Corporatism and Fascism

The Drive for Single Payer
By Ralph Nader | Common Dreams | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

The units of measure for losses due to health care fraud and abuse in this country are hundreds of billions of dollars per year. We just don't know the first digit. It might be as low as one hundred billion. More likely two or three. Possibly four or five. But whatever that first digit is, it has eleven zeroes after it. These are staggering sums of money to waste, and the task of controlling and reducing these losses warrants a great deal of serious attention.

In the early 1990s, the Congressional Government Accounting Office estimated that billing fraud accounts for 10% of health care spending annually. That would be about $250 billion this year. In 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno declared that health care fraud was the number two crime problem, after violent crime in the country.

After several weeks of protests at Senate hearings and health care events by single payer advocates (visit Single Payer Action.org), six physicians from Oregon, with 191 years of combined real-world medical experience, are crossing the country in a 27-foot Winnebago making stops in nearly 30 cities, to debate, educate and advance full medicare for all. Everybody in, nobody out.

Calling themselves "Mad as Hell Doctors," these physicians are already drawing crowds and expect thousands to turn out at each city that they visit, culminating in a large arrival demonstration in front of the White House around October 1. (Visit Mad As Hell.com).

They have written President Obama asking for a meeting "to discuss the future of health care as well as the moral, social, and fiscal imperative of enacting a single-payer system for America at this moment in our history."

The White House turned them down flat, not even leaving the door open for reconsideration. Mr. Obama has met countless times with the CEOs of large corporations, whose greed and callousness causes so much of this crisis. Though he believes in single payer "if we started from scratch," he has yet to meet with any single payer delegation. Read more.

By Linda Milazzo

It's a GREAT DAY in America when heralds of hate, specifically Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin, are booted from their Amazon best seller slots on DAY ONE of the publication of progressive leader David Swanson's breakthrough tome, DAYBREAK - now at Number One on Amazon's non-fiction best seller list.  From this terrific response to Swanson's new book arises my sincere hope that DAYBREAK attracts a good many of Beck and Malkin's readers, so they, too, will have the opportunity to absorb the depth of information and dedication to solutions that David Swanson offers.

Pentagon worried about Obama's commitment to Afghanistan
By By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

he prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama's administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.

On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the Pentagon, the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO. Although the assessment didn't include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

However, administration officials said that amid rising violence and casualties, polls that show a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting. With tough battles ahead on health care, the budget and other issues, Vice President Joe Biden and other officials are increasingly anxious about how the American public would respond to sending additional troops.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media, said Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the U.S. can't make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al Qaida. Biden's office declined to comment.

"I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier," a senior Pentagon official said. "We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war." Read more.

RISE OF MERCENARY ARMIES MENACE WORLD, HELP WHITE HOUSE THWART PEACE MOVEMENT
By Sherwood Ross

Stiglitz notes that in 2007 private security guards working for firms like Blackwater and Dyncorp were earning up to $1,222 a day or $445,000 a year. By contrast, an Army sergeant earned $140 to $190 a day in pay and benefits, a total of $51,100 to $69,350 a year.

Since U.S. taxpayers are underwriting private soldiers’ paychecks, where’s the savings? It is money from taxpayer’s pockets that has made these shadow armies great.

The growing use of private armies not only subjects target populations to savage warfare but makes it easier for the White House to subvert domestic public opinion and wage wars.

Americans are less inclined to oppose a war that is being fought by hired foreign mercenaries, even when their own tax dollars are being squandered to fund it.

Bad Advice: Bush’s Lawyers in the War on Terror
by Harold H. Bruff | Reviewed by Stephen F. Rohde | Los Angeles Lawyer September 2009

In William Shakespeare’s historical drama, King Henry V asks his trusted advisers, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, whether “with right and conscience” he may make a claim to the crown of France. In their response, the king receives the advice he wants, instead of the advice he needs, and his ensuing invasion of France leads at first to victory but in the end to great tragedy.

Harold Bruff, author of a new and engrossing book Bad Advice: Bush’s Lawyers in the War on Terror, uses
the test of “right and conscience” to judge the wisdom and ethics of the lawyers who advised President George W. Bush. Did John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, David Addington, Jay Bybee, and others at the Justice Department and in the White House meet the fundamental standard of the American Bar Association to “exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice”? Based on his sober and comprehensive study, Bruff convincingly concludes that to a man, “[i]gnoring the need for detachment
and lacking a willingness to consider constitutional claims of the other branches, President Bush’s lawyers manipulated the law for political ends.”

After tracing the history of the relationship between presidents and their lawyers from George Washington to the present, with particular emphasis on critical episodes when national security was at stake, Bruff, who himself served as a senior attorney-adviser to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Justice Department from 1979 to 1981, focuses on key decisions made by the Bush administration since September 11, 2001.

America's Tortured Past
By Stephen Lendman

On August 24, an ACLU press release stated:

In response to two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, "The government today handed over to the American Civil Liberties Union (one of dozens of documents comprising an unprecedented 130,000 previously secret pages, including) a detailed official description of the CIA's interrogation program."

Referring to a heavily redacted December 2004 report (originally commissioned by CIA director George Tenet) detailing torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, it "describes the use of abusive interrogation techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation and stress positions." Far worse ones were understated or redacted entirely.

According to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

Ridge, Cheney Assail Holder's Decision to Investigate CIA Officials
Bush-Era Officials Such as Cheney Say Justice Department's Investigation into Interrogation Techniques is Wrong
By Jake Tapper | ABCNews.com

Ridge backed Cheney this morning on "Good Morning America," saying, "I think he's right, pure and simple. It's wrong, it's chilling, and it's inappropriate."

Even though Ridge said he believed waterboarding was wrong and "wasn't the appropriate way for America to be conducting itself," the former Pennsylvania governor said that "to suggest four or five years later what they [CIA officers] did was criminal -- I think that's criminal."

Officials from the Bush administration this week entered the debate over national security, although President Barack Obama's administration was not the only one criticized.

While former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's new book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again," raised questions about whether some national security decisions by various Bush administration officials were based on political, and not counterterrorism, concerns, former Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to assail Obama's commitment to making the nation safe.

Cheney Sunday told his preferred venue, Fox News, that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to allow a preliminary review into whether any CIA officers crossed the line in its interrogations of detainees was "outrageous." Read more.

Media Ape Goebbels in Defending CIA Abuses
By Ray McGovern

EXTRA! Read all about it in the Washington Post: Torture worked; Cheney and torture practitioners vindicated; morale at CIA harmed.
It seems coverage of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” has been put back on track by the editors of the Washington Post and their “sources,” who appear determined to highlight the supposed successes of waterboarding and other forms of torture.

In the last few days the Post has markedly increased its effort to “catapult the propaganda” (to borrow a phrase from former President George W. Bush). When the wind is still, Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels can be heard cheering from the grave.

Frankly, I was wondering when this return to form would happen at the Post. I was surprised to see Post journalists recently losing their grip, so to speak, and falling into the practice of reporting real facts — like the sickening revelations in the long-suppressed CIA Inspector General’s report on torture.

Apparently they have now been reminded of the biases of the newspaper’s top brass, forever justifying the hardnosed “realism” of the Bush administration as it approved brutal and perverse methods for stripping the “bad guys” of their clothes, their dignity, their sense of self – all to protect America.

Hooded, threatened with a cocked gun and an electric drill, deprived of sleep for long periods, beaten, kept naked or dressed in diapers, forced into painful stress positions, locked in tiny boxes and subjected to the near-drowning of waterboarding, the terrorism suspects were supposed to be terrorized into what the CIA psychologists called “learned helplessness.”

Blackwater Founder Accused in Court of Intent to Kill
By Jerry Markon | Washington Post

The founder of Blackwater USA deliberately caused the deaths of innocent civilians in a series of shootings in Iraq, attorneys for Iraqis suing the security contractor told a federal judge Friday.

The attorneys singled out Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who is the company's owner, for blame in the deaths of more than 20 Iraqis between 2005 and 2007. Six former Blackwater guards were criminally charged in 14 of the shootings, and family members and victims' estates sued Prince, Blackwater (now called Xe Services LLC) and a group of related companies.

"The person responsible for these deaths is Mr. Prince,'' Susan L. Burke, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "He had the intent, he provided the weapons, he provided the instructions, and they were done by his agents and they were war crimes.'' Read more.

Health care industry contributes heavily to Blue Dogs
By Halimah Abdullah |
McClatchy Newspapers

As the Obama administration and Democrats wrangled over the timing, shape and cost of health care overhaul efforts during the first half of the year, more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries, according to watchdog organizations.

The amount outstrips contributions to other congressional political action committees during the same period, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog organization. The Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative lawmakers, successfully delayed the vote on health care overhaul proposals until the fall.

"The business community realizes that (the Blue Dogs) are the linchpin and will become much more so as time goes on," former Mississippi congressman turned lobbyist Mike Parker told the organization's researchers.

On average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that tracks the influence of money in politics. Read more.

CNN: Secret Service Interviewed Pastor Who Prays For Obama's Death
By Justin Elliott | TPM Muckraker

CNN has picked up our story from yesterday on Steven Anderson, the Arizona pastor who prayed for Barack Obama's death the day before one of his parishioners, who attended the sermon, brought an AR-15 rifle to an Obama event.

And they've advanced the story a bit: CNN analyst Mike Brooks reports that the Secret Service has interviewed Anderson, who told TPMmuckraker yesterday: "To be honest with you, I have prayed for Obama to die. I'm not the only one, I'm just the only one with the spine to say it."

Read more.

DOJ May Skirt Court Order on Interrogation Documents
In Response to ACLU Lawsuit, Federal Judge Ordered Files Released by Aug. 31
By Spencer Ackerman | Washington Independent

The Obama administration may circumvent the spirit of a judge’s order to disclose hundreds of documents relating to the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation program, delivering instead generic descriptions of the documents and legal arguments for continued nondisclosure.

While the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report on torture was released Monday, a tranche of hundreds of supporting documents sought by an ongoing American Civil Liberties Union court case remain unseen. Those include 129 documents that provide some of the source material for the inspector general’s report; 138 other documents from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel about the interrogation program; and a Sept. 17, 2001 presidential order from George W. Bush authorizing the CIA to set up unacknowledged detention facilities around the world. The Justice Department released additional supporting documents earlier this week in addition to the inspector general’s report.

On July 20, Judge Allen Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the government needed to complete a review of the documents for declassification in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Monday, Aug. 31. “As to the remaining 318 remanded CIA documents, the Government shall complete its processing of those documents by August 31, 2009, such that, on or before that date, the Government shall produce to the plaintiffs any portions of those 318 documents that are appropriate for release under [the Freedom of Information Act],”Hellerstein wrote in an order filed the following day.

But after The Washington Independent reported on the forthcoming disclosure, an administration official who insisted on anonymity emailed to say the report was inaccurate. Asked if there would be any disclosures on Monday, the official responded, “Nope.” Read more.

If you missed watching Bill Moyers on Bill Maher, you can see it here and here and here. This is a conversation you won't want to miss!

Bush's Search Policy For Travelers Is Kept
Obama Officials Say Oversight Will Grow
By Ellen Nakashima | Washington Post

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.

But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.

"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever." Read more.

Cheney's 'Fodder'
Cheney's torture claims debunked; will the media say so? | FAIR.org | 8/28/09

The release of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report on the agency's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, along with two other previously classified memos, has thrown a harsh spotlight on former Vice President Dick Cheney's oft-repeated pro-torture arguments. But corporate media seem intent on deflecting much of that glare.

Earlier this year, Cheney spent weeks on the airwaves, explaining that these CIA memos would back up his argument that torture provided valuable intelligence that helped thwart attacks against the United States (FAIR Media Advisory, 5/29/09). But the heavily redacted documents don't appear to do that. Of the two that Cheney asserted would help his case, reporter Spencer Ackerman noted (Washington Independent, 8/24/09) they "actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations."

Some reporters managed to reach the opposite conclusion, though how they did so was unclear. On the CBS Evening News (8/25/09), reporter Bob Orr said: "The once-secret documents do support the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney that harsh interrogations at times did work. Interviews with prisoners helped the U.S. capture other terror suspects and thwart potential attacks, including Al-Qaeda plots to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi and fly an airplane into California's tallest building." The problem is, whatever one makes of the CIA's argument that their interrogations yielded valuable intelligence, there's nothing in the documents newly available to the public--and to CBS--that actually argues this intelligence was produced by the torture techniques like waterboarding that Cheney so publicly defended.

As Ackerman told CounterSpin (8/28/09): Cheney and his supporters' argument "depends a lot on conflating the difference between saying the documents show that valuable [intelligence] came from detainees in the program, and then saying that it came from the enhanced interrogation techniques themselves.... That's a conflation that has served the former vice president's purposes. Read more.

Who Is Obama Playing Ball With?
By Amy Goodman | Truthdig

It looked like it was business as usual for President Barack Obama on the first day of his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, as he spent five hours golfing with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas. Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign, raised $250,000 for him back in 2006, and in February was appointed by the president to the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Economic recovery for whom?

Interestingly, Wolf’s appointment came in the same month that UBS agreed to pay the U.S. $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges related to helping people in the U.S. avoid taxes. Not to worry. UBS, an ailing bank with a pre-existing condition, had great insurance coverage. It was actually receiving $2.5 billion in a backdoor bailout from bailed-out insurance giant AIG. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said, “It looks like we’re simply laundering this money through AIG.” UBS, this bank that shelters wealthy tax dodgers, was actually being bailed out by hardworking U.S. taxpayers.

UBS, which once stood for Union Bank of Switzerland, was founded more than a century ago. Its success hinges on Switzerland’s famous banking secrecy laws, allowing people to squirrel money away in untraceable “numbered accounts.” Secret Swiss bank accounts have become a favorite way for wealthy people in the U.S. to dodge taxes. According to the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a July 2008 report, “From at least 2000 to 2007, UBS made a concerted effort to open accounts in Switzerland for wealthy U.S. clients, employing practices that could facilitate, and have resulted in, tax evasion by U.S. clients.” Read more.

Blurring the Lines: How I was Jailed by the U.S. Army and Why it Matters
By Brian Terrell

On August 9, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, I was one of more than 50 participants of the “Walk for Peace,” a three day, thirty mile march calling for the end of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing home all National Guard troops and the abolition of nuclear weapons, that ended at the gates of Fort McCoy. Fort McCoy is a military training center in Wisconsin from which National Guard units from around the United States are deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nine of us carried our protest onto the base after being warned by the US Army Police not to enter. If our plea for peace was deemed by the Army an “unlawful activity,” we explained, we respectfully could not comply with their order.

WPost's Ignatius Forgives the CIA Again and Again
By Melvin A. Goodman | The Public Record | Aug 26th, 2009

The Washington Post's David Ignatius simply cannot get off the wheel he spins for the Central Intelligence Agency. Only two days after the release of the 2004 CIA study of the detention and interrogation program, which provides sordid and sadistic details of an illegal and immoral program, Ignatius still opposes any criminal review of the conduct of CIA officers and echoes the CIA line that it is "glad to be out" of the interrogation business. He even cites deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, one of the key ideological drivers for the policy of detention and interrogation, as someone who "doesn't want to have anything to do with interrogation."

Ignatius strongly believes that it is time for the CIA to "get on with it," which was the signature line of former CIA director Richard Helms, who Ignatius considers the "savviest spymaster this country has produced." Let's forget that Helms lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1973 on the overthrow of the elected government in Chile and that a grand jury was called to see if he should be indicted for perjury. Let's forget that the Justice Department brought a lesser charge against Helms, who pleaded nolo contendere, and was fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended prison sentence. And let's forget that Helms was the major supporter of James Jesus Angleton, the crazed head of CIA counterintelligence for 20 years, who believed that the KGB had successfully penetrated the Agency. We called Angleton "The Ghost" when I was at the CIA because no one had ever seen the man. And it was "The Ghost" who befriended Kim Philby, the Soviet spy from British intelligence, introduced him to high-level CIA officials, and defended him to the end. So much for counterintelligence.

In his efforts to prevent any investigation of the CIA's interrogation program, Ignatius has also forgotten the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. The International Tribunal taught us that crimes committed by individuals for state purposes were the responsibility of those individuals and punishable by state law. And, most importantly, following orders was not a defense. But Ignatius believes that all of the relevant evidence on torture and abuse was seen by "career prosecutors, who decided against bringing cases." So, let's forget that the career prosecutors were employed by the politicized Justice Department of the Bush administration and that they reported to a politically-appointed assistant attorney general.

Ignatius believes that investigation and accountability will hurt the Agency. It will actually restore the credibility of the Agency and lead to greater cooperation from important foreign intelligence services, which is essential to combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It was CIA crimes such as secret prisons and extraordinary renditions that hurt the Agency, and led to reticence about sharing intelligence. For example, there is no intelligence service within the European Union that would assist in a rendition by the CIA; no EU country that would permit the CIA to transport a prisoner by aircraft; no EU country that would agree to a secret prison or "black site" within its borders. Read more.

Closing In on the Torturers
By Ray McGovern

Do you think the wardens will let George Tenet wear his Presidential Medal of Freedom over the orange coverall?

Perhaps he and Donald Rumsfeld will end up doing time together in one of the prisons also slated to host what Rumsfeld called “the worst of the worst” from Guantanamo.

That would be poetic justice of a most ironic kind. And if the two former leaders do end up in prison they can count themselves fortunate for having dodged execution for their roles in a slew of capital offenses.

You see, punishments for violations of the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441), applicable in their case, include the death penalty—often the sentence of choice if detainees die in their custody. And countless have.

Before you question my sanity, please know that I just completed the arduous task of reading the aging but devastating CIA Inspector General’s report on torture.

Sickening

You can be forgiven for holding your nose while paging through the redacted version of the “CIA Inspector General’s Special Review of Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001 – October 2003).” Although heavily sanitized, it is still nauseating.

You can not be easily forgiven, though, if you don’t make the effort to read with care at least some of this lurid account of the abuse of detainees held by the CIA—a narrative which is said to have sickened Attorney General Eric Holder and one which cries out for reinforced efforts toward accountability.

Illegal Health Reform
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey | Washington Post

President Obama has called for a serious and reasoned debate about his plans to overhaul the health-care system. Any such debate must include the question of whether it is constitutional for the federal government to adopt and implement the president's proposals. Consider one element known as the "individual mandate," which would require every American to have health insurance, if not through an employer then by individual purchase. This requirement would particularly affect young adults, who often choose to save the expense and go without coverage. Without the young to subsidize the old, a comprehensive national health system will not work. But can Congress require every American to buy health insurance?

In short, no. The Constitution assigns only limited, enumerated powers to Congress and none, including the power to regulate interstate commerce or to impose taxes, would support a federal mandate requiring anyone who is otherwise without health insurance to buy it. Read more.

Growing Poverty and Despair in America
By Stephen Lendman

In 1962, Michael Harrington's "The Other America" exposed the nation's dark underside enough for John Kennedy to ask his Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to look into the problem and for Lyndon Johnson to say (on January 8, 1964) that his administration "today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America."

In fact, it was little more than a skirmish that fell way short of addressing the real problem in the world's richest nation. Today it's even greater and increasing exponentially under a president who, unlike Johnson, declared war on the poor and disadvantaged to favor privilege over growing needs and essential social change.

In his book, Harrington wrote:

"In morality and in justice every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering. But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America." Sadly, we didn't then nor have we now.

Sanders Welcomes Court Ruling on Fed Secrecy | Press Release

BURLINGTON, Vt., Aug. 25 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today welcomed a court ruling that the Federal Reserve must reveal the names of banks that have received more than $2.2 trillion in secret loans.

Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska yesterday rejected the Fed’s argument that loan records are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has refused requests from Sanders and others to make public the names or loan recipients.

“This court decision is a victory for the American taxpayer. The American people have a right to know exactly who has received trillions of dollars from the Federal Reserve and what they are doing with this money. The Federal Reserve has kept this information secret for far too long. This money does not belong to the Fed. It belongs to the American people,” Sanders said.

“No one should have the power to print an unlimited supply of money and lend it to any bank or corporation it wants without accountability or oversight. This court ruling is an important step forward in increasing transparency at the Federal Reserve,” he added. “I hope it will not be appealed.”

The American Monetary Institute is holding its 5th Annual AMI Monetary Reform Conference on Sept. 24-27, 2009 at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Invited speakers include:

• Stephen Zarlenga, opens the Conference: AMI's Purpose, Objectives and Methodology
• Congressman Dennis Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth
• Prof. William Black will speak on Fraud's Critical Role in Producing the Financial Crisis
• Richard Cook will speak on: Democratization of the Monetary System
• William Bergman discusses Current Crucial Issues in Banking
• Chris Lindstrom speaks on The Myth of Money - The Spirit of Berkshares
• Prof. Michael Hudson speaks on The Key elements of How Real Monetary Reform Should Proceed
• Dr. Norman Ehrentreich and Prof. Michael Hudson "What's Next?"
• Michelle St. Pierre on Turning Talk into Political Action. How to sell the American Monetary Act to the American People and Congress
• Robert Poteat, will speak on the Moral Implications of Monetary Reform
• Jamie Walton on "The American Monetary Act - Why all Three Elements are necessary, and What they will do."
• Dr. Edward Chambers President of the Industrial Areas Foundation (the IAF) discusses: Organizing for Power, Action and Justice
• Nicolaus Tideman, Professor of Economics at Virginia Tech speaks on How Banks will Compete After the Reforms Needed for Stable Money and Stable Banking are in place
• Dick Distelhorst will present on What Must Be Done Now?
• Dr. Cay Hehner, Director, Henry George School of Social Science, NY, on "The End of Capitalism as we Know it"
• Reed Simpson will describe The Chinese Monetary System - Lessons & Cautions
• David I. Kelley discusses on the The Politics of Monetary Reform and Economic Justice
• Ben Dyson will discuss The Monetary Reform Situation in Great Britain & present a video interview with James Robertson
• Will Abrams of Canada presents the Reforms Instituted By Gerald Gratton McGeer
• Laurene Huffman presents Faith Based Financing - Islamic Lending in the United States

Feingold, Breaking Washington Taboo, Calls for Afghanistan Withdrawal Timetable
By Robert Naiman | Just Foreign Policy

Action: Just Foreign Policy has been urging the Senate to take up debate on how long U.S. forces are going to be in Afghanistan. You can add your voice here.

Yesterday, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin broke a Washington taboo. He called for a "timetable" for withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.

ABC News reports:

"I think it is time we start discussing a flexible timetable so that people around the world can see when we are going to bring our troops out," said Feingold. "Showing the people there and here that we have a sense about when it is time to leave is one of the best things we can do," he added.

Feingold made the comments in an interview with the editorial board of the Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wisconsin. Feingold also said:

I think (our presence) is increasing the extremism and increasing the resentment toward the United States.

The idea of an open-ended commitment with no vision of when it will end is a problem. I want a flexible timetable and a public vision of what we intend.

Senator Feingold's statements represent an important breakthrough. Though Feingold has been quite critical of the ongoing military escalation, this is, to my knowledge, the first time he, or any other U.S. Senator, has publicly uttered the word "timetable" in the context of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. Read more.

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Just Foreign Policy has been urging the Senate to take up debate on how long U.S. forces are going to be in Afghanistan. You can add your voice here.

Sen. Sanders Statement on Bernanke Nomination | Press Release

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Aug. 25 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today issued the following statement on the nomination of Ben S. Bernanke for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve:

"As a result of the greed, irresponsibility and illegal behavior of Wall Street our country has experienced the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. Mr. Bernanke was head of the Fed and the nation's chief economist as this crisis, driven by reckless speculation, developed. Tragically, like the rest of the Bush administration, he was asleep at the wheel during this period and did nothing to move our financial system onto safer grounds.

“As the middle class of this country continues to shrink, we need a chairman of the Federal Reserve who is more concerned about expanding the productive economy – increasing decent-paying jobs for all Americans – than continuing to fan the flames of Wall Street greed and outrageous compensation packages.”

Contact: Michael Briggs or Will Wiquist (202) 224-5141

Chinese Assassination Squads (Satire)

To: Leon Panetta, Langley HQ
From: Operative 650, Shanghai office
Re: Memo XE1250

Leon:

I just received the memo on the latest Blackwater scandal. Talk about embarrassing! Why did we outsource assassination to those bozos? Remember in 2006 when a Blackwater guy, drunk as a skunk, killed the Iraqi vice president's bodyguard? And we were going to deputize these trigger-happy Rambos to take down America's Most Wanted? I wish we could simply put all the blame on the last administration. But we're still shelling out millions to the company to provide "security" in Iraq.

Look, if we're going to outsource, we should outsource to the experts. The Chinese. They make our clothes. They make our computers. Heck, they even supply the components for our weapons systems. Why not give them the task of assassinating jihadists?

Here are the top five reasons to go with the Chinese:

Obama pushes ahead on Afghan war despite waning support
By Julie Mason | Washington Examiner

With a growing-yet-ambiguous mission and no clear exit strategy, the war in Afghanistan is fast becoming a key political liability for President Barack Obama.

Last week, the White House gamely tried to characterize Thursday's Afghan elections as a milestone for democracy. But the administration's tepid relationship with presumptively re-elected President Hamid Karzai is one symptom of a larger struggle for Obama.

"Our goal is clear: To disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and their extremist allies," Obama said of Afghanistan. "This is not a challenge that we asked for; it came to our shores when al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan."

Obama has tried to bring stability to Afghanistan by sending more troops and shaking up the military command. He broadened the regional strategy to include Pakistan and rooting out terrorist safe havens.

But even so, a Washington Post/ABC News poll last week found 51 percent of Americans said the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. Among Democrats, 70 percent are against the war. Read more.