Tuesday Reads: Voodoo Economics, Whistleblowing, Torture, and Violence against Women and Children

Posted: July 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, psychology, Republican politics, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, torture, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, voodoo economics, Wikileaks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

Coffe and Morning News, by Tim Nyberg

Good Morning!!! Gee, that title doesn’t look so cheery, does it? Sorry, but please read on. Since we just ended a long holiday weekend, there’s not a whole lot of news happening, but I located a few interesting reads for you.

Dakinikat has been hammering away at the lack of economic knowledge in the media and in our government. Yesterday, she pointed me to this great piece by Mark Thoma in which he once again explained what actually caused the economic meltdown and why our “leaders” are doing the wrong things to help the economy recover.

I’ve written about this so much it’s hard to muster the will to take it on yet again, especially with the attitude it deserves, and I liked the second column better. But with David Brooks, George Will, and a new book by Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner recently pushing the idea that Fannie, Freddie, and Democrats caused the financial crisis it’s important to push back. The right is very good at repeating their story line over and over and over, and if that redundancy goes unmatched — if they are allowed to have the last word many, many times over — they stand a good chance of capturing the narrative.

Actually, they’ve already “captured the narrative,” and President Obama has bought into it too. I don’t know if I can excerpt this piece, you really need to read the whole thing. But here’s just a bit:

…the targets for home ownership that supposedly led to Fannie and Freddie’s aggressive entry into subprime markets were set in 1992. If these targets were the problem, why didn’t the crisis occur sooner?

….if Fannie and Freddie had never existed, securitization would have likely happened anyway. As Barry Ritholtz notes, “securitized credit card receivables, auto loans, small biz loans, etc. took place without GSEs. I assume there would likely have been a private sector version for conforming loans, the way there was a private sector securitizing response to the demand for non-conforming (sub-prime) loans.”

The bottom line is that the case that the CRA, Fannie, and Freddie – and by implication Democrats supporting these institutions – were key players in the crisis is at odds with the evidence. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots for reasons to be concerned about Fannie and Freddie, and I’m not trying to defend them or their choices, but the idea that support of these institutions caused the financial crisis is wrong.

Hey, I’ve said this till I’m blue in the face, but I’ll say it again. We needed to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008.

Paul Krugman is also lamenting the economic ignorance in high places.

Watching the evolution of economic discussion in Washington over the past couple of years has been a disheartening experience. Month by month, the discourse has gotten more primitive; with stunning speed, the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis have been forgotten, and the very ideas that got us into the crisis — regulation is always bad, what’s good for the bankers is good for America, tax cuts are the universal elixir — have regained their hold.

And now trickle-down economics — specifically, the idea that anything that increases corporate profits is good for the economy — is making a comeback.

On the face of it, this seems bizarre. Over the last two years profits have soared while unemployment has remained disastrously high. Why should anyone believe that handing even more money to corporations, no strings attached, would lead to faster job creation?

Nonetheless, trickle-down is clearly on the ascendant — and even some Democrats are buying into it.

Once again, if we had put a Democrat in the White House in 2008, perhaps things would be different….

Via Kevin Drum, this article about NJ Governor Chris Christie contains some priceless quotes from NJ Senate President Stephen Sweeney.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget. He woke up Friday morning even angrier.

“This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he said in an interview Friday. “I wanted to punch him in his head.”

Sweeney had just risked his political neck to support the governor’s pension and health reform, and his reward was a slap across the face. The governor’s budget was a brusque rejection of every Democratic move, and Sweeney couldn’t even get an audience with the governor to discuss it.

“You know who he reminds me of?” Sweeney says. “Mr. Potter from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the mean old bastard who screws everybody”….The governor’s budget, he says, is full of vindictive cuts designed to punish Democrats, and anyone else who dared to defy him. And he is furious that the governor refused to talk to him during the final week….“He’s mean-spirited,” Sweeney said in the Friday interview. “He’s angry. If you don’t do what he says, I liken it to being spoiled, I’m going to get my way, or else.” And: “He’s a rotten prick.”

Jeeze, why doesn’t he tell us how he really feels?

Glenn Greenwald has a great post up about Bradley Manning’s motives for whistleblowing, drawn from some recently released “chat logs and other on-line communications” between Manning and another young man. The information was published in New York Magazine in an attempt to make Manning look psychologically troubled, but Greenwald reads the information differently. Here’s how Manning responded when asked what he was trying to accomplish:

hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms – if not, than [sic] we’re doomed – as a species – i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens – the reaction to the [Collateral Murder] video gave me immense hope; CNN’s iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded – people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . – i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

Greenwald goes on to argue that many of Manning’s goals have actually been achieved. He made a difference, and that’s why our government is persecuting him.

At Danger Room there’s a very interesting review of a new book by former CIA operative Glenn Carle. The memoir tells the story of a CIA “black site” and a supposed senior al-Qaida operative that Carle was assigned to break. Eventually, Carle realized the man was innocent.

Uneasy with the CIA’s new, relaxed rules for questioning, which allow him to torture, Carle instead tries to build a rapport with the man he calls CAPTUS. But CAPTUS doesn’t divulge the al-Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to “Hotel California” — an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law….

Carle provides the first detailed description of a so-called “black site.” At an isolated “discretely guarded, unremarkable” facility in an undisclosed foreign country (though one where the Soviets once operated), hidden CIA interrogators work endless hours while heavy metal blasts captives’ eardrums and disrupts their sleep schedules. But Carle — codename: REDEMPTOR — comes to believe CAPTUS is innocent….

“We had destroyed the man’s life based on an error,” he writes. But the black site is a bureaucratic hell: CAPTUS’ reluctance to tell CIA what it wants to hear makes the far-off agency headquarters more determined to torture him. Carle’s resistance, shared by some at Hotel California, makes him suspect. He leaves CAPTUS in the black site after 10 intense days, questioning whether his psychological manipulation of CAPTUS made him, ultimately, a torturer himself. Eight years later, the CIA unceremoniously released CAPTUS.

The jury has begun deliberations in the Casey Anthony case. I have continued to watch the trial closely and listened to all of the closing statements.

I know I’ll probably get yelled at for saying this, but if I were on the jury, I would have to go with one of the lesser charges, because there just isn’t any evidence to show how the child was killed. I do believe Casey Anthony should go to prison for a long time, but this trial has turned into a witch hunt.

If a man had done what Anthony did, there would never have been this much publicity and this amount of rage against the perpetrator. I shouldn’t have to point out that both men and women kill their children every day in this country. Both women and children are devalued in this country, and they are routinely abused and murdered. There are a number of reasons why this woman has been treated differently, but what she did is far from unique.

I honestly think Casey’s father George was involved with the disposal of the body at least. What motive did he have? I’ll tell you. George and Cindy Anthony thought the father of the child could have been either George or Casey’s brother Lee. I am convinced there was sexual abuse in that family. I can’t see how Casey could have become what she is without severe abuse. JMHO, based on personal experience and serious study of the effects of child sexual abuse.

Until we get serious about protecting children in this country, children will continue to die at the hands of their parents and other caregivers.

There is some possible news in the other case I’ve been following–the young Indiana University student who disappeared about four weeks ago, Lauren Spierer. The body of a woman has been found in a creek in Indianapolis. There are a couple of other missing women in Indiana, so it’s not clear this is Spierer. I just have a feeling it might be.

Police investigating the disappearance of Indiana University student Lauren Spierer are awaiting the results of an autopsy Tuesday of a decomposed female body found Sunday on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

The body, found a month after the Edgemont, N.Y., native went missing, had not been identified as of Monday night, and Bloomington, Ind., police have given no indication whether it may be her.

Spierer disappeared after a night when she had told her boyfriend she wanted to stay home. There are reports that they had had a fight. After midnight, she went out with some male friends, spent some time with them watching TV and then went with one of the young men to popular local bar. When she returned to her apartment with him, a group of men (possibly friends of her boyfriend) accosted them and punched her companion in the face.

The two then left and supposedly went to this young man’s apartment where he passed out. She then went to another apartment where another male friend lived. This man claims to have seen her leave his place at 4:30AM and turn the corner on her way home, but there is no independent confirmation of that.

At first this was investigated as a stranger abduction, but Spierer’s “friends” have all clammed up, and several have refused to talk to police and have retained lawyers. Most of them, including the boyfriend and the last guy to see Spirer, hightailed it out of town almost immediately. So now it looks like something bad happened to Spierer that night and these “friends” know something.

Since I grew up in Indiana and my sister lives in Bloomington, I’ve been following this case pretty closely. But women “disappear” every day too. Why do Americans tolerate it? Why do so many Americans seem to see the pervasive violence against women in this country as somehow normal?

That’s all I’ve got for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

“If this is transparency, who needs it?”

Posted: June 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

“If this is transparency, who needs it?” Steven Aftergood, Director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, speaking of the Obama Administration’s White House visitor log policy, the results of which he labeled “very thin gruel” (Apr. 13, 2011).

“A White House official conceded the system has limitations, asserting it was designed not as an archive but ‘first and foremost to protect the first family, second family and White House staff while imposing the smallest administrative burden possible.'” POLITICO, “White House Visitor Logs Leave Out Many” (Apr. 15, 2011).

from the site “Quotes of the Month” hosted by American University’s Washington College of Law, Collaboration of Government secrecy.

One of the major Obama campaign promises was to bring more transparency to governing. The English/international version of   Speigel on line has a compelling series up this week called “Disingenuous Transparency”focusing on how government whistle blowers have suffered under the Obama administration.  The series is extremely relevant given that the U.S. government has finally “officially” released the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War as a show of ‘openness’. The article accuses Obama and the administration of stonewalling and basically ignoring court instructions.  The sad thing is that the compelling article filled with compelling examples will probably never reach a large audience.

I have been following the case of Thomas Drake–a former employee of NSA–who is accused of providing the Baltimore Sun with internal information on government wiretapping. Drake’s case predates the more famous case of Bradley Manning and Wikileaks.  There have been other cases.

In May 2010, a court convicted former FBI interpreter Shamai Leibowitz was sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing government information to a blogger.  Another prosecuted whistle blower of Stephen Kim who was  a North Korea expert at the State Department.  Kim supposedly supplied state secrets to Fox News. Another high profile case is that of former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling who allegedly provided information to author James Risen a 2006 exposé entitled  “State of War.”    The Obama Justice Department has prosecuted these cases to the fullest extent possible.

The Drake case fell apart in a similar way that the charges of Oliver North fell apart during the Iran-Contra Scandal of the 1980s.  It was felt that the prosecution of Drake would expose too much national security information. Drake accepted a plea of misdemeanor charges for “exceeding his authorized use of a government computer”.  Again, the tie back to Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is relevant.

But the government withdrew the evidence supporting several of the central charges after a judge ruled Drake would not be able to defend himself unless the government revealed details about one of the National Security Agency’s telecommunications collection programs. On two other counts, documents the government had claimed were classified have either been shown to be labeled unclassified when Drake accessed them or have since been declassified. Faced with the prospect of trying to convict a man for leaking unclassified information, the government frantically crafted a plea deal in the last days before the case was due to go to trial.

The collapse of the case against Drake may have repercussions beyond just this one case.

This is the third time the government’s attempt to use the Espionage Act to criminalize ordinary leaking has failed in spectacular fashion. The first such example—against Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg—got dismissed when the government’s own spying on Ellsberg was exposed.

Spiegal characterizes this case as “an embarrassing setback for the White House”.  It seems that the candidate that promised translucency is fighting to keep secrets at a pace previously never experienced.  That says a lot given the paranoia of Nixon and the fierce defense of the so-called imperial presidency by the Bush/Cheney administration.

Under Obama, more whistleblowers are being held accountable than in all previous decades. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Associated Press that the US government is going after whistleblowers “very, very aggressively.”

Government whistle blowers are supposedly protected by an act of Congress passed in 1989 called The Whistle Blower’s Protection Act. It was designed to encourage government employees to step forward with instances of government abuse that they’ve witnessed. You’ll notice the date roughly corresponds to the time the Iran-Contra situation was fresh.   Since then, the law has been weakened.

“It is no surprise that honest citizens who witness waste, fraud and abuse in national security programs but lack legal protections are silenced or forced to turn to unauthorized methods to expose malfeasance, incompetence or negligence,” Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center wrote in an op-ed contribution to the New York Times on Monday.

He wrote that Congress and the executive branch would be well advised to follow the example of their predecessors. In fact, the first protective law in the US for “whistleblowers” is almost as old as the country itself — it originated in 1778.

Speigal characterizes the Obama administration as having an active policy of “stonewalling” and “blocking” any avenue that would provide a safe path for federal whistle blowers.

The Obama administration also uses other avenues for stonewalling and blocking. At times, those efforts take on grotesque dimensions, as in the case the Pentagon’s September order to pulp the entire first printing run of “Operation Dark Heart.” The memoir by army officer Anthony Shaffer over his time in the Afghanistan war contained what were alleged to be military secrets. The destruction of the 9,500 books cost taxpayers an estimated $47,300. When the second edition was released, 250 passages were blacked out.

This pressure clashes with the increasing openness of the Internet age. Four decades ago, Daniel Ellsberg had to photocopy selected passages from the “Pentagon Papers.” Today, WikiLeaks indiscriminately places tens of thousands of documents on the Web. “It revels in the revelation of ‘secrets’ simply because they are secret,” well-regarded attorney Floyd Abrams, who represented the New York Times in its “Pentagon Papers” case against the government, wrote six months ago in the Wall Street Journal.

Read the rest of this entry »

TBIF Reads

Posted: May 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 44 Comments

Good Morning!

Today we’re thanking the Buddhas for Friday just ’cause I feel like it!!  Well, not that any Buddhas had anything to do with naming today Friday or inventing the calendar or anything.  Let’s just say I felt contrarian today.

So, some of the Republicans who want to be president had a debate last night and it was all about denial of the last few centuries or progress.  Heck, it was denial of maybe 5 or so centuries.  Here’s a blast from the past from one of the more “credible candidates”.

MR. BROKAW: In the vast scientific community, do you think that Creationism has the same weight as evolution, and at a time in American education when we are in a crisis when it comes to science, that there ought to be parallel tracks for Creationism versus evolution in the teaching?

GOV. PAWLENTY: In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed — not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated, but in terms of the curriculum in the schools in Minnesota, we’ve taken the approach that that’s a local decision. I know Senator Palin — or Governor Palin — has said intelligent design is something that she thinks should be taught along with evolution in the schools, and I think that’s appropriate. My personal view is that’s a local decision —

MR. BROKAW: Given equal weight.

GOV. PAWLENTY: — of the local school board.

MR. BROKAW: And you would recommend it be given equal weight?

GOV. PAWLENTY: We’ve said in Minnesota, in my view, this is a local decision. Intelligent design is something that, in my view, is plausible and credible and something that I personally believe in but, more importantly, from an educational and scientific standpoint, it should be decided by local school boards at the local school district level.

I guess he doesn’t think stuff like science should be left up to scientists.  School Boards know so much more.  But that’s pretty funny, because last night, he couldn’t exit that question fast enough.  He also said he was for cap-and-trade before he was against it.

10:07 p.m. “Do we have to?” Pawlenty’s candid comment before he’s asked to listen to an old interview where he backs the cap-and-trade approach to put a price on carbon. Afterwards, he reiterates he’s changed his mind. “I don’t try to duck it, bob it weave it. I’m just telling you I made a mistake.”

10:05 p.m. Pawlenty pivots off a question about creationism to burnish his blue collar credentials: “My family is a union family,” he said. “It’s not about bashing unions it’s about being pro-jobs…Pressed on to answer the creationism question: “I believe that should be left up to parents and local school districts.”

The shocker of the evening was that  there is another pro-choice Republican politician still standing besides Rudy Guilliani.  It’s Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico.  Former Senator Rick Santorum is as Spanish Inquisition as ever.

10:00 p.m. Santorum offers a robust defense of the party’s social conservative wing — and takes a direct shot at Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels: “Anybody who would suggest we call a truce on the moral issues doesn’t understand what America is all about,” he says.

9:56 p.m. Johnson acknowledges he’s writing off the anti-abortion vote. “I support a woman’s right to choose up to the viability of the fetus,” he says.

9:54 p.m. Gays could get married if they want to under a President Paul: “The government should just be out of it,” the congressman says of the definition of marriage. “I have my standards, but I shouldn’t have the right to impose my standards on others… Just get the government out of it.”

If you haven’t noticed, Mittens and a few others were AWOL.  The debate was carried by Fox News.  This is interesting.  Gingrich didn’t show up but his contract with Fox was ended as was Rick Santorum’s contract.  How DO they tell the difference between dabblers and done thrown the hat in?  Huckabee still has his program.  Then, there’s the Donald on NBC.  NBC isn’t talking one way or the other about canceling whatever reality show Trump’s cooked up at the moment.

Fox News has terminated its contracts with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Rick Santorum after the deadline for them to decide on presidential bids passed on May 1, a source familiar with the move told POLITICO.

Fox suspended the two contributors in early March and stopped paying them as they mulled presidential runs, but left them the option of returning to the network. The contracts’ end marks another sign that Gingrich, who has repeatedly delayed his decision citing business obligations, is in the race — though he dropped out of tonight’s Fox debate.

For what it’s worth, the pundits and the focus groups liked former CEO Herman Cain’s debate performance.   For some reason, Santorum came in second with the Fox News debate focus group.  Most of them should just head to the ice floes now for the good of society.

In an interesting twist of fate,  Paul Ryan Agrees That His Budget Includes An Individual Mandate  for Health Insurance.

Q: If Medicare becomes a voucher program, would you require seniors to purchase private insurance and if so isn’t that an individual mandate? If you will not require them to purchase insurance how do you propose to prevent a situation where the costs of uninsured seniors is very expensive and gets passed on to me as a private policy holder? […]

RYAN: Its mandate works no different than how the current Medicare law works today, which is you just select from a wide range of different plans. It literally would be like Medicare Advantage…

So much for the faux outrage on “Obamacare”.  This was the same kind of crap that went on back in the day when it was all called Dolecare.  The centerpiece of all the Republican plans has been forcing people to buy stuff from private businesses.  I still can’t figure out how Obama got the Democrats to go along with it after they’d been fighting it for like 15 years.

The Daily Mail asks “Will Bin Laden’s sea burial backfire?” According to one British scholar, Radical Muslims have already renamed the Arab Sea  location ‘Martyr’s Sea’

Radical Muslims are already calling the site of Osama bin Laden’s ocean burial the ‘Martyr’s Sea’, according to one of Britain’s leading Islamic scholars.

The US said the decision to drop bin Laden’s body into the North Arabian Sea was taken to avoid creating a shrine for the slain Al Qaeda chief.

But Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at Cambridge University, claimed yesterday that the move could backfire on the Americans.

Speaking on Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme, he said it was ‘disappointing’ that bin Laden wasn’t taken into custody.

‘By tipping him into the sea, the Americans may have created a kind of shrine. Some radicals are already calling the Arabian Sea the Martyr’s Sea,’ he said.

Okay, here’s a  new study that’s  interesting but maybe not very useful:   WILL a baby be a boy or a girl? If the mother started her period at a young age, it is more likely to be a girl.”

That’s according to Misao Fukuda at the M&K Health Institute in Hyogo, Japan, and colleagues, who found subtle differences in sex ratios of children depending on when a mother entered menarche.

Fukuda asked over 10,000 mothers the age at which they had begun their period and the sex of their baby. Forty six per cent of the children born to women who began their periods at age 10 were boys. This figure rose to 50 per cent when the woman began her period at 12, and 53 per cent when the women entered menarche at age 14 (Human Reproduction,DOI: 10.1093/humrep/der107).

Fukuda points to previous research demonstrating higher levels of the female sex hormone oestradiol in women who entered menarche before the age of 12. This may lead to spontaneous miscarriage of fertilised male eggs, he says. The theory is plausible, says Valerie Grant at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, as male embryos are known to be more vulnerable to hormone imbalances.

WAPO has a very interesting personal feature up on Bradley Manning:  “Bradley Manning is at the center of the WikiLeaks controversy. But who is he?” It basically gives a brief biography of the young solider in the center of so much controversy and trouble.

Despite his struggles, Manning was excited about his future in Army intelligence, a field that suited his analytical mind. “It’s going to be a different crowd when I get through with basic,” he told the friend. “I’m going to be with people more like me.”

He enjoyed classes at the Fort Huachuca, Ariz., intelligence school, where he received a top-secret security clearance, graduated and joined the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y.

It was here, constrained by the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, that he began speaking out anonymously about gay rights. He attended a rally in Syracuse and noted on Facebook that he had gotten an “anonymous mention” in an article. The reporter wrote of a gay soldier who complained he was “living a double life. … I can’t make a statement. I can’t be caught in an act.”

Manning now had a love interest: Tyler Watkins, a freshman interested in neuroscience at Brandeis University who was an active member of Triskelion, the Brandeis club for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Manning began to make weekend visits to Watkins’s dorm at the tranquil, wooded campus west of Boston. On his Facebook page, Watkins declared that he was “totally in love with Bradley Edward Manning!!!!!!!”

It still seems that TV is centered on OBL.  I’m glad that we’ve been able to scrap up some alternatives around here. Well, that’s enough to get you started today! What’s on your reading and blogging list?

Late Night: Interesting Juxtapositions

Posted: April 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Surreality, torture, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

FIRST JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

First responders at Ground Zero in NYC

Huffington Post reported today that a little-known amendment in the new 9/11 health bill requires anyone who applies for benefits to be checked by the FBI to make sure they’re not terrorists.

The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.

Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address.

It’s a requirement that was tacked onto the law during the bitter debates over it last year.

The letter from Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, informs medical providers and administrators that they should begin letting patients know before the new program kicks in this July.

Yes, the people who risked their lives and their health to help after 9/11 will be treated like suspected terrorists by their government.

"Liquidators" clean up after Chernobyl explosion

From Voice of America: Chernobyl’s Cleanup Crew Pay a Steep Price, 25 Years On

On April 26, 1986 a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant caught fire and exploded, sending radioactive debris high into the sky. Aleksey Breus was an engineer at Chernobyl at the time of the explosion. He worked four straight days inside the plant after the explosion. He wore protective equipment, but still received a large dose of radiation.

According to Breus, all “lucheviki” – the Russian word surviving cleanup workers use for describing one another – have been left with one thing in common: illness and a lack of money to pay for medications. He says virtually all of them live in poverty.

Another Chernobyl worker, Aleksander Kramer, says he was one of the first to go into the plant after the explosion. Kramer, who now lives in Germany, remains angry at how he was treated by authorities in what was then the Soviet Union. From the very beginning, he says, the authorities doubted those claiming they were part of the clean-up effort.

And the suspicions have lingered. In 1993, Kramer says former rescue workers had to prove to Ukranian authorities “that their documents were not a sham and that their health problems were real.”

Remember when we were told over and over again that the United States was morally superior to the Soviet Union? What’s the difference again?


SECOND JUXTAPOSITION: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Time Magazine, 1970: President Richard Nixon tells the media that Charles Manson (then on trial in Los Angeles) is guilty.

Nixon had just come from a ten-day working holiday in San Clemente, where he found himself angered by the coverage given the Manson case in the local media. Many of the young, Nixon said in Denver, “tend to glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities.”

In Los Angeles, the effect of Nixon’s remarks on the Manson trial was instant and dramatic. While the Los Angeles Times came out the same afternoon with a four-inch headline reading MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES, Judge Charles Older went to great lengths to ensure that the jury, which has been sequestered since the trial began, would not learn of Nixon’s remarks. The windows of the jury bus were whited over with Bon Ami so that no juror could glimpse the headline on street newsstands. If the jury discovered Nixon’s verdict, the defense might have grounds for a mistrial.

Remember when Americans (and the media) cared when the President did something wrong?

WL Central, April 22, 2011: President Obama tells protestors that Bradley Manning “broke the law.”

Transcript and comments from WL Central:

“People can have philosophical ideas about certain things,” President Obama explains. “But, look, I can’t conduct diplomacy on open source.” He then goes on to add that he has to abide by certain classified information rules or law and if he had released material like Manning did he’d be breaking the law.

Now, here is the remark that deserves the most attention: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our decisions about how the laws operate.” He adds, “He broke the law.” Finally, before removing himself from the conversation, he says Manning “dumped” information and “it wasn’t the same thing” as what Daniel Ellsberg did because what Ellsberg leaked “wasn’t classified in the same way.”

First, President Obama says Bradley Manning did it. It is not entirely clear that he did it unless you solely rely on the chat logs published by Wired magazine. Manning is the alleged whistleblower in the case. And, displaying this attitude that he is guilty before he actually is put on trial and convicted may prejudice Manning’s case.

That’s if Mr. Obama ever allows Bradley Manning’s case to go to trial. When is that going to happen? And when will today’s media be as outraged by Obama’s irresponsible remarks as the media of 1970 was at Nixon’s?

Thursday Reads

Posted: March 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bahrain, Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Libya, Psychopaths in charge, torture, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd, Wikileaks, Yemen | Tags: , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Good Morning! Well, at least we are alive and not living next to a nuclear plant that is melting down–for now anyway–so I guess you could say it’s a good morning.

I’m pretty overwhelmed with trying to summarize the news. There is so much happening that I hardly know where to begin. I’m going to begin with a link or two about some of the big stories happening right now. You can supplement my links in the comments.

Japan nuclear disaster: US Officials Alarmed by Japanese Handling of Nuclear Crisis

“It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now,” one U.S. official told ABC News….

“We are all-out urging the Japanese to get more people back in there to do emergency operation there, that the next 24 to 48 hours are critical,” the official said. “Urgent efforts are needed on the part of the Japanese to restore emergency operations to cool” down the reactors’ rods before they trigger a meltdown.

“They need to stop pulling out people—and step up with getting them back in the reactor to cool it. There is a recognition this is a suicide mission,” the official said….

The U.S. official says experts believe there is a rupture in two, maybe three of the six reactors at the Fukushima power plant, but as worrisome is the fact that spent fuel rods are now exposed to the air, which means that substances like cesium, which have a long half-life, could become airborne.

“That could be deadly for decades,” the official said….

“There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen,” European Union’s energy commissioner Günther Oettinger said today, according to various reports. “Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come.”

It doesn’t get much more serious that that. The US has also contradicted Japan on the evacuation zone, saying that if this happened in the US, the recommendation would be to evacuate everyone in a 50 square mile radius of the plant–not the 12 miles that Japan has recommended.

Libya: Rebels fight to stall Gaddafi’s army in east

Government forces captured Ajdabiyah, 150 km (90 miles) south of Benghazi on the Gulf of Sirte, on Tuesday after most of its rebel defenders retreated from a heavy artillery barrage.

One rebel officer said on Wednesday the town had been lost and the fighters who remained had handed over their weapons. But some apparently refused to surrender or flee.

By Wednesday evening, residents said the rebels held the centre of town while forces loyal to Gaddafi were mostly on its eastern outskirts.

It’s just about over for the opposition forces. I’m writing this late at night, by the time you read this, there could have been a real bloodbath. It’s so sad. I’ll update in the morning.

Bahrain: Bahrain unleashes assault against protesters’ camp in capital

A tent city in the heart of Bahrain’s capital was wiped away Wednesday morning in a cloud of tear gas and a hail of rubber bullets after the government dispatched troops against pro-democracy demonstrators in defiance of U.S. warnings.

Trails of acrid black smoke floated over Manama as dumpsters and tires were set alight across the city. By late afternoon, the military had announced a 12-hour curfew for most of the downtown area, including Pearl Square, which has been the hub of the demonstrations.

The early-morning sweep came despite U.S. insistence that dialogue, not violence, was the only way to end the crisis that has convulsed Bahrain for more than a month. It drew an unusually sharp rebuke from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is visiting the Middle East.

“They are on the wrong track,” she told reporters in Cairo. “There is no security answer to this,” she added, referring to the protesters’ demands, “and the sooner they get back to the negotiating table and start trying to answer the legitimate needs of the people, the sooner there can be a

But people are still dying, and the Bahrain government is using U.S.-provided weapons and teargas. Last night I fell asleep listening to BBC World News on the radio. Once I awoke to hear a heart-rending call from a doctor at a Bahrain hospital. She was frantic, telling the horrified radio talkers that government troops (and Saudi forces) were shooting people on the streets and refusing to let the doctors treat the injured. Here’s the horrifying video.

Yemen: The Yemen government is also viciously attacking its own people–and with U.S. weapons and backing. I have to wonder if our own “leader’s” refusal to get involved in the Libyan situation has given other dictators carte blanche to follow Gaddafi’s lead and massacre protesters in order to stay in power.

The torture of Bradley Manning: Glenn Greenwald’s latest post is essential. Greenwald provides links to U.S. and international coverage of the Manning case and suggests that we may have finally hit a tipping point–the disgust at what the Obama administration is doing to this young man is palpable.

And please don’t miss this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow (via Greenwald).

Finally, also via Greenwald, please read this amazing rant. (I took the liberty of correcting a few typos)

If his psychopathic commitment to killing people hadn’t already convinced you that Barack Obama shared [George W. Bush’s] particular quality of being a vacant, blood-driven monster whose outward appearance as one of our own kind is no more than an act of ingenious fakery, then you may wish to consider his response to the torture of Bradley Manning, which he treats with the blithe indifference of a busy manager signing off on some subordinate’s expense report. Yeah, he assured me everything was copasetic. It’s all good.

Here is a fine opportunity to engage in a little free and painless magnanimity, to make vague noises about according decent treatment even to one’s enemies, to blather a bit about America’s commitment to the humane treatment of all God’s precious children, to give the poor kid some boxer shorts and a couple of books to read, and to throw that paltry bone to his supporters in the Democratic faction, who would immediately beatify him as better-than-Cheney, and he passed on it. He said, no, we’re going to go right on torturing this person, who has not been convicted of any crime, lest he commit suicide before we are able to consign him for the rest of his life to the tortures we are already visiting upon him….

What this episode reveals is that the most salient aspect of Barack Obama’s character is that he is an asshole of the worst order. He does not delight in cruelty like his predecessor, but is grossly indifferent to it. The Ts have all been crossed. Proper procedures followed? Yes. Fine. Let’s move on. I have been assured.

I cannot disagree. So….what are you reading and blogging about today? Lay it on me.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →