Will the US declare China as a “Currency Manipulator”

The growing danger of trade war

Peter Symonds, 31 March 2010

Demands for trade war measures against China are mounting in Washington as the April 15 deadline approaches for the US Treasury Department to submit its semi-annual report to Congress on currency matters. The key issue is whether to declare China a “currency manipulator” and thus open the way for retaliatory US penalties.

At a US House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week, economist Fred Bergsten claimed that the Chinese yuan was undervalued by 40 percent against the US dollar, causing large job losses in the US and a burgeoning trade deficit. He called on the Obama administration to brand China a currency manipulator as the first step toward enlisting the support of other powers to strong-arm Beijing, via the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, into revaluing its currency.

Bergsten’s heated language is itself a symptom of rising trade war tensions. Just as countries invariably go to war in the name of “peace,” so Bergsten justified US trade penalties US against China as “anti-protectionist”—a response to China’s “blatant form of protectionism” in undervaluing the yuan. Bergsten’s “multilateral” approach, appealing for European support in particular, seeks to ensure “maximum impact” and minimise Beijing’s ability to retaliate against Washington.

Europe, however, is mired in its own currency crisis. Conflict between European governments over an aid package to heavily indebted Greece have exposed fissures and called into question the future of the unified currency. The resulting fall in the value of the euro has assisted exporters, making European backing for any US push against China less likely. EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht told the Financial Times: “At this moment, it is less of a political issue in Europe.”

A US call for measures against China would place countries such as Japan and Australia in an invidious position. Many Asian-Pacific countries with longstanding strategic ties to the US depend heavily on exports to China to keep their economies afloat. Joining Washington in demanding the revaluation of the yuan risks economic retaliation by Beijing. Not doing so risks a breach with the US.

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This slide toward trade and currency wars, militarism, neo-colonial wars and broader global conflagration is the inevitable product of the fundamental, irresolvable contradiction of the outmoded capitalist system—that between global economy and the division of the world into nation states. The only alternative is the socialist reorganisation of the world by the international working class so that its vast resources can be mobilised to meet the pressing social needs of humanity, rather than the private profits of a wealthy few.

MORE:  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m31.shtml

Banks named as “co-conspirators” in municipal bid-rigging

By Andre Damon, 31 March 2010

As states and cities throughout the United States slash social spending to pay their debts, major Wall Street firms have been accused of conspiring to drive up prices on loans to local governments.

Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and UBS, together with over a dozen other financial companies, colluded to drive up interest rates on bonds to states and cities, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by the State of Mississippi, together with other local governments.

The group alleges that these financial companies assigned negotiated bids amongst themselves to limit competition and ensure that cities, states, and small foundations paid them high interest rates on municipal bonds.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero refused a request to block the lawsuit, which was re-filed with more details and fewer defendants, after being tossed out last year. The case “is replete with detailed allegations regarding the acts in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the judge said in allowing the case to go forward.

The accusation by the State of Mississippi overlaps with a criminal investigation into CDR Financial Products Inc., a financial advisor for local governments. Charges were filed against the firm alleging that it took kickbacks from major banks in exchange for advising local governments to do business with them. The alleged payments, ranging from $4,500 to $475,000, were paid out between 2001 and 2005.

MORE:  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/bidr-m31.shtml

Whistleblower: “Our President Is Deceiving the American Public”

“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public”: Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Democracy Now:

We are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

DANIEL ELLSBERG: President Obama is taking every symbolic step he can to nominate this as Obama’s war, just as the Vietnam War became Nixon’s war in November of 1969, just about the time I was copying the Pentagon Papers in hopes of forestalling that, and Johnson made Vietnam his war, Johnson’s war, and McNamara’s war in June of 1965, when I was working for him, when he decided to escalate, an open-ended escalation there, following the previous commitment of Eisenhower and of Kennedy that made it an open-ended war, just as Obama is doing there now, and, I think, with very much the same results in the end, tragic results, especially for the country involved and for the Americans, and with probably the same kinds of pressures on him, actually, as Johnson faced.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw you speak, Dan Ellsberg, here in New York after a production of Top Secret, a very interesting play about not the New York Times and the Pentagon Papers—they were the first to begin to print them but were then enjoined by the Nixon government, and then the Washington Post started to print the Pentagon Papers, and that’s what this was about. But afterwards, you talked about the US ambassador to Afghanistan and how important what Ambassador Eikenberry had to say in these memos and cables that were made public. Can you talk about those?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yeah. Well, for years now, really since we set out to go into Iraq on much the same kinds of lies in 2002 that sent us into Vietnam when I was in the Pentagon, since then, I’ve been saying to officials in the government, “Don’t do what I did. Do what I wish I had done in ’63 or ’64, before we had entered the war, before the bombs had fallen. Don’t wait, as I did, ’til we were in the war and the war was essentially unstoppable, before telling the truth about the hopelessness, understood within the government, and the impossibility—the unlikelihood of any kind of victory there. But do it now.”

Actually, almost as I—in recent times, that call has been answered. I don’t know whether it was direct or not, but some government official who is now the most dangerous man in America in the eyes of President Obama, I’m sure—I’m sure there’s a Plumbers operation going on right now to find out who leaked the cables, the secret cables, of our ambassador in Kabul, Lieutenant General, retired, Karl Eikenberry, who had been in charge in Afghanistan, and first in charge of training Afghan troops and then in charge of all of our operations in Afghanistan, before McChrystal, and is now our accredited ambassador to Karzai, the head of the so-called government that we’re supporting there now.

And in those cables, secret cables, which someone leaked in January, after the President had announced his decision, I’m sorry to say—I wish he had done what I most called for, and that is, send the cables, the truth that he was telling, in before that decision had been announced. Still, the decision hasn’t been fully implemented, especially by Congress, in terms of appropriation. And they would do well to read what it is they’re appropriating money for.

Eikenberry’s cables now, at this stage, read like a summary of the Pentagon Papers of Afghanistan. And that’s the first installment of papers that we need right now. Just change the place names from “Saigon” to “Kabul” and the Afghan national forces serving as the surrogate of our mercenary ARVN of Vietnam, and they read almost exactly the same. He’s describing the President, Karzai, to whom he’s accredited and who he just visited with President Obama. And Karzai has presumably read Eikenberry’s assessment of him as—that he is not an adequate strategic partner for the United States, and for reasons of corruption and inefficiency.

Allegedly, we hear that Obama’s reason for going seventeen hours over to Afghanistan was to convey in person our desire that he clean up his government. I’m really reminded of when Kennedy and Johnson decided to enlist our Mafia in an effort to get Castro. I don’t think they spent time telling the Mafia, “By the way, it’ll be helpful to us, if you’re going to be our partner, to clean up your act, get out of the drug business.” In Karzai’s government, as in the Mafia, corruption are us, drugs are us. Corruption is his government. That’s his constituency, his source of income. There is no chance whatever that he’ll, for instance, root out his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, from Kandahar, which is our next base of operations, despite the fact that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says no success is possible in Kandahar while corruption is still the heart of that, while drug dealing is the heart of that, so long as Wali, the President’s, Karzai’s brother, is in charge there.

It’s obviously—it’s not just a symbolism. It’s the fact that we have a government there that has no prospect of achieving legitimacy in the eyes of the people we’re supposedly appealing to in Afghanistan. And that’s symbolic of the whole effort. There is no prospect of any kind of success in Afghanistan, any more than the Soviets achieved in their ten years there, just as in Vietnam we really had no realistic prospect of more success than the French. But countries find it very hard to learn from the failures of other countries.

MORE: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/30/our_president_is_deceiving_the_american

Globalization Marches On

Growing popular outrage has not challenged corporate power.

By Noam Chomsky, March 26, 2010

Shifts in global power, ongoing or potential, are a lively topic among policy makers and observers. One question is whether (or when) China will displace the United States as the dominant global player, perhaps along with India.

Such a shift would return the global system to something like it was before the European conquests. Economic growth in China and India has been rapid, and because they rejected the West’s policies of financial deregulation, they survived the recession better than most. Nonetheless, questions arise.

One standard measure of social health is the U.N. Human Development Index. As of 2008, India ranks 134th, slightly above Cambodia and below Laos and Tajikistan, about where it has been for many years. China ranks 92nd—tied with Belize, a bit above Jordan, below the Dominican Republic and Iran.

India and China also have very high inequality, so more than a billion of their inhabitants fall far lower on the scale.

Another concern is the U.S. debt. Some fear it places the U.S. in thrall to China. But apart from a brief interlude ending in December, Japan has long been the biggest international holder of U.S. government debt. Creditor leverage, furthermore, is overrated.

In one dimension—military power—the United States stands alone. And Obama is setting new records with his 2011 military budget. Almost half the U.S. deficit is due to military spending, which is untouchable in the political system.

When considering the U.S. economy’s other sectors, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and other economists warn that we should beware of “deficit fetishism.” A deficit is a stimulus to recovery, and it can be overcome with a growing economy, as after World War II, when the deficit was far worse.

And the deficit is expected to grow, largely because of the hopelessly inefficient privatized health care system—also virtually untouchable, thanks to business’s ability to overpower the public will.

However, the framework of these discussions is misleading. The global system is not only an interaction among states, each pursuing some “national interest” abstracted from distribution of domestic power. That has long been understood.

Adam Smith concluded that the “principal architects” of policy in England were “merchants and manufacturers,” who ensured that their own interests are “most peculiarly attended to,” however “grievous” the effects on others, including the people of England.

Smith’s maxim still holds, though today the “principal architects” are multinational corporations and particularly the financial institutions whose share in the economy has exploded since the 1970s.

In the United States we have recently seen a dramatic illustration of the power of the financial institutions. In the last presidential election they provided the core of President Obama’s funding.

Naturally they expected to be rewarded. And they were—with the TARP bailouts, and a great deal more. Take Goldman Sachs, the top dog in both the economy and the political system. The firm made a mint by selling mortgage-backed securities and more complex financial instruments.

Aware of the flimsiness of the packages they were peddling, the firm also took out bets with the insurance giant American International Group (AIG) that the offerings would fail. When the financial system collapsed, AIG went down with it.

Goldman’s architects of policy not only parlayed a bailout for Goldman itself but also arranged for taxpayers to save AIG from bankruptcy, thus rescuing Goldman.

Now Goldman is making record profits and paying out fat bonuses. It, and a handful of other banks, are bigger and more powerful than ever. The public is furious. People can see that the banks that were primary agents of the crisis are making out like bandits, while the population that rescued them is facing an official unemployment rate of nearly 10 percent, as of February. The rate rises to nearly 17 percent when all Americans who wish to be fully employed are counted.

MORE:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5697/

Newborn With Heart Defect Is Denied Insurance Coverage

Published on Friday, March 26, 2010 by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)by Jan Jarvis

At birth, Houston Tracy let out a single loud cry before his father cut the cord and handed him to a nurse.

Instantly, Doug Tracy knew something was wrong with his son.

“He wasn’t turning pink fast enough,” Tracy said. “When they listened to his chest, they realized he had an issue.”

That turned out to be d-transposition of the great arteries, a defect in which the two major vessels that carry blood away from the heart are reversed. The condition causes babies to turn blue.

Surgery would correct it, but within days of Houston’s birth March 15, Tracy learned that his application for health insurance to cover his son had been denied. The reason: a pre-existing condition.

“How can he have a pre-existing condition if the baby didn’t exist until now?” Tracy asked.

New federal legislation that will prevent insurance companies from denying children coverage based on a pre-existing condition comes too late for the Tracys. The legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama this week, won’t go into effect until September.

MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/26-0

Expanding Drilling Without Holding Big Oil Accountable on Royalties Is Bad Deal for Taxpayers

Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program

WASHINGTON – March 31 – The Obama administration should not lift the moratorium on offshore drilling that has been in place since 1982. Offshore drilling does not solve our nation’s energy needs and is a dangerous distraction from real solutions.

Making a bad situation worse, President Barack Obama’s plan to pursue a broad expansion of offshore drilling while failing to hold Big Oil accountable on royalty reform will leave taxpayers shortchanged by billions of dollars.

This would have been bad energy policy in the 1980s; it is intolerable in 2010.

In his first budget, Obama proposed a new excise tax on offshore oil and gas drilling that would have raised $6 billion over 10 years, but Congress never approved it. Obama dropped the idea from his 2011 budget, unveiled in February.

The oil industry has long avoided royalty payments to the U.S. Treasury for pumping oil, a bureaucratic oversight that will save Big Oil from paying billions of dollars it owes taxpayers in foregone revenue over the life of the leases.

Allowing new oil and gas drilling to proceed without holding current leases accountable constitutes a massive taxpayer rip-off.

Environmentally, Obama’s proposal fails to address the country’s energy needs and realities. Increasing oil and gas drilling poses risks to coastal communities and ecosystems while encouraging more fossil fuel burning – undercutting the administration’s goal of addressing climate change.

MORE:  http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/03/31-17

Humans Are Too Stupid to Prevent Climate Change

Published on Monday, March 29, 2010 by The Guardian/UKJames Lovelock: Humans Are Too Stupid to Prevent Climate Change

In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action

by Leo Hickman

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists’ emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/29-4

Obama’s Peace Effort Is Doomed Because Israel Loses Nothing If It Fails

Published on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 by TomDispatch.comIsrael Won’t Change Unless the Status Quo Has a Downside

by Tony Karon

Uncomfortable at the spectacle of the Obama administration in an open confrontation with the Israeli government, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman — who represents the interests of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Capitol Hill as faithfully as he does those of the health insurance industry — called for a halt. “Let’s cut the family fighting, the family feud,” he said. “It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies.”

The idea that the U.S. and Israel are “family” with identical national interests is a convenient fiction that Lieberman and his fellow Israel partisans have worked relentlessly to promote — and enforce — in Washington over the past two decades. If the bonds are indeed familial, however, last week’s showdown between Washington and the Netanyahu government may be counted as one of those feuds in which truths are uttered in the heat of the moment that call into question the fundamental terms of the relationship.  Such truths are never easily swept under the rug once the dispute is settled.  The immediate rupture, that is, precludes a simple return to the status quo ante; instead, a renegotiation of the terms of the relationship somehow ends up on the agenda.

Sure, the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are now working feverishly to find a formula that will allow them to move on from a contretemps that began when the Israelis ambushed Vice President Joe Biden, announcing plans to build 1,600 new housing units for settlers in occupied East Jerusalem.  He was, of course, in Israel to promote the Obama administration’s failing efforts to rehabilitate negotiations toward a two-state peace agreement, a goal regularly spurned by Israel’s continued construction on land occupied in 1967.

Once again, as when Obama demanded a complete settlement freeze from the Netanyahu government in 2009, the Israelis will fend off any demand that they completely reverse their latest construction plans.  Instead, they will shamelessly offer to continue their settlement activity on a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” basis, professing rhetorical support for a two-state solution to placate the Americans, even as they systematically erode its prospects on the ground.

There is, as former Secretary of State James Baker has noted, no shortage of chutzpah in this Israeli government. “United States taxpayers are giving Israel roughly $3 billion each year, which amounts to something like $1,000 for every Israeli citizen, at a time when our own economy is in bad shape and a lot of Americans would appreciate that kind of helping hand from their own government,” Baker said in a recent interview. “Given that fact, it is not unreasonable to ask the Israeli leadership to respect U.S. policy on settlements.”

MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/24

“Why Do They Want to Do Us Harm?”

“Maybe the callousness ‘they’ display toward life is a reflection of the callousness we displayed when we built the “Jihad” movement to repel the Soviet invaders of that land during the 1980s.”

A few weeks after the “Christmas Day” bomber tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane, the 89-year-old grand dame of the White House Press corps, Helen Thomas, repeatedly asked U.S. homeland security officials to explain why “they want to do us harm.” After listening to a few minutes of boilerplate rhetoric about al Qaeda, she said, “But you haven’t explained why.”

We agreed, and set out to provide you with some real answers. The result is In These Times‘ current cover story, “Why Do They Want to Do Us Harm?”, which collects short pieces by Andrew Bacevich, Jodie Evans, Salim Muwakkil and Noam Chomsky, among many others.

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March 29, 2010

Why Do They Want to Do Us Harm? [Part One]

Helen Thomas asked the question. The White House stonewalled. Here are the answers.

By In These Times Contributors

On January 8, President Barack Obama held a press conference at which he said: “It is clear that al Qaeda increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations … to do their bidding. … And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death … while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress … That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.”

Obama then turned the floor over to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and terrorism expert John Brennan, former chairman of the National Counterterrorism Center, who spoke and took questions from the assembled reporters, including Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old grand dame of the White House press corps. The following exchange ensued:

Helen Thomas: What is really lacking always for us, is, you don’t give the motivation of why they want to do us harm.

Janet Napolitano: The screening at Schiphol Airport was done by Dutch authorities, and they did the screening that was described to you earlier this afternoon. The hand luggage was screened, the passport was checked, he went through a magnetometer, but it was done by Dutch authorities.

HT: And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out of ‘why’?

John Brennan: Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and slaughter of innocents. What they have done over the past decade and a half, two decades, is to attract individuals like Mr. [Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam and has corrupted the concept of Islam so that they are able to attract these kinds of individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.

HT: Are you saying that it is because of religion?

JB: I am saying that it is because of an al Qaeda organization that uses the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.

HT: Why?

JB: This is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.

HT: But you haven’t explained why.

Her question went unanswered, and another reporter spoke up, returning to the safe subject of airport screening procedures.

Since the Obama White House, like the Bush White House before it, was unable, or unwilling, to address Thomas’ question, In These Times asked a number of prominent activists, intellectuals and foreign policy experts “why they want to do us harm.” We present their answers on the following pages.

In These Times also put that question to Helen Thomas. Here is what she said:

Why do you think “they want to do us harm?”

Because of Western colonialization. The United States has no right to be in their countries.

Why do you think the administration is so loath to answer this question?

Because we invaded Iraq under lies. It’s also difficult for them to justify our intrusion in Afghanistan, which is causing death all around—including for us. There’s no real logic in going halfway around the world to kill people because we don’t like their government.

What has the response been from your colleagues in the White House press corps to your persistence?

Silence.

What do you think people can do to push our leaders to better answer this question?

People should protest wars that are not explained, and where no real reason is given for being in foreign countries. They should seek the truth and demand that the government stop using fear to repute innocent people.

Will you ask this question again?

Of course. The question is: Will I get an answer?

—In These Times Editor Joel Bleifuss

MORE: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5711/

Socialism and Obama – Refresher Course

There are many “kinds of”, “types” or “branches” of all political parties. Same holds true for Socialism. This list contains a small portion of information you can find covering Socialism

Palin enthusiastically practices socialism, Alaska-style: http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/581484.html

Obama’s No Socialist. I Should Know: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/13/AR2009031301899.html

Is Obama A Socialist? Not if You Ask One: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28645

Why Obama Is Not A Socialist: http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-obama-not-t128791/index.html

Obama is not a socialist: http://www.thedmonline.com/obama-is-not-a-socialist-1.899275

JUST A REMINDER: Socialist Says Barack Obama is Not One of Them http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/09/09/top-u-s-socialist-says-barack-obama-is-not-one-of-them/

Socialist Politics 101 – Socialist Action: http://www.socialistaction.org/kit.htm

What Socialists Stand For – Vote Socialist Action: http://votesocialistaction.wordpress.com/what-socialists-stand-for/

What Socialism looks like: http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/06/what_socialism_looks_like.php

The Nation and “socialism”: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/pers-a02.shtml

What is Democratic Socialism (1): http://www.ydsusa.org/whatisds.html

What is Democratic Socialism (2): http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/widemsoc.pdf

What is socialism: http://www.isreview.org/issues/65/feat-socialism.shtml

Towards Freedom: The Theory and Practice of Democratic Socialism: http://www.ydsusa.org/toward_ds.html

The S. Word, Socialism, Comes Out of the Closet: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/130365/

Socialist Party USA: http://socialistparty-usa.org/

History of Socialism in the U.S.A.: http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/758/

Socialism is not Communism: http://www.dsausa.org/dl/Winter_2009.pdf

Pope Benedict XVI’s Easter Message: “Don’t be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”

More:

By Davis Fleetwood, 3-31-10

This Easter Sunday, the group that brought you the inquisition and the crusades (imagine how those little pageants would have played out in a nuclear era) gives you a man who presided over- and gave his blessing to- decades of institutionally approved rape and pedophilia: Pope Benedict. Benny will cap off eight days of religious services and deliver his annual Easter Message in St. Peter’s Square. The address will be translated into 60 languages and heard around the world.

http://nocureforthat.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/pope-benedict-xvi%E2%80%99s-easter-message-%E2%80%9Cdon%E2%80%99t-be-intimidated-by-the-petty-gossip-of-dominant-opinion-%E2%80%9D/

There’s already a law on the books that holds Wall Street CEOs and executives to account — now it needs to be enforced

Don’t Wait for Reform

Robert B. Reich, March 29, 2010

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson admitted in his recent memoir that Lehman Brothers’ balance sheet was bogus before the bank collapsed in 2008. Nonetheless, Lehman paid out $5.2 billion in bonuses in 2006 and $5.7 billion in 2007. Lehman’s investors lost a fortune, of course. But Paulson doesn’t extend his logic to its natural conclusion. Lehman’s practices weren’t all that different from those of every other big bank on Wall Street. Lehman was just the first to go under, causing a financial run that led George W. Bush to warn “this sucker could go down” unless the federal government came up with hundreds of billions to bail out the remaining banks. It should be obvious that the bailouts concealed the other banks’ bogus balance sheets — thereby covering their assets and their asses.

We now know, for example, that Goldman Sachs along with a few other banks helped Greece hide its public debt and then placed financial bets that Greece would default, using “credit-default swaps” to avoid risking its own capital. It’s the same tactic Goldman used for (and against) American International Group (AIG): Hide the ball, and then bet against the ball and fob off the risk to investors and taxpayers — using derivatives such as credit-default swaps to make sure no evidence of the risky tactics appears on the balance sheets. Even today, no one knows the fair value of the complex derivatives underlying these and related maneuvers, which is exactly the point. One can only wonder how many other countries, and companies, may blow up in the future.

Now that bonuses are flowing again, the Street is awash in apologies. Morgan Stanley’s John Mack says he regrets his firm’s role in the credit crisis and is “especially sorry for what’s happened to shareholders.” Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein admits the firm “participated in things that were clearly wrong and we have reason to regret.” John Reed, former co-chief executive officer of Citigroup, apologizes to “people I love and care about” who lost everything as a result of the creation of the financial behemoth a decade ago.

Apologies are cheap. But the banks fear genuine financial reform would cost them a bundle if it stopped the use of off-balance-sheet derivatives that have allowed the banks to place big bets with little capital. So even as Wall Street sheds crocodile tears about the terrible things it’s done, it is throwing money at Capitol Hill to thwart reforms that would prevent it from continuing to do terrible things.

More:  http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=dont_wait_for_reform

The High Cost of Conservative Intellectual Bankruptcy

You don’t have to like David Frum to think his firing is bad news.

Mark Schmitt, March 29, 2010

The entire conservative movement seems to have chosen to sit this round out to avoid the risk of becoming complicit in governance, as if waiting for another chance at the total dominance they enjoyed during the Bush years. It’s a kind of willful intellectual bankruptcy, and it’s not likely to end well, for their movement or for American democracy.

More:  http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_high_cost_of_conservative_intellectual_bankruptcy

Right-wing populist fads catch our attention — but they burn out quickly

The End of the Tea Party

Mark Schmitt, February 22, 2010

As the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) overtook Washington this past week, the cheering for Dick Cheney, the sessions promoting “nullification” (the concept that states can opt out of federal laws, last heard from John C. Calhoun in the 1830s), and the angry rants about ACORN and homosexuality were a reminder that the idea that there is a “conservatism” that is measured, responsible, decent, and worthy of the word is a bit of a myth. As the historian Kevin Mattson showed in his 2008 book, Rebels All!, modern conservatism even in the era when William F. Buckley was founding National Review drew much of its energy from anger, mockery, and misinformation. This year the “tea party” movement has stirred up the old conservatives of CPAC (now in its 38th year) and given them a new confidence and passion.

The tea-party strain that increasingly dominates the Republican Party represents the latest wave of right-wing populism to sweep the country — or, rather, the media. There were 200 journalists covering the 600 people who attended Sarah Palin’s speech at the tea-party convention in Nashville. The “dean of the Washington press corps,” David Broder, returned to declare that Palin’s “populism” and “common-sense solutions” would “fit not just the wishes of the immediate audience but the mood of a significant slice of the broader electorate.”

But we’ve been here before. In the mid-1990s, it was Newt Gingrich’s revolution. Gingrich was 1995′s Time “Man of the Year,” and he and his movement terrified progressives and transfixed the media for most of it. It’s hard to remember that period, though, because after just a few months, after a government shutdown and a crippling snowstorm in D.C., it was over. The Gingrich Republicans still controlled Congress, but they no longer had the ability to set the agenda, and soon they were negotiating with President Bill Clinton rather than giving him ultimatums.

Before the Gingrich revolution, there was Pat Buchanan’s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, there was George Wallace blasting through primaries north and south in 1968, there was Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and before that there was Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who, on being relieved of his command for insubordination in 1950 by President Harry Truman, was briefly a hero of the emerging right and considered a likely presidential candidate in 1952.

Since Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” this ever-recurring force has been thoroughly examined by historians and sociologists. But what really binds these episodes together is their transience. McCarthy had much of Washington intimidated, until one day he was just a sorry alcoholic with no sense of decency. Gingrich boasted that after his revolution, Medicare would “wither on the vine”; instead, it was his movement that withered. What brings these movements to an end deserves as much study as what gets them started.

Many progressives are as transfixed by the tea-party movement as Broder, imagining it is the central reactionary force we will be facing through the midterm elections, the 2012 presidential campaign, and beyond. After perhaps underestimating its oppositional force, based on its first soggy protests attended by a few dozen oddballs last May, they now overestimate it. Some see in the inchoate populist anger an opportunity to redirect those feelings — if you’re mad about “bailouts,” as tea partiers say they are, you should be mad at Goldman Sachs, not the government, we reason. The rise of the tea parties has left many progressives frustrated, not least because Barack Obama’s cool and distinctly non-populist view of the world doesn’t seem to match the tea-party mood, which calls for a hot response, one that names enemies and takes them on.

But the most reliable lesson of recent American politics is that movements dependent on that level of heat eventually — or, actually, quite quickly — burn themselves out. The tea-party movement cannot be sustained at the level of anger that’s currently fueling it. It may leave a permanent impact on the Republican Party, giving it some new faces and new language, and most important, allowing the party to divorce itself from the legacy of that squishy moderate, George W. Bush. But regardless of the economic times or the political mood, hot populism of both the left and right varieties has never had a very long run.

More: http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_end_of_the_tea_party

‘Christian Warriors’: Who Are The Hutaree Militia And Where Did They Come From?

By Chip Berlet
March 31, 2010

Christian Soldiers of the Apocalypse have been running around the woods of Michigan planning attacks on federal law enforcement in their war against the antichrist. How does the Hutaree Militia fit into the history of American militias and conspiracy theorists? 

On monday, the nine members of the Hutaree Militia were charged with, among other things, ‘seditious conspiracy,’ which carries a maximum of a life imprisonment if convicted. The incident has raised concerns over domestic terrorism and left many confused about Christian apocalyptic belief, which requires some basic history to sort out. 

The Hutaree [hoo-TAR-ee]—which means “Christian warrior” in the group’s secret language—were preparing “for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.” They believed that “one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. All Christians must know this and prepare, just as Christ commanded.” And they obliged by forming a citizens’ militia underground cell and arming themselves. Their plans, according federal officials, began in August 2008.

In order to explain why the Hutaree militia was arming itself to battle the Antichrist and federal law enforcement we need to explore the intersection of Christian fundamentalist apocalypticism with citizen militias, the Patriot Movement, and right-wing populism.

Something old and something new (world order)

Conspiracy theories date back many centuries, with a major outbreak in the late 1790s of plots by Freemasons to smash both church and state. These plots were rewritten in the latter part of the 1800s to target Catholics; then by a sector of the Populists who saw the perpetrators as a giant octopus of plutocrats and bankers; and again in the early 1900s to scapegoat Jews. Talk radio pioneer Father Coughlin railed against the ‘banksters’ and Jews working behind the scenes in the Roosevelt Administration.

Since the early 1990s a sector of the political right in the United States has embraced a specific set of conspiracy theories revolving around government plans to impose tyranny through the United Nations or some such international body. These conspiracy theorists, egged on by groups like the John Birch Society, claimed that George H.W. Bush was planning a New World Order before attacking the Clinton Administration for political assassinations and drug running. The storyline morphed in recent years into fears that the government of the United States planned to destroy national sovereignty by merging with Mexico and Canada to form a North American Union. That theory first surfaced among right-wing opponents of President George W. Bush. Along the way, right-wing media demagogues and Republican Party activists and elected officials fanned the flames.

Now as the Barack Obama Administration enters its second year these conspiracy theories have led to aggression and violence and an alleged domestic terrorist plot. Why is anyone surprised? The widespread public dualist demonization of scapegoated targets has a sordid and violent history. It has happened here. Some fundamentalist Christians portray the government as in league with the Satanic Antichrist in the prophetic End Times.

More: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/2413/

In the midst of the worst crisis to hit Roman Catholicism in centuries, it is clear that the all-male rule of the Church has failed

An Unholy Holy Week: Is the All-Male Rule of the Roman Catholic Church Self-Destructing?

By Anne Eggebroten
March 31, 2010

This week is unprecedented in the two-thousand-year history of the Christian church. Instead of focusing on the last week of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, Christians are listening to horrific accounts of priestly sexual abuse of children and wondering whether Pope Benedict XVI will take decisive action to cleanse the church.Probably he will not. After all, he will be 83 years old on April 16, and he just doesn’t get it. His focus has been purity of doctrine, not the purity of those who say Mass and administer the church.

In the US, he has approved an on-going investigation of nuns whose social activism ranges from anti-war activity to challenging the Roman Catholic ban on contraception, married priests, women priests, and acceptance of same-sex relationships. But there’s no investigation of the reasons why widespread sexual activity by priests persists, whether it be child sexual abuse, affairs with parishioners, or “marriages” surrounded by a conspiracy of silence.

In fact, the all-male rule of the Roman Catholic Church is self-destructing. Ordained men from priests to the Pope are proving that it wasn’t a good idea to leave church governance to an old boys’ network. They have been focused on forgiving each other and covering up crimes “to avoid scandal”—that is, to protect each other, their power, and the church’s wealth.

More:http://religiondispatches.org/archive/religionandtheology/2409/an_unholy_holy_week%3A_is_the_all-male_rule_of_the_roman_catholic_church_self-destructing/

The Left’s needed response to the Texas curriculum

By: Marc Lamont Hill, 3-30-10

http://theloop21.com/news/teaching-the-right

Over the past two months, as the nation debated the merits of health insurance reform and troop escalation, another major political movement quietly slipped by the American public virtually unnoticed. In Texas, the uber-conservative State Board of Education has tentatively endorsed a set of curriculum reforms that will have a devastating impact on the entire nation.

Under the guise of providing “ideological balance” to the Texas curriculum, the school board has recommended a sweeping set of changes that will strongly tilt the district’s curriculum toward a far Right ideology. Among the board’s proposed changes: eliminating figures like Cesar Chavez, Edward Kennedy, and even Thomas Jefferson; replacing the word “capitalism” with “free enterprise system,” implying that there wasn’t a racial dimension to the internment of 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and emphasizing the Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers.

Scared yet? It gets worse.

Because of Texas’ enormous $22 billion educational endowment, which it uses to purchase nearly 50 million textbooks per year, the state holds considerable sway with the handful of publishers that service U.S. school districts. As a result, the decisions made by the highly partisan board will radically reshape the content of textbooks not only in Texas, but around the nation.

To be fair, school textbooks have never been apolitical or neutral. Like all aspects of schooling, they always reflect and reinforce a particular agenda, worldview, and ideology. This is not only because of political machinery, but because knowledge itself is under constant debate, reexamination, and revision. What counts as a “fact” today may be disproven and discarded next year. As a result, we must always make tough decisions about the people, events, and ideas that will be included or excluded within our canons of knowledge. This unavoidable subjectivity, however, cannot be used as an excuse for installing arbitrary procedures that only serve to reinforce the interests of dominant political groups.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening in Texas.

Instead of assembling experts who make informed decisions on relevant issues, the Texas school board is primarily comprised of random ideologues whose primary qualification is being conservative. Of the fifteen current board members, ten are Republican. Seven of the ten identify as extremely conservative. The board is comprised of multiple attorneys, a dentist, a newspaper publisher, and several other people who are perfectly intelligent but thoroughly unqualified to be the arbiters of historical, scientific, or social knowledge for an entire nation.

This is not to say that everyday citizens shouldn’t be on local school boards. On the contrary, public education works best when private citizens articulate their vision and exercise their power in full public view. It should not, however, be the job of a school board to decide the content of textbooks. For instance, on what credible grounds is the local butcher qualified to say what our students need to know about the origins of human civilization? Why should we appeal to the expertise of an art history professor when determining how to discuss the legitimacy of climate change?

For decades, conservatives argued that textbooks, like all forms of knowledge, were neutral, apolitical, and universal. Over the past three decades, they have rescinded such claims and instead committed themselves to openly fighting about what knowledge our children will be able to access. From school curricula to films to fashion to video games, the Right has situated itself into every sector of public life. In doing so, they help shape the intellectual, political, and moral direction of our nation for decades to come.

In response to this shift, the Left must become far more pro-active and aggressive. Instead of merely reacting to situations like the one in Texas, we must build grassroots educational movements and run for positions on local and state-level school boards. We must also fight to change textbook adoption policies around the nation so that individual districts and school leaders can make local decisions about the materials they use. This type of shift would dismantle the textbook publishing oligarchy and scale down the impact of local wing-nut movements. Without such a response, we will produce a generation of youth that believes in the perfection of the free market, but not the existence of dinosaurs.

Marc Lamont Hill is Associate Professor of Education at Columbia University. He blogs regularly at MarcLamontHill.com.

My Problem With God – by -Sibel Catana

My problem with god is that
god is me.
My problem with god is that I believe I can hear it,
Yet it talks with my voice,
My problem with god is that it is nonexistent.
I don’t feel god near me, in me, in all things alive,
In nothingness.
I don’t feel a presence or an absence,
One must feel a presence first,To feel the absence later.
I don’t find god, I only find me
And some of my lost alter egos,
My problem with god is that I cannot believe something
That I am forced to believe…
Need I say more?
My problem with god is not a problem at all,
I spend little time thinking about a god or any recycled series of gods,
But I spend a lot of time thinking about the greater things.
And if there is a god, then its creation – the universe with all of its details
Including us – has already become greater than it.
Why us? Because of thought.
Blame thought.
Thank thought.
But don’t recycle thoughts.

-Sibel Catana

Did Bush Knowingly Mislead the US to War?

Does this question even need to be asked?

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Charges and Countercharges: Did Bush Knowingly Mislead the U.S. Into War With Iraq?

David Corn, 03/30/10

Peter Wehner, a Politics Daily colleague, was quite gracious to accept my challenge to defend his old boss, George W. Bush — that is, to partially accept it.

Regular readers of this column might recall that in a March 17 article, I insisted that the evidence is quite clear that Bush and his crew misled the American public into the Iraq war. I noted that in the months prior to the March 2003 invasion they had “waged a willful campaign of misrepresentation and hyperbole” about the supposed WMD threat posed by Iraq. It wasn’t merely a matter of Bush, Dick Cheney, and the others repeating in good faith intelligence that later proved to be wrong. They incessantly made provocative (and false) assertions overstating the lousy intelligence, and, on other occasions, they simply made stuff up. I offered a sampling of eight false statements that characterized this endeavor. (The Center for Public integrity has put together a list of 532 false Bush administration statements about Iraq’s WMD capability.) And I dared Wehner, who worked in the W. White House, Karl Rove, Bush’s uber-strategist, and Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist — each of whom had recently dismissed the notion that Bush had misguided the nation — to provide a line-by-line response. Wehner was the sole member of this Bush-backing trio willing to give it a shot. But he has only managed to put up half a fight.

Though some people by now may consider this back and forth tiresome, it’s an important debate, and I’m going to engage in one more round, without expecting any converts, least of all Wehner. // <![CDATA[//

In his reply, Wehner addresses merely five of those eight statements. Should we assume he’s conceding on the others? Let me remind readers — those who are not weary of all this — about the statements Wehner declines to confront. In August 2002, as the Bush White House was ramping up its sales campaign for war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney delivered a high-profile speech in which he declared that there was “no doubt” that Saddam Hussein was “amassing” WMDs “to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” Yet a few months earlier, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency had testified to Congress that Saddam was only maintaining “residual” amounts of WMDs (which, as it turned out, was itself an overstatement). Perhaps more important, at the time of Cheney’s speech, there was no intelligence indicating that Saddam intended to use WMDs against the United States, which would have been suicidal. In fact, intelligence reports suggested he was not interested in a WMD showdown with Washington. That is, there was no factual basis for Cheney’s dramatic statement. No wonder Wehner avoids dealing with it.

More:  http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/30/a-long-war-did-bush-knowingly-mislead-the-u-s-into-iraq/

Iraq War: 7 Years, $743 Billion, Hundreds of Thousands Dead

Double Standard on White Christian Domestic Terrorists is Direct Threat to U.S.

Send Them to Guantanamo: Double Standard on White Christian Domestic Terrorists is a Direct Threat to the U.S.

By Mark Karlin, 3-30-10

It’s a relief of sorts that the Michigan militia members, White Christian Domestic Terrorists, were apprehended before they launched a killing spree of police officers and other Americans.  But why should they receive a civil trial, according to right wing arguments; why shouldn’t they be flown directly down to Guantanamo?

Of course BuzzFlash does support criminal trials for all charged terrorists and those plotting terorrism, but why the double standard on the part of the right wing when it comes to White Christian Domestic Terrorists?

In the Michigan Militia, which was quite active in the ’90s when the NRA was all but encouraging domestic insurrection, you find the convergence of GOP incendiary talk, hate radio, the End Times movement, white nationalism, whites feeling themselves “victims” of a secular society, and the sedition encouraged by the likes of the Tea Party, the Alaska Independence Party, Governor Perry of Texas, and basically the whole right wing “white is right” power movement.

BuzzFlash, whose editor dealt with trying to dampen the influence of the gun lobby for years, knows that at the root of the Timothy McVeighs of the world is a sense of loss of white male power in an increasingly secular nation.  That’s not to mention that the destructive white male power feeling of “victimization” (which translated means: “why don’t we call all the shots anymore, and why don’t the undeserving minorities know their place?”) virtually disappeared during the Bush administration, when you had a white male with a cauliflower for a brain as titular head of the nation; but that’s okay, white males — even if as dumb as cabbages — are entitled to rule.

That’s what the White Christian Domestic Terrorism of the Michigan militia is all about.

But BuzzFlash can assure you this from its 10 years of reporting on the white male power movement, which is essentially the Republican party, armed or unarmed: this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Anyone planning domestic terrorism or shooting a few people dead after reading books by FOX news inciters or Rush Limbaugh or the like should be sent directly to Guantanamo.

They are as dangerous in terms of terrorism as Al-Qaeda, so why should they get an exception just because they are white and Christian?

They shouldn’t.

More: http://blog.buzzflash.com/editors/310

Why Are We Afraid of Saying “Socialism”?

Knee-jerk reactions to words like “socialism” and “capitalism” get us nowhere. We need to first define the terms.

By Frances Moore Lappé, 3-30-10

“Socialist” has become the new favorite term of derision–working its fear-making magic because, for many Americans, socialism equals the great “government takeover.” It’s assumed to be not just un-American but downright anti-American. Tea Partiers at their round up in Searchlight, Nevada, told us that “socialist” Harry Reid “hates America.”

Our national aversion to the S-word isn’t necessarily a problem. But the term’s rapid rise as a political pot-shot, points to a huge problem: our culture’s lack of a common civic language, words on whose meaning we at least vaguely agree. Without it, we can’t hope to talk to one another about what matters most.

More: http://www.alternet.org/vision/146143/

Be sure to check out my large list of links offering information about Socialism:

http://coreysviews.wordpress.com/links/socialism-links/

Who is Lt. Eric Shine, and why should we care?

March 29, 2010 by Barbara Peterson

Source: Martial Law 911

Lt. Eric Shine is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point and is an expert in the history of the United States Merchant Marine, as well as issues relating to shipping and national security.

In his role as a whistle blower, Lt. Shine has taken his USMM oath, Acto Non Verba or “Deeds Not Words” to new heights. Lt. Shine has been the subject on hundreds of articles and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs nationwide including shows on Air America, Voice of America, and Pacifica Radio.

More: http://spktruth2power.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/who-is-lt-eric-shine-and-why-should-we-care/

OMG…..I have an account in a Commie Bank

Well thank god for that…it hasn’t failed like so many others….they must be doing something right….yeah….its called  “community” as in “We the People”. Too bad so many Right-wing, Christian Conservative Republicans do not honor the Constitution and ideology that has stood the test of time: Socialism.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The civil rights movement of the 60′s has certainly influenced the creation of Wainwright’s progressive social agenda.

That movement has evolved into a coalition of “rights” issues.

Homelessness, affordable housing, HIV/AIDS rights, immigration, environmental justice, economic equality and gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender equality are all children of the civil rights movement.

Through our lending practices, philanthropy, and leadership in addressing many of these areas, we have become a catalyst for social change.

To learn more, read Wainwright Bank: A Social Justice History (PDF)  and visit News, Awards & Press Releases.

~Excerpt from: 

WainwrightBank  https://www.wainwrightbank.com/html/about/index.html

Survivor of Clergy Sexual Abuse: Catholic Church Leaders Have Not Cleansed the Cancer of Child Sexual Abuse

Survivor of Clergy Sexual Abuse in Boston: The Catholic Church Leaders Have Not Cleansed the Cancer of Child Sexual Abuse

As a survivor of clergy abuse from the Boston area, it is of no surprise to me that the issue of clergy abuse has resurfaced on the front pages of newspapers across the globe, reaching the leader of the Catholic Church and rearing its ugly head.

It was almost 8 years ago at the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston, that I found myself asking one simple question, “What’s next?”

One year ago, after Pope Benedict met with a few survivors here in the United States, I again found myself asking the same question, “What’s next?”

The truth and the facts which caused the resignation of Cardinal Law 8 years ago, are the same truths and facts of today. The documents released a decade ago, are the same documents that the general public are amazed to read today.  The only thing different is the time that has past and the names of some of the church leaders.  

Almost a decade ago, as thousands of survivors struggled to open the door and shed a light on childhood clergy abuse, the Catholic Church had an opportunity to open their doors, release their records. The leaders of the Catholic Church had an opportunity to cleanse the cancer of childhood sexual abuse from their institution and break the cycle of silence.

Instead, the world was told by Vatican officials that the abuse of children by priests was an “American Catholic Church” issue. The Vatican officials were wrong.

More: http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3103

Don’t Kid Yourself: irulent Violent Hatred of the Tea Party and GOP Leaders is About Race

March 28, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

By FRANK RICH

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.

Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html

WikiLeaks to release video of Pentagon “cover-up where civilians, journalists are murdered in airstrike

by Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks is planning to release a video that reveals what it’s calling a Pentagon “cover-up” of an incident in which numerous civilians and journalists were murdered in an airstrike, according to a recent media advisory.

The video will be released on April 5 at the National Press Club, the group said.

They also noted their members have recently been tailed by individuals under State Department diplomatic immunity, and that “one related person was detained for 22 hours” while authorities seized computer equipment.

More: http://rawstory.com/2010/03/wikileaks-release-video-civilians-journalists-murdered-airstrike/

People’s lives have been ruined and someone has to pay. Benedict was the man in charge, Benedict must go

Ratzinger’s Swan Song: It’s Time for the Pope to Go

By Mike Whitney

March 29, 2010 “Information Clearing House” — Pope Benedict should do everyone a favor and resign. By sticking around, he’s just dragging the church through the mud and making matters worse. Who does he think he’s fooling anyway? Everyone knows that he was involved in the sex-scandal cover up. Does he really think that he can make amends by just issuing a few feeble apologies? He was in charge; that means he needs to “man up” and face the music. Why make a bigger deal out of it than necessary? Benedict’s job is easy: Arrange a press conference, tell the truth, and then resign. That’s all there is to it.

It’s clear that the problem isn’t going to go away either. In the last week alone, three incidents have resurfaced casting more suspicion on Benedict’s role in the cover up. In Wisconsin, Father Lawrence Murphy abused as many as 200 boys at a Milwaukee school for the deaf. One of the victims, Arthur Budzinski, has been all-over TV telling his story and blaming the pope. It’s pretty heart-wrenching stuff, too. According to Budzinski’s daughter Gigi,:

“The pope knew about this. He was the one who handled the sex abuse cases. So, I think he should be accountable, because he did nothing.”

This is bad. Everyone knows that the Vatican was shuffling predators from one spot to another trying to keep the details out of the news. It’s sleazy, and people want to know the truth. Maybe Benedict thought he was doing the right thing? Maybe he thought he was just being loyal or protecting the church from litigation? Who knows what he thought; it’s beside the point. The bottom line is that people’s lives have been ruined and someone has to pay. Benedict was the man in charge, which means Benedict’s got to go.

Here’s another bombshell which appeared in the Associated Press:

“In a signed statement last year, the 67 former pupils at a school for the deaf in Verona described sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment from the 1950s to the 1980s. They named 24 priests, brothers and lay religious men at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf.

One victim, Alessandro Vantini, told the AP last year that priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel “as if I were dead.”

“How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me?” Vantini, 59, said through a sign-language interpreter. “You couldn’t tell your parents because the priests would beat you.” (“Sex abuse scandal in US, Italy taints papacy”, Nicole Winfield, AP)

67 victims here, 200 victims there; this is industrial-scale sex abuse, a sex abuse conveyor belt!

More: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25101.htm

Slavery still exists in America, and too many consumers and leaders in the food industry simply turn a blind eye

Modern Slavery
 
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
 
Slavery still exists in America, and too many consumers and leaders in the food industry simply turn a blind eye.

March 29, 2010 “The Nation” — In textbooks across the country, students are still taught that slavery in the US ended with the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865.

But the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) knows better, and its Modern-Day Slavery Museum is traveling throughout Florida to drive that point home–that slavery persists in the agriculture fields of the state right up through this very day.

The Village Voice recently described the significance of the museum this way: “Though it’s unlikely to compete for crowds with Disneyworld, the Modern-Day Slavery Museum may be Florida’s most important new attraction.”

The bulk of the museum is housed inside of a 24-foot box truck–a replica of the one used by the Navarrete family in Immokalee to hold twelve farmworkers captive from 2005 to 2007. The workers were beaten, chained and imprisoned inside of the truck, and forced to urinate and defecate in the corners. US Attorney Doug Molloy called the operation “slavery, plain and simple.”

Inside of the truck visitors learn about seven cases of farm labor servitude in Florida successfully prosecuted by the US Department of Justice over the past 15 years. Workers were held against their will through threats, drugs, beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings. These cases meet the high standard of proof and definition of slavery under federal laws and resulted in the liberation of over 1000 farmworkers–CIW worked with federal and local authorities during the investigation and prosecution of six of the seven cases.

Barry Eastabrook described his experience in the truck for The Atlantic: “Inside, the vehicle was stacked high with cardboard tomato cartons. The floor was chipped and scuffed. There was a plywood sorting table–which doubled as a ‘bed’ for the workers. But what stays with me was the heat. Outside, the day was chilly and overcast, but inside the truck, even with the cargo door all the way open, the temperature became borderline unbearable. The stale air was uncomfortable to breathe. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt. And I was in there for less than five minutes, not two and a half years.”

More: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25102.htm

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq….

1,366,350

Iraq Deaths

The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq