Goldman Sachs: Philanthropists?

Looks like Goldman is thinking about requiring people who get bonuses to donate a percentage to charity:

As it prepares to pay out big bonuses to employees, Goldman Sachs is considering expanding a program that would require executives and top managers to give a certain percentage of their earnings to charity.

The move would be the latest in a series of initiatives by Goldman to soften criticism over the size of its bonuses, which are expected to be among the largest on Wall Street, bringing average pay to about $595,000 for each employee — with far higher amounts for top performers.

This is priceless. Goldman helps destroy the US economy, gets bailed out by the taxpayer, and then plans to take the bailout money (that was supposed to go towards stabilizing the banks and getting them to lend again) and instead gives it to its already rich bankers as a bonus-presumably for being good at screwing the taxpayers out of money. This is already causing massive outrage, but, instead of doing the right thing and canceling all bonuses, Goldman is talking about requiring its employees to donate some percentage (the article mentions a measly 4%) to charity.

It's like robbing a bank, and then asking if you can keep the money if you give a little of it away.

No, that's not quite true- it's not like that, it is that.

And lest you assume that these rounding error donations will be going to hungry inner-city children or something, here are a few charities that would be eligible for a Goldman donation:

• New York Yacht Club Foundation
• The Viennese Opera Ball
• The World Golf Foundation

Color me unimpressed.

Also,

The firm said last month that its 30 most senior executives would be paid bonuses all in stock, but the bank placed no limit on how large those bonuses might be.

This might mean something if Goldman was a normal company, and wasn't guaranteed by the United States Government. A company like that might actually go out of business, and it's possible that its stock might one day be worthless. But if you haven't noticed, Goldman Sachs isn't going out of business, no matter how much of the company's assets these bankers liquidate into bonuses.

If you work for a bank which was bailed out by taxpayers, I think you should be getting a US government employee salary. The president makes $400,000 a year; I don't think any of these guys are more important than the president.

Want to know where your TARP $$'s go?

Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario, says one of the reasons banks claim they should be able to pay huge bonuses is:

Big banks made these profits fair-and-square, so the bonuses belong to the workforce.  

Simon rebuts that by writing:

This is wrong at two levels (a) the profits in 2009 (and 2008) were solely the result of massive government intervention, designed at saving and recapitalizing big banks, and (b) the recapitalization part of that strategy only works if the profits generated are retained - not if they are paid out.

That TARP money was supposed to go to banks to make sure they didn't fail. That money was supposed to be added to their capital reserves, so that they could continue lending to businesses.


What are they doing with it instead? Paying their executives multi-million dollar bonuses. Because you have to have some real talent to make money when it's being given to you.


I hope this angers you as much as it does me. Read the rest here.

MEMORY FAIL

Disgraceful:







He probably also think that the reason 9-11 never happened is because of him. These neo-con jackasses like Giuliani are such a bunch of pansies that they freak out and think the world is coming to an end every time someone tries to light their underwear on fire.

Also, how about this line: "one in five people that have been released from Guantanamo have gotten involved in terrorist activity...". Only one in five? That's pretty good. I'm surprised that 100% of the innocent people who were abducted by the US, disappeared into some hellish prison, tortured and kept without charges, didn't turn to terrorism. What did we expect from them, a Christmas card?
Rudy should just shut up. He's a failed politician who let terrorists attack New York, for crying out loud.

Your Daily Dose of Snark

Ruben Navarette from CNN has opinions:

Polls show a detectable amount of angst among many Americans over the cost of health care reform, government bailouts and other massive expenditures. There is a sense in many parts of the country that President Obama and Congressional Democrats are trying to do too much too fast and running up too high a bill in the process.

Do you really think people are sitting around thinking, "Gee, that war in Afghanistan is fine, and I don't really have a problem with taxpayers giving hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street bankers so they can keep gambling and paying themselves bonuses, and normally, I'd be stoked about the prospect of fake health care reform written by insurance companies, in which insurance companies are handed over millions of new customers to screw over at taxpayer expense. I just don't understand why they had to do it all at once! If they'd spread it out over a couple years, I wouldn't mind getting bent over so much."

No, I don't think that's it. 

Worse, there is growing anxiety that -- in trying to do so much at once -- the administration and Democrats in Congress have taken their eyes off more important matters. Like keeping the country safe.

Right. Because the government should just drop everything it's doing every time some college kid tries to   blow up his underwear and fails. Because the problem isn't that terrorists are scaring us too much, it's that  we aren't sufficiently scared!

You know, I'm not really scared of terrorists. I'm scared that I'm going to lose my health insurance and get cancer. Because that kind of shit happens every single day. You want to keep me safe, Obama? Do something about that. I'd rather get blown up than die of cancer any day.

The recent terror scare orchestrated by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian suspected suicide bomber who allegedly intended to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, has only heightened those concerns.

Because morons like you won't shut the fuck up about it.

And frankly, Obama's comments Thursday about the incident and the changes that his administration is preparing to make to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again won't do much to reassure the country. The remarks were underwhelming and predictable.

You know what would have been overwhelming and completely unpredictable? If he had come out wearing a cape and carrying a ray gun and promised that he would protect all Americans from the bogey man under their beds and the monsters in their closets, and then rode of into the sunset on his rainbow colored pony. Reagan would have done that.

That might have convinced more Americans that Obama and everyone who works for him understand that, in this deadly game of counterterrorism, you have to catch every possible threat. 

We can do this. Each American should be issued a gun, 1000 rounds of live ammo, and an invisible cloak. We will then declare martial law, and require all Americans to gather in groups of four, standing motionless no less than 500 yards apart, in an open field, facing outwards with their backs together. Anything that moves gets shot. I think this can work.

A Very Clear Message

From Democracy Now:

A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax evasion scheme in US history is preparing to head to prison tomorrow to begin serving a forty-month federal sentence. 

Bradley Birkenfeld first came forward to US authorities in 2007 and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts. UBS pleaded guilty last February and paid a $780 million fine. UBS has also agreed to turn over the names of the nearly 4,500 of its American clients to the Justice Department. That’s only a portion of the 19,000 it claims the secret accounts of Americans it held. Meanwhile, thousands of other Americans with unreported offshore accounts have been allowed to belatedly disclose them and pay civil penalties. 

Why is Birkenfeld going to prison? He pled guilty after the Justice Department charged him with failing to disclose a relationship with a billionaire banker. However, Swiss law forbade him from disclosing this information without a subpoena. He asked the Justice Department for a subpoena, but they refused to give it to him. And then they charged him for withholding information about crimes, even though he had voluntarily come forward and tried to give Justice that very information!

What's worse is that while he is getting 40 months in prison, the people who committed the actual crimes which Birkenfeld tried to report got nothing!

This process was started by the Bush Justice Department, but was continued by the Obama DOJ. It is designed to send a very clear message: The people who steal from the average taxpayers by cheating on billions of dollars of taxes are friends of the administration, and you fuck with them at your own peril.

Read the whole thing here. It will make your blood boil.

Why Can't They Just Say It

Bruce Hoffman, in the Washington Post, reviews the balance of power between the US and Al Qaeda. He lists the five core elements of Al Qaeda strategy, which is fine as far as it goes. At the end of his piece, he writes this:

Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don't fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched. Al-Qaeda needs to be utterly destroyed. This will be accomplished not just by killing and capturing terrorists -- as we must continue to do -- but by breaking the cycle of radicalization and recruitment that sustains the movement.

Remarkably, however, Hoffman couldn't find room in his two-page column to explain what exactly it is that is sustaining this cycle of radicalization and recruitment. It is indeed remarkable that 8 years after 9-11, most Americans don't understand what is fueling this cycle, and the reason is because "analysts" like Hoffman, "journalists" like Chuck Todd, and political "leaders" like Joe Lieberman refuse to explain it. Most Americans think the Muslim world hates us because we're Christian and we watch subversive Hollywood movies. Or because Muslims want to take over the world and impose Sharia law everywhere. This is because there are, in fact, some Muslims that dislike our culture, and would like to see Sharia law imposed. Just as there are some Americans who hate Islamic culture, and would like to see Christian values imposed everywhere (for example, our last President.)


The problem is that these Muslims aren't the ones blowing themselves up. The ones who are joining Al Qaeda, and volunteering for suicide missions are motivated by a short list of very specific grievances, and they are not targeting all westerners, or all non-Muslim countries. They are targeting those countries which they believe have committed these specific offenses.


Specifically, they are targeting the US because we:

• Interfere in the internal politics of Muslim countries, from illegally overthrowing democratically elected leaders to supporting brutal and repressive Arab dictators like the Saudi or Egyptian regimes,
• Are currently bombing, invading, or occupying five Muslim countries,
• Torture and humiliate Muslims, whether in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or Bagram, and refuse to accept any responsibility, as well as imprison them indefinitely without charges or trials,
• Indiscriminately kill Muslim civilians, including women and children,
• Give arms, money, and unconditional support to Israel, enabling it to illegally occupy Palestinian territory, and to keep innocent Palestinians in a virtual concentration camp in Gaza.

Now, you can argue about the morality and strategic value of these actions all you want. I clearly think that each and every one of them is stupid, counter-productive, and immoral. But you cannot argue with the fact that the people who flock to Al Qaeda do so because they are angry about these things. 


Polls have shown that large majorities of Muslims all over the world admire the American ideals of liberty, justice, and equality. They do not hate America for who we are; they hate us for what we do. 


But if we continue to do these things, they will eventually learn that who we are, after all, is no more than the sum of what we do. And they will be right.

Puppet Master and Puppets

Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, with anchors Jenna Lee and Nicole Petallides.

I guess if you're slinging shit, you'd better hire someone good looking to do it.

The Disappeared

More on the people who died after being disappeared into the US Immigration detention system:

As (Boubacar Bah) lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told a reporter that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity...

In the agency’s confidential files was a jail video showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before medical personnel sent him to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native Fulani, “Help, they are killing me!”

The agency tried to save money by sending him back to Guinea, but apparently decided that shipping a dying, unconscious man back to Africa, while he still had a catheter in him, might look bad. Mr. Bah later died.

On the day after Mr. Bah’s death in May 2007, Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send the body to Guinea for burial, to prevent his widow from showing up in the United States for a funeral and drawing news coverage.

Mr. Weber wrote that he believed the agency had handled Mr. Bah’s case appropriately. “However,” he added, “I also don’t want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted.” Helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas, he wrote, “will go a long way to putting this matter to rest.”

I guess the pun was unintended.

This sounds like the kind of thing that happens in Iran, or that happened in the Soviet Union, or East Germany, or Nazi Germany. But in America? The world's great bastion of freedom and accountability and morality and equality?

Draw your own conclusions.

Update:

Here's link to a very moving documentary report on Boubacar Bah.

This Guy...

...is Dale Robertson, the founder of TeaParty.org. The Tea Party, according to many polls, is viewed more favorably than Democrats or Republicans in the US.

What, exactly, does that say about Democrats, Republicans, and the US? Or about our spelling skills?

H/T Paul Rosenberg at Open Left

Why Is That, Anyway?

David Brooks on why "Avatar" is such a success:

Cameron’s handling of the White Messiah fable is not the reason “Avatar” is such a huge global hit. As John Podhoretz wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Cameron has simply used these familiar bromides as shorthand to give his special-effects spectacular some resonance.” The plotline gives global audiences a chance to see American troops get killed. 

Here is an inadvertent admission of something neo-cons like Brooks would normally deny-specifically, that there a lot of people around the world who would get a kick out of a watching a movie where American troops get killed.


No doubt this is part of the neo-con strategy of "Keeping America Safe".

The Reports of the Recovery Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

So much for the recovery.

The American economy lost another 85,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate remained at 10 percent, setting back hopes for a swift recovery from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. 

....

The one point of agreement among economists is that the nation cannot recover without millions of new jobs. Workers must gain fresh wages they can spend at other businesses, creating jobs for other workers — a virtuous cycle, in the parlance of economists.

This millions of new jobs aren't going to magically appear. At its core, the problem is that America doesn't manufacture anything anymore. But manufacturing jobs require capital investment. And of the nations capital is going to bankers instead, who gamble with it, trade it around, and skim huge chunks of the top to waste on yachts and private golf courses.


In other words, our system is now rigged so that a few people get jobs which pay millions, and the rest of us screwed. 

Simon Johnson On Goldman Bonuses

Simon Johnson says that Goldman will announce more massive bonuses soon:

For critics of the company and its fellow travelers, the timing could not be better.

He goes on to list some reasons why Goldman will go ahead and announce these bonuses, even as it gets more and more obvious how much it is angering the public who saved their asses. Here's reason number three:

The most important reason is also Goldman’s greatest weakness: throughout the organization, people really think they are worth the money.  But remember these facts and keep track of how many times you hear them repeated: Goldman Sachs essentially failed in September 2008; it was saved by extraordinary and unprecedented government efforts at the end of September and subsequently (particularly through its conversion to a bank holding company, which gave access to the Fed’s discount window); partly this treatment was shaped by the special favor with which Hank Paulson viewed Goldman (documented in nauseating detail in Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail); and the strategy of allowing Goldman to recapitalize through taking huge risk with an unconditional government guarantee in 2009 only makes sense if they use the proceeds to boost their capital – not if they pay out massive bonuses.  In any reasonable economic analysis, the entire bonus pool at Goldman should be paid – with gracious thanks – to the government.

Read the rest of it to see why Johnson thinks this will never happen, and how these bonus announcements could become the rallying point for real reform in 2010. 


This will become big news right after the story about Geithner ordering AIG to cover up to the money trail blows up.

Tim Geithner is Not Your Buddy

It turns out that the New York Fed, under current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, encouraged AIG to hide how much money it was paying to banks like Goldman Sacs and some European banks.

Update | 12:13 p.m. Starting in November 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under Timothy Geithner began urgingAmerican International Group, the huge insurer that the government had bailed out, to limit disclosure on payments made to banks at the height of the financial crisis, e-mail messages obtained by DealBook show.

The e-mail exchange between the bailed-out insurance giant and its regulator portray a strange reversal of roles, with A.I.G. staff arguing for the disclosure of certain details on payments for credit-default swaps to major banks, only to be discouraged by officials at, or representing, the Federal Reserve. 

AIG wanted to disclose this information because they didn't want to break the law. Geithner wanted to hide this information because he didn't want the taxpayers to find out that he was funneling taxpayer money to banks who had made stupid bets, without even asking them to share in the loss.

This is not, of course, a Democrat vs Republican issue. The dynamic here is insiders vs outsiders. Geithner is friends with all these people at the banks. They are insiders. They get paid. You are a taxpayer. Geithner has never heard of you. You get screwed.

Huh?

Arnold looks at his state prison system, and doesn't like what he sees. 170,000 (!) prisoners, with a $10.6 billion budget. ($10.6 billion is more than the combined economies of Mongolia and Laos- two countries with a total population of around 9.2 million people.)

SACRAMENTO — With his state strapped and his legacy looming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed on Wednesday to greatly reduce the amount of money California spends on its prisons and to funnel that sum to the state’s higher education system instead.

It's sad that he had to wait until his state was bankrupt to do something about it, but at least he's doing it now, right? This should be a pretty easy call; there is absolutely no reason on earth for California to imprison 170,000 people. Most of them are non-violent offenders, including non-violent drug offenders who pose zero danger to society. Let's shift some of this money to education; nothing is more likely to keep people out of prison than education!

“The priorities have become out of whack over the years,” the governor told lawmakers. “I mean, think about it, 30 years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education, and 3 percent went to prisons. Today, almost 11 percent goes to prisons, and only 7.5 percent goes to higher education.”

Good stuff! What's the plan?

While the governor provided few details of his new plan, much of the prison cost savings he envisions would come though privatizing services or prisons themselves...

(Pounding my head against the wall.)

...The governor said no prisoners would be released early for his plan, shutting the door on changes to sentencing laws and the release of low-level offenders as other states have done.

So...California imprisons too many people, and spends too much money doing it, and the solution is to...wait for it...hire unaccountable, private, profit-making prison companies and their lobbyists to take over?

Don't laugh. As goes California, so goes the nation.

"In A World Where Democrats Ran the Government (from 2001-2007)..."

Check out this new video. It might be a trailer for a new film tentatively called "Conservative Fantasy II: The Amnesiacs":



It's almost unbelievable that right-wing populists could make this argument with a straight face. Republicans were in control of Congress from 1994 until Jan 2007. We had a Republican president from Jan 2001 until Jan 2009. The massive recession we are in started in Dec 2007, and the seeds for it were sown in the years which preceded it.

Right-wing politicians are responsible for literally every single apocalyptic event that they breathlessly rail against in this video, with the exception of health care reform (which hasn't even passed yet.)

• Higher taxes on middle class? Check*

• A reduction in civil liberties? Check

• Insane spending? Check

• Socialism? I guess they're talking about corporate welfare. Check!

• Government Takeovers? We're talking about GM, Fannie and Freddie, right? Ruined on the Republican watch? Check

• Development of systemic risk resulting in corporate looting and requiring bailouts? Check

• TARP? Requested and implemented by Bush and his Treasury Secretary? Check

• Need for Federal Reserve guarantees? Check

• 2008 Bush stimulus program? Check

• Tax, Spend, and Redistribute to Corporations and the Rich? Check

• We're broke? Check

• Massive national debt? Check

• Recession causing 10% unemployment? Check

• Backroom deals? Payoffs? Blatant and shameless bribes? Check

"We've had enough..." I'd say so. I have, anyway.

"We're taking our country back..." Directly to the stone ages. Or at least the Great Depression.

"From Radicals..." Like people who bring guns to town hall meetings? Or people who believe that you should just die if you can't afford health care?

"From Leftists and Liberals..." Oh, you mean all those leftist, liberal Republicans who destroyed our country from 2001 to 2007.

"America Rising..." Yeah. Let's give them another chance. 


*In all fairness, they did cut taxes for the super rich. Bankers, you know. This worked out well.

Enemy Combatants?

Right-wingers are all up in arms about the Obama administration's plan to try the underwear bomber in court. (Even though their hero Bush tried the shoe bomber in court.)

I just have a couple points to make. First, don't you need to declare war against someone in order to be at war? Unless I missed it, we have not declared war against Yemen, or Nigeria (or Afghanistan or Iraq, either, for that matter.)

But maybe that's just a technicality. This, however, is not. You can not be sentenced to prison for acts of war. You may be imprisoned as a prisoner of war, (subject to all the protections of the Geneva convention), but when the war is over,  you have to let the POW's go home.

So anyone who calls for treating terrorists as enemy combatants must be OK with releasing them when the "War on Terror" is over.

The scary thing is these people literally plan on the "War on Terror" going on forever.

Time For Another Fisking

Today's lucky target? Timothy J. Geraghty, come on down!

Iran Expands Its Target List

The nagging question of the nuclear age has been what if a madman gets hold of an atomic bomb? 

Is this a rhetorical question? There are a number of ways to write this sentence properly; this, unfortunately, is not one of them. But hey- you can't screw up every sentence if you don't screw up the first one, right?

At any rate, that question has already been answered, and answered more than once:

That question is about to be answered as Iran's defiance puts it on a collision course with the West.

By defiance, I assume you mean Iran's unwillingness to submit to the orders of the West. Another way of looking at this would be that the West is defying Iran by not requiring its sworn enemy, Israel, a rogue nuclear state, to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On Nov. 4, 2009, Israeli commandos intercepted an Antiguan-flagged ship 100 miles off the Israeli coast. It was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran and bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Since the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, Iran has rearmed Hezbollah with 40,000 rockets and missiles that will likely rain on Israeli cities—and even European cities and U.S. military bases in the Middle East—if Iran is attacked. Our 200,000 troops in 33 bases are vulnerable. Shortly before this weapons seizure, Hamas test-fired a missile capable of striking Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv.

Since 1979, Israel has been illegally arming itself with nuclear weapons, and has been armed to the teeth by the United States. All of Iran's 74 million citizens are vulnerable to a nuclear attack by Israel.

Iran is capable of disrupting Persian Gulf shipping lanes, which could cause the price of oil to surge above $300 a barrel. Iran could also create mayhem in oil markets by attacking Saudi oil refineries. Moreover, Iran possesses Soviet made SS-N-22 "Sunburn" supersonic antiship missiles that it could use to contest a naval blockade.

And the United States is capable of causing a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Needless to say, it is also capable of disrupting Persian Gulf shipping lanes. What are you saying? That Iran is not entitled to own weapons? This would be an odd position, since your current Secretary of Defense was complicit in selling them arms at one point.

Iran could unleash suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan or, more ominously, activate Hezbollah sleeper cells in the U.S. to carry out coordinated attacks nationwide. FBI, CIA and other U.S. officials have acknowledged in congressional testimony that Hezbollah has a working partnership with Mexican drug cartels and has been using cartel smuggling routes to get personnel and contraband into the U.S.

I hope you're not suggesting that Iran might encourage violence in either one of those two wonderfully tranquil places. And it's hard to get too upset at the fact that terrorist organizations might use this Mexican terror network. After all, it's our drug policy that created it.

While Iranian centrifuges continue to produce low-enriched uranium, the mullahs and their henchmen...

"Henchmen"? Seriously? What have you been been watching- Scooby Doo? 

...have been carrying out a campaign of deception. In October 2009, Iran rejected a plan to ship its low-enriched uranium out of country, primarily to Russia and France, to be highly enriched and then sent back to Iran for "peaceful medical purposes."

In fairness, one could also note that their government is effectively paralyzed by a popular revolution in the making; a revolution which the writer no doubt supports. The government is, understandably, a little schizophrenic at the moment.

On Nov. 28, 2009, reacting to increased pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran warned it may pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This would seriously undermine international attempts to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Two days later, Iran announced plans to build 10 new nuclear plants within six years.

Iran, a country which has not invaded or attacked any other country in the last 200 years, is a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has no nuclear weapons. 

Israel, a country which has been in a constant state of war almost since its founding 60 years or so ago, has ignored international law, acquired nuclear weapons, and refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

Does this not concern you, sir?

In another sphere, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez are openly cooperating to "oppose world hegemony," as Mr. Ahmadinejan has said, while weekly flights between Iran and Venezuela are not monitored for personnel and cargo. Meanwhile, Russia is building an arms plant in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the country.

Weekly flights between the US and Israel, or the US and pretty much anywhere else in the world we sling arms,  aren't monitored for personnel and cargo either. And since the US produces over 40% of the worlds weapons (10 times that of Russia), I'm not sure I see your point. Unless your point is that we should rule the world. I'm starting to think so. Incidentally, when people voice concern over "world hegemony", they are really concerned about the United States ruling the world.

I have seen this play before. In 1983, I was the Marine commander of the U.S. Multinational Peacekeeping Force in Beirut, Lebanon. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Lebanon contingent trained and equipped Hezbollah to execute attacks that killed 241 of my men and 58 French Peacekeepers on Oct. 23, 1983.

A tragic story. It reminds me of something you said before, about why this attack happened

It is noteworthy that the United States provided direct naval gunfire support—which I strongly opposed for a week—to the Lebanese Army at a mountain village called Suq-al-Garb on 19 September and that the French conducted an air strike on 23 September in the Bekaa Valley. American support removed any lingering doubts of our neutrality, and I stated to my staff at the time that we were going to pay in blood for this decision.

It is precisely this lack of neutrality which has led us to being a nation hated by millions. It's also why we should expect more bombings in the future. I hope Israel is worth it. And the oil. Oh, and that wonderful democratic utopia we call Iraq.

Today, Hezbollah directly threatens Israel, destabilizes Lebanon, and undercuts the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. Something similar is underway in Venezuela. Remember Hezbollah used the Beirut truck-bomb model for the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992 and the July 18, 1994 attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association that killed 85 and wounded 200.

All of this is true. And, while we're at it, let's consider these facts:

• The United Stated has destabilized Iran, beginning with a CIA coup of its democratically elected government, because that government refused to hand over its oil to the West.
• The United States has invaded Iraq without provocation, am invasion which has resulted in the deaths of some 500,000-1,000,000 Iraqis.
• The United States has given unconditional support to Israel, as it occupies and terrorizes the captive Palestinian people.

I'm not so sure you should be casting stones, Colonel.

Pomp It Up

There's a heart-warming story on one man's protest of the Swiss minaret ban in WSJ. Here's a taste:

BUSSIGNY, Switzerland -- In November, Switzerland voted to ban the construction of new minarets, the towerlike structures that adorn mosques. A week or so later, in an apparent act of defiance, a new minaret unexpectedly sprang up here.

But the new minaret is not attached to a mosque; this small town near Geneva doesn't even have one. And it's not the work of a local Muslim outraged by Switzerland's controversial vote to ban the structures, which often are used to launch the call to prayer.

Instead, Bussigny's minaret is attached to the warehouse of a shoe store called Pomp It Up, which is part of a Swiss chain. It was erected by the chain's owner, Guillaume Morand, who fashioned it out of plastic and wood and attached it to a chimney. The new minaret, nearly 20 feet high and illuminated at night, is clearly visible from the main highway connecting Lausanne and Geneva.

"The referendum was a scandal," Mr. Morand said recently at his cavernous warehouse, near pallets piled high with shoe boxes as pop music played on an old stereo system. "I was ashamed to be Swiss. I don't have the power to do much, but I wanted to give a message of peace to Muslims."

Read the rest. It funny how the Swiss are bending over backwards to claim that this isn't a minaret.

The Nation Freaks Out

The president summoned top administration officials today to make a big show of concern about airport security:

President Obama rebuked the U.S. intelligence community Tuesday for a "potentially disastrous" failure to detect an airline bombing plot, saying it ignored various "red flags" and failed to pull together pieces of information it already had. He called the intelligence breakdown intolerable and vowed that "we will do better" in the future....

Obama's statement came after he summoned 20 of his top national security aides for a White House meeting Tuesday afternoon. The changes to the government's terrorist watch-list system were part of a series of steps to improve airline safety following the bombing attempt, which was thwarted when the explosives failed to detonate and passengers subdued the suspect.

Let me get this straight. Some nutcase sets his underwear on fire, and the entire country reacts by taking its own underwear off, wrapping it around its neck, and attempting to strangle itself out of shock, disbelief, and craven, pathetic fear. After which, it runs to its government daddy, crying and wondering why anyone would want to do something like this.

Americans need to have something hammered into their heads. The United States has chosen a policy of pissing off every Muslim on the planet, by invading and occupying Muslim lands, torturing, imprisoning and killing innocent Muslims without trial, unconditionally supporting and arming Israel and other repressive regimes as they terrorize the Middle East, and blatantly stealing Muslim oil.

Apparently, quite a few people in this country have no problem with these policies. Those people need to shut the fuck up, and quit freaking out when an aggrieved party tries to blow up a plane, or a building, or, God forbid, something worse. What do they expect?

How is this kind of behavior a surprise? When you think about it, it's a pretty minimal reaction to all the murder and mayhem we commit. Get used to it. We obviously have no intention of changing these policies. Why should we think that continuing to do the same thing will bring us different results?

Maybe enraging a billion or so people is worth doing. Maybe living with increasing numbers of attacks by increasing numbers of increasingly radicalized Islamists is a small price to pay for cheap oil and SUV's, the privilege of forcing democracy down the throats of people who don't want it, and the undying, contemptuous gratitude we get from Israel. Maybe being a moral nation isn't so important after all.

Fine. Just quit with the surprise and righteous indignation already. It's pathetic.

Own It

Here's the best summation of the last decade I've read yet:

Here's the thing about the naughts: there was nothing magic about the numbers. It wasn't because of a double-zero in the middle of the dates that we launched an invasion that's cost the lives of thousands of Americans, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and a trillion dollars plus out of the pocketbooks of taxpayers. We launched into that still unresolved idiocy because of bad policy based on the conservative philosophy of smash things first, think never. We went there because of a extreme version of American exceptionalism, one that views America as above the the rules of law and exempt from questions of morality. A view that says not only if the president does it, it's not a crime, but that if America does it, it can't be wrong.

It wasn't the decade that caused the economy to come down in tatters. It was a conservative approach to the marketplace that views government as the enemy, greed as the only acceptable motivation, and the only solution for disasters brought on by a lack of regulation as still less regulation.

It wasn't the calendar that brought down the banks, or American manufacturing, or American's influence around the world. It wasn't the date that added torture to the list of growth industries while erasing our budget surplus.

Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. Think we should privatize war by handing unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Kiddo, we passed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries.

Read the rest here; it's even better.

Free Trade at Staples

Thought of the day:

If free markets work because all people are able to make fully-informed, free choices, then why does Staples price it's binders at $2.50, and then use fine print to hide the fact that you have to send in a rebate to get that price?

Is it possible that they don't really want me to have all the information?

That can't be it, because in free markets, we need everyone to have all the information. Right?

Gun Nuts? No, Just Nuts

H/T Digby:





What's striking about these people isn't their professed love of guns. I don't really even see that here. I see people who have a serious self-esteem problem. I see people who need to feel important, and walking around with a loaded gun makes them feel that way.

They think they're defending the US against that Marxist, socialist, fascist Obama. They probably harbor delusions that there will be a big shoot-out one day down at the OK Corral, and that they'll outdraw all the bad guys, shoot 'em all dead, and then bask in the glory as the townspeople gather 'round.

Maybe someone should tell them that real men don't need guns.

I Want Biased Reporting. Seriously.

I've written pretty extensively on the case of Todd Willingham, the man was executed by Texas in 2004 for setting a fire which killed his daughters, but who all the evidence shows is innocent of that crime. Read these posts here, here, here, here, and here; if you haven't read it, it's a fascinating story, and those posts cover it pretty well.

Here is a CNN interview of David Martin, who was Willingham's attorney in a death penalty case.

Two things.

First, God help anyone who has this man as an attorney. He had clearly made up his mind about his own clients guilt, and it's almost impossible to believe that someone could be on trial for his life and have this man responsible for saving it. The fact that Texas allowed this man to serve as an attorney in a capital case is a travesty in its own right.

Second, what in the hell is Anderson Cooper doing thanking this man for his "expertise"? This is a prime example of the new "fair and balanced" journalism, in which an opinion that is idiotic on its face is treated as just as valid as an opinion backed by evidence and actual reasoning. (Or, in this case, is given more time, and barely challenged at all.)

We have these "debates" all the time. A "journalist" invites two people with opposing viewpoints to "debate" each other on a "news" show. These people proceed to scream at each other, and are allowed to lie outright if it helps their case. The "journalist" sits there in the middle, never challenging, never offering an opinion. The message is that lies are as good as truths, and that journalists don't care.

Why on earth would we ever want balanced journalism? Balanced between what? Truth and falsehood?

I don't want that kind of balance. I want my reporting to be biased. I want it to be as biased as it can be on the side of truth. I don't want reporters to write down lies and repeat them. The people who are lying usually don't need any help promoting their lies.

Why Are We There? (Part 3,798)

From Juan Cole, who does all the heavy lifting when it comes to Afghan policy, comes two related stories. The first:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Deepening a rift between allies, Afghan investigators on Wednesday sharply contradicted accounts by NATOofficials about the deaths of 10 civilians in eastern Afghanistan, saying a visit to the remote site showed that nearly all those killed were school-age boys and one was an elderly man. They blamed international forces for the deaths....

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village, in Narang District of the eastern province of Kunar, and took 10 people from 3 homes, 8 of them school students in grades 6, 9 and 10, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” said the statement from the president’s office.

The second:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The second episode of civilian deaths within a week was under investigation Thursday by the Afghan government and NATO officials after reports that up to seven civilians had been killed in Helmand Province in a NATO missile strike.

The latest episode, in Helmand, took place Wednesday afternoon on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, when NATO forces responded to a Taliban provocation and ended up killing a number of civilians. Neither NATO forces nor the Helmand governor’s office gave a definitive number of dead, but reports from local people said that five to seven civilians had been killed, including three children.

We do not know if these allegations are true. But it doesn't matter (unless you're one of the dead.) The United States has a history of these kinds of atrocities; they are unavoidable in counterinsurgency combat. It does not require a stretch of the imagination to believe that they happened. 


These are precisely the kinds of things that inspire Islamic terrorism, further empower the Afghan insurgency, and generally make the United States a less secure nation. And given the fact that these kinds of events are unavoidable, counterinsurgency operations need to have a clear and obtainable objective, and the need to be absolutely vital to the security of the US. So vital, in fact, that the benefit from the operations will clearly outweigh the very real security costs of bombing and shooting schoolchildren.


Given that we have no clear objective, nor any real national security interest, nor any hope of reaching whatever objective we decide on this week, can anyone say with a straight face that the benefits are worth these costs?


I'll let Juan Cole sum it up.

So, the US is killing schoolchildren far too often, enraging the Afghan public. It has provoked a student protest movement against it in Jalalabad and Kabul. Its informants are double agents. Its supposed partner, the Afghan army, mostly doesn't actually exist and couldn't be depended on to show up to anything important; and that is when they aren't taking potshots at US troops; and there is no Afghan government as we go into 2010.

Other than that, we're in great shape.

Drug Terrorism

Not content with using foreign policy to radicalize Muslims into embracing Islamic terrorism, the United States also uses drug policy to breed terrorism just south of our border:

The bound, beaten bodies of two men were found hanging by their necks from a highway overpass in northern Mexico on Wednesday, along with a handwritten message from a drug cartel. The men’s hands were tied behind their backs, and shell casings at the scene in Los Mochis suggest that the killers fired at the victims as they were hanging, said the spokesman for the state prosecutors in Sinaloa, Martín Gastelum. The cause of death was still under investigation, however.

This terrorism, of course, is fueled by drug money, which flows as a direct result of American demand and prohibition.

If you doubt this, then ask yourself why the liquor cartels aren't terrorizing Mexico.

Who Lets These Savages Have Guns?

No longer satisfied from the high one gets from brutally Tasering people who aren't polite, cops have now moved on to Tasering people in comas. The following is from a lawsuit filed in Illinois. The LaGrange and Brookfield defendants are cops.

8. Plaintiff Prospero David Lassi is a diabetic. On the morning of April 9, 2009, while in his home, Mr. Lassi suffered a diabetes-induced seizure.

9. Mr. Lassi’s roommate, John Roza, heard Mr. Lassi groaning in pain and rushed to Mr. Lassi’s room. There he observed Mr. Lassi lying on the ground and foaming from the mouth. Mr. Roza called 911, seeking emergency medical assistance.

10. Shortly after 911 was called, the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants, as well as paramedics from the LaGrange Park Ambulance service, arrived at Mr. Lassi’s home. Mr. Roza informed the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants and paramedics about Mr. Lassi’s diabetes and explained that Mr. Lassi was having a seizure and needed medical care.

11. The paramedics began to examine Mr. Lassi, but because of his medical condition, Mr. Lassi was not alert and could not move his body. The paramedics enlisted the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants’ assistance in moving Mr. Lassi from where he was laying.

12. According to one or more of the LaGrange Defendants, one of Mr. Lassi’s arms flailed during his diabetes-induced seizure, striking one of the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants. At no time did Mr. Lassi intentionally strike or offensively touch any of the LaGrange or Brookfield Defendants.

13. Reacting to Mr. Lassi’s involuntary movement, one or more of the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants pushed Mr. Lassi to the ground, forcibly restraining him there.

14. Defendant Pedota then withdrew his Taser, an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt a person’s control over his muscles, and electrocuted Mr. Lassi eleven times.

15. Mr. Lassi remained immobile on the floor and was unable to defend himself during this attack. None of the other LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants attempted to interruptDefendant Pedota’s repeated use of the Taser. 

16. After Mr. Lassi was subjected to nearly one full minute of Taser shock, one or more of the LaGrange and Brookfield Defendants and paramedics transported him to Adventist LaGrange Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for his injuries. He remained in the hospital for five days.

17. As a result of this incident, Mr. Lassi has permanent scars on his skin, including a scar on his face. Mr. Lassi has also suffered, and continues to suffer, neurological and musculoskeletal injuries, among other injuries.

I'm not even sure what else can be added here, except to express disbelief that people like this are allowed to carry guns.

The Real Numbers

Jeremy Scahill on the large numbers of private contractors that the US has in Afghanistan:

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversightsubcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo[PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff,

“From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops inAfghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

Private contractors are widely known to be more expensive than US military personnel. Even worse, there is very little oversight or accountability with private contractors. Fraud is rampant. And an example of what the lack of accountability will get you can be found in the Blackwater murders of unarmed, innocent Iraqi civilians in 2007, an atrocity which will go unpunished primarily because the perpetrators were private contractors. Iraqi's (and Muslims across the region) don't really care if soldiers or contractors kill innocent people; they want justice in either case. And when we do not give them justice, they retaliate, and more people die. So we end up with these mercenaries who are presumed to be acting as representatives of the US government, but who the US government can't really control. It's a bad situation.


So why do we have all of these contractors? Well, there is no doubt that some are needed. There are technical things that the US military isn't very good at; turbine repair, or network maintenance, for example. Here, contractors can help. But security? Why should we ever need to give a private contractor a weapon? Isn't this what the US military is supposed to do?


Well, yes, but when you've decided to flout the will of the American people and escalate a very unpopular war, it helps to be able to hide the true number of people you are sending to fight it.


Those 30,000 troops Obama is sending? That number doesn't include contractors. Contractors, you see, don't count as troops. Even when they are doing the jobs troops should be doing.


What does all this mean? We're spending more money than we should, and allowing mercenary soldiers to sully what's left of our national reputation, because the government doesn't want you to really know how many people are going to Afghanistan. Once again, politics trumps the national interest. 


I guess it isn't just Jim DeMint.

Separate But Equal Rises Again

I wrote recently about the Israeli De Facto Apartheid State. What's even more frightening is that there are now calls from the right wing of American politics to impose a similar system here:

There is more here.

If we continue on this path, the America that we think we are protecting won't be worth protecting anymore.

Let's go back to what radio blowhard Mike Gallagher says at the end of that clip:

"Yeah, and let's not make the Muslim world mad at us."

He says this sarcastically, as though that's the last thing we should worry about. But guess what? It's one of the first things we should be worrying about. There are a billion Muslims in the world. Why on earth would we want to piss all of them off? Does Gallagher think he's some sort of John Wayne? Does he realize that most Muslims don't hate the US-yet?

This guy sounds so tough, but, unsurprisingly, although being of prime military age during the first Gulf War, as well as during the last decade of the Cold War, he never bothered to join the military and serve his country. It sure is easy to brag, bluster and swagger on TV wearing makeup, when you're not the one who is going to get your legs blown off in some foreign country fighting the people you advocate pissing off.

Just Like We Do It here

This will probably free up some investigators to go after someone selling their food stamps:

SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Kun-hee, the former chairman of Samsung who was convicted of embezzlement and tax evasion, was pardoned by President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday. The move drew criticism from civic groups that said it was another example of leniency for South Korean tycoons guilty of serious crimes.

Jo Yong-hak/Reuters

Lee Kun-hee, outside court in 2008, was convicted of embezzlement and tax evasion this year.

The president said he decided to grant a special amnesty to Mr. Lee, who was not imprisoned, so that the businessman could retain his membership at theInternational Olympic Committee and lead a campaign by the South Korean city of PyeongChang to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Republican DeMint Sides With Terrorists

Right-wing Republican types just can't get enough of hammering Obama and the Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano over the Christmas Day bombing attempt. For some reason, though, there hasn't been any criticism of the Transportation Security Administration. You know them better as the TSA; they're the agency who is actually responsible for making sure people don't bring things like bombs onto planes.

You'd think that the first person to criticize over this affair would be the person in charge of running the TSA. But for some reason, that person is not being blamed. The Washington Post found out why:

An alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration -- if there were one.

Instead, the post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has held up President Obama's nominee in an effort to prevent TSA workers from joining a labor union.

Yep. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has blocked the confirmation of Errol Southers, a highly respected expert in transportation security and counter-terrorism, because he's worried that Southers might allow TSA workers to join a union.

I think this is the charitable view. Consider this statement DeMint made back in July to Politico, concerning health care reform:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

There is no doubt that crushing Barack Obama's presidency is a priority for DeMint. Is it so far fetched, then, to suggest that he would intentionally block Obama's nominees in the hope that something bad would happen to the country? Something so bad that it would become Obama's Waterloo?

Ensuring that the TSA is a leaderless organization could be just the ticket.

A Blissful Silence

Looks like Fox News might go off the air on the New Year.

NEW YORK—News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said in a memo to employees Wednesday that it's unlikely the company will reach an agreement with Time Warner Cable Inc. in time to prevent television programming disruptions for its customers on New Year's Day.

"At this time, it looks like we will not reach an agreement and our channels may very well go off the air in Time Warner Cable systems at midnight tomorrow, December 31," said Mr. Carey in his memo to employees. "We deeply regret that millions of Fox customers will be deprived of our programming, but we need to receive fair compensation from Time Warner Cable to go forward with them."

There are millions of wingnut tea-baggers across the nation for whom Fox News is their sole source of information. What will these people do? Will they have to listen to other points of view? Perhaps they'll be forced to watch leftist, radical news organizations like CNN. 

I'm worried that one of them might accidentally land on PBS while changing channels. I could see this resulting in some exploding heads.