Corporatism and Fascism

Obama at the Precipice
By Frank Rich | NY Times

Obama’s decision, whichever it is, will demand all the wisdom and political courage he can muster. If he adds combat troops, he’ll be extending a deteriorating eight-year-long war without a majority of his country or his own party behind him. He’ll have to explain why more American lives should be yoked to the Karzai “government.” He’ll have to be honest in estimating the cost. (The Iraq war, which the Bush administration priced at $50 to $60 billion, is at roughly $1 trillion and counting.) He will have to finally ask recession-battered Americans what his predecessor never did: How much — and what — are you willing to sacrifice in blood and treasure for the mission?...

Either way, it’s up to the president to decide what he thinks is right for the country’s security, the politics be damned. That he has temporarily pressed the pause button to think it through while others, including some of his own generals, try to lock him in is not a sign of indecisiveness but of confidence and strength.

The most intriguing, and possibly most fateful, news of last week could not be found in the health care horse-trading in Congress, or in the international zoo at the United Nations, or in the Iran slapdown in Pittsburgh. It was an item tucked into a blog at ABCNews.com. George Stephanopoulos reported that the new “must-read book” for President Obama’s war team is “Lessons in Disaster” by Gordon M. Goldstein, a foreign-policy scholar who had collaborated with McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy-Johnson national security adviser, on writing a Robert McNamara-style mea culpa about his role as an architect of the Vietnam War.

Bundy left his memoir unfinished at his death in 1996. Goldstein’s book, drawn from Bundy’s ruminations and deep new research, is full of fresh information on how the best and the brightest led America into the fiasco. “Lessons in Disaster” caused only a modest stir when published in November, but The Times Book Review cheered it as “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans.” The reviewer was, of all people, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose career began in Vietnam and who would later be charged with the Afghanistan-Pakistan crisis by the new Obama administration.

Holbrooke’s verdict on “Lessons in Disaster” was not only correct but more prescient than even he could have imagined. This book’s intimate account of White House decision-making is almost literally being replayed in Washington (with Holbrooke himself as a principal actor) as the new president sets a course for the war in Afghanistan. The time for all Americans to catch up with this extraordinary cautionary tale is now. Read more.

Your electronic vote in the 2010 election has just been bought
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman | Free Press

Unless US Attorney General Eric Holder intervenes, your electronic vote in 2010 will probably be owned by the Republican-connected ES&S Corporation. With 80% ownership of America's electronic voting machines, ES&S could have the power to shape America's future with a few proprietary keystrokes.

ES&S has just purchased the voting machine division of the Ohio-based Diebold, whose role in fixing the 2004 presidential election for George W. Bush is infamous.

Critics of the merger hope Holder will rescind the purchase on anti-trust grounds.

But only a transparent system totally based on hand-counted paper ballots, with universal automatic voter registration, can get us even remotely close to a reliable vote count in the future.

For even if Holder does void this purchase, ES&S and Diebold will still control four of every five votes cast on touchscreen machines. As the US Supreme Court seems poised to open the floodgates on corporate campaign spending, the only difference could be that those who would buy our elections will have to write two checks instead of one.

And in fact, it's even worse than that. ES&S, Diebold and a tiny handful of sibling Republican voting equipment and computing companies control not only the touchscreen machines, but also the electronic tabulators that count millions of scantron ballots, AND the electronic polling books that decide who gets to vote and who doesn't.

Let's do a quick review:

1) ES&S, Diebold and other companies tied to election hardware and software are owned and operated by a handful of very wealthy conservatives, or right-to-life ideologues, with long-standing direct ties to the Republican Party;

2) As votes will be increasingly cast on optiscans, touchscreens or computer voting machines in the United States in 2010, what scant few so-called paper trail mechanisms that are in place will offer little security against electronic vote theft;

3) The source code on all US touchscreen machines now used for the casting and counting of ballots is proprietary, meaning the companies that own and operate the machines---including ES&S---are not required to share with the public the details of how those machines actually work; Read more.

NLG Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20 | Press Release

PITTSBURGH, PA - September 25 - National Lawyers Guild members witnessed first-hand yesterday the unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity.

Police deployed chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center. Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel residents to flee the area.

Tomgram: Arundhati Roy, Is Democracy Melting? | TomDispatch

So you, as a citizen, want to run for a seat in the House of Representatives? Well, you may be too late. Back in 1990, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website of the Center for Responsive Politics, the average cost of a winning campaign for the House was $407,556. Pocket change for your average citizen. But that was so twentieth century. The average cost for winning a House seat in 2008: almost $1.4 million. Keep in mind, as well, that most of those House seats don't change hands, because in the American democratic system of the twenty-first century, incumbents basically don't lose, they retire or die.

In 2008, 403 incumbents ran for seats in the House and 380 of them won. Just to run a losing race last year would have cost you, on average, $492,928, almost $100,000 more than it cost to win in 1990. As for becoming a Senator? Not in your wildest dreams, unless you have some really good pals in pharmaceuticals and health care ($236,022,031 in lobbying paid out in 2008), insurance ($153,694,224), or oil and gas ($131,978,521). A winning senatorial seat came in at a nifty $8,531,267 and a losing seat at $4,130,078 in 2008. In other words, you don't have a hope in hell of being a loser in the American Congressional system, and what does that make you?

Of course, if you're a young, red-blooded American, you may have set your sights a little higher. So you want to be president? In that case, just to be safe for 2012, you probably should consider raising somewhere in the range of one billion dollars. After all, the 2008 campaign cost Barack Obama's team approximately $730 million and the price of a place at the table just keeps going up. Of course, it helps to know the right people. Last year, the total lobbying bill, including money that went out for electoral campaigns and for lobbying Congress and federal agencies, came to $3.3 billion and almost 9 months into 2009, another $1.63 billion has already gone out without an election in sight.

Let's face it. At the national level, this is what American democracy comes down to today, and this is what George W. Bush & Co. were so infernally proud to export by force of arms to Afghanistan and Iraq. This is why we need to think about the questions that Arundhati Roy -- to my mind, a heroic figure in a rather unheroic age -- raises about democracy globally in an essay adapted from the introduction to her latest book. That book, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, has just been published (with one essay included that originally appeared at TomDispatch). Let's face it, she's just one of those authors -- I count Eduardo Galeano as another -- who must be read. Need I say more? Tom

What Have We Done to Democracy?

Of Nearsighted Progress, Feral Howls, Consensus, Chaos, and a New Cold War in Kashmir
By Arundhati Roy

While we're still arguing about whether there's life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By "democracy" I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

So, is there life after democracy?

Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defense of democracy. It's flawed, we say. It isn't perfect, but it's better than everything else that's on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: "Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia... is that what you would prefer?"

Whether democracy should be the utopia that all "developing" societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn't meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It's meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy -- too much representation, too little democracy -- needs some structural adjustment.

The question here, really, is what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasized into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the free market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of maximizing profit? Read more.

Former Guantánamo Prisoner Binyam Mohamed Speaks (Video) | AndyWorthington.co.UK

On August 30, at “Beyond Guantánamo,” an event organized by Cageprisoners, the British resident Binyam Mohamed, who was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and was finally released from Guantánamo in February this year, after nearly seven years in US custody, spoke for the first time in public. Binyam talked about Shaker Aamer, the British resident who is still held in Guantánamo, the establishment of the Guantánamo Justice Centre (which I covered here), and the conditions in Guantánamo, and he also urged those in the audience to look inside themselves to discover what they might be able to give to the campaign against injustice. A video of his talk is available above.

Other speakers, whose talks were also recorded (and can be found on the Cageprisoners site here) include former prisoner Sami al-Haj (El-Hajj), speaking about a number of current and former prisoners (with former prisoner Bisher al-Rawi translating), former Guantánamo guard and Muslim convert Terry Holdbrooks, Ahmed Ghappour (an attorney with Reprieve), journalist Yvonne Ridley, and the poet Amir Sulaiman, reading from the book Poems From Guantánamo. Also included is a recitation by former Guantánamo prisoner Moussa Zemmouri. Read more.

10 Ways the U.S. Military Has Shoved Christianity Down Muslims' Throats
By Chris Rodda | Alternet

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was founded in 2005 by Mikey Weinstein, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and Reagan administration White House counsel, after the harassment his own sons faced as Jewish cadets at the academy led him to discover that the fundamentalist Christian takeover of the Air Force Academy was far from an isolated problem.

It was a militarywide issue that needed to be confronted head on. But it quickly became apparent that MRFF's initial mission of protecting the rights of our men and women in uniform was only addressing part of the problem.

The evangelizing and proselytizing of Iraqi and Afghan Muslims by private religious organizations and U.S. military personnel also had to be exposed and stopped -- particularly the materials and media available via the Internet and television that could be used by Islamic extremists as propaganda for recruiting purposes....

Top Ten Ways to Convince the Muslims We're On a Crusade

10. Have top U.S. military officers, Defense Department officials and politicians say we're in a religious war.

9. Have top U.S. military officers appear in a video showing just how Christian the Pentagon is.

8. Plant crosses in Muslim lands and make sure they're big enough to be visible from really far away.

7. Paint crosses and Christian messages on military vehicles and drive them through Iraq. Read more.

Read more about the Austin Decision: The Citizens United Case: Will the Supreme Court Return America to the 19th Century?

Michael Munk was struck by Burl Ross' Letter to the Editor in the Oregonian satirizing the current political climate in which the content of the Pledge of Allegiance seems almost a historical aberration. Below the Letter is Dr. Baer's Short History of the Pledge of Allegiance.

About that Socialist pledge | The Oregonian
In Letters to the editor
September 24, 2009, 8:00PM

Our schoolchildren should never be instructed by their teachers to quote Socialist propaganda -- even to repeat the eloquent words of President Barack Obama.

Imagine an America where classrooms of indoctrinated young students would be directed to stand together every morning, place their hands over their hearts and recite the liberal proclamations of those like avowed Socialist Francis Bellamy, who wrote, in 1892, "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Not in this America...

Burl Ross
Lake Oswego

The Pledge of Allegiance
A Short History
by Dr. John W. Baer

Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897).

Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures and Edward Bellamy in his novels and articles described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.

Karl Rove And The Republican War Against ACORN
By Jason Leopold | The Public Record

Yet, while bending to Republican demands to speak out against a poor people’s group, Obama continued to resist the notion that powerful Republicans from the Bush administration deserved to be investigated for authorizing the use of torture against prisoners in the “war on terror.”

In recent days, the Washington Post, the New York Times and other major news outlets have recounted the “troubled” history of the poor people’s advocacy group ACORN, but left out the five-year anti-ACORN campaign led by White House adviser Karl Rove and other Republican operatives.

Dropped down the memory hole is the fact that ACORN was at the center of the so-called “prosecutor-gate” scandal, when the Bush administration pressured U.S. Attorneys to bring indictments over the grassroots group’s voter-registration drives and then fired some prosecutors who resisted what they viewed as a partisan strategy not supported by solid evidence.

The latest furor over ACORN was touched off by conservative filmmaker James E. O’Keefe III and a right-wing columnist who posed as a couple planning to buy a house for use as a brothel and getting advice from a few ACORN employees, rather than being turned away.

The pair filmed their meetings at ACORN offices with a hidden-camera, producing a video that brought to a fever pitch the long-simmering Republican war against ACORN. The video was trumpeted by Fox News and other right-wing news outlets, starting a stampede in the mainstream press and in Congress, where a majority of panicked Democrats joined the herd in approving legislation to strip ACORN of federal funds. Read more.

Congressman Jim McGovern Calls for U.S. Exit Strategy in Afghanistan

National Call-in Day: No Exit Strategy! Stop the Funding!

Wednesday September 30

To reach the Washington Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Congress is close to final passage of the $625.8 billion 2010 Defense Budget, which contains approximately $128.2 billion to conduct the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through September 2010.

So far the White House has offered no timetable and no “exit strategy” for Afghanistan. To the contrary, General McCrystal is calling for tens of thousands of additional American troops and a long-term commitment, which could tie the United States down in Afghanistan for years to come.

Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground To Excuse Overconsumption, Study Finds

Science Daily (Sep 25, 2009) — Hummer drivers believe they are defending America's frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors Marius K. Luedicke (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Craig J. Thompson (University of Wisconsin–Madison), and Markus Giesler (York University, Toronto) researched attitudes toward owning and driving Hummers, which have become symbols to many of American greed and wastefulness.

The researchers first investigated anti-consumption sentiments expressed by people who oppose chains like Starbucks and believe they are making a moral choice by shunning consumerism. To these critics, Hummers represent the ills of contemporary society. As one extreme example, on a website, people have posted thousands of photographs of middle fingers directed at Hummer vehicles.

U.S., NATO Poised For Most Massive War In Afghanistan's History
Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO | Blog site

Over the past week U.S. newspapers and television networks have been abuzz with reports that Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year.

The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000.

Fox News has cited figures as high as 45,000 more American soldiers and ABC News as many as 40,000. On September 15 the Christian Science Monitor wrote of "perhaps as many as 45,000."

Tomgram: A Military That Wants Its Way
How to Trap a President in a Losing War: Petraeus, McChrystal, and the Surgettes
By Tom Engelhardt

Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael "Mike" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a "deteriorating" war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. ("I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan... or sending a message that America is here for the duration.")

On the other hand, here's someone you haven't seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus. He was, of course, George W. Bush's pick to lead the president's last-ditch effort in Iraq. He was the poster boy for Bush's military policies in his last two years. He was the highly praised architect and symbol of "the surge." He appeared repeatedly, his chest a mass of medals and ribbons, for heavily publicized, widely televised congressional testimony, complete with charts and graphs, that was meant, at least in part, for the American public. He was the man who, to use an image from that period which has recently resurfaced, managed to synchronize the American and Baghdad "clocks," pacifying for a time both the home and war fronts.

He never met a journalist, as far as we can tell, he didn't want to woo. (And he clearly won over the influential Tom Ricks, then of the Washington Post, who wrote The Gamble, a bestselling paean to him and his sub-commanders.) From the look of it, he's the most political general to come down the pike since, in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said his goodbyes to Congress after being cashiered by President Truman for insubordination -- for, in effect, wanting to run his own war and the foreign policy that went with it. It was Petraeus who brought Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) back from the crypt, overseeing the writing of a new Army counterinsurgency manual that would make it central to both the ongoing wars and what are already being referred to as the "next" ones.

Before he left office, Bush advanced his favorite general to the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the former president's Global War on Terror across the energy heartlands of the planet from Egypt to Pakistan. The command is, of course, especially focused on Bush's two full-scale wars: the Iraq War, now being pursued under Petraeus's former subordinate, General Ray Odierno, and the Afghan War, for which Petraeus seems to have personally handpicked a new commanding general, Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations, McChrystal had operated in Iraq and was also part of an Army promotion board headed by Petraeus that advanced the careers of officers committed to counterinsurgency. To install McChrystal in May, Obama abruptly sacked the then-Afghan war commander, General David McKiernan, in what was then considered, with some exaggeration, a new MacArthur moment. Read more.

Victory on preventive detention law: in context
By Glenn Greenwald | Salon

When Barack Obama gave his "civil liberties" speech at the National Archives in May, he advocated a new scheme of preventive detention for detainees whom he claimed "cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people," and he unambiguously vowed to develop a new statutory regime, enacted by Congress, to vest him with the power of what he called "prolonged detention":

I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. . . . But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantanamo detainees -- not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so going forward, my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution. As our efforts to close Guantanamo move forward, I know that the politics in Congress will be difficult. . . . [I]f we refuse to deal with these issues today, then I guarantee you that they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.

Obama has now changed his mind about seeking a new law, and instead will continue to detain Terrorism suspects without charges under the current system (the one used by Bush/Cheney as well): Read more.

Classified McChrystal Report: 500,000 Troops Will Be Required Over Five Years in Afghanistan
By Tom Andrews, former member of Congress | Huffington Post

Congress Should Hold Hearings on Alternatives to Major Escalation

Embedded in General Stanley McChrystal's classified assessment of the war in Afghanistan is his conclusion that a successful counterinsurgency strategy will require 500,000 troops over five years.

This bombshell was dropped by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday:

The numbers are really pretty horrifying. What they say, embedded in this report by McChrystal, is they would need 500,000 troops - boots on the ground - and five years to do the job. No one expects that the Afghan Army could step up to that. Are we gonna put even half that of U.S. troops there, and NATO forces? No way. [Morning Joe, September 23, 2009]

Mitchell got the figure from an independent source. It was not revealed in the redacted version of the once classified report released by the Pentagon earlier this week. McChrystal has warned the administration that without an infusion of more troops the eight-year war in Afghanistan "will likely result in failure." Read more.

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? Lead letter to the New York Times Magazine: September 16, 2009 | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

Paul Krugman's How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?" (September 6, 2009) offers a refreshing, critical assessment of the academic profession of economics and how it missed the recent economic collapse. While addressing the standard textbook issues in mainstream economics, Krugman seems oblivious to one area of the field that has warned of deep, cyclical crises in capitalism since its inception: Marxist economics. You do not have to believe in revolution or the proletarian struggle to appreciate the centrality of secular crises for this economic tradition. Marx was wrong about a lot of things, but he seems to have been on target when pointing out at least two problems: the severity and depth of periodic crises and the rise of financial speculation.

DIEGO VON VACANO
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

Here's the article Diego commented on:

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
By Paul Krugman | NYTimes

I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH

It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.

Last year, everything came apart. Read more.

Sold to the United States for Cash
By Leonard C. Goodman | In These Times

In May, President Barack Obama began floating the idea that his administration might seek the power to “preventatively detain” terrorism suspects who “are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried.” The rationale is: These folks are bad. We can’t tell you how we know this because of national security concerns. So trust us. This is in effect what the Bush administration told us for more than five years, and it is nonsense.

I am an attorney representing one of the 230 remaining Guantanamo detainees who are subject to this preventative detention. Shawali Khan has been imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center for more than six years without charges. Khan is a small man with sad eyes, about 40 years old, who comes from a small farming village near Kandahar, Afghanistan.

When the Americans invaded in October 2001, Khan was living in Kandahar City, selling kerosene and gasoline. On Nov. 13, 2002, he was riding his motorcycle from his home to the market when he was arrested by four Afghan men who work for the corrupt warlord Gul Agha Shirzai, who governed Kandahar province. A short while later, Khan was transferred to the Americans.

Khan was no doubt sold to the United States for a cash bounty. Shortly after the U.S. invasion, the U.S. military littered Afghanistan with leaflets offering bounties of up to $20,000 cash in exchange for the capture of al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. One leaflet promised: “Enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.”

Most fifth-graders would understand that offering cash bounties to the people of one of the poorest and most corrupt countries on earth is unlikely to produce reliable information about terrorists. Read more.

Pentagon Study Proposes Overhaul of Defense Base Act to Cover Care for Injured Contractors
By T. Christian Miller | Pro Publica via Senator Sanders

Under the proposed system, the U.S. would pay directly for medical benefits and disability benefits rather than relying upon private insurance providers. The government would hire an outside firm to administer the claims to avoid the expense of training and hiring examiners.

The report makes clear, however, that such a fundamental change to the system would face a battle from the insurance industry. AIG dominates the market for the insurance, which exploded from an $18 million a year business to more than $400 million per year after civilian contractors flooded into war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, the report said.

AIG controls about 75 percent of the market, followed by Chicago-based CNA and Bermuda-based ACE Group. Together, the three firms collect 97 percent of all premiums paid by defense contractors for the insurance, the cost of which is reimbursed by the government.

Congress could save as much as $250 million a year through a sweeping overhaul of the controversial U.S. system to care for civilian contractors injured in war zones, according to a new Pentagon study.

In the most extensive review ever of the taxpayer-financed system, the Pentagon suggested that the government could issue its own insurance to cover the skyrocketing costs of medical care and disability pay for injured civilians.

Currently, the U.S. pays more than $400 million annually to AIG and a handful of other carriers to purchase special workers' compensation insurance policies required for overseas civilian contractors by a law known as the Defense Base Act, the study found. Read more.

Bank lobby defeats Obama reform plan
Hill resisting financial plan
By Sean Lengell | Washington Times

Key among those changes is Mr. Frank's decision to omit the "plain vanilla" mandate from his pending CFPA bill. So-called "exotic" financial products -- particularly subprime mortgages that typically offered low introductory payments that later ballooned in size -- have caused soaring default rates and were considered a major factor in last year's financial crisis. The administration had wanted to ensure that banks and other mortgage lenders give customers the option of less risky fixed-rate and simple adjustable-rate home loans.

Congress appears set to ignore President Obama's proposal that banks be required to offer "plain vanilla" financial products such as 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, giving the banking industry an early victory in its fight with the administration over how to reform the financial-services sector. Read more.

Obama to Set Higher Bar For Keeping State Secrets
New Policy May Affect Wiretap, Torture Suits
Carrie Johnson | Washington Post

The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according to two senior Justice Department officials.

The new policy requires agencies, including the intelligence community and the military, to convince the attorney general and a team of Justice Department lawyers that the release of sensitive information would present significant harm to "national defense or foreign relations." In the past, the claim that state secrets were at risk could be invoked with the approval of one official and by meeting a lower standard of proof that disclosure would be harmful.

That claim was asserted dozens of times during the Bush administration, legal scholars said.

The shift could have a broad effect on many lawsuits, including those filed by alleged victims of torture and electronic surveillance. Authorities have frequently argued that judges should dismiss those cases at the outset to avoid the release of information that could compromise national security.

The heightened standard is designed in part to restore the confidence of Congress, civil liberties advocates and judges, who have criticized both the Bush White House and the Obama administration for excessive secrecy. The new policy will take effect Oct. 1 and has been endorsed by federal intelligence agencies, Justice Department sources said. Read more.

Siegelman Blasts DoJ and Judge In ‘Final’ Reply Seeking Hearing
By Andrew Kreig | Huffington Post

Facing a sentence of 20 additional years in prison recommended by Bush Justice Department holdovers, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman finally took off the gloves Sept. 21 against his prosecutors and the judge -- and, for once, skipped any mention of Karl Rove.

Citing new evidence since his 2006 convictions, Siegelman's nine-page filing called for a hearing with cross-examination, plus a new trial and new judge.

The arguments responded to a government filing on Aug. 28 that no new evidence has arisen since Siegelman's 2006 corruption convictions to justify a hearing or other relief.

More generally, Siegelman's prosecution remains the dramatic centerpiece of still-unsolved allegations that the Bush administration mounted a nationwide effort to change the country's political leadership by hundreds of disputed prosecutions of Democratic office-holders, candidates and contributors. Siegelman's case is key because no other has produced so many whistleblowers and investigative reporters alleging scandals. But so far no watchdog institutions have put any of the alleged miscreants under oath for public cross-examination. Read more.

September 15 - Central American Independence Day; Neocolonialism Meets Resistance in Honduras
By Tom Loudon | Truthout | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

On the 80th day of the coup, both the de facto government and the resistance movement against the coup held marches to celebrate the anniversary of Central America's independence from Spain. At a military parade, de facto President Roberto Micheletti defiantly insisted that it would take a military intervention to remove him. Meanwhile, thousands of coup resisters, with elected President Manuel Zelaya's wife at the head, marched through the central park of Tegucigalpa, where last month police and military attacked peaceful protesters and passers-by. The massive resistance movement in Honduras continues to grow, denouncing the violent coup as an illegal takeover on the part of neocolonial economic and military interests.

The EU used the occasion of the anniversary to promise further sanctions if there was not a return to constitutional order. Secretary of State Clinton merely lamented "the turmoil and political differences that have ... divided Honduras."

During the month of August, the coup government of Honduras suffered a number of setbacks on the international level. First, was the release of an Amnesty International Report highlighting "serious human rights concerns which should be addressed as a matter of urgency." The report corroborated "increasingly disproportionate and excessive use of force being used by the police and military to repress legitimate and peaceful protests across the country." Read more.

Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief | Tehran Times Political Desk

According to Al Watan, Washington even used Blackwater forces to protect its consulate in the city of Peshawar. In addition, U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh has accused former U.S vice president Dick Cheney of being involved in the Hariri assassination. He said Cheney was in charge of a secret team that was tasked with assassinating prominent political figures.

Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe.

General Beg recently told the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Quetta.

General Beg, who was chief of army staff during Benazir Bhutto’s first administration, said U.S. officials always kept the presence of Blackwater in Pakistan secret because they were afraid of possible attacks on the U.S. Embassy and its consulates in Pakistan.

During an interview with a Pakistani TV network last Sunday, Beg claimed that the United States killed Benazir Bhutto. Read more.

Moore: GM Banned Me From Premiere
Screening Goes On Without Moore Present | KCRA

Controversial Michigan filmmaker Michael Moore was escorted out of the General Motors headquarters building in Detroit 20 years ago while filming “Roger and Me.” And Sunday, when Moore once again brought a film to the Renaissance Center, compromises had to be made.

In “Roger and Me,” Moore was trying to get some one-on-one time with then GM CEO Roger Smith, but Moore was asked to leave the property when cameras followed him in.

Moore rented out four movie theaters inside the Renaissance Center to screen his new film, “Capitalism -- A Love Story.”

The film blames the economic crisis on President Reagan-era deregulation and greedy business executives who Moore said he believes undermined free enterprise by pushing for policies that benefited the richest 1 percent while hurting the lower and middle classes.

But Moore said when the leaders of the auto company realized it was his film, they told him he wouldn’t be allowed in. Read more.

Goldstone Commission Gaza Conflict Findings and Reactions
By Stephen Lendman

"While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right of self defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole." Rocket attacks were a pretext for naked aggression.

Calling them war crimes, the Mission found evidence that "Palestinian armed groups" launched rockets and mortars into Southern Israel, but they were minor incidents compared to the Israeli onslaught.

On April 3, 2009, a UN press release stated:

"The Human Rights Council (HRC) today announced the appointment of Richard J. Goldstone....to lead an independent (four-person) fact-finding mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip....The team will be supported by staff of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights....Today's appointment comes following the adoption of a resolution by the Human Rights Council....to address 'the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip."

Report: More Troops Needed for Afghan War Success
McChrystal report: US needs more troops to avoid failure in Afghanistan war
By Anne Gearan, AP National Security Writer | ABC News

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan has reported to President Barack Obama that without more troops the U.S. risks failure in a war it's been waging since September 2001.

"Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," Gen. Stanley McChrystal wrote in a five-page Commander's Summary. His 66-page report, sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Aug. 30, is now under review by Obama.

"Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating," McChrystal said of the war's progress.

Geoff Morrell, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for communications issues, said in a statement the assessment "is a classified, pre-decisional document, intended to provide President Obama and his national security team with the basis for a very important discussion about where we are now in Afghanistan and how best to get to where we want to be." Read more.

Illustration by Michael Parenti, http://artificialeyes.tv/blog/2 under a Creative Commons Share Alike with attribution license.

CIA Torturers Running Scared
By Ray McGovern

For the CIA supervisors and operatives who were responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost. That is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law — and if they have the courage to stand up to brazen intimidation.

Unable to prevent Attorney General Eric Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, some of those same CIA officials, together with what in intelligence circles are called “agents of influence” in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Department of Justice’s preliminary investigation.

In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors—including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination— have asked the President to call off Holder.

Can someone please tell me how could the whole thing be more transparent?

By Linda Milazzo

In response to FOX's childish and embarrassing ad in the Washington Post that challenged competitors' coverage of the 9/12 teabaggers in Washington, DC, CNN is airing this equally chilidish and embarrassing ad to prove it did cover the teabaggers in Washington DC.

Du-uh!!

Oooh-oooh! Did I mention this is childish and embarrassing??

Inquiry Into CIA Practices Narrows
Ex-Agency Directors Urge Administration To Drop Investigation
By Carrie Johnson, Jerry Markon and Julie Tate | Washington Post

The Justice Department's review of detainee abuse by the CIA will focus on a very small number of cases, including at least one in which an Afghan prisoner died at a secret facility, according to two sources briefed on the matter.

On Friday, seven former CIA directors urged President Obama to end the inquiry, arguing that it would inhibit intelligence operations in the future and demoralize agency employees who believed they had been cleared by previous investigators.

"Attorney General [Eric] Holder's decision to re-open the criminal investigation creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy for those whose cases the Department of Justice had previously declined to prosecute," the directors, who served under Republican and Democratic presidents over the past 35 years, wrote in a letter.

Opposition to the probe has grown in the weeks since Holder ordered it, even as the outlines of the inquiry become more clear. Among the cases under review will be the death seven years ago of a young Afghan man, who was beaten and chained to a concrete floor without blankets, according to the sources. The man died in the cold night at a secret CIA facility north of Kabul, known as the Salt Pit. Read more.