A Browbeaten, More Passive Press Corps

Posted on September 8, 2008 by RagBlog

White House press corps acquiescing to another line of bullshit.

The mighty, scary press corps
By Glenn Greenwald / September 6, 2008

Criticizing the McCain campaign for refusing to allow reporters to question Sarah Palin, Time’s Jay Carney writes:

Political operatives love to talk about circumventing the media and other co-called “elites” — i.e., independent specialists, observers and thinkers. The operatives convince themselves they can take their candidate’s message directly to the people — on their terms, without all that poking and prodding and skepticism. That’s propaganda. In a democratic society, it rarely works for long.

If only that were true. But if there’s one indisputable lesson from the last eight years, it’s that political propaganda works exceedingly well — not despite an aggressively adversarial press but precisely because we don’t have one. Carney’s idealistic claims about the short life-span of propaganda in American democracy are empirically false:

“Half of Americans now say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003 — up from 36 percent last year, a Harris poll finds” (Washington Times, 7/24/2006); “Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks” (Washington Post, 9/6/2003); “The same poll in June showed that 56% of all Republicans said they thought Saddam was involved with the 9/11 attacks. In the latest poll that number actually climbs, to 62%” (USA Today/Gallup poll, 10/6/2004); “The latest Harris Poll has some interesting results on public opinions of Saddam Hussein’s possible links to al Qaeda. Of those Americans polled, 64% agree that Saddam Hussein had ‘strong’ links to al Qaeda” (Harris poll, July 21, 2006); “49 percent of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution . . . Only a third of Americans understood that much of the rest of the world opposed our invasion [of Iraq]. Another third thought the rest of the world was cheering our invasion, and a third thought the rest of the world was neutral” (Rick Shenkman, June, 2008).

Of course Carney is right in theory that anyone running for Vice President ought to submit to questioning from the media. But the idea that her doing so will be some great blow against propaganda is wrong for numerous reasons. Who are these great, aggressive journalists who are going to question her in a meaningfully adversarial way in order to expose the falsehoods behind the image that is being created around her?

When they decide in a couple of weeks that Palin is ready to do so, she’ll go and sit down with Brit Hume or Larry King or Charlie Gibson or some other pleasant, accommodating person who plays a journalist on TV and have a nice, amiable, entertaining chat about topics that are easily anticipated. Having been preceded by all sorts of campaign drama about her first interview and the excitement that she’s not up to the task, her TV appearance will be widely touted, score big ratings, and will be nice entertainment for the network that presents it. It will achieve many things. Undermining propaganda isn’t one of them.

This idea that she’s some sort of fragile, know-nothing amateur who is going to quiver and collapse when subjected to the rough and tumble world of American journalism is painfully ludicrous, given that — as the Canonization of the endlessly malleable Tim Russert demonstrated — that imagery is a fantasy journalists maintain about themselves but it hardly exists. The standard journalistic model of “balance” means that the TV journalist asks a few questions, lets the interviewee answer, and then moves on without commenting on or pointing out false claims, i.e., without exposing propaganda (Carney can check his own magazine to see how that sad, propaganda-boosting process works — here, here, and here). Few things are easier than submitting to those sorts of televised rituals.

Moreover, Sarah Palin isn’t Dan Quayle. She is extremely smart — much smarter than the average media star who will eventually be interviewing her — and she is very politically skilled as well. She didn’t go from obscure small-town city council member to Governor to Vice Presidential nominee by accident. She’ll be more than adequately prepared for the shallow, 30-second, rote exchanges that pass for political interviews in our Serious mainstream discourse. Anyone expecting her to fall on her face or be exposed as some drooling simpleton is going to be extremely disappointed. That might (or might not) happen with real questioning, but she’s not going to face that.

If anything, this growing drama about Palin’s supposed fear of facing America’s super-tough “journalists” who are chomping at the bit to expose her is going to help her greatly, for exactly the reason Digby wrote here, after highlighting Chris Matthews’ complaints that Palin won’t yet submit to interviews:

As if submitting to Chris Matthews’ questions ever told voters anything meaningful about the candidates.

They are going to work themselves into a frenzy over this. And the right will hold Palin off just long enough for the outcry to become deafening. And then Palin will appear in front of a gargantuan television audience (again) on something like 60 Minutes — and do quite well. They are already working the media hard to make sure they don’t go for the jugular — and they won’t.

People need to get over the idea that Palin’s some kind of Britney Spears bimbo. She’s a professional politician and from the looks of it, a pretty good one. She’s not going to fall on her face on TV. They will build the expectations accordingly.

Carney is exactly wrong. Propaganda thrives — predominates — in our democracy for many reasons, the principal reason being that we don’t have the sort of journalist class devoted to exposing it. Anyone who wants to contest that should examine the empirical data above, or more convincingly, just look at what the Bush administration has easily gotten away with over the last eight years — the systematic deceit, the radicalism, the corruption, the crimes.

The ideological extremism and growing ethical questions that define Sarah Palin — and especially the discredited, rejected core beliefs of John McCain — means that the McCain campaign should have much to worry about in this election. Having Sarah Palin face the mighty, scary American press corps certainly isn’t one of them. That’s just a melodramatic distraction, one that will redound to the GOP’s benefit. Palin will “face” our media soon enough, and it will probably be the easiest thing she’ll have to do between now and November.

* * * * *

UPDATE: Several people in comments suggest/hope that Palin’s refusal to submit to press questioning will alienate journalists and make them more intent on investigating her and subjecting her claims to scrutiny. A healthy journalistic instinct would indeed produce that reaction. But is that what we have?

It isn’t just that the Bush administration has been the most secretive in modern history (though it has been), but Dick Cheney seemed to take sadistic pleasure in purposely concealing from reporters even the most innocuous information, just to show he could. He even refused to say how many people worked in his office, or who worked there, or even where he was and what he was doing on any given day. Did that propel journalists to investigate him more aggressively or subject his claims to greater investigative scrutiny? Yes, that is a rhetorical question. A properly functioning press corps would become more adversarial and aggressive when treated with such contempt by the GOP. Ours becomes more browbeaten, more passive, more eager to please.

UPDATE II: From the AP, an hour or so ago:

Palin offers first television interview to ABC

Republican vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin is offering her first televised interview to ABC News in the coming week in Alaska.

Palin, the surprise pick of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, has been giving campaign speeches alongside the Arizona senator since the GOP convention but has not sat down for an interview about her views.

A McCain-Palin adviser says an interview was offered to ABC’s Charlie Gibson several days ago and that they expect it to happen in the latter part of the week in Alaska.

It’s not prescience when you simply describe the bleeding obvious. If I were a McCain adviser and wanted to have Palin sit with someone who is perceived as a “journalist” while knowing that no damage could possibly occur, I’d pick Charlie Gibson, too. There are many, many other equally good alternatives, but when it comes to wretched passivity and sycophantic establishment worship, the former “Good Morning America” host — whose career was built on oozing amiability and inoffensiveness — is as good as it gets.

Source / Salon

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Pakistan Shuts Down Khyber Pass Supply Line

Posted on September 7, 2008 by RagBlog

Lawyers in Multan burn an effigy of President Bush during a protest against U.S. attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas, Sept. 6. U.S. forces have conducted a raid inside Pakistan in the first known foreign ground assault in Pakistan against a suspected Taliban haven. A good number of innocent civilians were killed.

“The gesture from Pakistan is immensely important. The country simply cannot stand idly by and allow foreign invasions … For Washington, these deaths are nothing more than ‘collateral damage.’ For Pakistan, they amount to the senseless murder of innocent people.”

Civilian Deaths Justify Pakistan’s Cutoff of NATO Supply Line
Daily Jang, Pakistan / September 7, 2008

The trucks carrying goods and fuel supplies to allied forces based in Afghanistan through the border point at Torkham will no longer roll through Khyber agency each morning. In what is being interpreted as a response to the US ground attack in South Waziristan that killed 20 people, including women and children, orders have been issued to political authorities in Khyber to halt this supply line. Growing unrest in tribal areas and the possibility of attacks on the vehicles is being cited by local authorities as a possible reason for the decision. If indeed this measure has been taken to express anger over the US assault on its territory, it seems strange the Pakistan government has not seen it fit to make a more open announcement to its people. Instead, reports have filtered through to the media from Khyber. The orders have been issued verbally; there has been no clear-cut statement as to the reasons. Public outrage over the killing of innocent civilians and the audacious violation of sovereignty is acute. The government must say how it plans to counter the American actions. The cutting off of supplies, as a concrete action, would appear to be one means to do this.

Khyber Pass

Surely it offered the government an opportunity to prove something was being done. It is uncertain how far the cutting off of supplies will hamper US-led forces in Afghanistan. It seems likely alternative routes to acquire goods can be set up by them, even if this involves greater costs and more complex logistics. But for all this, the gesture from Pakistan is immensely important. The country cannot stand by and allow foreign invasions. The third US attack in three days took place on Sept 5, as US planes bombed North Waziristan. Three children were among those killed. For Washington, these deaths are nothing more than ‘collateral damage’. For Pakistan, they amount to the senseless murder of innocent people. Fury across northern areas is rising. Islamabad cannot allow such US action to go unchallenged. The decision to stop the transportation of goods is one step. It must also be backed by others so the message can get through Washington’s seemingly impenetrable walls.

Source / WorldMeets.US

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Community College Students Need Not Apply : Our Reward for Bailing Out the Banks

Posted on September 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘The following lenders have started turning away from community college students: Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, and PNC’
by Kesi Foster / September 3, 2008

“Since so many students at community college work full-time, I bet we’re actually paying a great deal more in taxes than students at 4-year universities.”

The American Dream deferred-that’s what national lenders announced recently when they told Americans they were significantly reducing their lending to students who attend community college. Education is the great equalizer, but there was no equality in their decision: they targeted community colleges for cuts while extending their lending programs at distinguished 4-year schools.

According to the New York Times (6/6/08), the following lenders have started turning away from community college students: Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, and PNC. In the case of Citibank, it has stopped offering loans to all community college students in the state of California. The banks’ reasoning is that community college students are more likely to default and are taking out smaller loans, while the students at elite universities are more likely to take out bigger loans and to re-pay them, since they are expected to earn more in the job market. This might sound like solid reasoning were it not for the fact (duly pointed out in the article) that the government ensures all student loans up to 95%. Thus there is essentially no risk involved for the lending companies.

We’ve been told that a college degree will set a person on the path for success. Not everyone takes the same path, however. People enroll in community college for many different reasons. Some didn’t get the grades in high school to qualify for a 4-year school, while others have to work full-time and need the flexibility that community colleges offer. Most simply cannot afford to enroll in a 4-year school. I am one of them.

After high school, I enrolled in St. John’s University because I got decent grades in high school and I was expected to go to college. I had no understanding of what I wanted to be in life and didn’t grasp the importance of the college experience and a higher education. I pretty much picked a major out of a hat and then spent my first two semesters skipping one too many a class. By the summer I decided not to enroll for the fall, and took a full-time job instead. It wasn’t anyone’s fault-in truth, I was not ready to attend college and made my decision accordingly.

Yet, in my household education has always been stressed, and so I knew in the front of my mind that I would return to college. After a few years of working, I matured a great deal and had a better sense of where I wanted to go in life. So I reapplied to St. Johns and was accepted once again. I quickly realized, though, that my situation had changed dramatically. The tuition was now double what it was when I had left, and I did not qualify for financial aid since I was no longer a dependent but the sole taxpayer. With basically no other choice, I turned to the best alternative available: community college.

“The banks’ reasoning is that community college students are more likely to default and are taking out smaller loans.”

At first I was discouraged. There is a stark difference between the administration of St. John’s and that of my new school, Bronx Community College. Whereas it took only about 30 minutes to sign up for classes at St. John’s, it can take a whole day at BCC. And they may even ask you to come back due to of some mysterious hold on your record that can be taken care of only by an obscure faculty member who is often never on campus when you are. In my admission process, I asked three different faculty members the same question and I got back three completely different answers. There was also this stigma I was carrying around that somehow an education at a community college is inferior-some people refer to it as the 13th grade.

After attending for more than three semesters now, I would say the administration process has improved some, but it is still in disarray. Moreover, basic resources are badly lacking, such as water fountains. Oddly, not a single functioning water fountain can be found on the entire campus, though there are soda machines in every building. The heating and AC systems are hit and miss and the menu at the food hall is less than appealing. As for the education, I couldn’t have been more wrong. It has been rigorous and very well rounded-great preparation for any baccalaureate program.

I was embarrassed to qualify only as a freshman even though I was legally old enough to drink, that is, until I got to class and met my classmates. This is the beauty of community college, the student body. Many of us have returned to community college as a second chance to help us achieve our goals. I met single mothers, fathers, grandmothers, first generation immigrants, people of all nationalities, the majority clearly focused and very eager to learn-all of us striving equally to get a piece of the American Dream, using community college as the springboard. When people would raise their hands to answer questions, you would hear West Indian accents, Eastern European accents, East Indian accents, Latino accents, and some I just couldn’t place.

“I met single mothers, fathers, grandmothers, first generation immigrants, people of all nationalities, the majority clearly focused and very eager to learn.”

Since I was still working, the flexible schedule was a necessity for me. Like me, many of my classmates came to class right after their full-time job. I don’t think most of us could afford to leave our jobs and without community college we couldn’t continue our higher education.

The student body at community colleges should be an inspiration to America. When I see a single mother who takes care of her children, works a full-time job, and finds time on the nights and weekends to attend school, I am inspired to continue despite at times feeling overwhelmed. Yet when it was discovered that lenders were turning their backs on these hardworking students, America didn’t blink an eye. Since the credit companies are now turning their backs on us, does that not mean we should have no problem turning our backs on the banks when they want the government to bail them out?

Perhaps we should do as economist Dean Baker has recently suggested and put into law as one of the terms of the bailout that Congress impose a strict cap on management compensation of $2m a year, including salary, bonuses, stock options, and personal use of company jets. As Baker says, “This can be a good first step toward reining in the outrageous salaries at financial institutions that have come at the expense of ordinary workers. We can apply the same salary caps for managers at other financial institutions that feed at the government trough.” He notes that under the current bailout, which naturally was written by the banks themselves, “the government is explicitly subsidizing the pay of incompetent bank managers. It is the effective use of lobbyists that ensures the pay of the executives of Fannie and Freddie, not their skill and hard work.”

“The government is explicitly subsidizing the pay of incompetent bank managers.”

In terms of college loans, why not downsize lending at the distinguished 4-year schools? After all, students at the wealthy 4-year schools have far more net worth than those attending community college. Also, since so many students at community college work full-time, I bet we’re actually paying a great deal more in taxes than students at 4-year universities.

When it was discovered that a local congressman, my local congressman, was hoarding rent-stabilized apartments it became a weeklong media circus, with news conferences and special features on the 6 and 11 o’clock news. It seems like you can’t turn on the news without a politician convening a press conference to defend their indefensibly corrupt behavior. Yet when it comes to the corruptions of the big banks the government rushes in to save their skin, that is, their hugely bloated salaries, and the media looks the other way.

As it is, in many inner cities and low-income communities too many students fall through the cracks before they even get a chance to attend community college. As a society, we can’t allow even more holes for them to fall through. What happens to people when more unnecessary obstacles are placed in front of them on their path to success?

The big banks want us to help them out in tough times, after having made extremely irrational lending decisions, but when we need help to purse a very sound and rational course, the attainment of a college degree, America’s politicians sit in the back of the classroom and nod off to sleep, squandering yet another chance for us to improve ourselves.

It makes one wonder if that is not the whole plan.

[Kesi Foster was raised in New Rochelle, NY and is currently a student at Bronx Community College.]

Source / Black Agenda Report

Thanks to Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Moose-Hunting Pitbull with Lipstick

Posted on September 7, 2008 by RagBlog


This cynical choice has left McCain’s honour in shreds
By Minette Marrin / September 7, 2008

I’m an American, California born. It’s true my mother was English and that I was brought up here from early childhood and think myself exceptionally lucky to belong here; I feel as English as I think anyone possibly can. Yet all the same, America is the land of my forebears on my late father’s side. I would even qualify to be a Daughter of the American Revolution, since one of my ancestors in North Carolina fought in the American war of independence. My grandmother travelled as a little girl in a covered wagon in the Wild West with my great-grandfather, who was an army officer. I have close family living in America still, and I have the right to vote there.

So I have always felt a strong sentimental attachment to the United States. I’ve felt proud of American achievements and generosity, and resented the unthinking antiAmericanism everywhere in Europe, ever since the first child in the playground of my first school shouted at me “Yanks go home”. Admittedly the spectacle of electioneering is a painful test of anyone’s respect for the United States. In their ghastly harrumphing electoral extravaganzas the Americans show themselves at their worst – vulgar, venal, naive, dishonest, stupid, wasteful, tasteless and vicious. Priggish though it may sound, I prefer to ignore these periods of national hysteria; after all, politics is nasty everywhere, it’s just that America does everything in extremes.

But last week everything changed. John McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin was the last straw. It makes American politics look like a sick comedy. My faith in my native country had already been shaken by other elections and by other wrongs, such as the Iraq war (which I at first supported, to my shame). But the moose-hunting pitbull with lipstick is too much. I have never used my vote in the past, but if I had, I would usually have voted Republican. Today no rational conservative can vote for the Palin and McCain ticket. It makes America an international laughing stock. The fact that there has been a Palin bounce, after her charismatic speech, fills me with dismay.

This has little to do with Palin’s views. I disagree passionately with some of them, but the Republicans are entitled to present any views they choose to the electorate. Nor do I share the objections to Sarah Barracuda of the liberal sisterhood; unlike them I don’t in the least object to an ambitious woman being right-wing. I am rather right-wing myself, and Margaret Thatcher is one of my heroines.

Unlike the lily-livered liberal intelligentsia, I admire Palin for being a good shot and a good fisherwoman, and capable of butchering large wild animals in her basement, though I do not share her rather unsporting enthusiasm for shooting wolves out of small aircraft. I admire her for her determination, for her energy and her self-possession. I admire the virtues of small-town and frontier America. As for her grooming and her cunningly chosen glasses, if I don’t admire the results, I do admire the self-discipline and self-respect behind them.

All the same, her selection was a shock. What horrified me was not so much the woman herself, though she is clearly entirely unfit to be vice-president or president. It was McCain’s cynical and sudden choice of her. Would you give power of attorney over your entire life to someone you had only met once, or possibly twice? Of course not. You would give the matter and the person very serious consideration. Yet McCain in effect is offering power of attorney over all the affairs of the United States and over all Americans, including me, to a woman he had barely met. I myself wouldn’t hire a house-sitter on such scant acquaintance.

Palin herself may not know what a vice-president is for, but McCain surely must. He must know that a vice-president needs to be someone the president can trust and rely on and work with. Such a person is not easy to find, even when highly qualified in other ways. It takes time. It’s a personal matter, a question of psychological fit and mutual understanding.

Obviously McCain’s public relations people have been scouring the country for libertarian babes. But politics is not painting by numbers. McCain doesn’t know Palin at all, nor it seems did his vetting people; revelations keep emerging about her all the time. But he showed himself willing to hand the free world over to a stranger because his people think she is a psephological paragon.

I had thought that McCain was, for a politician, an honourable man. Certainly honour is one of his top selling points. But who can think so now? In choosing a woman he doesn’t know or understand, purely for electoral advantage, he reveals a dishonourable lust for office, a disrespect for women generally and a dishonourable indifference to the future of his country. After all, if this known unknown woman does become president, it will almost certainly be because he himself is dead – quite possible given his age and health – and past caring.

Though he didn’t know Palin personally, he must have known a few facts about her. He must have known that she compares feebly with previous vice-presidential candidates. Her education is minimal, her real political and managerial experience very slight. The only previous woman candidate for vice-president, the Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, was well qualified, well educated and experienced; Palin can’t hold a candle to her. Palin’s experience is as nothing compared to that of Dick Cheney (congressman, secretary of defence and White House chief of staff), Al Gore (senator and congressman) or George Bush Sr (congressman, ambassador to the United Nations and China, head of the CIA). Being a vice-president is not just a matter of PR and homespun rhetoric, or used not to be.

Even a brief consideration of Palin might suggest that she is not the straightforward redneck hockey mom she claims to be. It’s not possible to be much of a mom to five children, including a baby with Down’s syndrome, if you have a more than full-time job. Like other people with working responsibilities, you have to hand your children over to someone else to bring up. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it denies you the right to exploit your image as a yummy downhome mummy.

In short Palin is an ill-educated, inexperienced hypocrite. The Republicans are trying to sell her to the voters as something she isn’t, and McCain hardly cares what she is. It’s a bad day for my native land.

Source / Times OnLine

Many thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens and her Friends Maria and Stephanie for the graphic.

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Go Tell Sarah : Celebrate the Freedom to Read

Posted on September 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Banned Books Week
Celebrating the Freedom to Read
September 27–October 4, 2008

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW’s 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

BBW is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, National Association of College Stores, and is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

To learn more about Banned Books Week and this year’s activities, go to the American Library Association website.

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Team McCain and the Trooper : Attempt to Derail Palin Probe

Posted on September 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Alaska state trooper Mike Wooten tells CNN he never drank while driving his patrol car during inverview.

Obstruction of Justice Dept: McCain allies seek to avoid ‘October surprise’ in ‘Troopergate’ investigation
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball / September 5, 2008

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin’s firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called “October surprise” that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska’s bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called “troopergate” investigation.

Coghill charged that the senator, Hollis French, had “politicized” the probe by making a number of public comments in recent days, including telling ABC News that Palin had a “credibility problem” and that the investigation into the firing of public safety commissioner Walter Monegan was “likely to be damaging to the administration” and could be an “October surprise.” Wrote Coghill: “The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process.”

The investigation, authorized by the Legislative Council last July, revolves around charges that Palin abused her power by embroiling the governor’s office in a bitter family feud involving her ex-brother in law, a state trooper named Mike Wooten. Specifically, the council is investigating whether Palin fired Monegan when he refused to dismiss Wooten (who at the time was involved in an ugly custody battle with Palin’s sister) after getting repeated complaints about him from the governor and her husband, Todd Palin. (Among the allegations that were raised against Wooten by Palin’s sister: he had Tasered his ten-year-old stepson and shot a moose without a permit.) Palin has denied wrongdoing; Monegan has said he believes his firing was connected to his refusal to fire Wooten.

French, the Democrat overseeing the probe, has hired a special counsel to determine, in effect, whether Palin “used her public office to settle a private score,” he recently said. He has also suggested that the probe may turn up evidence that state laws were violated by Palin’s aides because they pulled confidential personnel files on the trooper.

But Coghill, who told NEWSWEEK that he has the backing of Republican Speaker of the House John Harris in his effort to remove French, suggested Friday that the investigation into Palin’s firing of Monegan should be shut down entirely. “If this has been botched up the way it has, there’s a question as to whether it should continue,” Coghill told NEWSWEEK.

The move underscored the huge political stakes in the outcome of a legislative investigation that is being closely monitored by both the McCain and Obama campaigns because of its potential impact on the fall election. “How can this possibly be read as anything but a partisan attempt to shut down a legitimate investigation that was approved and funded with bipartisan support?” said one state Democratic legislative aide, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities. Coghill told NEWSWEEK that he decided to write his letter to strip French of his position on his own-without any coaxing by McCain campaign officials.

But a top McCain campaign official acknowledged that the GOP lawyer had given the campaign a “heads up” about his letter and that the McCain campaign approved of the effort to remove French.

“An investigation that was supposed to be non-partisan has become a political circus and has gotten out of control,” said Taylor Griffin, a top communications aide dispatched from McCain campaign headquarters to Alaska this week to monitor the investigation and related matters. (Griffin also said that Palin has “nothing to hide” about the Wooten matter.)

As a further sign of the sensitivity of the probe, a lawyer for Palin told NEWSWEEK Friday that Todd Palin, the governor’s husband, was in the process of hiring his own separate counsel to represent him in the legislature’s probe. Thomas Van Flein, Governor Palin’s lawyer, would not identify who is now representing the governor’s husband. But he sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman and oil company worker, had improperly intervened in state business by inviting Monegan to the governor’s office and asking him to look into Wooten’s status on the state police force. (For his part, Wooten has acknowledged that he “made mistakes,” but that he was “punished appropriately” when he was suspended from the police force for five days in 2006.)

In an interview on Friday, Van Flein sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin may have acted improperly by talking to the state public safety commissioner about Wooten. Todd was “the governor’s husband and a citizen of the state and he has every right to an opinion as [does] everyone else,” Van Flein said.

One major reason the probe is so sensitive is that it raises the prospect that Governor Palin’s credibility could be called into a question in a major state probe on the eve of the election. When the “troopergate” story broke over the summer, Palin adamantly denied that anybody in her administration exerted any pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten. But only weeks later, a tape recording surfaced in which another one of her top aides, Frank Bailey, was heard telling a police lieutenant, “Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, ‘Why on earth hasn’t this, why is this guy [Wooten] still representing the department?'”

French today acknowledged that some of his public comments about the ongoing probe may have been out of bounds. “I said some things I shouldn’t have said,” he told NEWSWEEK. But he insisted he had no intention of stepping down because the investigation was really being conducted by Steve Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor who was hired as the special counsel in the probe. French also said today he had moved up the deadline for Branchflower to produce his report. Although it was originally due Oct. 31, the Friday before the election, it will now be completed Oct. 10-in order to be “as far away from the election” as possible.

In the interview with NEWSWEEK, Van Flein, Governor Palin’s lawyer, raised other objections to the troopergate probe. He said the legislative investigation ran counter to the Alaska Constitution because it was being conducted in secret and without strict procedural rules. He said that in the “post-McCarthy era”, he would have expected more due process guarantees.

Van Flein also told NEWSWEEK that as part of defense preparations for the investigation, he had taken his own depositions from potential witnesses—including one this week who refused to give testimony to the Legislature’s special counsel. That was Frank Bailey, the former senior Palin aide who was recorded mentioning the concerns of Palin and her husband that Wooten was still on the police force.

In the deposition taken by Van Flein, which Palin’s lawyer made available to NEWSWEEK, Bailey acknowledged he had “overstepped my boundaries… I should not have spoken for the governor, or Todd, for that matter. I went out on my own on this discussion.”

But Bailey also confirmed in the deposition that Palin had herself raised Wooten’s name with the state police during her first security briefing after she won election as governor in November 2006. Bailey said he sat in on the briefing with Gary Wheeler, then head of the governor’s security detail. Wheeler asked Palin and her husband whether they were aware of any threats against her that the new bodyguards should be concerned about. “They specifically brought up only one person, and that was Mike Wooten,” Bailey testified. “There was a serious genuine concern about not only their safety but the safety of their family, their kids, their nieces, nephews, her father, regarding Trooper Wooten.” Bailey testified that Sarah Palin never asked him to do anything about Trooper Wooten, but that Todd Palin did talk to him about “issues about Trooper Wooten,” and expressed “frustration” that the state police were doing nothing to respond to the Palins’ concerns.

Source / Newsweek

Also see Subpoenas to be issued for Palin-trooper probe / AP / September 5, 2008

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Extraordinary Rendition: The Grief Isn’t Yet Over

Posted on September 7, 2008 by RagBlog


Rendered to Egypt for torture, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is released from Guantánamo
By Andy Worthington / September 6, 2008

News that three more prisoners have been released from Guantánamo is cause for celebration, as all three men should never have been held in the first place. In a report to follow, I’ll look at the stories of the two Afghans released — one a simple farmer, the other a juvenile at the time he was seized — but for now I’m going to focus on the extraordinary story of the prisoner released to Pakistan, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, whose grotesque mistreatment involves “extraordinary rendition” and torture spanning several continents.

A Pakistani-Egyptian national and the son of an Islamic scholar, Madni was 24 years old when he arrested in Jakarta by the Indonesian authorities on January 9, 2002, after a request from the CIA. He was then rendered to Egypt, apparently at the urging of the Egyptian authorities, working in cooperation with the CIA. In Egypt, he was tortured for three months, and was flown back to Afghanistan on April 12, 2002 with Mamdouh Habib, an Australian prisoner, seized in Pakistan, who was released in January 2005, and who has spoken at length about his torture in Egypt. Eleven months later, Madni was transferred to Guantánamo.

Although Madni did not speak about his treatment during any of his military reviews at Guantánamo, several prisoners confirmed that he was tortured by the Egyptians. Rustam Akhmyarov, a Russian prisoner released in 2004, said that Madni told him of his time “in an underground cell in Egypt, where he never saw the sun and where he was tortured until he confessed to working with Osama bin Laden,” and added that he “recalled how he was interrogated by both Egyptian and U.S. agents in Egypt and that he was blindfolded, tortured with electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling.”

Akhmyarov also said that Madni was in a particularly bad mental and physical state in Guantánamo, where he “was passing blood in his faeces,” and recalled that he overheard U.S. officials telling him, “we will let you go if you tell the world everything was fine here.” Mamdouh Habib confirmed Akhmyarov’s analysis, recalling how Madni had “pleaded for human interaction.” He said that he overheard him saying, “Talk to me, please talk to me … I feel depressed … I want to talk to somebody … Nobody trusts me.” On the 191st day of his incarceration, according to Madni’s own account, he attempted to commit suicide.

The Tipton Three — Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, British citizens released in 2004 — also recalled Madni in Guantánamo. They said that “he had had electrodes put on his knees: and that “something had happened to his bladder and he had problems going to the toilet,” but explained that he had been told by interrogators that he would not receive treatment unless he cooperated with them, in which case he would be “first in line for medical treatment.”

Quite what Madni was supposed to have done to justify this torture and abuse was never adequately explained at Guantánamo. The U.S. authorities urged the Indonesians to arrest him after they claimed to have discovered documents that linked him to Richard Reid, the inept and mentally troubled British “shoe bomber,” who was arrested, and later received a life sentence, for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001, but Madni persistently denied the connections. In his Combatant Status Review Tribunal — in which he pointed out that he is from a wealthy and influential family, is fluent in nine languages and is a renowned Islamic scholar — he maintained that he was betrayed by one of four radical Islamists whom he met by accident on a trip to Indonesia in November 2001 to sort out family business after his father’s death.

This account was backed up during an investigation by the Washington Post, who concluded that he rented a house in Jakarta, and did nothing more sinister than visiting the local mosque, handing out business cards “identifying him as a Koran reader for an Islamic radio station,” and spending “hours on end watching television at a friend’s house.” Succinctly summing up what happened to him, he told his tribunal, “After I went to Indonesia, I got introduced to some people who were not good. They were bad people. Maybe I can say they were terrorists. When someone gets introduced to someone, it is not written on their foreheads that they are bad or good.”

According to Ray Bonner of the New York Times, the entire basis for Madni’s capture, rendition and torture was that Madni, described by an uncle in Lahore as a young man who “had a childish habit of trying to portray himself as important,” had made the mistake of telling the men he had met — members of the Islamic Defender Front, an organization that espoused anti-Americanism, but had not been involved in an terrorist attacks — that bombs could be hidden in shoes.

The comment was picked up by Indonesian intelligence agents, who were monitoring the men, and was relayed to the CIA, who decided to pick him up after Richard Reid’s failed shoe bomb attack a few weeks later. Although a U.S. intelligence official confirmed Madni’s uncle’s account, calling Madni a “blowhard,” who “wanted us to believe he was more important than he was,” and another thought that he would be held for a few days, “then booted out of jail,” more senior officials clearly had other plans. Madni’s six and a half year ordeal, therefore, was based on a single ill-advised comment.

If Madni’s family are sufficiently well connected, it may well be that we haven’t heard the last of this particular story of the gruesome impact of torture arrangements between the United States and Egypt, based on inadequate intelligence, and the quiescent role of the Indonesian authorities. On the other hand, Madni, if released in Pakistan, may just want to rebuild his life in seclusion. This would be understandable, of course, but his abominable treatment deserves to be more than a mere footnote in the history of the Bush administration’s vile and unprincipled policies of “extraordinary rendition” and torture.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison. His website is: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/.

Source / Z-Net

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Con-Servative Way: Privatize the Profits and Socialize the Losses

Posted on September 7, 2008 by RagBlog


Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac: Phase two of financial crisis
By Jack Rasmus / September 1, 2008

Despite repeated efforts during the past year by the Federal Reserve (Fed), the U.S. Treasury, regulatory agencies, and global central banks, the current financial crisis has not been contained—let alone resolved. In the months since the Bear Stearns investment bank bailout in March 2008, the instability of the U.S. financial system has continued to deteriorate.

This past July, a second major financial instability event occurred—the near collapse of the two quasi-government housing market agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Like Bear Stearns, the collapse of Fannie/Freddie was barely averted by an announcement from Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the government would bail out the two agencies. Unlike Bear Stearns, the bailout requires Congressional action and its estimated cost may be as high as $300 billion, according to independent estimates. That’s nearly ten times the $29 billion bailout cost of Bear Stearns.

Evolution of the Fannie/Freddie Collapse

It is often noted in the business press that Fannie/ Freddie are liable for more than $5.3 trillion of total mortgage debt outstanding, or roughly half of total mortgage debt in the U.S. which totaled $10.6 trillion as of March, according to the U.S. Fed’s Flow of Funds data. Less often noted is that since 2001 this same mortgage debt had ballooned from $4.8 trillion to $10.6 trillion. That’s an increase of approximately $6 trillion in just 7 years. Between 2003-06 alone mortgage debt recorded a net growth of more than $1 trillion a year. Nearly half of that was “bad” subprime mortgage debt.

While banks and mortgage companies reaped super-profits from multi-trillion dollar mortgage lending during 2003-2006, they simultaneously pushed for the full privatization of Fannie/Freddie. They were not able to achieve that, but were able to keep Fannie/Freddie underfunded and freeze the latter’s share of mortgages purchased at no more than 40 percent of the total mortgage market.

But once the subprime mortgage bust began in late 2006, the same banking and mortgage lenders sought to have Fannie/Freddie buy up their bad debt in greater and greater volumes, including their so-called securitized packages of bad subprime mortgages. Fannie/Freddie’s bad debt load quickly accelerated. Its share of the mortgage debt market in turn rose rapidly, from less than 40 percent in 2005 to more than 70 percent. By the first quarter of 2008, more than 80 percent of all mortgages issued were purchased or guaranteed by Fannie/Freddie.

Fannie/Freddie’s debt load rose quickly, but their funding and reserves on hand to cover the debt did not. By summer 2008 the agencies found themselves with more than $5 trillion in liabilities, of which $1.7 trillion was direct debt, with only $81 billion in reserves.

Created in 1938 to rescue homeowners and mortgages from a similar bout of banking speculation gone bust, in 1968 Fannie/Freddie were partly privatized, which means they were no longer purely government agencies, but became corporations in which private investors purchased stock. Their private investors range from other financial institutions, wealthy independent investors, private equity funds, hedge funds, pension funds, and various foreign banks and institutions. Fannie/Freddie’s directly liable debt (called agency debt) of $1.7 trillion (of the total $5.3 trillion) is heavily owned by foreign central banks.

Should Fannie/Freddie collapse, their investors would suffer major financial losses as well as possible defaults and bankruptcies of their own. Foreign central banks would be especially hard hit. That would mean spreading and deepening the financial crisis further, not only in the U.S. but globally.

Investors became concerned that the two agencies could not cover their multi-trillion dollar liabilities with their miniscule liquid funds on hand. With housing prices continuing to fall and foreclosures rising, in early July analysts estimated Fannie/Freddie losses over the coming year of $100 to $300 billion depending on how far housing prices might fall. Investors did what most investors in any company do in such circumstances—they began a wholesale dumping of their Fannie/Freddie stock. The break came on Friday, July 11, as Fannie/Freddie stock prices plummeted by 50 percent.

Amazingly, even though Fannie/Freddie’s reserves had been declining throughout the current financial crisis, particularly in the first half of 2008, instead of taking action, U.S. government regulators repeatedly eased the amount of funds the agencies were required to keep on hand to cover emergencies such as that which occurred in July. From 30 percent at the outset of 2008, regulators reduced required reserves to 20 percent and then to 15 percent, with talk of a further cut to 10 percent in September 2008 on the agenda.

An opportunity to do something about the situation arose in mid-May, in the form of proposed housing assistance legislation for homeowners facing foreclosure. But Congress did nothing. Instead, it accepted promises that Fannie/Freddie would voluntarily raise capital to add to their reserves. Even tepid proposals to change the agencies’ regulators—a kind of rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic—failed to pass Congress last spring.

In the days leading up to July 11, government regulators, the Fed, and the Treasury repeatedly proclaimed that the two agencies had sufficient capital, were voluntarily raising more, and that no rescue of the agencies was necessary. Of course, Paulson/Bernanke never bothered to explain how companies with such a collapse in stock prices might be able to raise capital and thus avert the crisis. Even before the near collapse, both agencies were jointly able to raise only $20 billion. By the end of the week of July 7-11, Fannie Mae’s stock price was down 76 percent over the previous year, and Freddie’s had fallen 83 percent.

Over the weekend of July 12-13, Paulson/Bernanke and regulators did another about-face. When markets opened on Monday, July 14, they announced a plan to guarantee a government bailout of Fannie/Freddie. The plan required neither the Fed nor the Treasury to directly fund the bailout (neither had sufficient funds, in any event). Instead, Congress would be asked to provide the bailout funding. Until such funds were forthcoming, however, the Fed would provide interim emergency loans to the two agencies. Paulson also proposed the U.S. Treasury buy the two agencies’ public stock, thus propping up their stock prices, if necessary.

The moribund housing bill, which had earlier failed to pass Congress, was quickly resurrected following July 14. The Bush administration also proposed to repopulate the boards of directors of the two agencies with more Wall Street bankers. And Paulson/Bernanke made public assurances that “all necessary lines of credit” would be open to the agencies until Congress provided more substantial and permanent funding. The Congressional bill that eventually passed in late July ultimately provided for a $300 billion line of credit—just about what is projected by analysts as the total losses of the two companies over the next period. The $300 billion is to be disbursed by the Treasury to Fannie/Freddie as needed, either as loans or as government direct purchases of the companies’ stock.

Despite the bailout announcement, a further general fall in the New York stock market and a further crisis in confidence in the banking system and financial institutions followed. The California bank, IndyMac, failed soon after, and stock prices of other regionals like WaMu, National City, and others significantly declined. The Standard & Poor’s 500 bank stock index suffered its worst decline since 1989. Many banks and mortgage lending companies now teeter on the edge of default and bankruptcy.

The Strategic Significance of Fannie/Freddie

The near collapse and proposed bailout of Fannie/Freddie represents several important developments in the current financial crisis. First, it means the current financial crisis has not been stabilized, but has actually gotten worse. According to Bill Gross, manager of PIMCO, the world’s biggest bond fund, falling U.S. home prices will require financial institutions to write off more than $1 trillion in losses. The two to three million projected foreclosures may even be larger, given the estimated 25 million whose homes are now in negative equity (worth less than the purchased price) and the remaining mortgage costs.

It also means that the Fed, is no longer able to deal with the crisis on its own—as it essentially did with Bear Stearns. It has now clearly passed the buck to Congress. How much more will the bailout cost? According to a July Standard & Poor’s estimate, the cost would run somewhere between $420 billion and $1.1 trillion. That compares to the last housing market bailout that occurred in the late 1980s with the Savings & Loan debacle of around $250 billion.

To date the Fed has committed more than $400 billion of its roughly $800 billion to bail out Bear Stearns and prevent the collapse of other banks in the U.S. and abroad. In July it extended prior deadlines to provide special funding to banks and financial institutions still in trouble into 2009 and it will no doubt have to extend that guarantee as the crisis deepens.

The Fed has also lowered interest rates as far as it believes it can—to 2 percent. Its policy of engineering short term interest rate reductions has clearly failed. Lowering rates has not generated a recovery in the real economy or even assisted bank lending much. Banks continue to be reluctant to lend to each other, let alone to other non bank businesses or homeowners. All that lower Fed interest rates have accomplished is to fuel the devaluation of the dollar, feed currency speculators preying upon that devaluation, raise all types of commodity prices in the U.S., and in effect export part of the U.S. slowdown to other economies.

This shifting of the burden for bailing out the financial system to the U.S. Treasury and Congress signals an important shift in capitalist financial strategies for dealing with the crisis. It means monetary (Fed) solutions to the financial crisis have been effectively put on hold. Fannie/Freddie thus represents the shift into the second phase of financial crisis, while Bear Stearns represented the end of the first phase of the crisis.

They also represent a strategic crossroads. It is clear the Fannie/Freddie bailout is inevitable so long as housing prices continue to drop, which they will, foreclosures continue to rise, and housing market losses continue to grow. It remains to be seen how successful a proposed future bailout by Congress and the Treasury will be in stabilizing the two agencies. Should Fannie/Freddie fail to raise at least another $100 billion in capital or should their stock prices continue to decline, the two agencies might be forced to sell assets at fire sale prices. This very same development began occurring at the end of July among investment and commercial banks also unable to raise capital to cover losses. The hybrid giant bank, Merrill Lynch, began fire sales of its assets at the end of the month, dumping $31 billion in bad loans and mortgages for only $7 billion—a move almost certain to be copied by other banks. Fannie/Freddie might not be able to avoid similar action.

Fannie/Freddie also marked the entry of the New York stock markets into clear bear territory. Stock prices have now crossed a threshold. Despite occasional recoveries, they will proceed to decline further. In even typical postwar recessions, stock prices have fallen 30-40 percent. The current recession is anything but normal, so stock prices can be expected to fall at least as far.

Perhaps one of the more important strategic representations of Fannie/Freddie, and one of the least understood, are their tie-ins to the global derivatives markets. There are three critical numbers associated with Fannie/Freddie. First is their total liability of more than $5.3 trillion in mortgage debt. Second is their combined direct so-called agency debt of $1.7 trillion (which is part of that $5.3 trillion total). Third is the more than $2 trillion in derivatives they own, which were taken on to hedge their risks in their mortgage portfolio. The derivatives positions connect them to countless (and mostly unknown) global financial institutions. Were Fannie/Freddie to default or go bankrupt on their direct agency debt, the global impact via the derivatives market would be enormous. The magnitude of the current financial crisis would grow several-fold.

Read the rest of it here. / Z-Net

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Unaccountable Privatization: Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Posted on September 6, 2008 by RagBlog


One Fifth of Iraq Funding Goes to Private Contractors
By Willam Fisher / September 6, 2008.

If spending continues at the current rate, the U.S. will have spent 100 billion dollars on military contractors in Iraq by the end of the year.

As a new report forecasts that the 190,000 private contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries will cost U.S. taxpayers more than 100 billion dollars by the end of 2008, an under-the-radar Florida court case suggests that U.S. President George W. Bush — a staunch contractor supporter — is preparing to throw security contractors such as Blackwater under the political bus.

In the Florida case, relatives of three American servicemen killed in the 2004 crash of an aircraft owned by Blackwater Aviation in Afghanistan are suing the company for damages, based in part on U.S. government reviews that concluded that errors committed by Blackwater staff were responsible for the deaths. Last month, despite Bush’s support for what he has called the critical roles played by overseas contractors, his administration failed to meet a deadline for presenting the court with any defense of Blackwater.

The administration’s silence has caused consternation for Blackwater and its supporters. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s chairman, told Time magazine, “After the president has said that, as commander-in-chief, he is ultimately responsible for contractors on the battlefield it is disappointing that his administration has been unwilling to make that interest clear before the courts.”

Some observers have speculated that the Administration’s silence can be attributed to the controversial nature of the contractor issue and a reluctance to address it during a hotly contested presidential election year.

The Florida battle, which could eventually find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, turns on the question of whether Blackwater and other overseas contractors are subject to U.S. law. That question arises because of a decree issued in 2005 by the then U.S. Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer, granting contractors legal immunity.

The Iraqi government claims that Blackwater and other contractors have been responsible for the deaths of Iraqi civilians and wants to make them subject to Iraqi law. The U.S. has resisted this move, which is thought to be part of the ongoing stalemate in negotiations with Iraq over the future status of U.S. forces in that country.

The White House has also attacked a bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that would place combat-zone contractors under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. It called the measure an unacceptable extension of federal jurisdiction overseas, and said it would place additional burdens on the military.

Blackwater’s argument is that the company should be covered by the same “sovereign immunity” that protects the U.S. military from lawsuits because the downed flight in question in the Florida case was under the command and control of the U.S. military.

Last month, this argument was rejected by three federal judges, who cited the U.S. government’s failure to take a position in defense of Blackwater as one of their reasons. In their decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed, the judges ruled, “The apparent lack of interest from the United States … fortifies our conclusion that the case does not yet present a political question.”

Lawyers for many major contractors including DynCorp, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), Blackwater and others, say a dangerous precedent would be established if this and similar cases are allowed to go forward. Such a decision, they say, would open contractors to large money damages and greatly higher risk insurance costs that could adversely affect their ability to carry out the jobs the U.S. government has hired them to do.

As the Florida case made its way through the U.S. legal system, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contends that the cost of having military personnel provide security services in Iraq might be little different from the prices charged by private security contractors.

The report said that 6-10 billion dollars has been spent on security contractors thus far in 2008 and estimated that about 25,000-30,000 employees of security firms were in Iraq as of early this year. It estimates that, if spending for contractors continues at about the current rate, 100 billion dollars will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

The CBO report revealed that about 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors. Currently, it said, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighboring countries — a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member. It noted that the U.S. has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war for functions ranging from food service to guarding diplomats.

The report also noted that the legal status of contractor personnel is a grey area of U.S. law, particularly for those who are armed. It said that military commanders have less direct authority over contractors because a government contracting officer rather than a military commander manages their contracts.

The CBO review was requested by Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. In a statement, Conrad said the Bush administration’s reliance on military contractors has set a dangerous precedent. The use of contractors “restricts accountability and oversight; opens the door to corruption and abuse; and, in some instances, may significantly increase the cost to American taxpayers,” he said.

The report comes at a time when the actions of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming under increased scrutiny. Contractors — including Blackwater and KBR — have been investigated in connection with shooting deaths of Iraqis and the accidental electrocutions of U.S. troops. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee heard testimony a few weeks ago from a former Defence Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) contract overseer who was effectively fired because he refused to authorize 1 billion dollars in unsubstantiated charges from KBR. The Government Accountability Office released a report that confirmed whistleblower complaints of DCAA supervisors issuing unsupported findings that were favourable to contractors. And last week, Government Executive magazine reported that nearly a dozen former DCAA employees see DCAA as a very troubled agency that is more concerned with performance goals than actually overseeing contracts.

The death of a U.S. soldier, who was electrocuted in January while showering in Iraq, prompted a House committee oversight hearing last month into whether KBR has properly handled the electrical work at bases it maintains. The military has also said that five other deaths were due to improperly installed or maintained electrical devices, according to a congressional report.

Contractors’ activities have drawn sharp criticism from private non- governmental watchdog groups, such as OMB Watch. OMB stands for the Office of Management and Budget, which prepares and presents the president’s budget to congress.

Craig Jennings, OMB’s Federal Fiscal Policy Analyst, told IPS, “100 billion dollars is a very large amount of money — in fact, Iraq’s GDP was just over 100 billion dollars in 2007. But what staggers my imagination is how sober adults would be willing to divert such vast sums of America’s financial resources to the bank accounts of private firms whose dealings are opaque to taxpayers and, for the most part, held unaccountable.”

Jennings added, “I think advocates of unaccountable privatization are beginning to reap what they have sown: defending privatization of war-making on such an enormous scale is becoming tenuous. It’s hard to paint a picture of contractors providing taxpayers value when so many instances of contractor misconduct have found their way into the public’s consciousness.”

Jennings also called attention to the shortcomings of the military auditing process. He told IPS, “This magnitude of expenditures on private contractors is especially striking in light of recent government and media reports of dysfunction in the DCAA. The protection of the interests of American taxpayers is apparently suffering a number of impediments.”

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Note: DCAA = Defense Contract Audit Agency

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

New Media Targeted With Harassment, Arrests at RNC

Posted on September 6, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Using horseback officers, police moved to cut off demonstrators during GOP convention in St. Paul. Photo by Nick Vlcek / City Pages.

‘Dozens of journalists, photographers, bloggers and videomakers arrested in an orchestrated round up of independents covering the Republican National Convention’
By Timothy Karr / September 3, 2008

In St. Paul this week, a new generation of media makers is under assault by the city’s mayor and law enforcement officers.

These local officials think freedom of the press extends only to their allies in mainstream media.

For the rest of us, practicing journalism is a crime.

While reports of brutal police arrests and home invasions are still coming in, by Tuesday night the picture became clear.

Targeting the New Press

The list of those detained ranges from the well-known (Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman) and well-established (Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke) — to the bootstrapping bloggers and video makers who are covering local protests for TheUptake.org, Twin Cities Indymedia, I-Witness and other outlets.

Police — with firearms drawn — raided a meeting of the video journalists and arrested independent media, bloggers and videomakers. Journalists covering protests have been pointed out by authorities, blasted with tear gas and pepper spray, and brutalized while in custody.

Democracy Now’s Goodman reports that a U.S. Secret Service agent ripped her press credentials from her neck the moment she identified herself to him as a member of the media. Her producers emerged yesterday from their jail cells bloodied and scarred, reporting unusually harsh treatment at the hands of local and federal authorities.

Mayor Coleman’s Silence

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman hasn’t responded to repeated phone and e-mail requests for comments on the targeting of journalists. Instead he praised the work of Police Chief John Harrington and painted those arrested as a small band of outsiders and vandals intent upon committing felonies against the good people of his city.

In less than a day, more than 35,000 people have signed a letter from Free Press (my employer) to Mayor Coleman condemning the arrests and demanding that he and local prosecutors immediately “free all detained journalists and drop all charges against them.”

But when Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald pressed Harrington and Coleman to respond to widespread reports of journalist arrests, Harrington claimed ignorance while Coleman stood silent at his side.

Police spokesman Don Walsh intervened only to say that “arrest have been made” and that all those arrested were involved in criminal activities and not “simply non-participants.”

Strib Forgets About Free Speech

In a bizarre editorial on Tuesday, the Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune hailed the police crackdown as “appropriate,” blaming unrest on outsiders from beyond the Twin Cities.

“Many of those arrested in St. Paul weren’t carrying IDs or wouldn’t give their names. Those who were identified came from Lexington, Ky.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Portland, Ore., and dozens of other U.S. cities,” they wrote. “These weren’t the sons and daughters of Highland Park and south Minneapolis.”

The Star Tribune itself is owned by out-of-towners from Avista Capital Partners, a New York City private equity firm specializing in energy, healthcare and media investments.

Other than a brief story about Goodman’s arrest, the paper has failed to report on the apparent targeting of independent reporters, even though groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have sounded the alarm.

Sweeping Real Journalism Under the Carpet

Here we have every indication of an orchestrated assault by federal and local law enforcement agencies to stifle independent sources of information. As shocking as this conduct is, more disturbing is the fact that the mayor’s office and the local daily seem so unconcerned.

It’s not difficult to understand why. With local leaders making every effort to roll out the welcome mat for mainstream media and the GOP, they’d rather sweep beneath the carpet those pesky independents who are showing us a side of the spectacle that is less scripted for prime time.

As an elected representative, Mayor Coleman should take a stand on behalf of a free press, rein in aggressive and violent tactics by local law enforcement, stop the targeting of journalists and immediately drop all charges against them.

As a powerful news organization, the Star Tribune should know better, and should be sticking up for a free press, regardless of the form it takes.

For now, the democratic spirit of journalism is alive not in the Star Tribune newsroom, but among the video-blogs and cellphone reports that are bubbling up from outside the convention.

Timothy Karr is Campaign Director for Free Press and SavetheInternet.com. Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of Globalvision New Media and the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Karr critiques, analyzes and reports on media and media policy in his popular blog, MediaCitizen.

Source / The Huffington Post

Thanks to Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where Iraqi Spending Priorities Lie

Posted on September 6, 2008 by RagBlog

Please keep this in perspective: Iraq does not provide potable water for the majourity of its citizens, there are still 4 million Iraqis displaced because of ethnic cleansing (termed “civil war” by the US), cholera has become a majour concern (again) in the past few days, violence is still rampant with nearly 400 people dying (and rather more being wounded) from bombers, gunshots, and other murders in the last month in the country.

What is wrong with this picture?

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


Iraq eyes Lockheed F-16 fighter aircraft purchase
By Jim Wolf / September 5, 2008

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) – The Iraqi government has asked for information about buying 36 F-16 fighter aircraft built by Lockheed Martin Corp, the U.S. Defense Department said on Friday.

The request, received Aug. 27, is being reviewed “in the normal course of business” as part of the U.S. government-to-government arms sale process, said Air Force Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

Updated F-16s are among the world’s most advanced multirole fighters and a powerful symbol of military ties to the United States.

Iraq’s interest in the fighter jet, reported first by The Wall Street Journal, could spark concerns among neighbors worried about advanced arms in the hands of a country still facing major internal challenges.

U.S. reviews of possible arms sale can take a year or more. They involve the departments of State and Defense as well as Congress and weigh power balances, technology security and other thorny issues. If a contract were ultimately signed, deliveries could take another year or more, depending on the model in question.

The Pentagon did not specify which F-16 version Iraq was eyeing, nor whether it was new or refurbished. A Lockheed spokesman referred questions to the Pentagon.

F-16C/D Block 50/52 models are now being produced for Poland, Israel, Greece and Pakistan. The United Arab Emirates was the maiden customer for the Block 60 version, the most sophisticated F-16 produced to date.

More than 4,400 F-16s have been delivered worldwide, according to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin. Morocco this year became the 25th and latest overseas buyer with a deal for 24 new Block 50/52 models and related gear said by the Pentagon to be worth as much as $2.4 billion.

Iraq’s request for pricing and availability data might not necessarily lead to a sale. Sometimes governments seek such information for planning purposes only, the Pentagon’s Ryder said.

Flush with billions of dollars from oil sales, Iraq is emerging as the biggest client for a wide range of U.S. weapons — a shot in the arm for defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, General Dynamics Corp and Raytheon Co.

Among other systems, Iraq is seeking more than 400 armored vehicles plus six C-130 transport planes built by Lockheed, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier.

On July 30, the Pentagon notified Congress that Iraq also was seeking to buy 24 Textron Inc Bell Armed 407 or 24 Boeing AH-6 helicopters along with 565 120mm mortars, 665 81mm mortars, 200 AGM-114M Hellfire missiles and other arms that could be worth $2.4 billion.

Baghdad and Washington are working on a long-term security pact that calls for U.S. military forces to quit Iraq’s cities by next summer as a step toward a broader withdrawal from the country that U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003 to topple President Saddam Hussein.

F-16s would let Iraqi forces conduct airstrikes of their own on insurgent positions rather than relying on U.S. forces to do so, as is now the case.

Overseas sales have kept Lockheed’s F-16 production line open after the U.S. military shifted to more advanced fighters, including the radar-evading F-22 also built by Lockheed.

“The program is healthy and full of activity, with firm production through 2012 and a strong likelihood of new orders that will extend the line for several more years,” John Larson, vice president for Lockheed’s F-16 programs, told reporters in July at the Farnborough Air Show outside London.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, John Wallace, Phil Berlowitz)

© Thomson Reuters 2008

Source / Reuters

And there’s this from three weeks ago:

Iraqi Army T-72 tanks and an M113.

Iraqi Army beefs up armored forces
By DJ Elliott / August 15, 2008

The Iraqi government’s announcement it will spend nearly $11 billion on weapons systems highlights its desire to upgrade the capabilities of the Iraqi armed forces from a primarily counterinsurgency force to a military capable of protecting its own borders from outside threats. Included in the purchase are 24 light attack helicopters, mortar systems, six C-130 transports, various support vehicles, 392 Light Armored Vehicles, and above all else, 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks. The initial purchase of the Abrams tanks indicates the Iraqi Army is starting to transform from a light motorized force into a mixed force with armored, mechanized, and cavalry divisions capable of countering the Iranian and Syrian armies.

Read the rest of it here. / Long War Journal

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

ART : R. Crumb: Mr. Natural Goes to the Museum

Posted on September 6, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

“Mr. Natural” (1974), paint on plywood, from “R. Crumb’s Underground.” Image courtesy of John Lautemann / NYT.

R. Crumb’s Underground One of the more than 100 works in this exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Image courtesy of Denis Kitchen Art Agency / NYT.

R. Crumb’s Underground: ‘The exhibition is full of wild sex’
By Ken Johnson / September 4, 2008

PHILADELPHIA — What a long, strange trip it’s been. Over the course of his five-decade career the comic artist R. Crumb has gone from hero of the hippie underground to toast of the international art world. Founder of the deliriously psychedelic and ribald Zap Comix during the Haight-Ashbury wonder years, he has more recently contributed comic strips made in collaboration with his wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, to The New Yorker. In 2004 he was included in the Carnegie International and had a career retrospective at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

Now the Institute of Contemporary Art here offers “R. Crumb’s Underground,” an excellent opportunity to ponder Mr. Crumb’s incredible journey. This enthralling selection of more than 100 works from all phases of his career was organized by Todd Hignite, the publisher and editor of Comic Art magazine, for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, where it was on view in 2007.

Mr. Crumb is not the only artist to cross over from the comic-book ghetto to the fine-art museum. Gary Panter, Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes are just three of the better-known contemporary cartoonists who have helped to make the comic book a form to be taken seriously by sophisticated adults. But Mr. Crumb — a draftsman of transcendent skill, inventiveness and versatility, a fearlessly irreverent, excruciatingly funny satirist of all things modern and progressively high-minded, and an intrepid explorer of his own twisted psyche — remains the genre’s gold standard.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Mr. Crumb (first name, Robert) never went to art school. He learned to draw under the tutelage of his older brother, Charles, also an aspiring comic artist. In the early 1960s he designed greeting cards for the American Greetings Corporation in Cleveland. In 1967 he moved to San Francisco, where he would create some of the most memorable characters in cartoon history, including the irascible guru Mr. Natural and his hapless foil Flakey Foont; the suave, shamelessly randy Fritz the Cat; the angry amazon Devil Girl; and R. Crumb himself, a figure comparable to the autobiographical alter egos of Woody Allen and Philip Roth. Since the early 1990s Mr. Crumb and his wife have lived in the South of France.

The exhibition is full of wild sex. Mr. Crumb makes no bones about his lust for big, muscular women, and his uncensored erotic fantasy life is not only entertaining but also liberating. See “How to Have Fun With a Strong Girl” (2002), a suite of 12 drawings in which the scrawny Mr. Crumb climbs like a monkey all over a powerfully built young woman. We should all be so open to, and forgiving of, our libidinous fantasies.

But sex is not Mr. Crumb’s only preoccupation. He is also a great lover of early-20th-century popular music and a fanatical collector of old 78-r.p.m. records. A section of the exhibition devoted to his musical interests includes extended narratives about the sadly foreshortened lives of the blues musicians Charlie Patton and Tommy Grady. There is a humane, deeply moving tenderness to these works.

The influence of LSD, which Mr. Crumb has called his “road to Damascus,” is evident in works of funky surrealism from the ’60s and ’70s. The classic “Meatball” (1967), in which ordinary people from all walks of life are hit from out of the blue by consciousness-altering meatballs, is mysteriously trippy.

But what is also appealing in Mr. Crumb’s work is how often it is grounded in mundane reality. “Lap o’ Luxury” (1977), at 10 pages one of his longer productions, tells in detail all the events in one afternoon in the life of a little boy at home with his mom and his pesky younger brother. At one point he becomes sexually aroused by the cowboy boots on a woman who comes for a brief visit, but otherwise it is all good, clean fun.

Viewers should set aside two or three hours to take in this show. It requires a lot of reading, which brings up another of Mr. Crumb’s virtues: he is a gifted writer with a great ear for vernacular speech. An argument can be made that Mr. Crumb’s work is best consumed in book form. But there really is no substitute for seeing the original drawings, most of which are made with a fine black Rapidograph pen. The liveliness of his curiously old-fashioned draftsmanship comes across in print, but no reproduction can capture his subtlety of touch and alertness to the act of drawing.

Whatever the aesthetic and formal attractions of his work, Mr. Crumb’s penchant for barging past the limits of good taste and political correctness into psychologically juicy and dangerously complicated territory is still the main draw. His most amazingly provocative creation is Angelfood McSpade, a young, inky black, big-breasted African woman in a palm leaf skirt who was inspired by racist caricatures of the ’20s and ’30s. Sweet-tempered and dimwitted, the long-suffering Angelfood is subjected to all kinds of sexual abuse in various episodes Mr. Crumb has drawn. In one hilarious strip in the exhibition she is abducted and molested by aliens in a U.F.O.

Mr. Crumb’s outrageous play with the Angelfood character hinges on a theory that all people are at least unconsciously racist and that bringing racist fantasies fully to light is the best way to expose how stupid and cruel yet insidiously compelling they can be, especially when mixed with sexual fantasies. Kara Walker and Robert Colescott have toyed with racist stereotypes to similar ends.

But Angelfood represents something else for Mr. Crumb too. At the end of a zanily eventful four-page narrative from 1968 we see her dancing in the forest. “She spends her time bopping around in the jungle,” reads the caption, “just a simple, primitive creature! But if you dig her, go get her! If you dare!” In the final panel a man in a suit and tie hurries along a path in the opposite direction from a sign pointing to “Schmarvard Law School.” The words on his suitcase say, “Darkest Africa or Bust!”

Angelfood, in other words, is a symbol of modern man’s yearning for reconnection to his own misplaced instinctual life. In a sense that has been Mr. Crumb’s own lifelong mission: to stay imaginatively alive to his own deepest and most urgent desires, however embarrassing, distasteful or offensive they may appear to polite society. Angelfood is R. Crumb’s soul.

[“R. Crumb’s Underground” continues through Dec. 7 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia; (215) 898-7108, icaphila.org.]

Source / New York Times

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment