Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Worker Safety:
The Raw Story: Halliburton managers told workers carcinogen was 'mild irritant' workers say
"Hallburton subsidiary KBR told employees at a water injection plant in Iraq a sand-like substance scattered around the plant was just a 'mild irritant,' workers recall.
It turns out to be sodium dichromate -- a highly toxic chemical which can lead to cancer even with limited exposure.
Now nine Americans are suing KBR, according to a report in Tuesday's Boston Globe. They say they spent 2 1/2 months covered in the substance as they rushed to get the plant online, a key component in Iraq's oil infrastructure.
'Many of the 22 Americans and 100-plus Iraqis began to complain of nosebleeds, ulcers, and shortness of breath,' the Globe's Farah Stockman writes. 'Within weeks, nearly 60 percent exhibited symptoms of exposure, according to the minutes of a meeting of project managers from KBR, the Houston-based construction company in charge of the repairs.'
According to Oxford University, sodium dichromate is a 'NTP human carcinogen and IARC human Group I carcinogen. Inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption are harmful, and may be fatal. Exposure may cause cancer.'
A material safety data sheet at Fisher Scientific says chronic exposure may lead to ulcers, asthma, cancer and infertiliy.
'Prolonged or repeated exposure may lead to asthma and perforation of the nasal septum,' the sheet says. 'May cause respiratory tract cancer. May cause liver and kidney damage. Chronic inhalation may cause nasal septum ulceration and perforation. May cause cancer in humans. May alter genetic material. May impair fertility.'
The workers, however, face a daunting task in court. Under a World War II-era law, KBR isn't obliged to pay damages unless workers can prove the exposure was malicious..."
The Raw Story: Halliburton managers told workers carcinogen was 'mild irritant' workers say
"Hallburton subsidiary KBR told employees at a water injection plant in Iraq a sand-like substance scattered around the plant was just a 'mild irritant,' workers recall.
It turns out to be sodium dichromate -- a highly toxic chemical which can lead to cancer even with limited exposure.
Now nine Americans are suing KBR, according to a report in Tuesday's Boston Globe. They say they spent 2 1/2 months covered in the substance as they rushed to get the plant online, a key component in Iraq's oil infrastructure.
'Many of the 22 Americans and 100-plus Iraqis began to complain of nosebleeds, ulcers, and shortness of breath,' the Globe's Farah Stockman writes. 'Within weeks, nearly 60 percent exhibited symptoms of exposure, according to the minutes of a meeting of project managers from KBR, the Houston-based construction company in charge of the repairs.'
According to Oxford University, sodium dichromate is a 'NTP human carcinogen and IARC human Group I carcinogen. Inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption are harmful, and may be fatal. Exposure may cause cancer.'
A material safety data sheet at Fisher Scientific says chronic exposure may lead to ulcers, asthma, cancer and infertiliy.
'Prolonged or repeated exposure may lead to asthma and perforation of the nasal septum,' the sheet says. 'May cause respiratory tract cancer. May cause liver and kidney damage. Chronic inhalation may cause nasal septum ulceration and perforation. May cause cancer in humans. May alter genetic material. May impair fertility.'
The workers, however, face a daunting task in court. Under a World War II-era law, KBR isn't obliged to pay damages unless workers can prove the exposure was malicious..."
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Economy:
Paul Krugman: Partying Like It’s 1929
"...How did we get here?
Why does the financial system need salvation?
Why do mild-mannered economists have to become superheroes?
The answer, at a fundamental level, is that we’re paying the price for willful amnesia. We chose to forget what happened in the 1930s — and having refused to learn from history, we’re repeating it...
...Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a 'shadow banking system' that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.
For example, in the old system, savers had federally insured deposits in tightly regulated savings banks, and banks used that money to make home loans. Over time, however, this was partly replaced by a system in which savers put their money in funds that bought asset-backed commercial paper from special investment vehicles that bought collateralized debt obligations created from securitized mortgages — with nary a regulator in sight.
As the years went by, the shadow banking system took over more and more of the banking business, because the unregulated players in this system seemed to offer better deals than conventional banks. Meanwhile, those who worried about the fact that this brave new world of finance lacked a safety net were dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned..."
Paul Krugman: Taming the Beast
"We’re now in the midst of an epic financial crisis, which ought to be at the center of the election debate. But it isn’t...
...the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.
Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.
Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.
But will that logic prevail politically?
Not if Mr. McCain makes it to the White House. His chief economic adviser is former Senator Phil Gramm, a fervent advocate of financial deregulation. In fact, I’d argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible.
Both Democrats, by contrast, are running more or less populist campaigns. But at least so far, neither Democrat has made a clear commitment to financial reform.
Is that simply an omission? Or is it an ominous omen? Recent history offers reason to worry.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the Clinton administration went along too easily with moves to deregulate the financial industry. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that big contributions from Wall Street helped grease the rails..."
Nelson D. Schwartz and Julie Creswell: What Created This Monster?
"...Even though Mr. Gross, 63, is a market veteran who has lived through the collapse of other banks and brokerage firms, the 1987 stock market crash, and the near meltdown of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade ago, he says the current crisis feels different — in both size and significance.
Not only is the Federal Reserve's action unprecedented since the Great Depression — by lending money directly to major investment banks — but taxpayers are also now on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers made when the good times were rolling.
'Bear Stearns has made it obvious that things have gone too far,' says Mr. Gross, who plans to use some of his cash to bargain-shop. 'The investment community has morphed into something beyond banks and something beyond regulation. We call it the shadow banking system.'
It is the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows that worries regulators and Wall Street and that have created stresses in the broader economy. Economic downturns and panics have occurred before, of course. Few, however, have posed such a serious threat to the entire financial system that regulators have responded as if they were confronting a potential epidemic...
...With Bear Stearns forced into a sale and the entire financial system still under the threat of further losses, Wall Street executives, regulators and politicians are scrambling to figure out just what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
But because the forces that have collided in recent weeks were set in motion long before the subprime mortgage mess first made news last year, solutions won’t come easily or quickly, analysts say.
In fact, while home loans to risky borrowers were among the first to go bad, analysts say that the crisis didn’t stem from the housing market alone and that it certainly won’t end there.
'The problem has been spreading its wings and taking in markets very far afield from mortgages,' says Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and now an economics professor at Princeton. 'It’s a failure at a lot of levels. It’s hard to find a piece of the system that actually worked well in the lead-up to the bust,'..."
Dirty Tricks?
Newsday: Report: GOP operative exposed Spitzer
"The federal probe into Eliot Spitzer's alleged use of high-priced prostitutes took on a partisan tinge Sunday with news that a Republican political operative provided the FBI with salacious details of the former governor's trysts four months before he resigned.
In a Nov. 19 letter, an attorney for Roger Stone, once a consultant to Republican State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, said Spitzer had spent 'tens of thousands' of dollars on prostitutes using prearranged financial transfers...
...If the federal probe was triggered by Stone, 'it provides a different lens to look at all of this,' said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College. 'Even though it doesn't absolve Spitzer of his behavior and the hypocrisy that that represented, it still calls into question the actions of the federal authorities,'..."
Iraq: Five Years On - 4,000 U.S. Dead, Countless Iraqis Dead, Half A Trillion Spent:
It bears remembering how this nation was taken to war - by a willing accomplice - the corporate media - all too willing to parrot whatever Team Bush said as unchallenged fact.
Democracy Now! - So Wrong for So Long: Greg Mitchell on How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq
"...
AMY GOODMAN: We’re moving into the sixth year of this war. What’s so interesting about your book is that you start from the beginning, and it’s almost like a diary, a journal, of how the foundation was built, the justifications were built, for war.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, it’s really the first five-year history that anyone’s written, I think, and it goes from the run-up to the surge debate last fall. So it really is a chronology. It’s not in calendar form, of course, but it really does cover the whole period, so you do get all the arguments and the debate and the failures before the invasion was launched and then the five years of deceit and shortcomings ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the pre-invasion period and what you felt was most—how the media was most successful in laying the false foundation.
GREG MITCHELL: Right, right. Well, as you said, it really was the mainstream media that, starting early on, relayed the false information that came from the administration—as we know, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among the worst in that—and it not only was putting forth the false information, but also the placement of it, putting it on the front page. So it wasn’t just a matter of carrying the information. So it had tremendous impact on everyone, including Democrats in Congress, who were afraid to speak out..."
Consider that if anyone in Washington had proposed spending half a trillion dollars on any one domestic project, they'd be verbally crucified as a freedom-hating big-government monster that preys on the public's hard earned income. Spend this money on war and occupation, now that's another story. Congress can't write the check fast enough.
Robert Pollin & Heidi Garrett-Peltier: The Wages of Peace
"There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008. With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.
But the economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq..."
Energy:
The Times Online (UK) - Toyota Prius proves a gas guzzler in a race with the BMW 520d review: "...we set a challenge: to drive a Prius to Geneva using motorways and town driving. The direct route is 460 miles but we drove almost 100 miles further to give the Prius the advantage of running in urban conditions where its petrol-electric drivetrain comes into its own.
We took along a conventionally powered car – a diesel BMW executive saloon – for comparison and drove both cars an identical number of miles (545)...BMW - 50.3 mp(imperial)g, Prius 48.1 mp(imperial)g..."
AP: Truckers slowing down to save fuel
"Coast-to-coast trucker Lorraine Dawson says fellow drivers used to call her 'Lead Foot Lorraine.' But with diesel fuel around $4 a gallon, she and other big-rig drivers have backed off their accelerators to conserve fuel...
...Dawson said she's cut her speed by five to 10 miles per hour to save money for her company. Many independent owner-operators have slowed even more, she said..."
Paul Krugman: Partying Like It’s 1929
"...How did we get here?
Why does the financial system need salvation?
Why do mild-mannered economists have to become superheroes?
The answer, at a fundamental level, is that we’re paying the price for willful amnesia. We chose to forget what happened in the 1930s — and having refused to learn from history, we’re repeating it...
...Wall Street chafed at regulations that limited risk, but also limited potential profits. And little by little it wriggled free — partly by persuading politicians to relax the rules, but mainly by creating a 'shadow banking system' that relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass regulations designed to ensure that banking was safe.
For example, in the old system, savers had federally insured deposits in tightly regulated savings banks, and banks used that money to make home loans. Over time, however, this was partly replaced by a system in which savers put their money in funds that bought asset-backed commercial paper from special investment vehicles that bought collateralized debt obligations created from securitized mortgages — with nary a regulator in sight.
As the years went by, the shadow banking system took over more and more of the banking business, because the unregulated players in this system seemed to offer better deals than conventional banks. Meanwhile, those who worried about the fact that this brave new world of finance lacked a safety net were dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned..."
Paul Krugman: Taming the Beast
"We’re now in the midst of an epic financial crisis, which ought to be at the center of the election debate. But it isn’t...
...the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.
Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.
Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.
But will that logic prevail politically?
Not if Mr. McCain makes it to the White House. His chief economic adviser is former Senator Phil Gramm, a fervent advocate of financial deregulation. In fact, I’d argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible.
Both Democrats, by contrast, are running more or less populist campaigns. But at least so far, neither Democrat has made a clear commitment to financial reform.
Is that simply an omission? Or is it an ominous omen? Recent history offers reason to worry.
In retrospect, it’s clear that the Clinton administration went along too easily with moves to deregulate the financial industry. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that big contributions from Wall Street helped grease the rails..."
Nelson D. Schwartz and Julie Creswell: What Created This Monster?
"...Even though Mr. Gross, 63, is a market veteran who has lived through the collapse of other banks and brokerage firms, the 1987 stock market crash, and the near meltdown of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade ago, he says the current crisis feels different — in both size and significance.
Not only is the Federal Reserve's action unprecedented since the Great Depression — by lending money directly to major investment banks — but taxpayers are also now on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers made when the good times were rolling.
'Bear Stearns has made it obvious that things have gone too far,' says Mr. Gross, who plans to use some of his cash to bargain-shop. 'The investment community has morphed into something beyond banks and something beyond regulation. We call it the shadow banking system.'
It is the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows that worries regulators and Wall Street and that have created stresses in the broader economy. Economic downturns and panics have occurred before, of course. Few, however, have posed such a serious threat to the entire financial system that regulators have responded as if they were confronting a potential epidemic...
...With Bear Stearns forced into a sale and the entire financial system still under the threat of further losses, Wall Street executives, regulators and politicians are scrambling to figure out just what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
But because the forces that have collided in recent weeks were set in motion long before the subprime mortgage mess first made news last year, solutions won’t come easily or quickly, analysts say.
In fact, while home loans to risky borrowers were among the first to go bad, analysts say that the crisis didn’t stem from the housing market alone and that it certainly won’t end there.
'The problem has been spreading its wings and taking in markets very far afield from mortgages,' says Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve and now an economics professor at Princeton. 'It’s a failure at a lot of levels. It’s hard to find a piece of the system that actually worked well in the lead-up to the bust,'..."
Dirty Tricks?
Newsday: Report: GOP operative exposed Spitzer
"The federal probe into Eliot Spitzer's alleged use of high-priced prostitutes took on a partisan tinge Sunday with news that a Republican political operative provided the FBI with salacious details of the former governor's trysts four months before he resigned.
In a Nov. 19 letter, an attorney for Roger Stone, once a consultant to Republican State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, said Spitzer had spent 'tens of thousands' of dollars on prostitutes using prearranged financial transfers...
...If the federal probe was triggered by Stone, 'it provides a different lens to look at all of this,' said Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College. 'Even though it doesn't absolve Spitzer of his behavior and the hypocrisy that that represented, it still calls into question the actions of the federal authorities,'..."
Iraq: Five Years On - 4,000 U.S. Dead, Countless Iraqis Dead, Half A Trillion Spent:
It bears remembering how this nation was taken to war - by a willing accomplice - the corporate media - all too willing to parrot whatever Team Bush said as unchallenged fact.
Democracy Now! - So Wrong for So Long: Greg Mitchell on How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq
"...
AMY GOODMAN: We’re moving into the sixth year of this war. What’s so interesting about your book is that you start from the beginning, and it’s almost like a diary, a journal, of how the foundation was built, the justifications were built, for war.
GREG MITCHELL: Right. Well, it’s really the first five-year history that anyone’s written, I think, and it goes from the run-up to the surge debate last fall. So it really is a chronology. It’s not in calendar form, of course, but it really does cover the whole period, so you do get all the arguments and the debate and the failures before the invasion was launched and then the five years of deceit and shortcomings ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the pre-invasion period and what you felt was most—how the media was most successful in laying the false foundation.
GREG MITCHELL: Right, right. Well, as you said, it really was the mainstream media that, starting early on, relayed the false information that came from the administration—as we know, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among the worst in that—and it not only was putting forth the false information, but also the placement of it, putting it on the front page. So it wasn’t just a matter of carrying the information. So it had tremendous impact on everyone, including Democrats in Congress, who were afraid to speak out..."
Consider that if anyone in Washington had proposed spending half a trillion dollars on any one domestic project, they'd be verbally crucified as a freedom-hating big-government monster that preys on the public's hard earned income. Spend this money on war and occupation, now that's another story. Congress can't write the check fast enough.
Robert Pollin & Heidi Garrett-Peltier: The Wages of Peace
"There is no longer any doubt that the Iraq War is a moral and strategic disaster for the United States. But what has not yet been fully recognized is that it has also been an economic disaster. To date, the government has spent more than $522 billion on the war, with another $70 billion already allocated for 2008. With just the amount of the Iraq budget of 2007, $138 billion, the government could instead have provided Medicaid-level health insurance for all 45 million Americans who are uninsured. What's more, we could have added 30,000 elementary and secondary schoolteachers and built 400 schools in which they could teach. And we could have provided basic home weatherization for about 1.6 million existing homes, reducing energy consumption in these homes by 30 percent.
But the economic consequences of Iraq run even deeper than the squandered opportunities for vital public investments. Spending on Iraq is also a job killer. Every $1 billion spent on a combination of education, healthcare, energy conservation and infrastructure investments creates between 50 and 100 percent more jobs than the same money going to Iraq..."
Energy:
The Times Online (UK) - Toyota Prius proves a gas guzzler in a race with the BMW 520d review: "...we set a challenge: to drive a Prius to Geneva using motorways and town driving. The direct route is 460 miles but we drove almost 100 miles further to give the Prius the advantage of running in urban conditions where its petrol-electric drivetrain comes into its own.
We took along a conventionally powered car – a diesel BMW executive saloon – for comparison and drove both cars an identical number of miles (545)...BMW - 50.3 mp(imperial)g, Prius 48.1 mp(imperial)g..."
AP: Truckers slowing down to save fuel
"Coast-to-coast trucker Lorraine Dawson says fellow drivers used to call her 'Lead Foot Lorraine.' But with diesel fuel around $4 a gallon, she and other big-rig drivers have backed off their accelerators to conserve fuel...
...Dawson said she's cut her speed by five to 10 miles per hour to save money for her company. Many independent owner-operators have slowed even more, she said..."
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Iraq:
Raw Story: NYT: Stolen oil profits keep Iraq's insurgency running
"While many US officials and politicians routinely point to jihadism or Islamofascism as key motivating factors for Iraq's insurgency, a growing number of officers on the ground are blaming economic conditions instead, according to an article slated for the front page of Sunday's New York Times.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reports that 'there are officers in the U.S. military who openly question how much a role jihadism plays in the minds of most people who carry out attacks. As the U.S. occupation has worn on and unemployment has remained high, these officers say the overwhelming motivation of insurgents is the need to earn a paycheck.'
'Ninety percent of the guys out here who do attacks are just people who want to feed their families,' Maj. Kelly Kendrick, operations officer for the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Salahuddin, tells the Times.
Stolen oil profits are helping to keep the insurgency running, according to Sunday's report..."
Free Trade Policy:
David Sirota: Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen Statements On NAFTA
"For the last few weeks, Hillary Clinton has been claiming that she never supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has explicitly claimed 'I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning.'
Clinton's record of speeches over the last decade, of course, tells a much different story. In 1996, she toured Texas to promote NAFTA. In 1998, she visited Davos, Switzerland to thank corporations for mounting 'a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.' In her memoir a few years ago, she touted NAFTA as one of her husband's big successes. And in 2004, she told reporters that 'NAFTA has been good for New York and America.'
And yet, despite all of this evidence, Clinton has worked to confuse voters by insisting that she has always been fighting against NAFTA. As I've written in another post, it is a tactic reminiscent of Joe Lieberman denying he supported the Iraq War in the lead up to his 2006 election contest with Ned Lamont. And it is a tactic that Establishment shills have tried to embolden. As just one example, the esteemed David Gergen has used his television platform to back up Clinton's historical revisionism - and Gergen has been cited by others as 'proof' Clinton's claims are true - despite, of course, her very own words.
But now with the release of Clinton's White House schedules, the veneer has been torn off, and the brazen dishonesty is finally on display for everyone to see.
As Reuters reports:
'Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage...Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a 'NAFTA Briefing drop-by,' in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media. Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program.'
ABC's Jake Tapper digs even deeper, noting that at one of the meetings, Gergen 'served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA.' In other words, Gergen has been on television deliberately lying for the Clinton campaign, as he was actually running these NAFTA-promoting events with Clinton. Tapper goes on to interview people who were in the room..."
Religion In The 2008 Campaign:
Barbara Ehrenreich: Hillary's Nasty Pastorate
"There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.
You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that 'through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as 'The 'Fellowship,' also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer...
...At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.
Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's 'most elite cell,' the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is 'a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.'
Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing 'religious freedom' in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.
What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck..."
One Nation, Under Surveillance:
Slashdot: WikiLeaks: Wikileaks Publishes FBI VoIP Surveillance Docs
"The folks on wikileaks have published a new interesting and shocking report: Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet Service The 88 paged document, which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan was published in January 2003 and describes in detail all needs for surveillance of phone calls made via data services like the internet..."
Raw Story: NYT: Stolen oil profits keep Iraq's insurgency running
"While many US officials and politicians routinely point to jihadism or Islamofascism as key motivating factors for Iraq's insurgency, a growing number of officers on the ground are blaming economic conditions instead, according to an article slated for the front page of Sunday's New York Times.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. reports that 'there are officers in the U.S. military who openly question how much a role jihadism plays in the minds of most people who carry out attacks. As the U.S. occupation has worn on and unemployment has remained high, these officers say the overwhelming motivation of insurgents is the need to earn a paycheck.'
'Ninety percent of the guys out here who do attacks are just people who want to feed their families,' Maj. Kelly Kendrick, operations officer for the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Salahuddin, tells the Times.
Stolen oil profits are helping to keep the insurgency running, according to Sunday's report..."
Free Trade Policy:
David Sirota: Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen Statements On NAFTA
"For the last few weeks, Hillary Clinton has been claiming that she never supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). She has explicitly claimed 'I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning.'
Clinton's record of speeches over the last decade, of course, tells a much different story. In 1996, she toured Texas to promote NAFTA. In 1998, she visited Davos, Switzerland to thank corporations for mounting 'a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.' In her memoir a few years ago, she touted NAFTA as one of her husband's big successes. And in 2004, she told reporters that 'NAFTA has been good for New York and America.'
And yet, despite all of this evidence, Clinton has worked to confuse voters by insisting that she has always been fighting against NAFTA. As I've written in another post, it is a tactic reminiscent of Joe Lieberman denying he supported the Iraq War in the lead up to his 2006 election contest with Ned Lamont. And it is a tactic that Establishment shills have tried to embolden. As just one example, the esteemed David Gergen has used his television platform to back up Clinton's historical revisionism - and Gergen has been cited by others as 'proof' Clinton's claims are true - despite, of course, her very own words.
But now with the release of Clinton's White House schedules, the veneer has been torn off, and the brazen dishonesty is finally on display for everyone to see.
As Reuters reports:
'Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now argues that the North American Free Trade Agreement needs to be renegotiated, but newly released records showed on Wednesday she promoted its passage...Among the thousands of details of daily life for Clinton, there was a November 10, 1993, entry -- a 'NAFTA Briefing drop-by,' in Room 450 of the executive office building next door to the White House, closed to the news media. Approximately 120 people were expected to attend the briefing, and Clinton was to be introduced by White House aide Alexis Herman for brief remarks concluding the program.'
ABC's Jake Tapper digs even deeper, noting that at one of the meetings, Gergen 'served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA.' In other words, Gergen has been on television deliberately lying for the Clinton campaign, as he was actually running these NAFTA-promoting events with Clinton. Tapper goes on to interview people who were in the room..."
Religion In The 2008 Campaign:
Barbara Ehrenreich: Hillary's Nasty Pastorate
"There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.
You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that 'through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as 'The 'Fellowship,' also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer...
...At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.
Clinton fell in with The Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the Senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family's 'most elite cell,' the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia's notoriously racist Senator George Allen. This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, The Family's publicity-averse leader, that he is 'a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.'
Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing 'religious freedom' in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics.
What drew Clinton into the sinister heart of the international right? Maybe it was just a phase in her tormented search for identity, marked by ever-changing hairstyles and names: Hillary Rodham, Mrs. Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and now Hillary Clinton. She reached out to many potential spiritual mentors during her White House days, including New Age guru Marianne Williamson and the liberal rabbi Michael Lerner. But it was the Family association that stuck..."
One Nation, Under Surveillance:
Slashdot: WikiLeaks: Wikileaks Publishes FBI VoIP Surveillance Docs
"The folks on wikileaks have published a new interesting and shocking report: Electronic Surveillance Needs for Carrier-Grade Voice over Packet Service The 88 paged document, which is part of the CALEA Implementation Plan was published in January 2003 and describes in detail all needs for surveillance of phone calls made via data services like the internet..."
Friday, March 21, 2008
On Torture:
BBC: Yemeni describes CIA secret jails
"A Yemeni man has described being held for nearly three years in secret CIA prisons, or 'black sites', around the world and accused the US of torture.
Khaled al-Maqtari told Amnesty International he was held in isolation for more than 28 months without charge or access to any legal representation.
He said he first became a US 'ghost detainee' at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq after being arrested there in 2004.
The US has not acknowledged detaining Mr Maqtari..."
Coincidental Fall Of Gov. Spitzer?
Greg Palast: Eliot’s Mess
"...Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.
Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny 'introductory' interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime,’...
...Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of 'federal pre-emption,' Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws..."
BBC: Yemeni describes CIA secret jails
"A Yemeni man has described being held for nearly three years in secret CIA prisons, or 'black sites', around the world and accused the US of torture.
Khaled al-Maqtari told Amnesty International he was held in isolation for more than 28 months without charge or access to any legal representation.
He said he first became a US 'ghost detainee' at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq after being arrested there in 2004.
The US has not acknowledged detaining Mr Maqtari..."
Coincidental Fall Of Gov. Spitzer?
Greg Palast: Eliot’s Mess
"...Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.
Here’s what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage and its variants including loans with teeny 'introductory' interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called ‘Countrywide’ became America’s top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chunk of these ‘sub-prime,’...
...Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hearty – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of 'federal pre-emption,' Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws..."
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Surveillance Nation:
Robert Scheer: Spitzer's Shame is Wall Street's Gain
"...Frankly, I don't care what any of these politicians do in their personal lives as long as the practice is consensual, and the thousands of dollars that exchanged hands in this case would provide a presumption that the lady in question was indeed a willing partner in this commercial transaction. True, Spitzer is an outrageous hypocrite for having prosecuted others caught in what should not be considered criminal behavior, but since when is hypocrisy on the part of a politician, particularly as to sex, so shocking?
I wouldn't have written this column had I not read The Wall Street Journal's Page 1 news story headlined 'Wall Street Cheers as Its Nemesis Plunges Into Crisis.' The article begins with the crowing statement 'It's Schadenfreude time on Wall Street' and goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated on Wall Street. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.
The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels quite willing to rob decent, hardworking people of their homes. And of course no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex."
Robert Scheer: Spitzer's Shame is Wall Street's Gain
"...Frankly, I don't care what any of these politicians do in their personal lives as long as the practice is consensual, and the thousands of dollars that exchanged hands in this case would provide a presumption that the lady in question was indeed a willing partner in this commercial transaction. True, Spitzer is an outrageous hypocrite for having prosecuted others caught in what should not be considered criminal behavior, but since when is hypocrisy on the part of a politician, particularly as to sex, so shocking?
I wouldn't have written this column had I not read The Wall Street Journal's Page 1 news story headlined 'Wall Street Cheers as Its Nemesis Plunges Into Crisis.' The article begins with the crowing statement 'It's Schadenfreude time on Wall Street' and goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated on Wall Street. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.
The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels quite willing to rob decent, hardworking people of their homes. And of course no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex."
Friday, March 14, 2008
Our (Fleeting) Constitutional Rights:
Raw Story: WSJ: NSA quietly expands domestic spying program, even as Congress balks
'The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed,' The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman reports on Monday page ones. 'But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.'
'According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records,' Gorman adds. 'The NSA receives this so-called 'transactional' data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.'
'The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light,' he continues. 'They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements...'
Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball: Canada Rejects CIA Evidence
"The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.
According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror 'sleeper' operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.
The move, which so far has received no public attention, is the latest sign of potential international fallout from the CIA's recent confirmation that it waterboarded a handful of high-profile Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003..."
Economics:
Naomi Klein: Disowned by the Ownership Society
"Remember the 'ownership society,' fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? 'We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,' Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered 'long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.' Yet in Bush's final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.
Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world. The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market--a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension--they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic..."
The Lies That Took A Fearful Nation To War:
It seems the Pentagon is applying Team Bush's penchant for secrecy: if the facts are inconvenient, just hide what the public paid to have studied.
McClatchy Washington Bureau: Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
"The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won't be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy..."
Raw Story: WSJ: NSA quietly expands domestic spying program, even as Congress balks
'The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed,' The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman reports on Monday page ones. 'But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.'
'According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records,' Gorman adds. 'The NSA receives this so-called 'transactional' data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.'
'The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light,' he continues. 'They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements...'
Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball: Canada Rejects CIA Evidence
"The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.
According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror 'sleeper' operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.
The move, which so far has received no public attention, is the latest sign of potential international fallout from the CIA's recent confirmation that it waterboarded a handful of high-profile Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003..."
Economics:
Naomi Klein: Disowned by the Ownership Society
"Remember the 'ownership society,' fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? 'We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,' Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered 'long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.' Yet in Bush's final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.
Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world. The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market--a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension--they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic..."
The Lies That Took A Fearful Nation To War:
It seems the Pentagon is applying Team Bush's penchant for secrecy: if the facts are inconvenient, just hide what the public paid to have studied.
McClatchy Washington Bureau: Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
"The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won't be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy..."
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Energy:
At least some people in the U.S. are adjusting their behavior to record prices for fuel. Many Americans, though, still do not believe there are any options other than driving in their daily routine. They did not consider proximity to mass-transit connections to work, food stores, or even if their neighborhoods have sidewalks, when they bought their homes.
Reuters: Mass transit use hits 50-year high on pump prices
"The number of Americans hopping buses and grabbing subway straps has climbed to the highest level in half a century as soaring gasoline costs push more commuters to take mass transit..."
The Lies That Took A Nation To War:
Get ready for more politics of fear as November draws closer.
McClatchy Newspapers: Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam, al Qaida
"An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network..."
The Warfare State, For Profit:
Democracy Now - Headlines for March 07, 2008
"...War Contractor KBR Dodges Taxes
The Boston Globe reports
the nation’s top Iraq war contractor— Kellogg Brown & Root—has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in the Cayman Islands. More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq, including over 10,000 Americans, are listed as employees of two shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Despite cheating the government of the tax money, KBR has received $16 billion in contracts in Iraq. Up until last year KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton..."
At least some people in the U.S. are adjusting their behavior to record prices for fuel. Many Americans, though, still do not believe there are any options other than driving in their daily routine. They did not consider proximity to mass-transit connections to work, food stores, or even if their neighborhoods have sidewalks, when they bought their homes.
Reuters: Mass transit use hits 50-year high on pump prices
"The number of Americans hopping buses and grabbing subway straps has climbed to the highest level in half a century as soaring gasoline costs push more commuters to take mass transit..."
The Lies That Took A Nation To War:
Get ready for more politics of fear as November draws closer.
McClatchy Newspapers: Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam, al Qaida
"An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network..."
The Warfare State, For Profit:
Democracy Now - Headlines for March 07, 2008
"...War Contractor KBR Dodges Taxes
The Boston Globe reports
the nation’s top Iraq war contractor— Kellogg Brown & Root—has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in the Cayman Islands. More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq, including over 10,000 Americans, are listed as employees of two shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Despite cheating the government of the tax money, KBR has received $16 billion in contracts in Iraq. Up until last year KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton..."
Monday, March 10, 2008
Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela:
Greg Palast: $300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE
"Here’s the written evidence … and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador...
...Do you believe this?
This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!
That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?
The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to 'terrorists' quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.
What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop..."
Greg Palast: $300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE
"Here’s the written evidence … and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador...
...Do you believe this?
This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!
That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.
So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?
The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to 'terrorists' quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.
What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop..."
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Iraq:
Don't like the result? Just make it sectet. After all, the People don't need to know, they only paid for it...
Washington Post: Officials Lean Toward Keeping Next Iraq Assessment Secret
"A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.
The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said..."
Don't like the result? Just make it sectet. After all, the People don't need to know, they only paid for it...
Washington Post: Officials Lean Toward Keeping Next Iraq Assessment Secret
"A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed this month, according to U.S. intelligence officials. But leaders of the intelligence community have not decided whether to make its key judgments public, a step that caused an uproar when key judgments in an NIE about Iran were released in November.
The classified estimate on Iraq is intended as an update of last summer's assessment, which predicted modest security improvements but an increasingly precarious political situation there, the U.S. officials said..."
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Grandstanding On Democracy, While Undermining Results It Doesn't Like:
Jerusalem Post: Vanity Fair: Bush approved plot to oust Hamas
"US President George W. Bush is said to have approved a covert initiative to overthrow the Hamas government shortly after Hamas won the January 2006 parliamentary election, according to confidential documents obtained by Vanity Fair magazine.
The documents, which have been corroborated by sources at the US State Department and Palestinian officials, reveal that the plan was supposed to be implemented by the State Department.
The report confirms allegations by Hamas and other Palestinians that the US has been supplying Fatah with weapons and money so that its forces could bring down the Hamas government. Some senior Fatah officials have also accused the US of 'meddling' in Palestinian affairs by encouraging Fatah to work toward toppling the Hamas government.
The magazine said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams were entrusted with provoking a Palestinian civil war, in which forces led by Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan - fortified with new weapons supplied at America's behest - would remove the democratically elected, Hamas-led government..."
The Lies That Led A Fearful Nation To War:
Democratic Underground: Not only did Hillary not read the NIE, Condi [Rice] Convinced Clinton to vote YES on Iraq
"Following up on what Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told us earlier this week regarding Hillary Clinton's vote to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, we asked Sen. Clinton today if it was correct that Colin Powell had persuaded her that the resolution could be a vote to avoid war rather than a vote for war.
She replied: 'No, it wasn't Colin Powell. it was Condi Rice. Condi Rice told me specifically when I was still weighing all of the evidence, and I had been to the White House one last time -- I think, if I'm not mistaken, it was Oct. 8 -- and I'd had the whole presentation by the CIA and others and I hadn't asked any questions, I had listened. And I went back to my office, and Condi Rice called me and said, You didn't ask any questions, do you have any questions? I said I only have one: Will you use this authorization to put inspectors back in, so that we can find out whether any of this is true, how much WMD he still has or has reconstituted? She said, Yes, that's what it's intended to do. I think Dick might have gotten confused.'
Monitor: And you had no reason to doubt her?
Clinton: "I did not...the argument of putting inspectors back in, backed up by force -- because Saddam never did anything that didn't have at least the backup threat of force -- was not on its face totally illegitimate. So I was willing to give him the authority to do that, and he misused the authority,'..."
Whistleblower Protection:
AFP: Wikileaks champions whistle blowing after US court triumph
"Wikileaks was championing nameless whistle blowers with renewed vigor Monday after a US judge ruled efforts to shut down the website violated Constitutional rights to free speech.
Wikileaks is striving to be an 'uncensorable' online compendium of 'untraceable' documents that expose wrongdoing but not identities of those providing the information, its creators say in a website posting.
'Wikileaks.org is back,' the posting says, claiming to have more than 1.2 million documents from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
'Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.'
Julius Baer & Co. on February 15 convinced federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco to issue an injunction ordering the website to shut down.
The Swiss bank went after Wikileaks in court after the website posted copies of internal documents indicating the company helped customers launder money illegally through the Cayman Islands..."
The Environment vs. Profit:
XOM's lawyer actually argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that since Exxon did not profit from the spill, they should not be required to pay. A one track mind, this corporation has.
Greg Palast: Exxon suxx. McCain duxx.
"...On the night of March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez was not even supposed to leave harbor. Here’s why. Tankers are not allowed to sail unless unless a spill containment barge is operating nearby. That night, the barge was in dry-dock, locked under ice. Exxon kept that fact hidden, concealing the truth even after the tanker grounded. An Exxon official radioed the emergency crew, “Barge is on its way.” It wasn’t.
Had the barge been in operation, it would have surrounded the leaking ship with rubber skirts - and Paul’s home, and Alaska’s coast, would have been saved. But Exxon couldn’t wait for its oil.
Paul’s gone – buried with Exxon’s promises. But the oil’s still there. Go out to Chenega lands today. At Sleepy Bay, kick over some gravel and it will smell like a gas station.
Tort Tart
What the heck does this have to do with John McCain?
The Senator is what I’d call a ‘Tort Tart.’ Ken Lay’s 'Law Suit Reform' posse was one of the fronts used by a gaggle of corporate lobbyists waging war on your day in court. Their rallying cry is ‘Tort Reform,’ by which they mean they want to take away the God-given right of any American, rich or poor, to sue the bastards who crush your child’s skull through product negligence, make your heart explode with a faulty medical device, siphon off your pension funds, or poison your food supply with spilled oil..."
Jerusalem Post: Vanity Fair: Bush approved plot to oust Hamas
"US President George W. Bush is said to have approved a covert initiative to overthrow the Hamas government shortly after Hamas won the January 2006 parliamentary election, according to confidential documents obtained by Vanity Fair magazine.
The documents, which have been corroborated by sources at the US State Department and Palestinian officials, reveal that the plan was supposed to be implemented by the State Department.
The report confirms allegations by Hamas and other Palestinians that the US has been supplying Fatah with weapons and money so that its forces could bring down the Hamas government. Some senior Fatah officials have also accused the US of 'meddling' in Palestinian affairs by encouraging Fatah to work toward toppling the Hamas government.
The magazine said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams were entrusted with provoking a Palestinian civil war, in which forces led by Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan - fortified with new weapons supplied at America's behest - would remove the democratically elected, Hamas-led government..."
The Lies That Led A Fearful Nation To War:
Democratic Underground: Not only did Hillary not read the NIE, Condi [Rice] Convinced Clinton to vote YES on Iraq
"Following up on what Ambassador Richard Holbrooke told us earlier this week regarding Hillary Clinton's vote to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, we asked Sen. Clinton today if it was correct that Colin Powell had persuaded her that the resolution could be a vote to avoid war rather than a vote for war.
She replied: 'No, it wasn't Colin Powell. it was Condi Rice. Condi Rice told me specifically when I was still weighing all of the evidence, and I had been to the White House one last time -- I think, if I'm not mistaken, it was Oct. 8 -- and I'd had the whole presentation by the CIA and others and I hadn't asked any questions, I had listened. And I went back to my office, and Condi Rice called me and said, You didn't ask any questions, do you have any questions? I said I only have one: Will you use this authorization to put inspectors back in, so that we can find out whether any of this is true, how much WMD he still has or has reconstituted? She said, Yes, that's what it's intended to do. I think Dick might have gotten confused.'
Monitor: And you had no reason to doubt her?
Clinton: "I did not...the argument of putting inspectors back in, backed up by force -- because Saddam never did anything that didn't have at least the backup threat of force -- was not on its face totally illegitimate. So I was willing to give him the authority to do that, and he misused the authority,'..."
Whistleblower Protection:
AFP: Wikileaks champions whistle blowing after US court triumph
"Wikileaks was championing nameless whistle blowers with renewed vigor Monday after a US judge ruled efforts to shut down the website violated Constitutional rights to free speech.
Wikileaks is striving to be an 'uncensorable' online compendium of 'untraceable' documents that expose wrongdoing but not identities of those providing the information, its creators say in a website posting.
'Wikileaks.org is back,' the posting says, claiming to have more than 1.2 million documents from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
'Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.'
Julius Baer & Co. on February 15 convinced federal judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco to issue an injunction ordering the website to shut down.
The Swiss bank went after Wikileaks in court after the website posted copies of internal documents indicating the company helped customers launder money illegally through the Cayman Islands..."
The Environment vs. Profit:
XOM's lawyer actually argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that since Exxon did not profit from the spill, they should not be required to pay. A one track mind, this corporation has.
Greg Palast: Exxon suxx. McCain duxx.
"...On the night of March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez was not even supposed to leave harbor. Here’s why. Tankers are not allowed to sail unless unless a spill containment barge is operating nearby. That night, the barge was in dry-dock, locked under ice. Exxon kept that fact hidden, concealing the truth even after the tanker grounded. An Exxon official radioed the emergency crew, “Barge is on its way.” It wasn’t.
Had the barge been in operation, it would have surrounded the leaking ship with rubber skirts - and Paul’s home, and Alaska’s coast, would have been saved. But Exxon couldn’t wait for its oil.
Paul’s gone – buried with Exxon’s promises. But the oil’s still there. Go out to Chenega lands today. At Sleepy Bay, kick over some gravel and it will smell like a gas station.
Tort Tart
What the heck does this have to do with John McCain?
The Senator is what I’d call a ‘Tort Tart.’ Ken Lay’s 'Law Suit Reform' posse was one of the fronts used by a gaggle of corporate lobbyists waging war on your day in court. Their rallying cry is ‘Tort Reform,’ by which they mean they want to take away the God-given right of any American, rich or poor, to sue the bastards who crush your child’s skull through product negligence, make your heart explode with a faulty medical device, siphon off your pension funds, or poison your food supply with spilled oil..."
Monday, March 03, 2008
The So-Called War On Terror:
Democracy Now! - The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
"One week after President Bush rejected charges the war in Iraq has hurt the US economy, a new book puts a conservative estimate of the war’s cost at $3 trillion so far. In their first national broadcast interview upon their book’s publication, Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes of Harvard University say the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war—and even kept a second set of records hidden from the American public..."
...and its roots in the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran. It was about then, and it is still about oil today.
Democracy Now! - Stephen Kinzer on the U.S.-Iranian Relations, the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran and the Roots of Middle East Terror
"As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Iraq for a historic meeting with Iraqi leaders, we turn to former New York foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer, author of 'All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror,'..."
Underreported News:
CanWest News Service: Canada, U.S. agree to share troops in civil emergencies
"Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.
Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas..."
Democracy Now! - The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
"One week after President Bush rejected charges the war in Iraq has hurt the US economy, a new book puts a conservative estimate of the war’s cost at $3 trillion so far. In their first national broadcast interview upon their book’s publication, Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes of Harvard University say the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war—and even kept a second set of records hidden from the American public..."
...and its roots in the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran. It was about then, and it is still about oil today.
Democracy Now! - Stephen Kinzer on the U.S.-Iranian Relations, the 1953 CIA Coup in Iran and the Roots of Middle East Terror
"As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits Iraq for a historic meeting with Iraqi leaders, we turn to former New York foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer, author of 'All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup And The Roots of Middle East Terror,'..."
Underreported News:
CanWest News Service: Canada, U.S. agree to share troops in civil emergencies
"Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.
Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas..."
