Islamophobia rears its ugly head again in the attack on the TV series, All-American Muslim

The Jaafar family, one of the participating families in the Learning Channel's
'All-American Muslim' reality TV show.
Photograph: TLC

i first heard about this upcoming series while listening to an npr interview with a commentator who wrote a piece about it in the guardian...

wajahat ali...

I think it's refreshingly bland. It's honest, it's real, it's human. And it's nice to see a show where Muslims aren't terrorists, taxi cab drivers or potential terrorists, you know? They're just people.

i've actually been hoping for a show like this for quite a while... i had thought that maybe a sitcom a la the cosby show might do it but i was very pleased to hear about "All-American Muslim" and thought it might give a real push toward mitigating some of the more rampant islamophobia that has been plaguing the country...

guess not...

The cable channel TLC may have thought it was promoting the cause of ethnic and religious harmony by running a program that sympathetically examines the lives of five ordinary American Muslim families. But now the show itself has become a source of conflict, with the conservative Florida Family Association urging advertisers to boycott it and at least one major retail chain complying.

Media critics are already issuing scathing criticism of the decision by home retail giant Lowe’s to respond to the Florida Family Association’s campaign against the program. Gawker, for example, writes, “American Muslim, a TLC reality show that depicts the lives of Muslims in dangerous anti-American professions like ‘police officer’ and ‘high school football coach,’ is obviously the most egregious example yet of creeping Sharia. So thank (the Christian) God that all-American retailer Lowe’s has decided to pull advertising from the show!”

[...]

As viewed by the Florida Family Association, however, the normality and all-American quality of the families profiled is in itself a cause for suspicion.

“The Learning Channel’s new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law,” the group writes at its website. “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”

in response, the home improvement chain, lowes, has pulled its advertising...

Lowe’s actions are already being described as “a public relations disaster” and have aroused anger among the American Muslim community.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, for example, has issued a statement saying, “Sadly corporations, such as Lowe’s, have succumbed to the idiocracy of such garbage campaigns, which are orchestrated by groups and organizations which lack credibility, legitimacy, and are founded on the basic notions of bigotry and racism reminiscent of a shameful era in this country’s history.”

personally, i think this kind of attack is both disgusting and shameful... i've said repeatedly here that i have a fair number of islamic friends and count them among some of the finest people i know... they're people trying to make it just like the rest of us and to demonize them as a few brutally ignorant people in this country are trying to do is despicable...

here's the trailer for the series...



yes, bland, but also accurate... muslims in the u.s. live lives very much like everybody else... truth be told, muslims around the world live lives very much like everybody else... this overwhelming urge to demonize those whose beliefs, skin color, national origin, diet or surnames don't match our predetermined notion of what we think they SHOULD be needs to stop...

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$29 TRILLION is the Federal Reserve bailout total...!

when we get into the trillions of dollars, we lose all comprehension of scale... one trillion is too vast a number to wrap our heads around, god only knows, but TWENTY-NINE...?

barry ritholtz...

There is a fascinating new study coming out of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Its titled “$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bail-out by Funding Facility and Recipient” by James Felkerson. The study looks at the lending, guarantees, facilities and spending of the Federal Reserve.

The researchers took all of the individual transactions across all facilities created to deal with the crisis, to figure out how much the Fed committed as a response to the crisis. This includes direct lending, asset purchases and all other assistance. (It does not include indirect costs such as rising price of goods due to inflation, weak dollar, etc.)

The net total? As of November 10, 2011, it was $29,616.4 billion dollars — (or 29 and a half trillion, if you prefer that nomenclature). Three facilities—CBLS, PDCF, and TAF— are responsible for the lion’s share — 71.1% of all Federal Reserve assistance ($22,826.8 billion).

here's the breakdown...



here's a relatively understandable explanation for the method used to come up with the $29T total...

l. randall wray writing in economonitor...

Think about it this way. A half dozen drunken sailors are at the bar, and the bartender refills their shot glasses with whiskey each time a drink is taken. At any instant, the bar-keep has committed only six ounces of booze. That is a useful measure of whiskey outstanding. But it is not useful for telling us how much the drunks drank. Bernanke would like us to believe that if the Fed newly lent a trillion bucks every day for 3 years to all our drunken bankers that we should total that as only a trillion greenbacks committed. Yes, that provides some useful information but it does not really measure the necessary intervention by the Fed into financial markets to save Wall Street.

And that leads to the final way to measure the Fed’s commitments to propping up our drunks on Wall Street: add up every single damned loan, guarantee and asset purchase the Fed made to benefit banks, banksters, real Housewives on Wall Street, fraudsters, and their cousins, aunts and uncles. This gives us the cumulative Fed commitments.

The final important consideration is to separate “normal” Fed actions from the “extraordinary” or “emergency” interventions undertaken because of the crisis. That is easier than it sounds. After the crisis began, the Fed created a large alphabet soup of special facilities designed to deal with the crisis. We can thus take each facility and calculate the three measures of the Fed’s commitments for each, then sum up for all the special facilities.

And that is precisely what Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have done. They are PhD students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, working on a Ford Foundation grant under my direction, titled “A Research And Policy Dialogue Project On Improving Governance Of The Government Safety Net In Financial Crisis”. To my knowledge it is the most complete and accurate accounting of the Fed’s bail-out. Their results will be reported in a series of Working Papers at the Levy Economics Institute (www.levy.org). The first one will be posted soon, and is titled $29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed’s Bail-out by Funding Facility and Recipient. Watch for it!

to say that i'm speechless would be a gross understatement...

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Democracy under attack around the world - "These are very dangerous times"

yes, these are very dangerous times... i can't shake the feeling that we are on the cusp of something very, very big, something that could go either way - continuing down the dark path we're currently on or perhaps something wonderful that will surprise us all... it's a tipping point, for sure...

thom hartmann...

A year ago - if you would have asked the proud people in Italy - if their elected Prime Minister could be replaced by an unelected bankster to impose harsh austerity measures on them without a single vote - they would have called you crazy. Similarly - if you would have asked the Greeks - the cradle of democracy - if their elected Prime Minister could be run out of office for just asking for a national referendum on a bailout - and replaced by a bankster - they too would have called you crazy. Yet - that's exactly what's happened - and is continuing to happen in Europe.

Democracy is under attack around the world - including the United States - where Republican Governor Rick Snyder in Michigan has given himself the power to appoint unelected "financial managers" to take over cities struggling with budget deficits - fire elected city council officials - void union contracts - and sell off large chunks of cities to private corporations. Other Republican governors are thinking this is a good idea.

These are very dangerous times.

there's a lot of stuff piling up against the dam right toward the end of the year... if you're quiet, you can hear the cracks spreading...

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Ending the Bill of Rights in the U.S.

a message from anonymous...

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What's worse, the Defense Authorization Act or the Stop Online Piracy Act?

as soon as i read the story about hillary's unbelievably hypocritical speech at the hague extolling OTHER countries to espouse unfettered internet freedom, i just KNEW glenn would be all over it like white on rice...

Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom

Hypocrisy from the U.S. Government — having U.S. officials self-righteously impose standards on other countries which they routinely violate — is so common and continuous that the vast majority of examples do not even merit notice. But sometimes, it is so egregious and shameless — and sufficiently consequential — that it should not go unobserved. Such is the case with the speech delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday at a Conference on Internet Freedom held at the Hague, a conference devoted to making “a stand for freedom of expression on the internet, especially on behalf of cyber dissidents and bloggers.”

[...]

She astutely observed that “those who push these plans often do so in the name of security.” She added that “the first challenge is for the private sector to embrace its role in protecting internet freedom,” which — she lamented — has not always happened: “A few years ago, the headlines were about companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents. Earlier this year, they were about a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate.” She concluded with a real flourish: “Our government will continue to work very hard to get around every barrier that repressive governments put up” even though such governments will try to maintain those barriers “by resorting to greater oppression.”

What Hillary Clinton is condemning here is exactly that which not only the administration in which she serves, but also she herself, has done in one of the most important Internet freedom cases of the last decade: WikiLeaks. And beyond that case, both Clinton specifically and the Obama administration generally have waged a multi-front war on Internet freedom.

[...]

Perhaps worst of all, many of the administration’s key allies in the Senate are now pushing a bill – in the name of stopping online piracy (SOPA) — that would vest the U.S. government and the largest corporations with draconian powers literally to shut down or otherwise disable Internet sites without due process. Hillary Clinton personally ”tacitly endorsed that bill,” enabling the bill’s key Democratic Congressional supporters to tout State Department support for it. As EFF’s Trevor Timm recently wrote: “Ironically, we know from the WikiLeaks cables that the State Department has also aggressively lobbied many other countries for strict new laws similar to SOPA. They have even offered to fund enforcement and literally draft the laws that sacrifice free speech for greater copyright protection for Hollywood.”

here's glenn talking with cenk uygur on current's young turks...

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"Disrupting the flow of normalcy" and continuing to instill fear, Occupy Princeton takes on JPMorganChase

good on them...!

from occupy princeton...

18 OWS-affiliated Princeton undergraduates attended the JP Morgan/Chase info session for prospective summer analysts earlier this evening, asking pointed questions and ending with a mic check. Less than half the room was left after Occupy Princeton walked out.

allison kilkenny advocates the importance of not being co-opted by dysfunctional existing societal structures and continuing to find ways to "instill fear" in our elites...

Occupy And The Importance Of Not Asking For Permission

[T]he whole reason Occupy has been such a exciting, revolutionary movement is precisely because it doesn't ask for permission -- not from city officials when members camp outside or occupy abandoned buildings, not in order to wage some of its marches, and certainly not from the Democratic Party. It doesn't seem like the group is going to ask for permission when it breaks into foreclosed houses to reintroduce homeless families to them on Tuesday, either.

[...]

[S]ocial movements do need to instill fear into the political elite in order to have a significant impact, but that fear won't come from Occupy asking permission to sit at the negotiation table. That change will come following mass acts of civil disobedience - by disrupting the flow of normalcy until the movement can no longer be ignored. Eventually, if negotiations do occur, Washington will have to learn how to work with Occupy, a leaderless movement that votes on everything democratically, which can oftentimes be a painfully slow process. But that is the very nature of Occupy. Anything other than that process won't be OWS, but rather a co-opted mutant breed masquerading as the revolutionary force.

"disrupting the flow of normalcy" is precisely the thing we need to keep in mind... we are way, way past the point of tolerating the status quo and standing by while business is conducted "as usual"...

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Six people have as much wealth as 90.7 million of the 302.2 million people in the U.S.

laura at daily kos...

We're talking about the top .00000002 percent.

laura is posting on research done by Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics...

such a yawning gap of wealth inequality is unconscionable...

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2012 election

no comment necessary...

mr. fish...

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Death to the House of Saud

russ baker reports on the middle east uprising that has scarcely been mentioned in either the u.s. or international news media...

Those wanting a closer look at what is going on in Saudi Arabia can go to the site Liveleak, where there’s highly disturbing video accompanied by this text: “Qatif—Firing live bullets at the demonstrators November 21, 2011: Video shows the brutal style Saudi security forces in dealing with the demonstrators by firing live bullets.” Another source is a blog called “Angry Arab News Service,” which features video in which a large and vocal group in Qatif are apparently chanting “Death to the House of Saud”:

That kind of material seems to warrant worldwide attention. And with that, we might reasonably expect the protests to grow. But the coverage has not come, nor the greater uprising.

[...]

[Saudis] cannot count on the handy boost the West gave to revolutions in nearby countries. Nor can they count on the Western media, which brays about its independence and initiative, but, increasingly, shows neither where the West’s precious oil supplies are involved.

Protesters in Qatif chant "Death to Al Saud" after 2 protestors were shot
dead by the security forces. The interior ministry then refused to give the
bodies to the families unless they waived their rights regarding compensation.

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Information about the CIA black sites continues to trickle in

i've posted extensively on the cia black sites, particularly the ones in poland, lithuania and diego garcia... here's some fresh information on the site in romania, dug up, no surprise, by a non-u.s. news organization, in this case, the german network ard...

The existence of a CIA prison in Romania has been widely reported, but its location has never been made public. The Associated Press and German public television ARD located the former prison and learned details of the facility where harsh interrogation tactics were used. ARD's program on the CIA prison is set to air Thursday.

The Romanian prison was part of a network of so-called black sites that the CIA operated and controlled overseas in Thailand, Lithuania and Poland. All the prisons were closed by May 2006, and the CIA's detention and interrogation program ended in 2009.

Unlike the CIA's facility in Lithuania's countryside or the one hidden in a Polish military installation, the CIA's prison in Romania was not in a remote location. It was hidden in plain sight, a couple blocks off a major boulevard on a street lined with trees and homes, along busy train tracks.

here it is, "hidden in plain sight"...


The National Registry Office for Classified Information, also known
as ORNISS, sits in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from
the center of Romania’s capital city of Bucharest in this recent photo.
Between 2003 and 2006, the CIA operated a secret prison from the
building's basement, bringing in high-value terror suspects for
interrogation and detention. A joint AP-ARD Panorama investigation
revealed the exact location of the prison. (AP Photo)

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Corporate personhood

fresh from the good news of the la city council passing a measure supporting the abolishing of corporate personhood, we should be aware of the history and background of this scandalous notion...

noam chomsky...

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What really happened in the eviction of Occupy LA

very worthwhile and illuminating first-hand account of the police brutality that accompanied the eviction of occupy la last week from a writer for the animated series family guy who also happens to be a father and a unitarian church goer...

My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan

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American Airlines bankruptcy - the desire “to get out of bankruptcy what you couldn’t get at the table”

no surprise here... bankruptcy hashttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif become the strategic tool of choice for negating labor contracts, jettisoning employees and kicking pension plans over to the pbgc...

here's some perspective on american airlines recent bankruptcy filing...

American Airlines’ parent company filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday, throwing into question the fate of thousands of union members’ jobs, their contracts and an eight year-old partnership agreement under which they’ve made hefty sacrifices. “I was shocked that it happened when it happened…” says Transport Workers Union President James Little. “I thought we could have avoided it.”

Little, whose union represents 26,650 mechanics, technicians, and fleet service workers at American Airline and sibling airline American Eagle, believes “a major motivation” for management was the desire “to get out of bankruptcy what you couldn’t get at the table.”

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, TWU had just reached tentative agreements with American for new contracts in some of its bargaining units that were awaiting ratification by members. Other union members at American were still working without a contract extension agreement four or more years since expiration. Although TWU has been preparing for the possibility of bankruptcy for two years, Little says management never indicated during negotiations that it could be imminent. “We didn’t get any advance notice, except perhaps five minutes before the media knew about it.”

Little suggested that the board of parent company AMR may have made the bankruptcy decision against the recommendation of CEO Gerald Arpey, whose retirement AMR also announced on Tuesday.

In a statement, Arpey’s replacement Thomas Horton said that despite a series of achievements, “as we have made clear with increasing urgency in recent weeks, we must address our cost structure, including labor costs, to enable us to capitalize on these foundational strengths and secure our future.” (An American Airlines spokesperson declined a request for comment.)

sigh...

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Dean Baker, "If you want to talk to someone from Goldman Sachs, call the Treasury"

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Woo-hoo...! Gotta love them drones...!

glenn takes on the spin-fortified crap that passes for news on npr (yes, virginia, npr is a government spin-machine right along with all the rest of 'em) and also paints a picture of how military-spawned drone technology is rapidly coming to a neighborhood near you...

NPR’s domestic drone commercial

[...]

Even leaving aside the issue of weaponization (police officials now openly talk about equipping drones with “nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun”), the use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad, sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use. In sum, the potential for abuse is vast, the escalation in surveillance they ensure is substantial, and the effect they have on the culture of personal privacy — having the state employ hovering, high-tech, stealth video cameras that invade homes and other private spaces — is simply creepy.

But listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry.

speaking of commercials, glenn also offers this air force recruiting advert...



chilling, isn't it...?

going back to the subject of npr, i've long since accepted the fact that npr has been consciously and carefully shaped into just another government propaganda outlet... i still listen to it when i'm out and about in my truck because, despite its serious shortcomings, it's preferable to the rest of the mindless stuff that comes over the radio... but i've been known to scream at the top of my lungs while driving down the interstate while listening to the garbage that they're passing off as news... thank god for the internet...

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The spirit of Occupy kicks "learned helplessness" to the curb

given my penchant for pattern recognition and the work that i do with complex systems, i learned to recognize the dynamic of learned helplessness almost twenty-five years ago... i first ran into it, interestingly enough, while working on my own issues when i had to confront a deep-seated belief about not being able to change myself... once i was able to get past that barrier, i opened up to a much bigger playing field in working with organization change... i could see that much of the resistance of people to doing things differently - and, hopefully, better - springs from that same belief system which, loosely described, says, "what's the use, nothing's going to change, why bother...?"

in the process of discovering that "helplessness" is a belief system, i also discovered that, like most belief systems, it isn't genetic, it's learned, which, in turn, led to the realization that complex systems (families, corporations, governments, organizations of all types) often consciously or unconsciously promote feelings of helplessness...

as my learning continued to expand, i began to see how feelings of helplessness were often deliberately fostered by those whose power and influence depended on the compliance and passivity of those over whom they exercised that power... i also began to realize how complicit we all are - or certainly can be - in abdicating the power we have as our birthright...

we are constantly implored to give up our power to teachers, bosses, police, politicians, government officials, scientists and experts of all stripes who, we are told, know more about what's good for us than we do or, worse yet, portray themselves as having access to power and authority that we don't have access to and probably never will... in the course of this brainwashing, we eventually lose sight of the fact that our power is something that is ours by birth and that giving it away is a choice, maybe not a choice we consciously make, but a choice nonetheless...

i've been involved with "empowerment" efforts in organizations which i've always thought were misnamed since the whole notion of "empowering" someone smacks of condescension, implying giving something to someone to whom it belonged in the first place... however, the term does have a positive ring to it and i haven't been able to come up with one i like better... "empowerment" is even featured on my business cards...

moving to reclaim our power is a heady experience... as the article snippet below states, it's positively "liberating," the term relating back to"liberation theology" and "liberation psychology"... when people move to take back their power, is it any wonder that the catholic church came down so hard on clergy in latin america who were pushing "liberation theology"...? is it any wonder that the 1% are so determined to squash the occupy movement...? people reclaiming their power scares the shit out of those who think they should have it all...

bruce levine in alternet...

Liberation psychology, unlike mainstream psychology, questions adjustment to the societal status quo, and it energizes oppressed people to resist all injustices. Liberation psychology attempts to discover how demoralized people can regain the energy necessary to take back the power that they had handed over to illegitimate authorities.

The Occupy movement has tapped into the energy supply that many oppressed and exploited people ultimately discover. We discover it when we come out of denial that we are a subjugated people. We discover just how energizing it can be to delegitimize oppressive institutions and authorities. And when these oppressive authorities react violently to peaceful resistance, their violence validates their illegitimacy—and provides us with even more energy.

With liberation psychology, we no longer take seriously the elite’s rigged games that had sucked us in and then sucked the energy out of us. We move beyond denial and depression that the U.S. electoral process is a rigged game, an exercise in learned helplessness in which we are given the choice between politicians who will either (1) screw us, or (2) screw us. We begin to engage in other “battlegrounds for democracy.”

it's a very good article and worth reading in its entirety...

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Be a good quiet peon and you have no reason to worry

from economonitor...

Historians will debate the exact date the Constitution no longer ruled America. When did it die in our hearts? When during the long slow decay did we pass from self-rule into oligarchy? When did we lose so many freedoms so that we were no longer a free people?

I believe that we passed that point this week. We need to think about our future. All paths from here lead into darkness of oligarchy; that seems unavoidable. Some of these paths may go up into the light again. Perhaps to a revived Second Republic, applying the paddles to shock Constitution back to life. Perhaps to a Third Republic.

[...]

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is its core. Without its protections the rest of document are little but pleasant sentiments.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Congress has in effect repealed these words, allowing the Executive to declare guilt (in secret), and jail indefinitely or execute — using the military. Be a good quiet peon and you have no reason to worry.

so, where do we go from here...?

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The UK classifies Occupy protestors as "domestic terrorists"

the uk has always led the way in oppressing the masses...

Police in City see occupiers as 'terror' risk

The City of London Police force was facing criticism last night after including the Occupy London demonstration in a letter warning businesses about potential terrorist threats.

The letter, a "Terrorism/Extremism Update", lists al-Qa'ida, the Colombian dissidents Farc, and Belarusian terrorists who bombed the Minsk underground. It also lists Occupy London under the heading "Domestic".

It states: "It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism. City of London Police has received a number of hostile reconnaissance reports concerning individuals who would fit the anti-capitalist profile. All are asked to be vigilant regarding suspected reconnaissance, particularly around empty buildings."

An Occupy London spokesman said: "Activism is not a crime and the desire to participate in democratic decision-making should not be a cause for concern for the police in any free society.

“An institution that confuses active citizens with criminals and equates al-Qa'ida with efforts to reimagine the city is an institution in danger of losing its way."

A police source said the letter was authentic but was poorly worded and never meant to imply demonstrators posed a terrorist threat.

A spokesman for City of London Police said: “City of London Police works with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice. We’ve seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests.”

i'm almost positive that occupy groups have been classified similarly in the u.s... it just hasn't hit the media yet...

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The Mall of America security team accosts and interrogates an average of 1200 shoppers a year

max blumenthal offers a chilling vision of how our domestic police and security forces have become increasingly militarized along the israeli model...

al akhbar...

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus, recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg.

Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.

The process of Israelification began in the immediate wake of 9/11, when national panic led federal and municipal law enforcement officials to beseech Israeli security honchos for advice and training. America’s Israel lobby exploited the climate of hysteria, providing thousands of top cops with all-expenses paid trips to Israel and stateside training sessions with Israeli military and intelligence officials. By now, police chiefs of major American cities who have not been on junkets to Israel are the exception.

[...]

Given the amount of training the NYPD and so many other police forces have received from Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus, and the profuse levels of gratitude American police chiefs have expressed to their Israeli mentors, it is worth asking how much Israeli instruction has influenced the way the police have attempted to suppress the Occupy movement, and how much it will inform police repression of future upsurges of street protest. But already, the Israelification of American law enforcement appears to have intensified police hostility towards the civilian population, blurring the lines between protesters, common criminals, and terrorists.

we're all terrorists now...

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Why is Jon Corzine still at large? All bets are off. It's not reassuring.

james howard kunstler...

Is there still an Attorney General in this country? Will somebody please follow Eric Holder down a hallway and see if he leaves a trail of sawdust on the floor. Or did congress just retract all the fraud statutes by stealth in the same way that the Federal Reserve handed out $7.7 trillion in bailouts back in 2008 (much more than the generally accepted figure of the $800 billion TARP) without anyone finding out until three years later when some Bloomberg reporters rooted the numbers out of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing. And by the way, what is the US Federal Reserve doing handing out billions of dollars to the Royal Bank of Scotland? Was Scotland admitted to the Union by stealth, too? Or did Jamie Dimon just buy it as a birthday present for Barack Obama, who likes golf.

[...]

Jon Corzine has not revealed the destination of the loot (somewhere between $600 million and $2.5 billion, estimated) that vanished from the "segregated" accounts of his many clients at MF Global. The rumor is that it went to cover a rude margin call from Jamie Dimon's bank, JP Morgan, after JC took some unfortunate positions in European sovereign bonds in a bad month. Beyond the question of why Mr. Corzine is not in jail (as a flight risk, just like DSK) is how come the Department of Justice has not so much as issued a statement saying that they were looking into the matter, so as to reassure both the victims and the financial markets that this is not a culture that just makes shit up as it goes along - i.e. that we have predictable rules and formal procedures for doing stuff.

[...]

Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. It's not reassuring.

this goes back to my post from yesterday...

There is no law except for street justice and vigilante law

it also goes back to my several posts about glenn's new book...

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

accountability...? fuhgedaboudit...

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Redefining patriotism

from egyptian muslima...

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D.E.A. launders drug money

this is being spun as a conscious tactic in bringing down the cartels...? oh, man... just exactly how stupid do they think we are...? there's no way this passes the smell test...

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

here's the money quote - "the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries"... mexico just happens to be the most recent and the one that's come to light... what about colombia...? afghanistan...? other central american countries...?

and here are my questions...

• so, what "other countries"...?
• how much money are we talking about and over what period of time...?
• where does that money really go...?
• what kind of relationship does/did the d.e.a. have with wachovia bank that was caught laundering billions of dollars in drug money...?
• what are the banks that were involved, what was the nature of the relationships and how were they established...?
• what, if anything, resulted from this tactic...? arrests...? cartels dismantled...? drug flows reduced...?

it's utterly fascinating to me that wachovia is not even mentioned in this nyt article... i'm not a reporter... i'm probably not even an adequate sidelines observer, but the first thing that leaped to mind as i was reading this was wachovia...

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