Glenn: Like all propaganda, [the U.S. use of the word "militant"] is designed to deceive the citizenry in order to compel acquiescence to government conduct

yes, i know i tend to be a little heavy in citing glenn in my posts but he's one of the few observers i turn to regularly who happen to have a consistent, firm grasp on reality...

here, glenn is commenting on yesterday's wapo story on a u.s. drone missile strike in pakistan...

[T]he word “militant” is being aggressively distorted by deceitful U.S. government propaganda that defines the term to mean: any “military-age males” whom we kill (the use of the phrase “suspected militants” in the body of the article suffers the same infirmity).

How is it possible to have any informed democratic debate over a policy about which the U.S. media relentlessly propagandizes this way? If drone strikes kill nobody other than “militants,” then very few people will even think about opposing them (and that’s independent of the fact that the word “militant” is a wildly ambiguous term — militant about what? — though it is clearly designed (when combined with “Pakistan”) to evoke images of those who attacked the World Trade Center). Debate-suppression is not just the effect but the intent of this propaganda: like all propaganda, it is designed to deceive the citizenry in order to compel acquiescence to government conduct.

what most people in the u.s. fail to realize is just how massively we are propagandized on a daily basis... it hits us from every direction, 24/7, from the ceaseless ads on tv for prescription drugs ("ask your doctor if it's right for you") to the critical importance of checking our credit scores to news stories obsessing on celebrities, the the all-pervasive focus on violence... then, besides the in-your-face kind of propaganda, there's the more subtle and insidious kind that simply fails to report on anything of substance or, if something of substance is being reported, omitting all relevant context thus ensuring that any real understanding is virtually impossible... i was lunching with a friend and colleague this week who, bless his heart, is one of the few who understands just how little we are told about what's really happening in the world... i probably wouldn't be so aware of it myself if i didn't spend so much time poring over multiple sources and trying to fit the pieces together... (whether that's healthy or not is for a later discussion...!)

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Glenn: The War on Terror has normalized even the most warped powers

from the wapo...

President Obama plans to issue an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who “obstructs” implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen.

The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.

Unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, the new order does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, one official said, it is designed as a “deterrent” to “make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition” to think again. . . .

The order provides criteria to take action against people who the Treasury secretary, in consultation with the secretary of state, determines have “engaged in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, such as acts that obstruct the implementation of the Nov. 23, 2011, agreement between the Government of Yemen and those in opposition to it, which provides for a peaceful transition of power . . . or that obstruct the political process in Yemen.”

glenn...

Jeremy Scahill, who has reported extensively from Yemen over the last year, reacted to the news of this Executive Order this morning by writing: ”This Executive Order appears to be an attack on Americans’ 1st Amendment Rights and Yemenis’ rights to self-determination“; he added: ”apparently the 1st Amendment had an exception about Yemen in it that I missed.” He then asked a series of questions, including: “What if a Yemeni citizen doesn’t believe in a one candidate ‘election’ and is fighting to change their government? US sanctions?” and ”How would Obama define an American citizen as ‘indirectly’ threatening the stability of Yemen’s government?” and “what if an American citizen doesn’t support Yemen’s government and agitates for its downfall? Sanctions from US Treasury? Wow."

but wait, there's more...

[A] bipartisan group of House members is attempting to enact a law specifying that the indefinite detention powers vested in the President by last December’s passage of the NDAA does not apply to those arrested on U.S. soil; in other words, they are trying to ban military detention on American soil without charges. Even though President Obama, after he signed the bill into law, said he does not intend to use these powers for that purpose, the sponsors of this bill are concerned that — because the law does vest this power — Obama could change his mind at any time or a subsequent President could use those powers. Unfortunately, they are being opposed by key Democratic Senators such as Carl Levin in close cooperation with standard neocon members of Congress. As one tweeter wrote to me yesterday about this: “The fact that government has to be told NOT to do that is insane.” Indeed, and it’s easy to forget how frequently true that is. But the War on Terror has so normalized even the most warped powers — warrantless eavesdropping, torture, indefinite detention, renditions, due-process-free-assassinations, Executive Orders like the one today — that it’s sometimes easy to forget that this is the only real reaction that should be needed.

god i hate reading about this shit... it seems that a day doesn't go by without more bad news about the u.s. constitution and the bill of rights being summarily shredded...

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Glenn: The Washington Post Op-Ed page is truly the belly of the beast of America’s rotted media discourse

glenn's been on a tear the past two days, exposing just how subservient our so-called "news" media is to our super-rich elites and their government puppets... i suggest reading the posts yourself...

Ruth Marcus reveals another journalistic value

The secrecy-loving mind of the U.S. journalist

The victims the NYT Editors forgot

would that other columnists would hold our rotten media's feet to the fire the way glenn does...

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Tom Toles on OWS in today's WAPO

you always have to look in the lower right-hand corner for the punchline...

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VoteVets endorses General Sanchez for U.S. Senate, the same Sanchez who approved torture at Abu Ghraib

what is it with memory in my country...? either people don't remember, don't WANT to remember or never have bothered to find out in the first damn place...

here's my response to votevets and their execrable endorsement of ricardo sanchez for the u.s. senate seat in texas...

Dear Friends.

Ricardo Sanchez is the one who authorized the torture/enhanced interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib and then lied about it in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 19 May 2004. He would like you to believe he's rehabilitated but, unless and until he is held accountable for his past actions, he has no business presenting himself as a serious candidate for the United States Senate. Furthermore, as a Vietnam Veteran and someone who is currently working in Afghanistan, i think it is an absolute disgrace that an organization like VoteVets would endorse such a candidate.

Before putting more of your organizational credibility on the line, I suggest you follow up on the following links.

Blog posts on General Sanchez

Copies of the documents authorizing torture techniques under General Sanchez' signature

Washington Post story on Sanchez' testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee

I know General Sanchez thinks all of this is behind him and, for most people who don't pay close attention, it probably is, but General Sanchez is just as guilty of war crimes as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and, more recently, Barack Obama.

Shame on you VoteVets for not properly vetting your endorsements.

Sincerely,

XXX XXXXX
U.S. Army 1968-1971
Vietnam Veteran

and here's the votevets endorsement...

On Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Ashwin Madia <info@votevets.org> wrote:

Dear XXXX,

Today I’m writing with some exciting news. We have a chance to send a veteran to the Senate, from Texas. Not only that, but this veteran also happens to be a retired Lieutenant General who commanded forces in Iraq. Today, we’re endorsing Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez (USA, Ret.) for Senate. He needs your help.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO SANCHEZ FOR SENATE

General Sanchez has a compelling story and honorably served our country in uniform. He’ll make an outstanding Senator for the people of Texas. We're always happy to see veterans entering politics as a way to continue their public service, but it's especially encouraging to see one of our military's finest minds, General Sanchez, look to continue that service as a public servant. General Sanchez knows what this generation of warriors has gone through, and how Washington can best serve them. For the people of the state of Texas, they will have a Senator who is committed to America’s security, and just as committed to the state he loves

General Sanchez graduated from Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1973. After decades of service, following nomination to Lieutenant General, he assumed command in Baghdad, Iraq, of the Army’s Fifth Corps and became the commander of one of the largest combat forces deployed in US military history. Upon the reorganization of command-and-control structures in Iraq, he commanded Headquarters, Multi-National Forces (Iraq) from 14 May 2004 to 1 July 2004. After 33 years of service, he retired in 2006.

CLICK HERE TO SEND RICARDO SANCHEZ TO THE SENATE

Texas is a huge state, and running for office there isn’t cheap. But any donation you can afford will go a long way towards sending Ric Sanchez to the Senate. This is an open seat, because Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is stepping down, so it is an excellent opportunity for a candidate with strong credentials – like General Sanchez – to win. Please click the link above, and help get him to the finish line!

Sincerely,

Ashwin Madia

Iraq War Veteran
Interim Chairman, VoteVets.org

Paid for by VoteVets Political Action Committee
Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee

sad... accountability seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth...

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Does this stike a chord with anybody....?

i thought it might...

tom toles in today's wapo...

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Global outrage at the Wikileaks revelations - except in the U.S.

the rest of the world is sitting up and taking serious notice of the wikileaks document dump...

Robert Fisk: The shaming of America

Our writer delivers a searing dispatch after the WikiLeaks revelations that expose in detail the brutality of the war in Iraq - and the astonishing, disgraceful deceit of the US

Torture, killing, children shot – and how the US tried to keep it all quiet

The largest leak in history reveals the true extent of the bloodshed unleashed by the decision to go to war in Iraq – and adds at least 15,000 to its death toll

Iraq war logs: How civilians have paid heaviest price

Leaked military files analysed by the Guardian reveal secret US tally of Iraqi deaths

WikiLeaks and Assange Honored

You are not likely to learn this from the “mainstream media,” but WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange have received the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award for their resourcefulness in making available secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Poisonous US weapons in Iraq kill thousands and mar generations

According to Brian Becker, Director of the anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, WikiLeaks is revealing the horrible truth that has been known for years.

“The police forces and army that were trained by the Americans… engaged in systematic torture, abuse, rape and it was unreported and unpublished by their masters, by the US trainers,” he said.

Now, however hard Washington may want to hush WikiLeaks, it should think twice: following the report, the UN chief investigator for torture has already called on Barack Obama to investigate possible cases of torture in Iraq, Becker pointed out.

[See Brian Becker interview here]

meanwhile, in the very country that's guilty of perpetrating the whole friggin' mess, the former baghdad bureau chief for the wapo shares her opinions in the daily beast, opinions that would NEVER get published in the wapo...

WikiLeaks Exposes Rumsfeld's Lies

Thanks to Wikileaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.

glenn, meanwhile, decries the appalling lack of censure coming from the u.s. establishment news media...

NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage

[T]he U.N. chief investigator for torture called on the Obama administration to formally investigate this complicity in Iraqi abuse, pointing out that "if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration has a clear obligation to investigate them," and that "under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse." Today, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister called on the British Government to fulfill that obligation by formally investigating the role British troops might have played in "the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq."

But these calls for investigations -- and the U.N.'s explanation of the legal obligation to do so -- are virtually nonexistent in the American media. The only mention in the NYT of the U.N.'s statement is buried deep down in a laundry list of short items on one of its blogs. Along with most American media outlets, The Washington Post has no mention of this matter at all (while whitewashing American guilt, the NYT -- in the form of Judy Miller's former partner, Michael Gordon -- prominently trumpeted from the start of its coverage the "interference" in Iraq by Iran in aiding "Iraqi militias," a drum Gordon has been dutifully beating for years).

The notion that the Obama administration not only should -- but must -- investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place. It's not hard to see why. The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

accountability...? what a quaint notion...

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I'm not auditioning for president of the Glenn Greenwald fan club

but...

he made an excellent point this morning when commenting on michael mukasey's wapo op-ed in today's edition...

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, The Washington Post, today, arguing against civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees:

The civilized world has tried over several hundred years to establish rules of warfare so that those who wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly and do not target civilians are treated as prisoners of war when captured. Those who follow none of these rules are treated as war criminals, not as ordinary defendants accused of ordinary crimes and entitled to far more robust protection than war criminals.

[...]

The irony here is that the decision to declare enemy fighters in Afghanistan as "unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is what, in turn, "justified" denial of Geneva Conventions protections for them (at least until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise) -- was grounded in the fact that they do not, as Mukasey put it, "wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly." That's what made them, in the U.S. lexicon, not only "unlawful combatants" but even Terrorists. But, of course, exactly the same is true for our countless private contractors who are acting as combatants for the U.S. in multiple parts of the world... .

as i said yesterday, the ability of the u.s. to wax righteous to the rest of the world while blindly justifying its own utter disregard for accountability, the rule of law and internationally accepted standards of conduct is seemingly limitless...

speaking of which, a neighbor of mine in the rv park is on temporary duty here with the air national guard, serving as a mission commander for drone missions in afghanistan and pakistan and probably other places i'll never hear about... as with so many of these guys, he's a decent enough sort, pleasant to talk with, laid back and easy-going... i'm sure he doesn't think of himself as either a war criminal or a terrorist and i'm sure nothing i could say would change that... however, i'd be really curious to know how much and how deeply he actually thinks about what he's doing... i can't believe he doesn't think about it at all but i strongly suspect he tells himself that, unpleasant as it is, it's a job that's got to be done... if pressed, i'd guess most people would respond that way, so thoroughly have we been sold on the unimpeachable rightness of united states behavior in all things...

p.s. how come it is that former officials of a thoroughly discredited presidential administration - rove, cheney, yoo, mcconnell, mukasey, et al, ad nauseam - keep getting trotted back out to spew their fear-based, constitution-shredding garbage...? why do their opinions still matter...? why not john dean...? why not paul craig roberts...? for that matter, why not ramsey clark...? just askin'...

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The War Machine is obligated to shareholders, not the common good

glenn keeps on a-truckin' with the second installment of the dana priest/william arkin wapo investigative report, top secret america...

[I]f you combine this second Post installment with the first one from yesterday, the picture that emerges is that we have a Secret Government of 854,000 people so vast and secret that nobody knows what it does or what it is. Roughly 30% of that Secret Government -- engaged in the whole litany of functions from spying to killing -- is composed of private corporations: "The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors." That there is a virtually complete government/corporate merger when it comes to the National Security and Surveillance State is indisputable: "Private firms have become so thoroughly entwined with the government's most sensitive activities that without them important military and intelligence missions would have to cease or would be jeopardized."

As little oversight as National Security State officials have, corporate officials engaged in these activities have even less. Relying upon profit-driven industry for the defense and intelligence community's "core mission" is to ensure that we have Endless War and an always-expanding Surveillance State. After all, the very people providing us with the "intelligence" that we use to make decisions are the ones who are duty-bound to keep this War Machine alive and expanding because, as the Post put it, they are "obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest." Our military, our CIA, our spying agencies (such as NSA) are every bit corporate as they are governmental: in some cases more so. So complete is the merger that it's the same people who switch seamlessly back and forth between governmental agencies and their private "partners," which means we have not only a vast Secret Government, but one that operates with virtually no democratic accountability and is driven not by National Security concerns but by its own always-expanding private profits.

here's a thought...

once every square inch of the planet is privatized and once unfettered capitalism has become the global religion with social darwinism as its most sacred doctrine, the only accountability left will be to shareholders, at which point our super-rich elites will have arranged it so that THEY are the only shareholders...

ya want accountability...? i got yer accountability RIGHT HERE...!

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Every day, [NSA intercepts and stores] 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications

as glenn points out, this headline taken from the the wapo series by dana priest and william arkin, top secret america, captures one of the most stunning points made in the first installment... sadly, however, to those of us who have been paying the slightest bit of attention for the past dozen years, it's only the raw numbers in black and white that are news, not the fact that the nsa is vacuuming up every single byte of electronic data from every single public network around the world and probably most private ones as well...

here's glenn...

Here is [Arkin and Priest's] first sentence: "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." This all "amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight." We chirp endlessly about the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the Democrats and Republicans, but this is the Real U.S. Government: functioning in total darkness, beyond elections and parties, so secret, vast and powerful that it evades the control or knowledge of any one person or even any organization.

Anyone who thinks that's hyperbole should just read some of what Priest and Arkin chronicle. Consider this: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." To call that an out-of-control, privacy-destroying Surveillance State is to understate the case. Equally understated is the observation that we have become a militarized nation living under an omnipotent, self-perpetuating, bankrupting National Security State. Here's but one flavoring anecdote:

Command centers, internal television networks, video walls, armored SUVs and personal security guards have also become the bling of national security.

"You can't find a four-star general without a security detail," said one three-star general now posted in Washington after years abroad. "Fear has caused everyone to have stuff. Then comes, 'If he has one, then I have to have one.' It's become a status symbol."

What's most noteworthy about all of this is that the objective endlessly invoked for why we must acquiesce to all of this -- National Security -- is not only unfulfilled by "Top Secret America," but actively subverted by it. During the FISA debate of 2008 -- when Democrats and Republicans joined together to legalize the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping program and vastly expand the NSA's authority to spy on the communications of Americans without judicial oversight -- it was constantly claimed that the Government must have greater domestic surveillance powers in order to Keep Us Safe. Thus, anyone who opposed the new spying law was accused of excessively valuing privacy and civil liberties at the expense of what, we are always told, matters most: Staying Safe.

But as I wrote many times back then -- often by interviewing and otherwise citing House Intelligence Committee member Rush Holt, who has been making this point repeatedly -- the more secret surveillance powers we vest in the Government, the more we allow the unchecked Surveillance State to grow, the more unsafe we become. That's because the public-private axis that is the Surveillance State already collects so much information about us, our activities and our communications -- so indiscriminately and on such a vast scale -- that it cannot possibly detect any actual national security threats. NSA whistle blower Adrienne Kinne, when exposing NSA eavesdropping abuses, warned of what ABC News described as "the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans, instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack." As Kinne put it:

By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody. You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security.

The Government did not fail to detect the 9/11 attacks because it was unable to collect information relating to the plot. It did collect exactly that, but because it surveilled so much information, it was incapable of recognizing what it possessed ("connecting the dots"). Despite that, we have since then continuously expanded the Government's surveillance powers. Virtually every time the political class reveals some Scary New Event, it demands and obtains greater spying authorities (and, of course, more and more money). And each time that happens, its ability to detect actually relevant threats diminishes. As Priest and Arkin write:

The NSA sorts a fraction of those [1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of daily collected communications] into 70 separate databases. The same problem bedevils every other intelligence agency, none of which have enough analysts and translators for all this work.

The article details how ample information regarding alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hassan and attempted Christmas Day bomber Umar Abdulmutallab was collected but simply went unrecognized. As a result, our vaunted Surveillance State failed to stop the former attack and it was only an alert airplane passenger who thwarted the latter. So it isn't that we keep sacrificing our privacy to an always-growing National Security State in exchange for greater security. The opposite is true: we keep sacrificing our privacy to the always-growing National Security State in exchange for less security.

the 4th amendment...? how quaint...

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Google to "test" 1GB internet download speed in U.S. which is currently #29 worldwide

here's the current top 14 world-wide in internet download speeds...

Top Countries by Download Speed

• 1. 23.35 Mb/s Korea, Republic of
• 2. 18.17 Mb/s Aland Islands
• 3. 17.38 Mb/s Japan
• 4. 16.73 Mb/s Latvia
• 5. 15.24 Mb/s Romania
• 6. 14.76 Mb/s Lithuania
• 7. 14.58 Mb/s Sweden
• 8. 14.08 Mb/s Netherlands
• 9. 13.99 Mb/s Andorra
• 10. 13.77 Mb/s Bulgaria
• 11. 12.28 Mb/s Moldova, Republic of
• 12. 10.73 Mb/s Hong Kong
• 13. 10.64 Mb/s Portugal
• 14. 10.24 Mb/s Slovakia

the united states...??

• 29. 7.57 Mb/s United States

woo-hoo, right...? but google might, just might, bring as many as 500,000 of us UP TO ONE WHOLE GB...!!!

Google, the world's biggest online search engine, wants to turbocharge your Internet connection.

The company said Wednesday it is getting into the broadband service business with trials for fiber networks that will deliver Internet access speeds that are 100 times faster than what most Americans are getting today.

The company said in a blog that it will build fiber-to-the-home connections to a small number of locations across the country that will deliver Internet access speeds of 1 gigabit per second. The company didn't say what areas would be part of its experiment, but said prices would be competitive and that its network would reach at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. A source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the company doesn't currently have plans to expand beyond the initial tests but will evaluate as the tests progress.

and, in typical wapo, head-in-the-sand, context-free fashion, completely neglects to mention that there are a full TWENTY-EIGHT COUNTRIES that have faster internet than the u.s... great going, wapo...!!

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God, I'm sick of context-free news reportage

having just spent some time working in kosovo while getting a "deep-dive" education on current goings-on in that relatively newly-hatched country and then reading this, i'm once again left amazed at just how much what can only be a deliberate omission of relevant context can skew a news story...

Despite its troubles, Kosovo offers model for nation-builders
In newest country, improvements come slowly but steadily

[...]

And yet, in spite of its problems and growing pains, Kosovo is cited by many diplomats as a credible model of nation-building, a sign -- relevant to the current debate over Afghanistan -- that a determined effort by foreigners can help to build a country from the ashes.

After years of ethnic conflict, security and stability are taking root.

[...]

[C]onstruction cranes rise like green shoots from the skyline of Pristina, Kosovo's capital, which is in the midst of a building boom thanks to foreign aid.

In another hopeful sign, Kosovo in mid-November held its first municipal elections since declaring independence on Feb. 17, 2008. Although there were a handful of violent incidents during the campaign, voters cast their ballots in peace and there were no major allegations of fraud.

it would have been helpful to provide a little more context although i despair of finding that most basic journalistic blandishment in the wapo of the 21st century...

the context that is sadly missing is the enormous corruption that fuels kosovo... with a massive set of laws on the books, all written by outsiders but virtually no functioning justice system to apply them, kosovo is nearly as much of a wild, anything-goes frontier as is afghanistan... (having spent considerable time recently in both places, i believe the comparison is apt...)

bootlegged and counterfeit products, human trafficking, a vibrant drug trade, politicians openly on the take, brand new roads and buildings already crumbling due to lack of any construction codes or standards, all conspire to make the wapo's rosy picture of a nation "a-building" more than a bit lame...

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Yep, the banksters have a LOT to be thankful for - massive bailouts and no regulation

meanwhile, all we peasants can expect is a lump of coal in our christmas stockings...

from the wapo... (the strikeout is mine...)

The nation's bankers banksters have much to be thankful for as they sit down to their turkey dinners on Thursday.

At this time last year, the American financial system was near collapse, rescued only by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Now the system has stabilized, and the industry is on the verge of a coup that many would have thought impossible a year ago: an escape from any major reform of financial regulations.

On Tuesday, the American Financial Services Association even held a conference call with reporters to update them on its efforts -- successful so far -- to torpedo plans for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would protect people from the sort of lending abuses that led to last year's implosion.

The ASFA, a trade group of credit card issuers, auto-finance companies, mortgage lenders and others leading the fight against the CFPA, took the unusual approach on Tuesday of publicly celebrating the reform's fading prospects.

"This was supposed to be a slam-dunk," crowed Bill Hempler, the group's top lobbyist. But instead, he said, "Democratic members are increasingly having heartburn over CFPA and maybe second thoughts."

[...]

Now these same companies [CIT, CitiFinancial, Countrywide, EquiFirst, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo Financial and GMAC], suffering from some combination of amnesia and ingratitude, are determined to fight off regulatory efforts to prevent a repeat of the same cycle of bubble, collapse and bailout. Big firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America -- direct or indirect beneficiaries of federal bailouts -- are all battling efforts to rein in derivatives. And credit card issuers, facing new regulations scheduled to take effect in February, have responded by increasing their rates and fees.

check THIS as a rationale for fighting re-regulation...

[T]he argument most likely to prevail for the financial firms on Capitol Hill was offered by Chris Stinebert, the trade group's chief. "Especially now, when we're in a very, very sensitive time, when the capital markets are just starting to recover," he said, "introducing a high level of uncertainty in the marketplace could be very detrimental."

amazingly enough, dana milbank, well-known for shilling the views of his ultra-establishment employer, actually decides to call a spade a spade...

Or, to put it another way: Don't regulate us now because the economy is still suffering from the mess we made because we weren't regulated the last time. Chutzpah, it appears, is recession-proof.

how long will it take the long-suffering citizens of our formerly devoted-to-the-common-good country to realize we've been the victims of yet another coup d'etat, this one of truly staggering proportions... bless the 17+% unemployed who owe their circumstances largely to the banksters... and fie on the banksters who will be celebrating the latest fast one they pulled on us peasants...

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A dog story from Pakistan

this is the kind of thing that i'd like to see more of... it's human, touching, and brings a compassionate three-dimensionality to what is often seen as sadly one-dimensional, particularly from the perspective of this side of the world...

and, yes, it brought tears to my eyes...


Lost and found: Pamela Constable with Ahu and
some of the Pakistanis who helped her locate the
missing pet. (Courtesy Of The Author)

Ahu & Me: A Dog Is Lost, Hope Is Found In Pakistan

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

another take-away from this story (besides warm fuzzies), is that there are good-hearted, wonderful people everywhere, just as there are assholes and idiots everywhere...

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Am I cynical...? Am I a contrarian...? Am I a Republican...?

yes, occasionally and hell no... however, at this stage of the game, i have to confess that anyone endorsed by the wapo is deserving of my opposition...

Confirm Sonia Sotomayor

After four days of often intense confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor proved herself well-qualified and worthy of confirmation.

the co-host of my blogtalkradio program, brother tim, expressed puzzlement the other day over why the repubs were so opposed to sotomayor when it's obvious that she's a perfect choice for them, a law and order freak and a supporter of the corporate model who will probably align quite nicely with the neo-bush obama administration...

i make the above points with great pain since i think a latina supreme court justice would be a great thing just as i thought a black president would be a great thing... hell, i think a black, female president would be a great thing and if it wasn't for the fact that the only product on offer that met that description was she-who-must-not-be-named, i would have gone out and pushed for her...

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Oops...! We've been fingered...! Guess it's time to try to spin our way out of it...!

what a bunch of fresh, steaming, fly-encrusted horseshit...

Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth yesterday canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered corporate underwriters access to Post journalists, Obama administration officials and members of Congress in exchange for payments as high as $250,000.

"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."

The fliers were approved by a top Post marketing executive, Charles Pelton, who said it was "a big mistake" on his part and that he had done so "without vetting it with the newsroom."

[...]

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he was "appalled" by the plan. "It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase," Brauchli said. The proposal "promises we would suspend our usual skeptical questioning because it appears to offer, in exchange for sponsorships, the good name of The Washington Post."

The Post Co. fliers offered an "intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth." The fliers, which said participants would be charged $25,000 to sponsor a single salon and $250,000 to underwrite an annual series of 11 sessions, were reported yesterday by Politico.

ok... take a deep breath... clear your head... take a moment to look off in the distance and let those muddled thoughts settle... ready...? now, let's get really, really real...

these protestations of being "appalled," of "disappointment," of not wanting to do "any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom," are disingenuous in the extreme... pelton would have never done something that involved sending fliers to d.c. movers and shakers under the wapo banner advertising no less than dinner at the house of the wapo ceo and publisher unless ALL the details had been ok'd by said ceo and publisher in advance... no marketing honcho is going to put his career on the line by doing something like that unilaterally unless he's purposely angling to get fired... no siree... they blew it, big-time, and now pelton has become the whole burnt offering sacrificed on the altar of "to hell with you, i'm saving my OWN ass..."

patético...

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The headline I've been waiting for

	News Alert 11:05 p.m. ET Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Barack Obama Wins the Presidency Barack Obama defeats John McCain to become first African American to win the White House

kabul, afghanistan, 8:50 a.m., wednesday, 5 november 2008

literally everybody here in the project is talking about this, afghans and ex-pats alike... i had the tv on in my hotel room since 5:30 this morning... what an amazing feat... god help barack... god help us all...

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The Obama endorsement I never thought I'd see

whaddaya know...

	Opinions Friday, Oct. 17, 2008 Editorial Barack Obama for President The Washington Post endorses Barack Obama.

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Press Or Say.............

Fair use be damned........this is too good not too share in it's entirety.

From today's WaPo.

For a Bailout, Press 'One' . . .

By Alan Neff
Thursday, September 18, 2008; Page A21

"Hello! You've reached the United States Treasury's automated bailout hotline. Please listen carefully, because our options have recently changed. If you're too big to fail, press or say 'one.' If not, hang up and dial 1-800-FOR-FEMA.' "

"One."

"Great! You've selected Option One. If you're a bank, press or say 'one.' If you're a brokerage firm, press or say 'two.' If you're an insurance company, press or say 'three.' "

"Three."

"You've selected Option Three, which means you're an insurance firm. Did I get that right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, let's drill down a little further. If you're calling because you're besieged by class-action lawsuits brought by take-no-prisoners plaintiffs' attorneys because your large corporate policyholders committed innumerable mass toxic torts, press or say 'one.' If you're calling because you insured billions of dollars' worth of undocumented, nonperforming mortgages, press or say 'two.' "

"Two. No, wait, one. I mean, uh, both."

"I'm sorry. I didn't understand. Let's try something else. If you're the CEO of an insurance company with a servile compensation committee that gave you an irrevocable golden parachute, press or say 'one.' If you've served on corporate boards with Henry Paulson, press or say 'two.' If you believe in strict market Darwinism for every company but yours, press or say 'three.' "

"Three."

"If you want your check automatically deposited into your company's bank account, press or say 'one.' If you want cash in small, unmarked, used, nonsequential bills delivered to a branch office in Zurich or the Cayman Islands, press or say 'two.' "

[Silence. Thinking. Surge of fiduciary energy.]

"One."

"Okay. Please enter the amount you want using the number keys. Use the star sign for a decimal point and press pound when you've finished."

[Lengthy series of numbers entered, followed by the pound sign.]

"Wow! You are in trouble! Your funds should clear in three business days. When you have another claim, call back. Thank you for calling, and have a great day!"

Alan Neff is a lawyer and novelist. He lives in Chicago.

The convergence of fact and fiction.

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The Washington Post won't provide context even from their OWN newspaper, even when it's from YESTERDAY

god, it's SO-O-O-O-OOO ANNOYING...!

on page one of today's edition, gates says...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says that even winning the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not end the "Long War" against violent extremism and that the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorists should be the nation's top military priority over coming decades, according to a new National Defense Strategy he approved last month.

yeah, ok, we're all familiar with the "Long War"/endless war rhetoric... it's been shoved down our collective throats for years as the no-argument excuse for lining the pockets of defense contractors and bush cronies, shredding the constitution, stripping our civil liberties, justifying torture, collecting mountains of private information on everyone and everything, and perpetrating abuses unimaginable in what we thought was the land of liberty and justice for all... but yesterday, in this very newspaper on page 4, it was revealed that the rand corporation, not exactly a bastion of peace-loving, dope-smoking hippies, had this to say...

The Bush administration's terrorism-fighting strategy has not significantly undermined al-Qaeda's capabilities, according to a major new study that argues the struggle against terrorism is better waged by law enforcement agencies than by armies.

The study by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. also contends that the administration committed a fundamental error in portraying the conflict with al-Qaeda as a "war on terrorism." The phrase falsely suggests that there can be a battlefield solution to terrorism, and symbolically conveys warrior status on terrorists, it said.

[...]

"In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument," said Jones, a terrorism expert and the report's lead author.

Addressing the U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda, the study noted successes in disrupting terrorist financing, but said the group remains a formidable foe. Al-Qaeda is "strong and competent," and has succeeded in carrying out more violent attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than in all of its previous history. Moreover, its organizational structure has adapted and evolved over time, "making it a more dangerous enemy," Jones and Libicki wrote.

The authors call for a strategy that includes a greater reliance on law enforcement and intelligence agencies in disrupting the group's networks and in arresting its leaders. They say that when military forces are needed, the emphasis should be on local troops, which understand the terrain and culture and tend to have greater legitimacy.

very interesting, no...? but did the high potentates who exercise the ever-so-thorough oversight on the news that gets printed in the wapo see fit to mention THAT in the gates article...? of course not... so, the very day after the rand corporation story is published, decrying the entire notion of the "Long War," our secretary of defense bald-facedly declares that we're not only fighting the "Long War," but that it will continue on for DECADES, without ONE SINGLE MENTION of what the very same newspaper published the day before...

yeah, i know... it's not news to anyone that our news media practices propaganda instead of journalism, nor is it news that they pretend that what they reported as news yesterday is somehow irrelevant to today, but it's still shocking to see such a graphic display of dishonesty, to say nothing of a goddam shame...

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