and folks will lose their jobs".And the con game just made another 53,000 victims - not counting the increasing amount of billions of taxpayer money wasted ...
Or, in other words: "let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs".
That is because we allow our governments to give our taxpayer monies to corporations as incentives, rescues and/or outright bail outs, which instead never fail to use such monies as plain capital to further their own self-serving ends.
(...) "Let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs" - yes, that's sounds like the best summary of today's prevailing business model, which is nothing more than a continuing blackmail con game at the expense of all of us taxpayers ... we taxpayers, who constitute the very fuel of the economic engine of our democratic societies.
Any questions?
(Cross-posted at TWWL)
Bush's Ode To The Free Market
Bush the incompetent strikes back to further sell the continuing blackmail con game of our times ...
Bush Sells Free Market as Cure-All, Despite Crash
By Matthew Rothschild
On Thursday, Bush gave a speech in New York about the financial crisis, and it was a laughable ode to the free market.
It sure was an odd time for such an ode, since the free market is crashing down upon us.
Ever incoherent, Bush himself admitted as much.
“I’m a market-oriented guy, but not when I’m faced with the prospect of a global meltdown,” he said.
And so he enumerated the market interventions that his administration has already taken. He talked about the need to “make our financial markets more transparent”— though his bailout is anything but. And he even called for more regulation.
But then he went back to singing his ode.
“The greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market,” he said. “It is too much government involvement in the market.”
This is economic idiocy at a time of global collapse, and to utter it, Bush had to distort the cause of the collapse, blaming a lot of it on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and denying that it was caused by “greed and exploitation” or “a failure of the free market system.”
Nice try, George.
But that’s exactly what it was: A failure of cowboy capitalism. Deregulation come a cropper.
Bush can deny it all he wants. But the evidence is right in front of us.
This is what happens when you knock down the wall between commercial banks and other financial institutions, as Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin did by abolishing Glass-Steagall.
This is what happens when you allow Wall Street to issue all sorts of clever derivatives and swaps that are unregulated, as Bill Clinton (with encouragement from Larry Summers) did when he signed Phil Gramm’s Commodities Futures Modernization Act.
This is what happens, in short, when you believe in the Reagan-Clinton-Bush ideology that big government is bad and that any regulation is suspect and that the free market will regulate itself.
Hell, even Alan Greenspan has given up on that now.
But not Bush.
(Keep reading ...)
By Matthew Rothschild
On Thursday, Bush gave a speech in New York about the financial crisis, and it was a laughable ode to the free market.
It sure was an odd time for such an ode, since the free market is crashing down upon us.
Ever incoherent, Bush himself admitted as much.
“I’m a market-oriented guy, but not when I’m faced with the prospect of a global meltdown,” he said.
And so he enumerated the market interventions that his administration has already taken. He talked about the need to “make our financial markets more transparent”— though his bailout is anything but. And he even called for more regulation.
But then he went back to singing his ode.
“The greater threat to economic prosperity is not too little government involvement in the market,” he said. “It is too much government involvement in the market.”
This is economic idiocy at a time of global collapse, and to utter it, Bush had to distort the cause of the collapse, blaming a lot of it on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and denying that it was caused by “greed and exploitation” or “a failure of the free market system.”
Nice try, George.
But that’s exactly what it was: A failure of cowboy capitalism. Deregulation come a cropper.
Bush can deny it all he wants. But the evidence is right in front of us.
This is what happens when you knock down the wall between commercial banks and other financial institutions, as Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin did by abolishing Glass-Steagall.
This is what happens when you allow Wall Street to issue all sorts of clever derivatives and swaps that are unregulated, as Bill Clinton (with encouragement from Larry Summers) did when he signed Phil Gramm’s Commodities Futures Modernization Act.
This is what happens, in short, when you believe in the Reagan-Clinton-Bush ideology that big government is bad and that any regulation is suspect and that the free market will regulate itself.
Hell, even Alan Greenspan has given up on that now.
But not Bush.
(Keep reading ...)
Sunday, November 16, 2008
APOV's Weekly Revue (11/16/2008)
If it's Sunday ...
Oh, Canada!
Oh, U.S.A.!
Oh, Economy!
Oh, World!
And that is it for the Weekly Revue on this Sunday, November 16 2008.
Peace and all that stuff.
Harper: a Third Rate Actor Gutting the Script on the World Stage™;
More Harper Hypocrisy and Double-Talk;
Prime Minister Harper: I've Got Your Cooperation Right Here;
Canada: the Great (Leadership) Void;
Afghanistan: Simple Answers to Stupid Questions;
November 11.
Oh, U.S.A.!
Missile Shield and Iran: A Boondoggle To Defend Against A Fiction?
Moving away from anti-intellectualism;
Sarah Palin Cannot Move On;
Bush's parting gift to al Qaeda;
Remembering the Big Lie;
Questions for the Obama Administration.
Oh, Economy!
FDIC vs. the Paulson Bailout;
Laid Off After 34 years;
Eat, Drink and Be Merry While the Commoner Starves;
Free Market: Trial and Error;
Another of a Common Man's Analysis of the Economic Crisis;
IEA Oil Report: The End of Oil is Nigh.
Oh, World!
Israel-Palestine: Re-branding Oppression.
And that is it for the Weekly Revue on this Sunday, November 16 2008.
Peace and all that stuff.
The Continuing Blackmail Con Game
It is always the same story - "give us tax breaks or we will have to close down and folks will lose their jobs"; "give us some bailout monies or we'll have no choice but to close down and folks will lose their jobs"; "deregulate or it will cost us too much and we'll have no choice but to reorganize and folks will lose their jobs".
Or, in other words: "let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs".
That is because we allow our governments to give our taxpayer monies to corporations as incentives, rescues and/or outright bail outs, which instead never fail to use such monies as plain capital to further their own self-serving ends (yet one more example here).
Allow me to reiterate yet again:
What is needed first and foremost is a reshaping of the free market system in a way that enforces responsibility through stringent regulations, in order to protect our democratic societies from the recklessness, blind greed, dangerous self-serving expediency and outright incompetence currently en force in virtually all of today's business models - whereby the possibility of short term gains/profits far outweights any long term, adaptable strategies for sustainable economic growth and prosperity.
Free market? Yes. Anything-goes-free-market? No more. Because it has indeed shown itself to be not only an utter failure, but as well as inherently dangerous to our prosperity, our health and our environment - regardless of what Bush (or even Harper) think.
I mean - selling our assets in order generate liquidity to help bailout incompetent, self-serving corporations and/or CEOs (one more recent example here)? Never a more a ludicrous and outright stupid idea have I ever heard as a "solution" to our current economic woes, folks.
As example: remember the electric car and what happened to it? Talk about being a little too late ...
"Let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs" - yes, that's sounds like the best summary of today's prevailing business model, which is nothing more than a continuing blackmail con game at the expense of all of us taxpayers ... we taxpayers, who constitute the very fuel of the economic engine of our democratic societies.
Here's (lots more) food for thought on the matter:
Or, in other words: "let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs".
That is because we allow our governments to give our taxpayer monies to corporations as incentives, rescues and/or outright bail outs, which instead never fail to use such monies as plain capital to further their own self-serving ends (yet one more example here).
Allow me to reiterate yet again:
Giving any bailout money to any corporation and/or financial institution without oversight and stringent conditions for use of said money, including limits/cuts on compensations for (failing/incompetent/irresponsible) CEOs, is the same thing as a parent giving $10 to an 8-years old to "buy a healthy lunch only" and not bothering to make sure that the kid doesn't use the money to stuff his/her face with fast food and/or sweets instead.What is needed is not just a "reshaping" of the financial systems of the world.
The same applies with regards to lack of regulations (or enforecement thereof) and "laissez faire" economic/environmental policies such as "voluntary measures" - in the end, corporate entities end up doing whatever they damn please, if only because one thing ever matters to their existence: the bottom line.
That is the nature of the beast, as "responsible" and self-serving as an 8-years old kid.
It is as simple as that.
What is needed first and foremost is a reshaping of the free market system in a way that enforces responsibility through stringent regulations, in order to protect our democratic societies from the recklessness, blind greed, dangerous self-serving expediency and outright incompetence currently en force in virtually all of today's business models - whereby the possibility of short term gains/profits far outweights any long term, adaptable strategies for sustainable economic growth and prosperity.
Free market? Yes. Anything-goes-free-market? No more. Because it has indeed shown itself to be not only an utter failure, but as well as inherently dangerous to our prosperity, our health and our environment - regardless of what Bush (or even Harper) think.
I mean - selling our assets in order generate liquidity to help bailout incompetent, self-serving corporations and/or CEOs (one more recent example here)? Never a more a ludicrous and outright stupid idea have I ever heard as a "solution" to our current economic woes, folks.
As example: remember the electric car and what happened to it? Talk about being a little too late ...
"Let us do whatever we damn well please or folks will lose their jobs, and whenever we screw things up, then better bail us out or folks will lose their jobs" - yes, that's sounds like the best summary of today's prevailing business model, which is nothing more than a continuing blackmail con game at the expense of all of us taxpayers ... we taxpayers, who constitute the very fuel of the economic engine of our democratic societies.
Here's (lots more) food for thought on the matter:
The New Trough
The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create
By Naomi Klein
On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of "seasoned financial veterans" that will be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one name jumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serve as chief investment officer for the massive new program.
On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment. Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he's an alum of Goldman Sachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2005 to 2007, he proudly advocated "flexibility" in regulation — a laissez-faire approach that failed to rein in the high-risk trading at the heart of the meltdown.
Bankers watching bankers, regulators who don't believe in regulating — that's all standard fare for the Bush crew. What's most striking about Jeffery's résumé, however, is an item omitted when his new job was announced: He served as executive director of Paul Bremer's infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War. Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the partisan machine that filled the Green Zone with Young Republicans, investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren't a big issue back then, because the staff's main function was to hand over stacks of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as "a free-fraud zone." During Senate hearings last year, when Jeffery was asked what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said he thought that contracts should be handed out with more "speed and flexibility" — the same philosophy he cited back when he was in charge of regulating Wall Street traders.
The Bush Administration has since reversed the Jeffery appointment, perhaps thinking better of giving a CPA alum such a central role in the Wall Street bailout. Still the original impulse underscores the many worrying parallels between the administration's approach to the financial crisis and its approach to the Iraq War. Under cover of an emergency, Treasury is rapidly turning into an economic Green Zone, overrun with private companies collecting lucrative contracts. Fittingly, one of the first to line up at the new trough was none other than the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani — yes, that Giuliani. The firm's chairman, Patrick Oxford, could scarcely conceal his glee over the prospect of cashing in on the bailout. "This one," he told reporters, "is very, very big." At least four times bigger, in fact, than the post-9/11 homeland-security bubble, from which Giuliani and his various outfits have profited so extravagantly. Even bigger, potentially, than the price tag for the Iraq War itself.
(Keep reading ...)
The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a "free-fraud zone" where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create
By Naomi Klein
On October 13th, when the U.S. Treasury Department announced the team of "seasoned financial veterans" that will be handling the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, one name jumped out: Reuben Jeffery III, who was initially tapped to serve as chief investment officer for the massive new program.
On the surface, Jeffery looks like a classic Bush appointment. Like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he's an alum of Goldman Sachs, having worked on Wall Street for 18 years. And as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2005 to 2007, he proudly advocated "flexibility" in regulation — a laissez-faire approach that failed to rein in the high-risk trading at the heart of the meltdown.
Bankers watching bankers, regulators who don't believe in regulating — that's all standard fare for the Bush crew. What's most striking about Jeffery's résumé, however, is an item omitted when his new job was announced: He served as executive director of Paul Bremer's infamous Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, during the early days of the Iraq War. Part of his job was to hire civilian staff, which made him an integral part of the partisan machine that filled the Green Zone with Young Republicans, investment bankers and Dick Cheney interns. Qualifications weren't a big issue back then, because the staff's main function was to hand over stacks of taxpayer money to private contractors, who were the ones actually running the occupation. It was this nonstop cash conveyor belt that earned the Green Zone a reputation, in the words of one CPA official, as "a free-fraud zone." During Senate hearings last year, when Jeffery was asked what he had learned from his experience at the CPA, he said he thought that contracts should be handed out with more "speed and flexibility" — the same philosophy he cited back when he was in charge of regulating Wall Street traders.
The Bush Administration has since reversed the Jeffery appointment, perhaps thinking better of giving a CPA alum such a central role in the Wall Street bailout. Still the original impulse underscores the many worrying parallels between the administration's approach to the financial crisis and its approach to the Iraq War. Under cover of an emergency, Treasury is rapidly turning into an economic Green Zone, overrun with private companies collecting lucrative contracts. Fittingly, one of the first to line up at the new trough was none other than the law firm of Bracewell & Giuliani — yes, that Giuliani. The firm's chairman, Patrick Oxford, could scarcely conceal his glee over the prospect of cashing in on the bailout. "This one," he told reporters, "is very, very big." At least four times bigger, in fact, than the post-9/11 homeland-security bubble, from which Giuliani and his various outfits have profited so extravagantly. Even bigger, potentially, than the price tag for the Iraq War itself.
(Keep reading ...)
Darkness In Afghanistan
The savagery in Afghanistan is reaching new heights. Whether it is assaulting schoolgirls with acid or the torture (including at the hands of U.S. soldiers), as well as mass executions, are slowly becoming the norm.
Just like in the good old days of the Taliban regime, eh?
(oh, the bitter irony - or is it blatant hypocrisy?)
It's no wonder then, that Harper and his Harpies keep trying again and again to block public hearings into whether they allowed the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities, despite having full knowledge that they could be tortured - why, this would definitely put a stain on Harper/Canada's war, eh?
All in all - it makes one wonder yet again what the Hell this FUBAR war was for anyway ...
Here's more food for thought on the matter:
Just like in the good old days of the Taliban regime, eh?
(oh, the bitter irony - or is it blatant hypocrisy?)
It's no wonder then, that Harper and his Harpies keep trying again and again to block public hearings into whether they allowed the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities, despite having full knowledge that they could be tortured - why, this would definitely put a stain on Harper/Canada's war, eh?
All in all - it makes one wonder yet again what the Hell this FUBAR war was for anyway ...
Here's more food for thought on the matter:
No End to the Savagery in Afghanistan
By Robert Fisk
Back in Afghanistan, the mind turns to the small matter of savagery. Not the routine cruelty of war, but the deliberate inhumanity with which we behave. The torture and killing of prisoners in this pitiful place—the American variety in Bagram and the Taliban variety in Helmand—is a kind of routine of history. Even execution has to be made more painful. A knife is more terrible than a bullet. The cult of the suicide bomber in the Middle East began its life in Lebanon, moved to “Palestine”, arrived in Iraq, leached over the border here to Afghanistan and passed effortlessly through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan. And New York. And Washington. And London ...
Are human beings at war—any kind of war—by definition bound to commit atrocities? The International Committee of the Red Cross tried to answer this question in a report four years ago. Were combatants unaware of international humanitarian law? Unlikely, I would think. They just don’t care. The Red Cross enquiry interviewed hundreds of fighters in Colombia, Bosnia, Georgia—a bit of real prescience, there, on the part of the ICRC—and the Congo, and suggested that those who commit reprehensible acts see themselves as victims, that this then gives them the right to act savagely against their opponents. Certainly, this might apply to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, very definitely to the Serbs of Bosnia—I’m not so sure about Georgia—and quite definitely to the Taliban (not least when we’ve been bombing more wedding parties).
Such cruelty is abetted with a bodyguard of clichés—“police operations”, “clean up”, “mop up”, “surgical strikes”—where you can kill by remote control, “especially when the media are not present to show the realities of a conflict”. This is most certainly the case today, for what journalist will now dare to wander the village streets of Helmand or the city of Baquba in Iraq or, for that matter, the border towns of Pakistan? War has never, it seems, been so underreported. And both the good guys and the bad guys like it that way; they prefer to indulge in savagery unseen.
There is nothing new in all this. At the Battle of Omdurman—where the British executed all the Arab wounded—the young Winston Churchill wrote of a sight which is familiar today in a land which was then called Mesopotamia and in another which was already called Afghanistan. He described “grisly apparitions”, of “horses spouting blood, struggling on three legs, men staggering on foot, men bleeding from terrible wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, arms and faces cut to pieces, bowels protruding, men gasping, crying, collapsing, expiring ... ”. To the men can now—this very week—be added the suicide-bombed schoolgirls of Baghdad.
In his earlier military campaign on the North West Frontier, Churchill saw how some of the Taliban’s ancestors dealt with a wounded British officer: the leader of “half a dozen Pathan swordsmen ... rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed it three or four times with his sword. I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well sharpened. ... The savage saw me coming ... ”. Well there’s something for the ICRC to think about.
Yet it pays to remember that Afghan wars have always been dreadful. Sir Mortimer Durand—he who created the Durand line which masquerades as the Afghan-Pakistani border, crossed with such impunity today by Americans and Taliban warriors in order to kill each other—witnessed the cruelty of the Afghan war at first hand. “During the action in the Chardeh valley on the 12th of Dec 1879,” he wrote, “two squadrons of the 9th Lancers were ordered to charge a large force of Afghans in the hope of saving our guns. The charge failed, and some of our dead were afterwards found dreadfully mutilated by Afghan knives-… I saw it al-l... ”
Yet Durand himself objected profoundly to a statement from General Frederick Roberts—he of Kandahar fame—after the murder of the British mission diplomats in Kabul. The killings had been “a treacherous and cowardly crime, which has brought indelible disgrace upon the Afghan people-… all persons convicted of playing a part in (the murders) will be dealt with according to their deserts”. Durand confronted Roberts over this Victorian version of the message that George Bush would give to the Afghans 122 years later.
“It seemed to me so utterly wrong in tone and in matter,” Durand would later write, “that I determined to do my utmost to overthrow it ... the stilted language, and the absurd affectation of preaching historical morality to the Afghans, all our troubles with whom began by our own abominable injustice, made the paper to my mind most dangerous for the General’s reputation.”
Of course, it did Roberts no harm at all. In the age of “shock and awe” —when a Canadian general can call his Taliban opponents “scumbags”—it still doesn’t seem to worry Nato officers. They should know better. Montgomery never cursed Rommel; he kept a photograph of the Afrika Korps commander in his caravan to remind him of the man he was fighting. But then again, didn’t Montgomery fight in the age of the Holocaust, of industrial killing, of the Hamburg and Dresden firestorms? Indeed, the very Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 were supposed to end the mass destruction of human life. And President Bush has torn them up.
(Keep reading ...)
By Robert Fisk
Back in Afghanistan, the mind turns to the small matter of savagery. Not the routine cruelty of war, but the deliberate inhumanity with which we behave. The torture and killing of prisoners in this pitiful place—the American variety in Bagram and the Taliban variety in Helmand—is a kind of routine of history. Even execution has to be made more painful. A knife is more terrible than a bullet. The cult of the suicide bomber in the Middle East began its life in Lebanon, moved to “Palestine”, arrived in Iraq, leached over the border here to Afghanistan and passed effortlessly through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan. And New York. And Washington. And London ...
Are human beings at war—any kind of war—by definition bound to commit atrocities? The International Committee of the Red Cross tried to answer this question in a report four years ago. Were combatants unaware of international humanitarian law? Unlikely, I would think. They just don’t care. The Red Cross enquiry interviewed hundreds of fighters in Colombia, Bosnia, Georgia—a bit of real prescience, there, on the part of the ICRC—and the Congo, and suggested that those who commit reprehensible acts see themselves as victims, that this then gives them the right to act savagely against their opponents. Certainly, this might apply to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, very definitely to the Serbs of Bosnia—I’m not so sure about Georgia—and quite definitely to the Taliban (not least when we’ve been bombing more wedding parties).
Such cruelty is abetted with a bodyguard of clichés—“police operations”, “clean up”, “mop up”, “surgical strikes”—where you can kill by remote control, “especially when the media are not present to show the realities of a conflict”. This is most certainly the case today, for what journalist will now dare to wander the village streets of Helmand or the city of Baquba in Iraq or, for that matter, the border towns of Pakistan? War has never, it seems, been so underreported. And both the good guys and the bad guys like it that way; they prefer to indulge in savagery unseen.
There is nothing new in all this. At the Battle of Omdurman—where the British executed all the Arab wounded—the young Winston Churchill wrote of a sight which is familiar today in a land which was then called Mesopotamia and in another which was already called Afghanistan. He described “grisly apparitions”, of “horses spouting blood, struggling on three legs, men staggering on foot, men bleeding from terrible wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, arms and faces cut to pieces, bowels protruding, men gasping, crying, collapsing, expiring ... ”. To the men can now—this very week—be added the suicide-bombed schoolgirls of Baghdad.
In his earlier military campaign on the North West Frontier, Churchill saw how some of the Taliban’s ancestors dealt with a wounded British officer: the leader of “half a dozen Pathan swordsmen ... rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed it three or four times with his sword. I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well sharpened. ... The savage saw me coming ... ”. Well there’s something for the ICRC to think about.
Yet it pays to remember that Afghan wars have always been dreadful. Sir Mortimer Durand—he who created the Durand line which masquerades as the Afghan-Pakistani border, crossed with such impunity today by Americans and Taliban warriors in order to kill each other—witnessed the cruelty of the Afghan war at first hand. “During the action in the Chardeh valley on the 12th of Dec 1879,” he wrote, “two squadrons of the 9th Lancers were ordered to charge a large force of Afghans in the hope of saving our guns. The charge failed, and some of our dead were afterwards found dreadfully mutilated by Afghan knives-… I saw it al-l... ”
Yet Durand himself objected profoundly to a statement from General Frederick Roberts—he of Kandahar fame—after the murder of the British mission diplomats in Kabul. The killings had been “a treacherous and cowardly crime, which has brought indelible disgrace upon the Afghan people-… all persons convicted of playing a part in (the murders) will be dealt with according to their deserts”. Durand confronted Roberts over this Victorian version of the message that George Bush would give to the Afghans 122 years later.
“It seemed to me so utterly wrong in tone and in matter,” Durand would later write, “that I determined to do my utmost to overthrow it ... the stilted language, and the absurd affectation of preaching historical morality to the Afghans, all our troubles with whom began by our own abominable injustice, made the paper to my mind most dangerous for the General’s reputation.”
Of course, it did Roberts no harm at all. In the age of “shock and awe” —when a Canadian general can call his Taliban opponents “scumbags”—it still doesn’t seem to worry Nato officers. They should know better. Montgomery never cursed Rommel; he kept a photograph of the Afrika Korps commander in his caravan to remind him of the man he was fighting. But then again, didn’t Montgomery fight in the age of the Holocaust, of industrial killing, of the Hamburg and Dresden firestorms? Indeed, the very Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 were supposed to end the mass destruction of human life. And President Bush has torn them up.
(Keep reading ...)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
A Phenomenon Of Systemic Criminality
Obama and the Rogue Regime
By Ralph Nader
Barack Obama is receiving lots of advice from many people these days about the collapse of Wall Street, the sinking economy and the quagmire wars he will inherit from the Bush regime. However, there is one important matter that he alone can address with his legal training and the sworn oath he will take on January 20 to uphold the Constitution. That phenomenon is the systemic, chronic lawlessness and criminality of the Bush/Cheney regime which he must unravel and stop.
To handle this immense responsibility as President, he needs to bring together a volunteer task force of very knowledgeable persons plus wise, retired civil servants to inventory the outlaw workings of this rogue regime.
Much is already known and documented officially and by academic studies and media reporting. In the category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, are (1) the criminal war—occupation of Iraq, (2) systemic torture as a White House policy, (3) arrests of thousands of Americans without charges or habeas corpus rights, (4) spying on large numbers of Americans without judicial warrants and (5) hundreds of signing statements by George W. Bush declaring that, he of the unitary presidency, will decide whether to obey the enacted bills or not.
To its everlasting credit, the conservative American Bar Association sent to President Bush three reports in 2005-2006 concluding that he has been engaged in continuing serious violations of the Constitution. This is no one-time Watergate obstruction of justice episode ala Nixon that led to his resignation just before his impeachment in the House of Representatives.
Keep Reading ...
punditman says ...
Ralph Nader is at his best when doing what he does best: documenting injustice (as opposed to running for election). Will Obama do anything about the Bush administration's crimes? Punditman is doubtful.
(Mentarch here, taking another break from his blogging break to barge in and add: I agree that it remains to be seen to what extent President-elect Obama will undo all the FUBAR caused - and still being caused - by Bush. However, I have difficulty taking stock in what Nader says nowadays, especially because of this recent ludicrous hyperbole of his, which speaks a whole lot more about him than it does potentially about Obama ...)
By Ralph Nader
Barack Obama is receiving lots of advice from many people these days about the collapse of Wall Street, the sinking economy and the quagmire wars he will inherit from the Bush regime. However, there is one important matter that he alone can address with his legal training and the sworn oath he will take on January 20 to uphold the Constitution. That phenomenon is the systemic, chronic lawlessness and criminality of the Bush/Cheney regime which he must unravel and stop.
To handle this immense responsibility as President, he needs to bring together a volunteer task force of very knowledgeable persons plus wise, retired civil servants to inventory the outlaw workings of this rogue regime.
Much is already known and documented officially and by academic studies and media reporting. In the category of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, are (1) the criminal war—occupation of Iraq, (2) systemic torture as a White House policy, (3) arrests of thousands of Americans without charges or habeas corpus rights, (4) spying on large numbers of Americans without judicial warrants and (5) hundreds of signing statements by George W. Bush declaring that, he of the unitary presidency, will decide whether to obey the enacted bills or not.
To its everlasting credit, the conservative American Bar Association sent to President Bush three reports in 2005-2006 concluding that he has been engaged in continuing serious violations of the Constitution. This is no one-time Watergate obstruction of justice episode ala Nixon that led to his resignation just before his impeachment in the House of Representatives.
Keep Reading ...
punditman says ...
Ralph Nader is at his best when doing what he does best: documenting injustice (as opposed to running for election). Will Obama do anything about the Bush administration's crimes? Punditman is doubtful.
(Mentarch here, taking another break from his blogging break to barge in and add: I agree that it remains to be seen to what extent President-elect Obama will undo all the FUBAR caused - and still being caused - by Bush. However, I have difficulty taking stock in what Nader says nowadays, especially because of this recent ludicrous hyperbole of his, which speaks a whole lot more about him than it does potentially about Obama ...)
The West Ignoring The Truth About The War In Georgia
Mary Dejevsky: Why did the West ignore the truth about the war in Georgia?
It seems there is now some pull back from the official position.
Nevertheless, a recent case in point: In a November 12th broadcast, BBC's HARDtalk programme host, Stephen Sackur accused Russia alone of starting the war when he interviewed Konstantin Simonov, Director General of the National Energy Security Fund, Russia. It was as if the West and Israel played no role whatsoever in stirring up and training Georgian forces, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is all lilly white.
So this is all old hat. Does that make us "pro-Russian"? No. Does it make us truth-seekers? Yes, because we smelled a rat from the beginning — and we were right.
(Mentarch here, taking a break from his blogging break to barge in and add: well put, punditman - especially since that only now the media is beginning to report sporadically, instead of trumpeting, the truth of the matter. Meanwhile ...)
The US and UK left the impression that Russia was the guilty party
Thank goodness, they might be thinking at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, for the financial crisis. Were it not for the ever-blacker news about the Western world's economy, another scandal would be vying for the headlines – and one where the blame would be easier to apportion. It concerns our two countries' relations with Russia and the truth about this summer's Georgia-Russia war.
Over the past couple of weeks, a spate of reports has appeared in the American and British media, questioning many assumptions about that war, chief among them that Russia was the guilty party. Journalists from the BBC, The New York Times and Canada's Embassy magazine, among others, travelled to South Ossetia, the region at the centre of the conflict, in an effort to establish the facts.
Not the "facts" as told by the super-slick Georgian PR machine at the time, nor the "facts" as eventually dragged from the hyper-defensive and clod-hopping communicators of the Kremlin. But the facts as experienced on the ground by those who were there: civilians, the local military commander, and the small number of unarmed monitors stationed in the region by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The journalists travelled to the region separately and by different routes. They spoke to different people. But their findings are consistent: Georgia launched an indiscriminate military assault on South Ossetia's main town, Tskhinvali. The hospital was among the buildings attacked; doctors were injured even as they operated.
punditman says ...
It seems there is now some pull back from the official position.
Nevertheless, a recent case in point: In a November 12th broadcast, BBC's HARDtalk programme host, Stephen Sackur accused Russia alone of starting the war when he interviewed Konstantin Simonov, Director General of the National Energy Security Fund, Russia. It was as if the West and Israel played no role whatsoever in stirring up and training Georgian forces, and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is all lilly white.
So this is all old hat. Does that make us "pro-Russian"? No. Does it make us truth-seekers? Yes, because we smelled a rat from the beginning — and we were right.
(Mentarch here, taking a break from his blogging break to barge in and add: well put, punditman - especially since that only now the media is beginning to report sporadically, instead of trumpeting, the truth of the matter. Meanwhile ...)
Friday, November 14, 2008
Late Friday Night Ode To ... TGIF
It's Friday - so take a break and have fun, eh?
I know I will ;-)
Hence for tonight's Ode, I offer a triple play of those bad boys from Germany - Scorpions!
First - we have Bad Boys Running Wild:
I know I will ;-)
Hence for tonight's Ode, I offer a triple play of those bad boys from Germany - Scorpions!
First - we have Bad Boys Running Wild:
Then we have their classic - and all-time-all-around fun - Rock You Like A Hurricane:
And for the closer, we have Big City Nights:
Bonus song - for Teh Ladies ... Lee Aaron's Hot To Be Rocked:
(because rock is an equal opportunity party inducer, eh?)
Rock'n roll all night, folks!
(I'll be taking a blogging break until Sunday afternoon - so have a great week-end, ya'll!)
Rock'n roll all night, folks!
(I'll be taking a blogging break until Sunday afternoon - so have a great week-end, ya'll!)
