The Department of Justice says the Central Intelligence Agency has about 3,000 documents, including e-mails, transcripts and cables to officials in Washington, related to the missing and destroyed videotapes of "interrogation" (it's called torture, except by American media and government mouthpieces) during the Bush-Cheney administration.
[ The Public Record ]
On 60 Minutes last night, in addition to stupidly saying that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's job is safe, President Obama said the right things about former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent ludicrous accusations that America is somehow "less safe" because Obama has announced that
"The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power."
Daniel Webster
he's dialing back the torture and endless, hopeless imprisonment without trial, closing Guantanamo, etc. "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" he said. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." That's obviously true, but just saying so isn't much of an advertisement that things will change. You know what would really get that message out? You know what might really convince the people who hate America most that things are different? Dick Cheney in irons.
[ Washington Monthly ]
The Obama administration intends to declassify and publicly release another set of previously classified Justice Department memorandums, drafted in May 2005 to provide the Bush administration with faux legal authorization to torture "high-value" detainees. These memos were written by Steven Bradbury, who was Bush-Cheney's head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and Jay Bybee, who was Deputy Assistant Attorney General. Drip, drip, drip, the incriminating evidence is revealed, and I don't know what to make of this. Feedback from readers would be appreciated, and your feedback might be to smack me in the head for saying this, 'cuz it's going to sound stupid and I don't really believe what I'm going to type here. I'm not putting this out as my theory, because it's just too preposterous, but the drip-drip-drip seems to be intentional. There's no reason the Justice Department couldn't have revealed these memos along with the last batch of memos revealed and the next batch, all at once -- or they could've not released any of the memos at all. One big dump of Bush-Cheney memos would make news once and be forgotten in days,
Corporations own the news
Virtually all American media is controlled by corporations and operated solely for profit, so news that's controversial or expensive to cover often gets minimal coverage that's shallow, inaccurate, or slanted to favor big business.
America's political discourse and mainstream media are dominated by lies, insults, and general nuttiness from right-wing commentators and politicians. And there's really no left-wing equivalent, since anyone who offers blunt criticism of the right-wing -- even when it's warranted and true -- is "outside the mainstream", by definition.
but if they keep letting the evidence out bit by bit, then it keeps making news and keeps coming back to make news again, and the drip-drip-drip might conceivably lead to a groundswell of public outcry demanding an investigation? It goes without saying that I don't trust Obama at all -- his administration has endorsed much of the Bush-Cheney legacy, argued for continued unconstitutional acts, tried to block lawsuits, etc. And yet... If Obama wanted a wide-ranging investigation of the Bush-Cheney administration, and also wanted to make sure it didn't look like it was his idea, this might be a workable strategy.
[ Newsweek ]
Contrary to claims at the time, we're now told that the FBI and Nevada US Attorney's office were involved in the raid on ACORN's offices in Nevada a few weeks before last fall's election. Add it to the mountain of evidence of Bush-Cheney era corruption.
[ Raw Story ]
Paul Minor, another victim of the Bush-Cheney administration's politicization of the Department of Justice, is serving an 11-year sentence non-violent, white collar crimes he did not commit. His "crime" consisted of making campaign donations to Democratic candidates for judgeships in Mississippi, setting back plans hatched by Karl Rove and Hailey Barbour (then RNC chair and now governor of Mississippi) to take control of the state's judiciary by flooding the electoral process with dollars from Republican-loyal out-of-state business interests. The details of his case were surveyed here and here. His appeal is slated to be argued in New Orleans on April Fool's Day.
[ Huffington Post, distilled by Harper's ]
Victims of the US-based mercenary firm CACI can sue in American courts over their torture.
[ Associated Press ]
"Medicare Part D, the prescription benefit that went into effect three years ago, was supposed to let the elderly get their medicines more cheaply by creating competition between private insurers. Yes, the program has undeniably improved access to prescriptions. Health Insurance But the cost to taxpayers has been 3.5 times the market value of those prescriptions, according to a study in the journal Health Affairs." The legislation was driven by Republicans, so its obvious, inarguable intent was to funnel as much money as possible to giant corporations, and it does this task very effectively. Any help that's been provided to senior citizens needing prescriptions is merely coincidental.
[ New York Times ]
There are now allegations that Jovica Stanisic, who was in charge of Serbia's secret police during its darkest, most deadly days under Slobodan Milosevic, was actually a CIA operative. There's no knowing yet whether it's true or not, but it's perfectly plausible.
[ The Sunday Herald ]
As the Obama administration was sending a generally warm, friendly, and potentially productive message to the people of Iran, Israel was sending a very different message. Israeli President Shimon Peres also delivered a "special message" to Iran on Nowruz, but "was addressed specifically to Iran's people and not their government, reprising the tone of [former President] Bush." And Peres explicitly contradicted Obama and called on the Iranian people to overthrow their government. You stay classy, Shimon.
[ ThinkProgess ]
In Iraq, according to the Washington Post, there's fear of "chaos" as hundreds of prisoners are freed from the US-run Bucca Prison, which is being closed. "As the United States dismantles Bucca, viewed by many as an appalling miscarriage of justice where prisoners were not charged or permitted to see evidence against them, freed detainees may end up swelling the ranks of a subdued insurgency." What this says is that the individuals in Bucca and others prisons like it were there as political prisoners, and their release poses the problem that they will be free to resume political opposition to the Maliki government established by the American occupation. --Wig
[ Washington Post ]
An Iraqi widow is suing the mercenary company Xe (formerly Blackwater) in an American court, for the company's alleged cover-up of her husband's killing.
[ Agence France-Presse ] The Guardian suspects that the US will engineer a new Prime Minister for Afghanistan, who would presumably be an even more pliable puppet than the current President- on-strings, Hamid Karzai. The US government still thinks it knows how to develop democracies where they don't want one. --Wig
[ The Guardian ]
More than a million people are protesting in the streets in France, infuriated by their government's economic policies. In France. 'Cuz the French don't take this crap lying down, while Americans take it all and ask for seconds. --Angry Annie
[ BBC News ]
A United Nations human rights investigator said on Thursday that Israel's offensive against Hamas in densely populated Gaza appeared to constitute a war crime of the "greatest magnitude." Well, duh.
[ Ha'aretz (Jerusalem) ]
Many Israeli troops had the sense of fighting a "religious war" against Gentiles during the 22-day offensive in Gaza, according to a soldier who has highlighted the martial role of military rabbis during the operation. The soldier testified that the "clear" message of literature distributed to troops by the rabbinate was: "We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the Gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land." [ Belfast Telegraph ]
The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to "cold-blooded murder".
[ London Times ]
It made me stop and think
"A headline today said, "Americans lose 18 percent of their wealth." Well, no, it wasn't real wealth, it was a bubble. You're down 18 percent? You're not. It shouldn't have been up there in the first place. So get over it. Shut up. Go to work, produce stuff that has value. I really think the days are gone, I hope, when people can rearrange the furniture and get rich on it. You got to produce something."
[ Rick Steves ]
"By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. "
[ Matt Taibbi ]
"Yes, we really do live in a country where high-level executives can destroy the largest insurance company on earth, get paid millions in bonuses nonetheless, while literally hundreds of thousands of middle class employees lose their jobs. Yes, we really live in a country where CEOs get paid not just $1m or $10m but $30-$100m even while their companies slide down the sh*tter on their watch and they have to lay of tens of thousands of people."
[ Law Talking Guy ]
"For months, the opponents of Operation Cast Lead -- the assault on Gaza that killed 1,434 Palestinians -- have been told we are "dupes for Islamic fundamentalists", or even anti-Semitic. The defenders of Israel's war claimed you could only believe the reports that Israeli troops were deliberately firing on civilians, scrawling "death to Arabs" on the walls, and trashing olive groves, or using the chemical weapon white phosphorus that burns to the bone, if you were infected with the old European virus of Jew-hatred. "Now the very people who fought that war have confirmed we were simply describing reality. One Israeli Defense Force squad leader says of the orders he was given to target civilians: "I call it murder." As he put it: "In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them 'you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed'." In a crowded civilian city, there are all sorts of people who cannot run away: the elderly, the disabled, the pregnant, the terrified. This soldier was told to kill them."
[ Johann Hari ]
"At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis -- that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that "governments do a bad job of running banks" (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached. "This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it's owned by the wheeler-dealers. And that leaves it with no ability to counter crude populism."
[ Paul Krugman ]
"A couple of years ago, it would have been hyperbole to suggest that we would all be better off if the senior executives at all our major financial firms were people picked entirely at random out of the phone book. Now, it's arguably true. People picked at random would, admittedly, be likely not to have been to business school. They might not know a lot about futures or derivatives or put options. But so what? At least they might have been more likely to know that they were clueless, and a few of them might have had the common sense to ask questions like: will housing prices really go up indefinitely? "In any case, what's the worst they could have done? Bankrupted their companies with ludicrously risky gambles that fell apart once markets went south? Destroyed trillions of dollars in value? Brought the world financial system to the brink of collapse? Left taxpayers across the globe on the hook for trillions of dollars? Bankrupted entire countries? "Oh, right."
[ Hilzoy ]
Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons. It's an awkward fact unanimously ignored by American and Israeli officials, but accidentally acknowledged in a 2008 Defense Department report. Well, you're saying, whoopee ding-dong, what does it matter that some official document wanders into the real world for long enough to say yup, Israel's got nuclear arms up the yin-yang? "By law, the US would have to cease providing billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel if it determined the country had a nuclear weapons program. That's because the so-called Symington Amendment, passed in 1976, bars assistance to countries developing technology for nuclear weapons proliferation." But the law doesn't matter at all, because US government always, always ignores inconvenient laws.
[ military.com ]
Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter has signed a number of injunctions banning a series of events titled "Jerusalem, the capital of Arab culture," which were scheduled to be held Saturday in Jerusalem, Nazareth and in other parts of the country under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
[ YnetNews.com ]
In a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing, former Halliburton unit KBR complained that it will be at a "competitive disadvantage" to win "large-scale" international contracts because it is being forced to comply with US laws.
[ The Public Record ]
Election officials are among eight people indicted in Kentucky in allegations of vote buying and vote theft that included using voting machines to steal votes. Of course, using machines to steal votes is about as easy as sending an email, so please don't read this and imagine that it's only happened in Kentucky.
[ BradBlog ]
The US Army says it'll investigate why 22 military police officers were deployed in Alabama after last week's routine deranged nutball shooting spree. "In addition to determining the facts, this inquiry will also consider
whether law, regulation and policy were followed," says a spokesman. Same old question. Who knew what? And when did they know it? And is it another Inquiry no-one will ever hear about again? --Wig
[ Associated Press ]
Almost 2½-million Americans are in prison -- five times as many as when Reagan was elected, and about 15 times as many as at the height of the Great Depression. Are there more criminals now than then? Is society safer because of all these prisons full of Americans? Or is there just more money to be made building and staffing prisons?
[ Wikipedia ]
Ten US Muslim organizations threatened this week to cease working with the FBI, citing "McCarthy-era tactics" by the agency, including efforts to covertly infiltrate California mosques. Is there even the slightest reason to doubt that it's true? The feds don't even bother to deny it.
[ Cable News Network ]
California's Secretary of State has given a green light to collect signatures for a new initiative that would reverse last year's Proposition 8, and restore the right for adults to marry regardless of gender.
[ Salon ]
The new improved Department of Justice will appeal the recent dismissal of charges against James Tobin, the Republican official who orchestrated a phone-jamming effort to suppress votes in the 2002 Senate election (narrowly won by corrupt Republican James Sununu).
[ Associated Press ]
A federal judge has ruled that Pulaski and McCreary counties in Kentucky, which posted the Ten Commandments in their courthouses, then ignored ACLU letters pointing out the illegality of this, then fought the ACLU all the way to the US Supreme Court, must pay the legal bills of the ACLU's lawyers. The counties, of course, will appeal the ruling, which I certainly hope will add still more to the eventual bill.
[ Lexington Herald-Leader ]
The Obama administration says it'll spend another $75-$100 billion -- but it could be lots more -- to purchase toxic loans and get them off the books for Big Finance and Wall Street companies. I'm not an economist but we're so far over to the other side of the looking glass, even I can see that we're just skating farther and farther out on thinner and thinner ice, and when the ice breaks the American economy will drown.
[ Wall Street Journal ]
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's "plan" has been leaked, and it's every bit as ugly and stupid as observers had feared. Here, I'll let Paul Krugman explain: "The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with
the financial system -- that what we're facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved. "To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad -- I mean misunderstood -- assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding. "But it's immediately
obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating -- deliberately! -- the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. ..."
[ New York Times ]
American International Group (AIG), the colossally corrupt financial giant that's been rewarded with nearly $200-billion in bailout bucks for its deep involvement in criminal schemes that brought down the world's economy, is suing the US government to have $306 million in tax payments returned. Breathtaking, ain't it? Is there no-one in the entire corporate structure at AIG who understands anything about public relations, no-one who understands that idiocy stacked on incompetence stacked on repeated outrages like this will make it harder and harder for the Obama administration to continue the gravy train of billions? The goons at AIG need to slap themselves on the forehead and figure out that they're imperiling their steady stream of rip-off funding, and that's the only thing keeping AIG afloat. [ New York Times ] An internal memo at AIG explains how employees can avoid and survive public fury. [ Gawker ]
Turns out that AIG gave bigger bonuses than previously announced, for the people who wrote worthless derivatives trades. It's $218-million so far, not merely $165-million.
[ BBC News ]
JP Morgan Chase will spend millions on new jets and a luxury airport hangar.
[ ABC News ]
And a judge has ordered Bank of America to turn over the names of its Merrill Lynch multi-million-dollar bonus bag-money recipients to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
[ New York Times ]
Flashback: It was George W Bush and the Republican Party that opposed executive compensation caps.
[ Huffington Post ]
Oh, and speaking of the clearly clueless elite, the rotting corpse of Washington Mutual is suing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) over allegedly "cryptic disallowance" of its claims and FDIC's "unreasonably low price" in selling the bankrupt bank. There could be some merit to the dead bank's complaint, I suppose, but it adds to the growing realization among clue-deprived Americans who hadn't realized it before, that the rich live on a different world than you and I, a world where the very idea that they might someday, somehow not be rich is just unthinkable.
[ Reuters News Agency ]
Banks and other firms receiving federal bailout bucks were required to sign contracts stating they had no unpaid taxes. But you'll be un-surprised to learn that at least 13 of the companies have unpaid taxes, some dating back years. Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia), chair of some House subcommittee that's allegedly overseeing the bailout, says the names of the companies cannot be legally revealed. Funny how that works, eh?
[ Associated Press ]
Congress is hard at work on bills that would tax the hell out of this year's huge bonuses received by executives at bailed-out companies. I understand the anger at AIG, but this is dumb-ass populism -- targeting taxpayers this narrowly and specifically is absurd, unfair, and possibly illegal. Do we want Congress to pass humongous tax hikes for anyone who becomes politically unpopular? And of course, the legislation does nothing to curb the mega-Midas paychecks received routinely by executives at virtually every big American company.
[ Los Angeles Times ] The New York Times has called the AIG boondoggle Obama's "Katrina moment", and a flock of pundits have helped make that term almost a cliché, but it's a god-awful stupid line.
[ TV Barn ]
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) tried to insert language in the bailout/rip-off bill that would've limited the super-spectacular-ginormous paychecks for CEOs and other executives, but that language was deleted... by Sen Dodd... to appease Secretary Treasury Tim Geithner. OK, Dodd's a spineless wimp and Geithner ought to be fired -- he's an utter embarrassment when American desperately needs smart leadership. But again, while all this is outrage focused on AIG is fun, it's almost trivial compared to the big picture. Big Government is rescuing Big Finance (or trying to) with limitless billions in taxpayer money while leaving ordinary people to rot -- and that ought to be seen as exponentially more infuriating than a few piddly millions in unwarranted bonuses at AIG and Merrill Lynch and Citigroup spending $10-million to remodel its executive suite, and all the other daily outrages we're reading about.
[ The Hartford Courant ]
US Agency for International Development has opted to switch its purchase of gazillions of condoms from a manufacturer in Alabama to foreign suppliers. Expect plenty of late-night comedians' jokes, but it's symptomatic of a real and serious mistake often made. Whenever its possible and feasible, Americans should buy from American suppliers.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
Because Vallejo, California is bankrupt, a judge has allowed the city to abrogate its contracts with unions. It's a gruesome side effect of bankruptcy, aggravating but not surprising.
[ San Francisco Chronicle ]
The state of Michigan has taken over the city of Pontiac. All city spending will now be under the control of Fred Leeb, a "turnaround specialist" who owns a couple of management firms and has been placed in charge of Pontiac.
[ WDIV-TV ]
The Pentagon has downplayed, under-reported and generally ignored brain injuries among US soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Iraq.
[ AlterNet ]
The New York Times' ombudsman does a pretty good job showing how the paper ignores its own policies, and welcomes anonymous sources on any topic, no matter how trivial, no matter how obviously some of these sources are playing politics behind their anonymity.
[ New York Times ]
MSNBC is reportedly in talks with Ed Schultz, who would presumably provide a third prime time hour of left-leaning commentary, to go with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. I can see the business sense in it -- Schultz's radio show is very popular -- but we listen to a lot of radio programs, most of which tilt to the left, and I've never had any response to Ed Schultz beyond a long, loud yawn. Politically, he's barely to the left of center, and his personality (or at least, what comes across on the radio) is that of an old, kind of dim guy who doesn't have much to say but says it all, slowly and with little style or charm. I've listened to his radio program perhaps a dozen times, and never heard Schultz or his guests cite any news I didn't know or state anything I found thought-provoking or even mildly amusing.
[ ThinkProgess ]
A bill in the Texas legislature would allow "creationists" at a private college to hand out Masters of Science degrees.
[ Raw Story ]
There's a faint chance that the Bush-Cheney administration's torture architect, John Yoo, could face a blip in his academic career as punishment for some preposterous legal papers he wrote while working in Washington. Of course, he's being publicly defended by Alan Dershowitz, another famous fan of torture.
[ Harper's ]
A scientific study which followed 345 terminal cancer patients suggests what may be the final hypocrisy: that the highly religious seem the most afraid to die. Why? Perhaps because in their hearts they know they're likely wrong about the nature and existence of God. Or, they know they lived their lives doing wrong against others, merely using religion as a convenient excuse for some of it, and thus fear righteous punishment. --JR Mooneyham
[ BBC News ]
In what's otherwise a big smooch for Arianna Huffington, this piece in Time briefly acknowledges that "Someone is going to sue The Huffington Post" over its unfair use of "fair use". We're in no position to preach, as anyone who pokes around Unknown News could probably find a hundred violations of "fair use" here, but our website has never been about making money and we've never had any money to speak of. Arianna Huffington, though, has a heck of a lot of money and she's built a very popular ad-supported website largely on swiped or "scraped" content that she could easily pay for. It's scummy, and it's going to make her Huffington Post a tempting target for a "fair use" lawsuit that could hurt a lot of little weblogs like ours if the verdict doesn't go Arianna's way.
[ Time ]
A state Senator in Arizona wrote an insulting email to a developmentally disabled 9th-grader. I'm a thousand miles from Arizona, but I was pretty sure the politician was a Republican even before the article told me.
[ The Arizona Republic ]
Kurt Perry suffers from a degenerative neurological disease, suffers so much that he arranged for an assisted suicide. When his suicide helpers were arrested for planning his death, Perry decided not to kill himself after all. Instead he's becoming an activist: "I want to do everything I can to support the right-to-die movement." Not our ordinary fare at Unknown News, but it's a heck of an inspirational story and it made me stick my fist into the air.
[ Disaboom ]
#
I recently concluded a thorough pillaging of the sci-fi section of the local "free library" in town.
So...I decided to see what else they had in stock. I was shocked to see just a couple of Tom Robbins and one Tom Wolfe novel (though according to Wikipedia, most of Wolfe's books are considered non-fiction.) Here is what I found:
Trevanian (author of "The Eiger Sanction", "Shibumi", etc.) has published "The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street". This is a fictionalized autobiography about growing up in the slums of New York during the last half of the Depression and WWII. There is now a www.trevanian.com website, fyi, and regrettably, he seems to be implying that "Crazy Ladies" is his final novel ...
Robbins has published "Villa Incognito", and it is a good read. Mercifully shorter than some of his previous novels. He includes a copyrighted song of his own invention, "Meet Me Incognito" :-) From the cover: "On one level, this is a book about identity, masquerade, and disguise -- about "the false mustache of the world" -- but neither the mists of Laos nor the smog of Bangkok, neither the overcast of Seattle nor the fog of San Francisco, neither the murk of the intelligence community nor the mummery of the circus can obscure the linguistic phospor that illuminates the pages of Villa Incognito."
Finally, in sci-fi, Joe Haldeman is out with "Marsbound". Not a bad read at all, though a very Heinlein-esque, Podkayne-ish story about emigrants to Mars via the Earth Space Elevator... One nice thing about Haldeman is that he writes in a simple, single-threaded, first person narrative style that is perfect for reading while walking or riding (i.e. it does not require intense focus to just enjoy a masterfully told story.)
In other entertainment news, I have recently rediscovered George Clooney's "O Brother, Where Art Thou" -- ironically another Depression-era story. It is fairly loony, and may require several re-watchings, as it may be an acquired taste (similar to Queen Latifah, who grows more appealing the more I see her -- and her "Last Holiday" movie is definitely ok.)
OK, that's the nooze from Lake Wobegone...
Willow
#
I found this while hunting down the original article about Japanese women who are now inclined to matrimony because of the economy (an alarming development, IMO):
Excerpt: '"I want to get married soon, hopefully by the end of this year," said Iwate, a 36-year-old employee at a mail-order retailer in Tokyo. "The recession made me realize I'm not going to make as much money as I expected, and I'd be more stable financially if I had double income to fall back on."
Other stories of interest -- homeless men sleeping in internet cafes for just $9 a night, "drift tribe" racers who we recently saw in "Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift", and yakuza geezers threatened by gangster nerds -- these give me the idea that just as California sometimes leads the rest of USA in social trends, perhaps Japan leads California?
Excerpt: Japan's housewives have acted as the guardians of the country's vast household savings built up since its rise to prosperity after the devastation of war. At more than Y1,500,000bn (some $16,800bn), these savings are considered the world's biggest pool of investable wealth. Most of it is stashed in ordinary Japanese bank accounts; a surprisingly large amount is kept at home in cash, in tansu savings, named for the traditional wooden cupboards in which people store their possessions. But from the early 2000s, the housewives -- often referred to collectively as "Mrs Watanabe", a common Japanese surname -- began to hunt for higher returns. ...Noriko Hama is an outspoken and thoroughly entertaining economist at Kyoto's Doshisha University Business School. Her hair color -- sometimes purple, sometimes orange -- changes at each new encounter. When I met her recently in Tokyo, it was a wispy pink. Hama argues that Japanese women are far more powerful than western stereotypes allow, particularly in the realm of finance. "Take a typical Hollywood film when something goes bump in the night," she says. "The wife would invariably say to the husband: 'Do something. Go and see what this is all about.' But in a Japanese setting, it would be the woman who gets up and takes care of things. It is women who have the ability to do these practical things. Therefore, the lords and princes are very much dependent on how women behave." She also believes women played an important role in funneling Japanese yen and yen-derived trades into the global financial bubble.
Hama says women's power is especially evident when it comes to household finance. "If you go way back to the Edo period and before," she says, "one of the principal functions of the wife of the shogun and feudal lords was to manage the household." Even the bigger financial decisions -- buying a house or building an investment strategy -- tend to be taken by women, she adds. "The men pretend to control the larger decisions. There's a lot of keeping up appearances in terms of letting the men feel that that's the case. But all the groundwork has been done by the wife. It's just an endorsement ritual that the men get up to."
Hazel Burke
#
I stumbled across this and it made my eyes roll out of their sockets:
That's the mindset of a frighteningly large subset of Republican voters -- they're willing to believe and repeat any lie that's whispered or posted or emailed their way, reality be damned.
Heidi Papademetriou
A substantial number of right-wing true believers are dumber than sticks, and will believe anything they're told, so their leaders tell them outrageous lies which are swallowed whole. That's why lots of Republicans think Obama is a socialist, or Obama's not an American citizen, or Obama's getting ready to confiscate every American's guns, or the Stimulus bill (excuse me, "Porkulus bill") funds a high-speed train from Disneyland to Las Vegas, or the Employee Free Choice Act deprives workers of the right to vote, or ACORN is stealing elections, et cetera, ad nauseum, on and on -- all lies, all widely believed by the deeply gullible.
Excerpt: The AIG scandal has made it apparent that we are ruled by a government of
men, not laws.
Obama seems to be utterly deaf and blind regarding what people are thinking about the present circumstances. If he ignores this much longer, he'll go down in flames, and all our hopes with him.
#
Do you think these people would NOT risk totally bankrupting America to save their fortunes? Or that the clowns in Congress AND the White House are looking out for John Q. Public (if so, why is it that nearly all of the money is going to prop up financial markets and only minute amounts being used to build an economy which builds things?).
Excerpt: People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve -- "our partners in the government," as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron -- a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers. ...
Excerpt: I believe the Bernanke Fed committed a historic mistake this week -- compounding ongoing errors made by the Activist Greenspan/Bernanke Federal Reserve for more than 20 years now. I find it rather incredible that Discretionary Activist Central Banking is not held accountable -- and that it is, instead, viewed critical for the solution. Apparently, the inflation of Federal Reserve Credit to $2.0 TN was judged to have had too short of a half-life. So the Fed is now to balloon its liabilities to $3.0 TN, as it implements unprecedented market purchases of Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, agency and corporate debt securities. And what if $3.0 TN doesn't go the trick? Well, why not the $5 or $6 TN Bill Gross is advocating? What's the holdup?
Washington fiscal and monetary policies are completely out of control. Apparently, the overarching objective has evolved to one of rejuvenating the securities and asset markets. I believe the principal objective should be to avoid bankrupting the country. It is also my view that our policymakers and pundits are operating from flawed analytical frameworks and are, thus, completely oblivious to the risks associated with the current course of policymaking.
Today's consensus view holds that inflation is the primary risk emanating from aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulation. It is believed that this risk is minimal in our newfound deflationary backdrop. Moreover, if inflation does at some point begin to rear its ugly head the Fed will simply extract "money" from the system and guide the economy back to "the promised land of price stability." Wording this flawed view somewhat differently, inflation is not an issue - and our astute central bankers are well-placed to deal with inflation if it ever unexpectedly does become a problem.
Our federal government has set a course to issue Trillions of Treasury securities and guarantee multi-Trillions more of private-sector debt. The Federal Reserve has set its own course to balloon its liabilities as it acquires Trillions of securities. After witnessing the disastrous financial and economic distortions wrought from Trillions of Wall Street Credit inflation (securities issuance), it is difficult for me to accept the shallowness of today's analysis. In reality, the paramount risk today has very little to do with prospective rates of consumer price inflation. Instead, the critical issue is whether the Treasury and Federal Reserve have set a mutual course that will destroy their creditworthiness - just as Wall Street finance destroyed theirs. ...
I would argue that market pricing for government and mortgage finance remains highly distorted -- a pricing system maligned by government intervention on top of layers of previous government interventions. These contortions become only more egregious, and I warn that our system will not actually commence its adjustment and repair period until some semblance of true market pricing returns to the marketplace. Yet policymaking has placed peddle to the metal in the exact opposite direction.
The real economy must shift away from a finance and "services" structure -- the system of "trading financial claims for things" -- to a more balanced system where predominantly "things are traded for other things." Such a transition is fundamental, as our system commences the unavoidable shift to an economy that operates on much less Credit of much greater quality. But for now, today's Washington-induced distorted marketplace fosters government and mortgage Credit expansion -- an ongoing massive inflation of non-productive Credit. I would argue this is tantamount to a continuation of Bubble Dynamics that have for years misallocated financial and real resources. In short, today's flagrant market distortions will not spur the type of economic wealth creation necessary to service and extinguish previous debts -- not to mention the Trillions and Trillions more in the pipeline. ...
I am enclosing the contents of an email I sent yesterday to the good people at UnknownNews.net. Valuable information about the ongoing bankrupting of the USA is provided, FYI.
Concerning your great essay about Obama's brain -- bag of hammers -- I explain his astonishing performance thusly...
Obama is a triangulator. Unfortunately this means that although the ship of state has been heading East for eight years (or more) and now desperately needs to voyage West, Obama has chosen the middle course: South. Presumably he will attempt to re-triangulate eventually and then we will be heading South-West... But it will be too late, by then, I believe... I recommend purchasing gold -- or the equivalent in trade goods: alcohol, tobacco and firearms.
Excerpt: "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."
Excerpt: "The military rabbinate brought many magazines and articles with a very clear message: 'We are the Jewish people, a miracle brought us to the land of Israel, God returned us to the land, and now we have to struggle so as to get rid of the gentiles who disturb us from conquering the holy land.' All the feeling throughout all this operation of many of the soldiers was of a war of religions," he said. "As a commander, I tried to explain that the war is not a war of Kiddush Hashem [the sanctification of God's name, including through martyrdom] but over the stopping of the launching of the Qassam rockets."
Sorta reminds me of Adolph's call for the need for a pure Aryan nation.
Excerpt: ... the debate could be transformed by a "third way" proposed by three companies that like to project a progressive image: Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods.
ROFLMAO!!!! "Progressive image"? If you consider the status quo progressive, I guess. The opposition to the "...two of the Employee Free Choice Act's components -- a provision that would allow workers to form a union if a majority sign pro-union cards, without having to hold a secret-ballot election, and one that would impose binding arbitration when employers and unions fail to reach a contract after 120 days" is exactly why the unions are in the predicament that exists today.
1.) What is the difference that makes "a secret-ballot election" more democratic than "a majority sign pro-union cards"? Perhaps the fact that in secret ballot elections the companies are able to strong muscle the workers susceptible to fear of losing their jobs if the company discovers they strayed to the union. If the union wins by an open signing of a majority pro-union cards the company is forced to accept the reality that any retaliation will have to be subject to a negotiated contract.
.2) Is the fear of arbitration a signal that companies know that the reason for the failure to reach an amicable contract is their stubborn opposition to ANY contract? Arbitration in disputes is a long established method of resolving seemingly impossible resolution of differences. Refusal to submit to arbitration by either party to a dispute signals a desire to maintain it's position against any open scrutiny which will expose its hidden motives.
Wig
Opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, whether disguised as "compromise" or just more blatant lies, marks Costco, Starbucks, and Whole Foods as enemies of ordinary working people, but that's really no surprise.
Costco, like its primary competition Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, uses the rigged economic system to gain enormous profits by destroying local stores. Costco pays better and offers more generous benefits that Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, which makes Costco a better choice than Wal-Mart, if you're so poor you can't afford to shop at a local store, but I don't think that makes Costco "progressive". I know next to nothing about the business practices of Starbucks and Whole Foods, but I've never heard anything about either that distinguishes their operations from other chain stores. So I'd say, progressive, my ass.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#National economic Katrina in progress: I thought I had seen everything which the government could possibly do that was asinine. But Ben Bernanke and the Fed announced Wednesday that they will begin buying Treasury bonds as well as mortgage backed securities. A trillion dollars worth.
And Comrade President Obama is proposing to spend trillions more this year with a federal budget deficit year far in excess of one trillion dollars -- perhaps two trillion dollars.
One problem is that the trade deficit has been decreasing due to US imports falling sharply, even faster than exports. That means fewer dollars available overseas to buy treasuries... hence the "need" for Bernanke to buy them.
This is an epic disaster in progress. A national Katrina, from coast to coast. This could be TEOTWAWKI happening now.
One scenario proposed by Karl Denninger is a dramatic destruction of our entire economic and political system. And not just over a period of decades, but weeks or months once foreigners stop purchasing US debt and the only source of "money" is Uncle Ben's Magic Money Tree...
I would have hoped that someone in Authority would take notice of the crash dive of the dollar after the FOMC announcement on Wednesday. Alas, AIG was the main topic in Washington D.C. for the remainder of the week. Everyone, including the fabulous but clueless Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow devoted endless airtime to the question of $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG executives...
C'mon people, the Federal Reserve and President Obama are running amok with an insane spending spree that threatens the very existence of "the United States Of America" as a political entity. What cannot continue will not...
I know Obama is clueless about this stuff, but what is Ben Bernanke thinking??? Will he recognize his mistakes in time? Will someone (anyone?) stop him before he destroys us?
The Blue Dog Democrats and the GOP are right this time: the spendorama festival of Barack Obama must come to an end. OR...."PayGo" must be reinstituted: if military spending could be cut by a trillion then ok, yeah, we could spend more on clean energy and universal healthcare. But if not, it will prove to be totally impossible because the US is Bankrupt now. Our government is in total denial about this.
It is now reasonable to place serious money bets on the complete collapse of the US itself within Obama's first -- and only -- term in office.
Excerpt: While the Fed is certainly very much to blame for the horrible dilemma in which it now finds itself, which has its roots in a litany of crassly irresponsible policies going back years, such as the slashing of interest rates to near zero in 2003 which ignited the housing boom and fuelled rampant leveraged speculation, one can understand why its present reactions to the financial crisis can be classed at best as clueless and at worst as desperate and reckless. Right now the hackneyed old saying "between a rock and a hard place" applies very well to the unenviable situation it finds itself in. Up until yesterday it had to make one of two choices, to support the Treasury market or not support it. Vast quantities of money have to be raised to finance the deficit, the government and to pay for the numerous bailouts, requiring the issue of a flood of new Treasuries. The problem is that overseas buyers are abandoning ship -- they don't want them anymore because they have a miniscule yield, and besides they have plenty of problems at home that require urgent attention. This means that the US Treasury market is verging on collapse, and in the absence of intervention it will collapse. To prevent this and the resulting ruinous spike in interest rates, the Fed and the Treasury would have to monetize the new Treasuries, in other words, buy their own rubbish, and to do this this they will have to create vast quantities of new dollars. Yesterday was a momentous day because the Fed came down off the fence and announced that this is exactly what they are going to do. Of course, major financial news networks tried to put a positive spin on it by proclaiming that this "would ensure adequate liquidity for the upcoming economic recovery", but the real news was the reaction of the dollar, which plummeted like a lead balloon. This news telegraphs that the course has been set towards collapse of the dollar and hyperinflation because yesterday's announcement has opened the floodgates -- they can't stop with buying $300 billion of this stuff, just like the bailouts they will find themselves obliged to buy more and more until they crumple up completely like an exhausted junkie. If the Fed thinks it can prop up the Treasury market by creating money to backstop it, it is in for a rude awakening -- the huge near 3% drop in the dollar index yesterday will have scared the **** out of foreign investors in US government paper. So Treasuries spiked yesterday, but the gains were almost entirely erased by the drop in the dollar, and then you have to factor in the drop in the yield for potential new buyers. So in an environment where the Fed and Treasury are going to have to create dollars, i.e. dilute the currency, to prop up financial instruments which have almost zero yield, due to a serious shortfall of demand, meaning that their real worth will decline because of the steeply depreciating currency, who but a complete imbecile is going to buy them? Less and less investors is the answer, and that being the case the Treasury market will collapse in due course anyway despite, and perhaps even because of the Fed's desperate and reckless attempts to backstop it.
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions?
We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think.
A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution. viz: Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and Ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution. The First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The Third Amendment
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The Fourth Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fifth Amendment
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.
The Sixth Amendment
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
The Seventh Amendment
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
The Eighth Amendment
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The Ninth Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
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"A mind-blowing mix of fact and fantasy, hard science and well-grounded speculation, with
concrete how-to info to top it all off -- resulting in some of the best and strangest stuff
on Earth..."
Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered, by the official investigators.
