In doubling the bounty on former Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur’s head, the Obama administration is announcing that Black radicals are candidates for his Kill List. The message is as unmistakable and dramatic as the billboards that have been erected in Newark, New Jersey, and elsewhere screaming for the exiled freedom fighter’s blood.
One does not wind up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list based on the number of murders committed or millions of dollars stolen. The Most Wanted list is among the nation’s most political documents, in which individuals are meant to personify the scope and type of offenses that the U.S. government considers most in need of stamping out. The list is a kind of propaganda, a symbolic display of what the state considers dangerous behavior.
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the two Black men who are most responsible for making Assata Shakur the face of domestic terror in the United States, are fully conversant in the language of symbolism. They are publicly defining the Black liberation movement – or what’s left of it, or those who might attempt to revive it – as a priority domestic target for repression. Shakur, a 65-year old grandmother who has not left Cuba for the past 29 years, poses no physical danger to the American state. She represents a political threat, through her “ideology,” as brazenly stated by the FBI. The Bureau has marked Shakur for priority assassination on the basis of, in the FBI’s words, her “anti-U.S. government speeches espousing the Black Liberation Army message.” “Terrorism” is somehow inherent in the message of Black liberation. Advocacy of Black liberation, is the threat. The reward of $2 million is meant to silence Assata Shakur’s political speech, and remove her as a symbol of resistance to the U.S government.
For the National Security State, “terror” is a powerful word, with vast legal ramifications. The Obama administration is informing Americans and Cubans that Assata is as much fair game for assassination by drone as the late Anwar al-Awlaki. Barack Obama and Eric Holder are serving notice that those who share Assata’s ideology – as understood by the FBI – are subject to eradication as well, because it is an ideology of terror. And they are telling those who give “substantial support” to Assata that they are subject to detention by the U.S. military without trial or charge, for the duration of the war against “terror.”
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will hold a demonstration on Thursday, May 9, from 5 to 7pm, in front of the Harlem State Office Building in New York City, to give substantial and unwavering support to the safety and freedom of Assata Shakur; Freedom for Sundiata Acoli and Sekou Odinga, Black Liberation Army members held in U.S. prisons; and Freedom for All Political Prisoners.
They tried to kill Assata in 1973, and their still trying. They tried to kill the Black liberation movement, but its not dead yet. Join the Black is Back Coalition and a host of other concerned organizations at the Harlem State Office Building, on 125th Street, at 5pm, on Thursday. Tell the real terrorists what you think about them, their austerity, their mass incarceration, and their wars.
Glen Ford can be contacted at GlenFord@BlackAgendaReport.com.
For more information, go to Black Is Back Coalition event Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/425416530887768/
May 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Assata Shakur, Attorney General Eric Holder, Black Liberation Army, Cuba, FBI, Obama, United States, US government |
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With neoconservatives and neoliberals amplifying calls for US military intervention in Syria, it is worthwhile to take a moment and consider all the places in the world, where the US currently has forces engaged in daily operations.
Secrecy, the reality that a substantial portion of US military or espionage operations with troops are likely happening covertly, may mean it is impossible to truly get a complete picture of where America is projecting power and targeting and killing people. But, Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”
Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.1 Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.
Citing a page at US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the “areas of responsibility” publicly lists:
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, “supports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations.”
Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or “helping” some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.
Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries. SOCOM had about 4,000 people deployed around the world in countries besides Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The forces were deployed, as the Washington Post reported, to “go beyond unilateral strikes” and train “local counterterrorism forces” and engage in “joint operations with them.” Plans for both “preemptive” and “retaliator strikes” existed in “numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot” was identified or “after an attack linked to a specific group.”
Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”:
…[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico…
Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in far more countries than ever expected.
Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides an accounting of all the publicly acknowledged deployments of US military forces. It indicated that, as many Americans may not be aware, in February of this year, 100 military personnel were deployed to Niger to “provide support for intelligence collection” and to “facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region,” according to President Obama.
Also, according to the report, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel ordered American troops to be deployed to Jordan. Hagel told the Senate Armed Serivces in a statement on Syria that they would be there to “work alongside Jordanian forces to ‘improve readiness and prepare for a number of scenarios.’” Up to 200 troops would be deployed.
In 2012, Obama reported to Congress that “US combat-equipped military personnel” had been deployed to Uganda “to serve as advisors to regional forces” that were “working to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and other senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leaders from the battlefield and to protect local populations.” About 90 US military personnel were deployed and “elements” were sent to “forward locations in the LRA-affected areas of the Republic of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.” President Obama stated US forces were not to engage LRA forces “except in self-defense.”
Approximately 817 military personnel were contributed to the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), presumably to “stop the ‘movement, arming, and financing of certain international terrorist groups,’ as well as the “proliferation by sea of weapons of mass destruction and related materials.’” there were continued operations in Libya as well as operations in Yemen that were acknowledged. [By the way, it takes thirty-three pages for CRS to list all “notable deployments of military forces overseas” since 1798.]
Obama administration officials might argue that none of these operations in various different countries represent different conflicts or wars. All are connected to the “Global War on Terrorism” and the Authorized Use for Military Force (AUMF) after the 9/11 attacks give the president the executive authority to have forces in all parts of the world conducting whatever operations are deemed necessary to fight “terrorism.” Or, they might claim the US is technically not “involved” in wars if they are merely operating as advisors, who help facilitate military operations of other allied or proxy forces.
Any number of games with semantics or euphemism can be played by officials authorizing these operations. Undoubtedly, there are probably countries where the US has forces that have gone unmentioned in this post.
The reality is current US wars are not limited to the one winding down in Afghanistan and the other one that recently ended in Iraq. There are numerous wars going on unannounced, undeclared and in secret. The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the “help” of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.
May 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Obama, United States, United States Central Command |
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Made in the USA. (Photo: Julie Webb-Pullman)
While the United States peddled the threat of chemical weapon use to justify its arming of the ‘opposition’ in Syria, Israel destroyed a chemical research facility near Damascus which was allegedly developing such weapons – thus unleashing every single potentially-poisonous particle on the Syrian public.
Thus guaranteeing that regardless of whether there actually were chemical weapons being developed or manufactured, regardless of whether the Assad regime actually was intending to use them against the Syrian people, the Syrian people now HAVE been exposed – and in a totally uncontrolled fashion – to not only the known toxic effects of whatever was in the facility, but also to the unknown effects of the random mixing of such chemicals under conditions of extreme heat, and their dissemination who knows how far, causing who knows what extent of environmental and health damage.
Assad mustn’t be permitted to do it – but Israel can – and with US blessing.
Israel’s “right to defend its interests,” Obama immediately called it.
Others would call it a cold-blooded murderous attack on the Syrian civilian population.
Others would call it terrorism.
State terrorism.
Since the Twin Towers attacks in 2001, the use of pre-emptive strikes by both the US and Israel to ‘counter terrorism’ or ‘defend security interests’ have escalated to become the single most potent military threat to civilians anywhere on the planet.
Massacre after massacre of civilians by drones, by rockets, by misguided ‘targeted assassinations’ in Afghanistan, Gaza, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan – the list goes on. The list of perpetrators, however, is short – only two. The United States and Israel.
Are such peremptory attacks permissible in international law?
No – international law is very clear on this. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter only allows military actions in self-defence when under direct attack.
Did Syria attack Israel?
No.
Did Syria make any kind of threatening military action towards Israel?
No.
Israel carried out an indefensible-in-international-law military strike in Syria causing direct – and very real – harm to a large civilian population.
A more clear – and potent – case of state terrorism would be hard to find.
Did the US condemn this act, which exposed Syrians to the very harm Obama was trumpeting around the world his intention to protect them from?
No.
He defended Israel’s attack.
A more clear – and potent – case of abject hypocrUSAy would be hard to find.
If the world is not to degenerate into a complete USraeli military dictatorship, the international community must act immediately to curtail this latest slide down the slippery slope of human rights derogation, where notions such as international law and due process are merely quaint antiquities, and self-determination a notion reserved solely for Yanqui and Zionist imperialists – or it won’t just be the end of the alphabet we have reached.
And for those in the US who doubt your country’s role in Israeli military activities, take a look at where your tax-dollars are going. Take a look at this photograph (above) of the remains of the rocket fired by an Israeli military plane at a building housing media agencies in Gaza in November 2012, destroying civilian property and persons. YOU are financing these atrocities. Yes, YOU.
You – and the United Nations – should be reminded of the UN General Assembly’s Measures to prevent and combat terrorism contained in the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy of 2006, where it stated its resolve to “… find, deny safe haven and bring to justice, on the basis of the principle of extradite or prosecute, any person who supports, facilitates, participates or attempts to participate in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts…”
The world is waiting – especially all the Syrians just exposed to the cocktail of chemicals the US was claiming to protect them from, while defending Israel’s right to toast them.
– Julie Webb-Pullman is a New Zealand activist and writer currently based in Gaza. She has written on social and political justice issues for New Zealand Independent News website SCOOP since 2003, as well as for websites in Australia, Canada, the US, and Latin America, and participated in several human rights observation missions.
May 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Human rights, International law, Israel, Obama, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Folha de São Paulo – Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002. The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.
But Venezuela is not the only country to fall prey to Washington’s efforts to reverse the electoral results of the past 15 years in Latin America. It is now clear that last year’s ouster of President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay was also aided and abetted by the United States government. In a brilliant investigative work for Agência Pública, journalist Natalia Viana shows that the Obama administration funded the principal actors involved in the “parliamentary coup” against Lugo. Washington then helped organize international support for coup.
The U.S. role in Paraguay is similar to its role in the military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009, where Washington hijacked the Organization of American States (OAS) and used it to fight the efforts of South American governments who wanted to restore democracy. Zelaya later testified that Washington was also involved in the coup itself.
In Venezuela this past week, Washington could not hijack the OAS but only its Secretary General, José Miguel Insulza, who supported the White House (and Venezuela opposition) demand for a “100 percent recount.” But Insulza had to back down, as did Spain, the United States’ only other significant ally in this nefarious enterprise – because they had no support.
The demand for a “recount” in Venezuela is absurd, since there has already been a recount of the paper ballots for a random sample of 54 percent of the voting machines. The machine totals were compared with a hand count of the paper ballots in front of witnesses from all sides. Statistically, there is no practical difference between this enormous audit that has already happened, and the 100 percent audit that the opposition is demanding. Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s electoral system “the best in the world,” and there is no doubt about the accuracy of the vote count, even among many in the Venezuelan opposition.
It is good to see Lula denouncing the U.S. for its interference and Dilma joining the rest of South America to defend Venezuela’s right to a free elections. But it is not just Venezuela and the weaker democracies that are threatened by the United States. As reported in the pages of this newspaper, in 2005, the U.S. government funded and organized efforts to change the laws in Brazil in order to weaken the Workers’ Party. This information was discovered in U.S. government documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Most likely Washington has done much more in Brazil that remains secret.
It is clear that Washington did not see the mildly reformist Fernando Lugo as threatening or even radical. It’s just that he was too friendly with the other left governments. The Obama administration, like that of President Bush, does not accept that the region has changed. Their goal is to get rid of all of the left-of-center governments, partly because they tend to be more independent from Washington. Brazil, too, must be vigilant in the face of this threat to the region.
Em Português | En Español
May 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Brazil, Honduras, Latin America, Paraguay, Venezuela |
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“A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that ‘it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture’ and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.”
So began a page-one story in the New York Times that should have dominated public discussion for days and begun the process of coming to terms with this shameful chapter in American history. Unfortunately, the story ran April 16, the day after the Boston Marathon bombing, and thus got little notice. And just as attention on Boston was waning, the George W. Bush Library and Museum was dedicated in Dallas. Unsurprisingly, neither President Obama nor the ex-presidents assembled to celebrate the event (and the Bush administration), mentioned this “nonpartisan, independent review.”
It’s been pretty much consigned to the memory hole. But maybe it’s not too late to retrieve it.
The review was done by The Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, which included members not normally associated with critics of the Bush administration, such as former Republican Rep. Asa Hutchinson (co-chairman), who was an undersecretary in the Bush administration’s Department of Homeland Security and administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The task force concluded that in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and other places, American forces engaged in torture and other practices that violated U.S. laws and international treaties — conduct that has been condemned by the U.S. government when practiced by other governments. Such conduct has long been considered a war crime, the task force noted. While it stopped short of claiming that the highest government leaders explicitly called for the use of torture against detainees, it said the use was a consequence of the administration’s declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people captured in the “war on terror.” (PDF) The report states,
The Task Force believes there was no justification for the responsible government and military leaders to have allowed those lines to be crossed. Doing so damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.
Democracy and torture cannot peacefully coexist in the same body politic. The Task Force also believes and hopes that publicly acknowledging this grave error, however belatedly, may mitigate some of those consequences and help undo some of the damage to our reputation at home and abroad.
The task force also found,
There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.
It notes that some former officials insist their interrogation techniques were effective, adding, “but those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security.” The task force discounts such assertions, however, because the former officials “generally include those people who authorized and implemented the very practices that they now assert to have been valuable tools in fighting terrorism.… It is reasonable to note that those former officials have a substantial reputational stake in their claim being accepted.” The task force went so far as to reject the claim that torture led to the locating of Osama bin Laden, citing the Senate Intelligence Committee finding to that effect. (The fundamental case against torture, of course, is not that it is ineffective, but that it is immoral.)
The task force also called attention to the continuing detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, over half of whom have long been cleared for release. At the moment 100 of the 166 prisoners are conducting a hunger strike, and 21 are being force-fed by nasal tube, which in itself has been called torture and is condemned by the task force. A majority of the task force called for civilian or military trials of some of the detainees and release of others to countries in which they will not be tortured. It continued,
Those prisoners who are deemed to still be a threat to the safety of the U.S. and its citizens and who would be difficult (a) to prosecute because they were subjected to torture or the relevant criminal laws did not apply overseas at the time of their conduct; or (b) to transfer due to lack of suitable receiving country, would be brought to the mainland United States and held in custody until a suitable place to transfer them was found. Their cases would be subject to periodic review.
This recommendation is not good enough. How can men be held indefinitely because the alleged evidence against them was obtained by torture and is inadmissible? That is grounds for release. But even worse is the recommendation from the two-member minority consisting of Hutchinson and Richard Epstein (yes, alas, that Richard Epstein):
As troubling as indefinite detention might be, there are currently no good or feasible alternatives. Those prisoners who are deemed to be a continuing threat to the United States and for whom a trial is not currently feasible, and where there is no other suitable country that will accept them, should remain in detention for the foreseeable future. They should not be brought to the U.S., and Guantánamo remains the best location to hold them.
Justice demands to know why people against whom there is apparently no trial-worthy evidence are to be left to rot in an American prison in Cuba. This is truly a disgrace. And notice the self-reinforcing nature of the argument. These people are said to be a threat, but holding them at Guantanamo sows the seeds of hostility and the desire for revenge. Even if they were tried and acquitted, they might be angry at the U.S. government for the treatment they received. Are they still to be held even if acquitted? (The Bush administration thought that in some cases, yes.)
It’s good to see that the task force report holds the Bush administration lawyers responsible for the mistreatment of detainees:
Lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) repeatedly gave erroneous legal sanction to certain activities that amounted to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of U.S. and international law, and in doing so, did not properly serve their clients: the president and the American people.
Extraordinary rendition, the practice (begun in the Clinton years) of outsourcing torture to foreign governments, and abuse of detainees at secret CIA prisons, or “black sites,” also come in for condemnation as violations of international law. Unfortunately, the task force did not call for an end to turning people over to other governments; it simply recommended that there be more than “diplomatic assurances” that torture will not take place.
Refreshingly, physicians and psychologists are taken to task for their participation, in violation of age-old ethical standards, in the abuse of detainees, both by devising techniques that constituted torture and for failing to report abuses. It’s about time a floodlight was shined on this shameful conduct by medical and so-called mental-health professionals.
Also welcome is the recommendation that “the executive branch should declassify evidence regarding the CIA’s and military’s abuse and torture of captives.” We have a right to know what this lawless government did in our names.
The task force also called on the government to comply with its obligation under the Convention Against Torture to assure “that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation.” Quite the opposite has happened: “The United States has not complied with this requirement, in large part because of the government’s repeated, successful invocation of the state-secrets privilege in lawsuits brought by torture victims.” The Obama administration has been particularly determined to keep such suits out of court. This is a blot on the country.
The report further indicted the government for not complying with its obligation under the Convention Against Torture to “criminalize all acts of torture, attempts to commit torture, or complicity or participation in torture” and “proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.” It notes that “no CIA personnel have been convicted or even charged for numerous instances of torture in CIA custody.” Conspicuous by its absence is the call for prosecution of President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, members of the Office of Legal Counsel who cooked up legal justifications for torture, CIA director George Tenet, and other top officials.
President Obama says “looking backwards” at past conduct is unproductive when it comes to the interrogation of detainees. That’s odd. The government doesn’t find it unproductive to look back when private individuals commit crimes. Why should government officers get special treatment?
We can only hope that someday, when these people are traveling abroad, they will be arrested and brought before the International Criminal Court.
Finally, the task force notes that Obama, despite apparent promises to end the abuses, has not lived up to expectations. Guantanamo is still open (he said this week he would push to close it), and reporter Jeremy Scahill has exposed the CIA’s continued participation in interrogations in a secret prison beneath Somalia’s National Security Agency. Scahill’s reporting reveals that the administration has simply outsourced torture — hardly an improvement over the Bush years. Of course, Obama also claims the power to kill people and to detain them indefinitely in a military prison without due process.
“The Obama administration has ended the most inhumane treatment of detainees,” the report states, “though some troubling questions about current policies remain unanswered. But it is unclear whether it has taken sufficient steps to prevent a future administration from resorting to torture or cruel treatment.”
When it comes to conserving the national-security state, it matters little which party is in power.
May 4, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Bush administration, Guantanamo, Obama, Sheldon Richman, United States |
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An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama’s Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker
President Barrack Obama has nominated his long time friend and top fundraiser, Chicago-based Multibillionaire, Penny Pritzker, to be the next Secretary of Commerce. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and… She could also face scrutiny over the collapse of Superior Bank, which was co-owned by her family. The bank, based in Hinsdale, Ill., was involved in subprime mortgage lending, and its failure in 2001 stirred charges of fraud and mismanagement.”
Penny Pritzker, says Chicago-Based independent banking investigator Tim Andersen, played fast and loose with the American Dream. Anderson, who has been investigating for many years Pritzker’s pioneering sub-prime operations, says Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. He asserts that her extreme wealth and privilege has not only made her virtually untouchable by law enforcement, but now her appointment to Sec of Commerce, will allow her to cleanse her sub-prime banking record by becoming the Secretary of Commerce.
D.B Let’s start with some deep background on Penny Pritzker and the family holdings…
TA: There are 11 senior Pritzkers, the descendants of A. M Pritzker, who is the 11th wealthiest person after Forbes. But they are different as far as their wealth goes. Before they broke up the family dynasty because of a suit between two of the junior siblings, they had about 15 billion dollars. Bloomberg thought it was more like 38 billion because so many of the assets are major companies that are privately owned, it’s hard to evaluate that.
DB: $38 billion, with a B.
TA: $38 billion. One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.
DB: That’s amazing because before she had TransUnion, she had Superior Bank, through which she destroyed the credit of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. You might say she helped destroy the credit of the United States of America.
TA: She had TransUnion while she had Superior Bank, so she controlled the credit scores of everybody who was getting a subprime loan. You pay a higher interest on your subprime loan based on your credit score. Whether or not it was ever brokered between the credit bureau and the bank, we don’t know, but we know the same people control both entities.
DB: What happened with Superior Bank when Barak Obama was an assemblyman in her district?
TA: Superior Bank was acquired back in 1989 as part of the original savings and loan giveaway by M, D and E Wall. As I wrote a in a paper for an economic conference in Denver, Superior Bank was sold to the Pritzkers for 42.5 million dollars. They changed the name from Lion Savings and Loan to Superior Bank after they acquired it. Lion Savings and Loan was sold to the Pritzkers just to put up money for the capital. But as government reports show, they only put up a million dollars cash and pledged their assets as the difference, the capital. That’s not supposed to be done, but they are privileged people so they get privileged deals. After they acquired this for $1 million they also got $640 million in tax credits.
DB: So they paid a million bucks and got $640 million in tax credits.
TA: The tax credits were designed so they could use it in any entity they wanted. They didn’t have to use it on what they bought. It could be sold on the open market for value, the credits could be used to file back taxes or warehouse them for future taxes. So for a million dollars, they got 640 million dollars for agreeing to take over Superior Bank, which they then looted for years then gave it back to the government with an enormous loss to the uninsured depositors and the whole subprime industry.
DB: And the US taxpayers.
TA: Oh yes. Taxpayers have lost very, very dearly. In 2007 and 2008, real estate dropped in value because of the subprime bubble bursting. Penny Pritzker, who ran Superior Bank, is going to claim she was just a silent investor and chairman. I gave the Chicago Sun Times a letter on Superior Bank letterhead that they ran, dated May 31, 2001. Addressed to the management and employees of Superior Bank, it said “with great pleasure…I am able to announce an agreement has been reached with the Office of Supervision for a $351 million plan to recapitalize Superior Bank. They reached the agreement, but they never paid it.
DB: So the Pritzkers never paid the $351 million?
TA: No. They reached the agreement so they could stay open. Then three months later they said that’s a bad deal – let’s just reneg on it. So they told the FDIC, “Here are the keys, you take it.” During that period of time, this letter, signed by Penny Pritzker, told her people – we are going to regain our prominence in the subprime industry. She was so proud of her prominence in the subprime industry. At that time, Wells Fargo, Countrywide and Washington Mutual hadn’t tooled up in the subprime lending as they did later on. One reason is they didn’t have a staff to do it. The FDIC closed down Superior Bank with its thousands and thousands and thousands of employees who made originated mortgages through their origination department. After they were laid off by the close of Superior Bank, they couldn’t work anywhere so they worked for Wells Fargo Countrywide. The whole tool up of Washington Mutual, Countywide and TransUnion are old Superior workers who were out of a job and knew how to make subprime mortgages.
DB: When you read the stories of the time, all the reports, including the Wall Street Journal, said the failure of the Superior Bank may have cost taxpayers between 1 and 2 billion dollars. It’s reported that between 1400 and 1700 savings accounts were gutted at Superior. How many people ended up losing their money at Penny Pritzker’s bank while she was busy working with her people to be sure that Wall Street got in real deep. She started with Meryl Lynch, which is also gone.
TA: These are smart people. Genius doesn’t have a connotation of ethics. Genius is genius unto itself. Let’s leave the ethics equation out of being a genius. The Pritzkers are absolute geniuses at understanding the tax system and investing and put it to their benefit. Warren Buffett is in awe of the Pritzkers. They gave Warren Buffett their Mermin group to manage for them and then he will buy them out as it performs over the years.
DB: So Warren Buffett is one of Penny’s managers?
TA: The Pritzkers, years ago, sold Buffett 40% of the Mermin group with the other 60% acquired by Buffett over a 10 year period based on how well the Mermin group performed. As Warren made the Mermin group more profitable, the Pritzkers got more money, as he had to keep buying it from them. That’s how they let him manage the asset for them. You cannot appreciate their sheer genius until you study all the stories about them. I have run across no family as bright, quick or well connected – with a White House pass. And any day, Penny Pritzker will probably be nominated as Secretary of Commerce by Congress.
DB: Some of those hundreds of people who lost their savings at Superior Bank lived in the same neighborhood as Obama. He knew. He got complaints from people about what Penny was doing, back in the day.
TA: Yes. But Penny and the Pritzkers are a special class of privilege – they are immune. Some major media are finally picking up on this story, but it got a pass four years ago because of the influence of the Pritzker family, which buys both sides of the isle. They are non-partisan, neither republican nor democrat. They will support whoever the incumbent is or is going to be. They invest in people, many of them being politicians, of course.
DB: Yes, they do. Now going back to the first Obama campaign, if the Clintons know they have a subprime bandit running their key opponent’s finances, why didn’t they go after Penny and her subprime operations? But the Clintons had a Pritzker too.
TA: Penny’s brother was co-chairman for Hilary’s campaign. I used to joke that it didn’t matter who won. If Hillary won, her brother would take her to the inaugural ball. If Barack Obama won, as he did, Hilary could take her brother to the inaugural ball. The Pritzkers bought both horses in a two-horse race. It was a no brainer. Society was fed up with George Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. Whoever won the democratic nomination was going to be the next president. The Pritzkers hedged their bet and bet on both horses in a two-horse race. They had one, and her brother had the other.
DB: How powerful are the Pritzkers in their hometown of Chicago?
TA: The Pritzkers have the Pritzker Foundation. The Pritzkers are large contributors to the museum, symphony, opera; anything that they can get their brass plaque above everyone else. They are golden in Chicago. They give away the Pritzker architect award, which is considered the Pulitzer of architecture. They have many others – as they curry favor with everybody. They invest in their own good name. They are very smart and savvy, disregarding what is good for society.
DB: Whatever the banks are doing now, they were doing 20 years ago. She was out of the subprime business by 2001 or 2003 and the FBI decided not to investigate anybody until 2004. How did that happen?
TA: That’s the privilege of the Pritzkers. They are immune to investigation. When the Pritzkers signed off on the deal on the Superior Bank with the FDIC to pay only some of the money, part of the agreement was that the FDIC, for this agreement, which is public record, would not cooperate with any other government agency without the Pritzkers. So the Justice Department couldn’t investigate the Pritzkers without the FDIC’s blessing, and the FDIC agreed they wouldn’t do it. What the Pritzkers did, and they negotiated beautifully, is they negotiated immunity from prosecution for all subprime crimes going back to 2004. In 2002, when the FDIC took over Superior Bank, they ran it for ten months under their management, using all the employees of Superior Bank and their mortgage originators. As the Wall Street Journal reported, for ten months the FDIC was the largest subprime lender in the country. They were taking the mortgages they were making, securitiizing and selling them off.
DB: Hence the Wall Street connection.
TA: Yes. The FDIC ended up working for the Pritzkers.
DB: Let’s talk about their predatory operations. There were many leads, examples, stories about what the Pritzker operation was doing to trap poor people, targeting specifically brown and black people for these predatory loans. They had a whole operation.
TA: I interviewed the only mortgage originator who went to jail out of the Superior Bank operation. The only reason he went to jail is that he pled guilty for the Pritzker’s signing the agreement with the FDIC. All his other cohorts who were going to be indicted were never indicted. I talked to the FBI, and they were ready to indict 14 people in this area. But the one guy, Jason Dune pled guilty and got it behind him. He explained to me that what you do is target a small couple and rip them off by moving the Pritzger subprime loans into their lives.
The subprime people would say they are just giving lower income people and middle America people a chance at the American dream. But these were not fresh mortgages; they were all refinanced mortgages. Superior was in the refinance business. If you had the American dream, the Pritzkers and Superior would push you into an American nightmare. That’s what they did across the country with lending offices under Alliance Funding. You can’t appreciate how large and profitable their operation was. They kept taking all the profits out in distribution dividends for the Pritzkers and then the OTS said, “You are taking so much money out, you are under capitalized.” But rather than give the money back, they said, ”OK, you take over the operation. The subprime business is over and we want out.” So they got out. But they got out without having to take any responsibility, and that is the real shame that has never been dealt with.
DB: So poor Jason Dune told the truth and went to jail for it. Penny stole zillions and she’s going to be the next Secretary of Commerce.
TA: That’s up to our Senate. Does our Senate, in a non-partisan manner, want to stand up and ask Penny a few questions, such as “What was your role in getting subprime mortgage bonds investment grade?” That’s how every pension fund, such as CalPers, the teachers pension fund in California that bought mortgage-backed securities because they were investment grade, lost money. How did they become investment grade? The Pritzker’s genius was that if there is a bond with a thousand mortgages in it, and they’re all subprime, it’s a junk bond by definition. The Pritzkers convinced the rating agencies that if any mortgage goes bad they would take it out of the bond portfolio and put a fresh mortgage in. So the raters said, “if that’s collateral substitution, the bond can’t default.” They forgot to ask the one question: what if you can’t make mortgages anymore? They couldn’t when they were taken over. That was the start of the collapse of subprime mortgages. There never should have been investment grade. But once it became investment grade, Merrill Lynch was doing it with the Pritzkers, then Countrywide, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual had to do it because every major pension fund wanted these investment grade subprime mortgages. They paid a very high yield and knew they were quality because the rating agency said investment grade triple A. They never were triple A. We all have hindsight. The Pritzkers created the investment grade for the entire subprime mortgage industry. Once that collapsed, the worldwide economy collapsed. And this is the person they want to put as Secretary of Commerce.
DB: The Pritzkers were doing this beginning in the 40s. How could the first Obama campaign, when Obama was a newcomer and Penny was the chair of the finance committee, out fund-raise by two to three times what the well-connected Clintons raised?
TA: The Wall Street Journal wrote a cover story on the genius of what Penny set up. Besides being able to call all her friends to give money, they set up a system through public relations where people on the street pledged on their credit card to give $10 a month to the Obama campaign. The credit card was debited for a year and everybody wanted to be a piece of it. To see the momentum, look at the tapes of inauguration, the night in Chicago when he won the election. There was enormous euphoria in the country. There was euphoria because people were fed up with Bush. Nothing has made Bush look better than the last four years with Obama. Penny, four years later, as Secretary of Commerce, is not going to investigate herself. The circle closes. It’s up to the various editors of major newspapers, television and radio stations, to do their research. It’s all out there and easy to do. I was able to find information, find the documentation, reports. They need to do it and contact the various senators on the committee and make them ask Penny the questions. If Penny can answer the Senate’s questions, the Senate which represents us, then let them vote her in.
DB: Penny never relents – she’s always moving forward. There was an excellent picture of Penny as the President of the Pritzker Realty Group which owns the former navy base with David Pace, who is managing her development in Orlando with Orlando mayor Glenda Hood. She owns a lot of politicians. What has she been up to?
TA: Any politician who is for sale knows how to call Penny and ask for money. What the Pritzkers did in ’01 when the navy decided there would be one recruiting depot in Great Lakes, Chicago-land, the Orlando and San Diego naval bases for recruits were closed. The Pritzkers were able to acquire 1,093 acres for $6900, under $7,000 an acre. That was the price they were paying for it. They were supposed to include some low and moderate-income housing, but after the deal closed, they realized, what a waste, let’s just build million dollar condos and houses. They were also able to sell back to the government open-space land and never paid a penny. They used taxpayer money to buy it by selling back land they couldn’t use. They sold wetlands and swampland as parks. They either got tax credits, which for the Pritzkers was the same as money, or they actually got cash for selling it back. They got financed to buy it through the state and the city of Orlando, which is when the politicians came in. It was a 19 million deal, which became 130 million and they never even used their own money. You cannot duplicate the deals they pull off. They are more than wealth – they are privileged. They can do whatever they want and not be held accountable and the people suffer. There were 1400 uninsured depositors of Superior Bank – the hubris of Penny. It would have been peanuts to be sure that Fran Sweet, and the other known excess depositors of over $100,000 were paid back. They lost their money because they were told the Pritzkers would never let it fail. They put their money in there, though they were nervous putting $100,000 in. It would have been so easy for Penny to pay them off. About a year ago, to get rid of this last debt to the FDIC, the Pritzkers got a discount for paying off their debt to the FDIC early. So Fran Sweet and 1400 other uninsured depositors will never get all their money back. The Pritzkers do not pay their bills. They like to say they pay their debt, but they don’t. This is just contempt – absolute contempt for society.
DB: When Obama was elected the first time, one of the first things Penny did was represent all the major, highest end of the corporate interests in Congress to resist any attempt to make it easy for people to unionize.
TA: One of the largest hotel workers unions, UNITE HERE, is not going to fight this thing with Penny because it would embarrass the president, and since these union people are democrats and love unions and Barak says he loves unions too, they don’t want to jeopardize their relationship with the president. So UNITE HERE is selling out their own people in Chicago, and the whole Hyatt chain throughout the country, to protect the president. It’s disgraceful. They know the story. I’ve had their people interview me twice. The union gets abused by the Pritzkers but they take it because they don’t want to hurt their president. Penny is immune from both sides. The far right doesn’t touch her because they like the kind of money she makes for them, and the left doesn’t want to fight her because Barak is their candidate. They know how to play both horses in a race.
DB: How close is the relationship? Is it true that Michelle and Penny used to run together?
TA: I don’t know. There are stories in the Wall Street Journal and Chicago papers that before Obama was a senator, they used to vacation together in one of Penny’s homes in Michigan. I think it’s accepted that they are very, very close. And for the billion dollars that she raised in 2008, she’s even closer.
DB: Is it true that when Barak Obama was in the Illinois state legislature, he received written complaints from people who were being ripped off by Penny?
TA: That’s my understanding.
DB: When people who lost their money in Superior were hustled, such as by the companies selling off the debt to other companies, people didn’t know who they were paying or who owned their property.
TA: The Pritzkers would sell them into bonds, and they got all their money back, plus a profit when someone else owned the debt. You made the payments to Superior Bank, but the notes had been sold to other investors – Superior just serviced the debt. People’s lives were made miserable because they would make a payment, but it would be held until after a due date and then they’d get a penalty.
DB: They paid the interest for years but could never pay down the loan.
TA: There’s a whole show of how you run predatory lending. The Pritzkers are masters. This was known by the government on July 3, 2000. The NCRC, National Coalition of Reinvestment Act, wrote a letter to the OTS complaining that Superior Bank was the largest predatory lender in the land. They were complaining about it and talking about how they would book these mortgages and set them up so the people would fail – it was designed to fail so they could foreclose. The report shows how Superior Bank targeted minorities three and four times greater than any other subprime lender. Superior Bank in 98, 99 and 2000 targeted the minority community for their subprime mortgages – to refinance them and get them into trouble. No shame whatsoever.
DB: There were many suits that non-profits took on.
TA: There was one successful guy who represented the James and Irene Phillips family in West Virginia. They were mentally challenged.
DB: I read that lawsuit and spoke to their social policy attorney. They were mostly minors and were targeted by the zip codes. You could see whole zip codes of houses disappearing because Penny’s front man was saying meet me at McDonalds and people would sign over what their house was worth, 18, 20 30 thousand dollars. It didn’t matter because the Pritzkers took them all.
TA: Yes. It was a very sophisticated con game. They were the best in the business at hurting the poor people – they did a superb job. Look at what they’ve done to the middle class, to everyone’s retirement, every pension fund that lost money in ’08, ’09 and 2010. The Pritzkers destroyed the American economy, which destroyed the world economy. It’s time for the Senate to ask Penny, when she goes before them, to explain. Let the staffers do their research, talk to me, you, others who have done the research. Look at the documentation. Make Penny answer the questions.
DB: And she never has. On September 11, 2001, and this is in no way is to suggest a conspiracy, but she was supposed to testify on the day the twin towers were hit. She was already in Washington, and that investigation was cancelled. There was never even the beginning of a follow-up. Tell us about Bert Healy.
TA: Bert Healy is a well-renowned bank consultant who is quoted in every business publication when they talk about banks. He, and George Kaufman, professor at Loyola University, and Ellen Sideman, the head of the Office of Supervision, were all sworn in on 9/11, ready to give their testimony. Healy will tell you the story that they were all there, sworn in, in the cloak room waiting to go back in, when they were told the first building was hit. When the first building was hit, they didn’t know it was a terrorist attack because we thought one plane had gone off course. Healy says all of a sudden they are back in the room and staffers are whispering to the senators, then the senators all left, came back, and said “Maybe you people want to leave too.” That was 9/11. Then Ellen Salmon wrote their report after the fact, a report that is part of the public record. I’ve got copies of all their reports. Penny was on the list to appear, but this was Penny Pritzker. I don’t know if she was there. She hires lawyers. She’s a lawyer; they all are. The original business of Pritzker and Pritzker was a law firm. The Forbes magazine story shows that the whole Pritzker enterprise was a Chicago-based law firm.
DB: They are very secretive folks. It will be interesting to see her as Secretary of Commerce. She wants a bit of the high profile now. We know a lot more about her because her kids sued her.
TA: Lisa and Matthew, her half brother and sister, sued all the Pritzkers. That’s how we found out as much as we did, but that left us to uncover more and more and more. Four years ago she had to decline it ??? because the family hadn’t been divided. Now she can fill out a financial statement, which will show that she owns x amount of shares of Bushar-Hathaway, x amount of shares of the Hyatt. She may or may not disclose how much she owns of the casinos, other shipping companies, etc. It will all be a great deal of money in trust. It’s not her wealth but her power and influence – her ability not to be held accountable for the damage that Superior Bank did to our economy that is the real shame.
DB: Many of the people who lose their money in the casinos are poor and working class folks. But her first casinos were the banks, in the context of the subprime meltdown.
TA: All their businesses were casinos, and the house always wins, no matter what business they’re in. It’s up to the public to pay attention. Adlei Stevenson the first, the vice presidential candidate, grandfather of the senator and father of the governor, said by and large, the people get exactly what they ask for. Typically, at the time, they don’t realize that’s what they are asking for. If the public is upset with our Congress and Senate, they have nobody to blame but themselves. Now it’s up to them to tell their senators, “Before you approve her to be Secretary of Commerce, make her answer the questions about her role, not her wealth, but her role in the subprime securitization mess.” She needs to answer to her role in the mortgage meltdown which basically destroyed our whole economy. They need to be prepared to ask her the right questions. If they don’t, she’ll just walk right through it and get free pass like she’s always gotten. The burden is on the public.
DB: This is one of those stories that I refuse to let go of. I put this story in my book about Henry Hyde, who was part of this Chicago story. These are not just the 1%, this is privileged wealth, the 1% of the 1%.
TA: These are the people who are immune from prosecution or any form of accountability. They are above the Madoffs and the Corzines of the world. They can do whatever they want, and no one is willing to hold them accountable.
Dennis J. Bernstein can be contacted at dennisjberstein@gmail.com.
May 3, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Obama, Penny Pritzker, Pritzker, Superior Bank, TransUnion |
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US President Barack Obama today condemned the Guantanamo Bay prison camp run by US President Barack Obama, channeling the moral outrage last heard on the 2008 campaign trail.
“The idea that we would still detain forever a group of individuals that have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, that is contrary to our interests and it has to stop,” the president said during a press conference at the White House.
The rhetoric was bold and progressive. The reality? At least half of 166 never-tried, never-convicted prisoners that reside at Guantanamo Bay are engaged in a hunger strike that is making the president look bad. And so the man with a kill list who is ultimately responsible for them being there – and who’s initial plan for closing the prison was simply moving it to Illinois – had to act as if he was deeply troubled by his poor human rights record, like an oil executive shedding tears for Mother Earth after a big spill.
What Obama is banking on is the fact that most people (including his base) aren’t terribly detail oriented. The tale liberal Democrats tell themselves, and which the liberal media tells the rest of us, is that the fight over Guantanamo Bay is Obama and a bunch of ACLU lawyers on one side, the forces of fear-mongering, reactionary insanity on the other. The president, it is to be understood, is facing irrational hostility from the Chicken Littles of the right and would like to the do the right thing — of course he would — but, you know: Republicans.
That narrative, unfortunately, is false. The true story, obfuscated by the president’s occasional condemnations of his own human rights record, is that Obama himself signed an executive order creating “a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.” Rather than repudiate the notion of “detain[ing] forever a group of individuals that have not been tried,” Obama (through a task force he commissioned) determined that 48 of the prison camp’s detainees were “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution.” The evidence against those men would not be admissible even by the weakened standards of a military court – that is, it was probably gained through torture – but rather than release them, as if they were persons endowed with certain inalienable rights, the Obama administration would prefer to lock them away until they die.
The president has even refused to release dozens of Yemeni citizens who have been cleared of all wrongdoing. Obama also signed (and his lawyers later defended in court) a bill that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens. And let’s not forget that kill list, which is based on the idea that it’s alright for the president to act as judge, jury and executioner, so long as the unilateral justice is being delivered abroad. So when the president of the United States righteously condemns the idea of imprisoning someone forever without charge or trial, it’s important to remember the truth about his record. It’s important to remember he is lying.
May 1, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Human rights, Obama, United States |
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When one conspires to violate federal law, it helps to have a government agency or two as one’s co-conspirators when law enforcement comes poking around, as telecom giant AT&T and others learned recently when the Defense Department (DOD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) successfully pressured the Justice Department (DOJ) to agree secretly not to prosecute blatantly illegal wiretaps conducted by AT&T and other Internet service providers at the request of the agencies.
Although some press reports have termed this an authorization of activity that would otherwise be illegal, this is a misnomer. The executive branch lacks the power to retroactively declare criminal conduct to be lawful, but it can choose to ignore it by waiving prosecution pursuant to “prosecutorial discretion.”
Although the secret DOJ prosecution waiver initially applied to a cyber-security pilot project—the DIB Cyber Pilot—that allowed the military to monitor defense contractors’ Internet links, the program has since been renamed Enhanced Cybersecurity Services and is being expanded by President Obama to allow the government to snoop on the private networks of all companies operating in “critical infrastructure sectors,” including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.
“The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” warned Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained more than 1,000 pages of government documents relating to the issue via a Freedom of Information Act request. “Alarm bells should be going off.”
The wiretap law referenced by Rotenberg is the Wiretap Act, codified at 18 USC 2511, which makes it a crime for a network operator to intercept communications carried on its networks unless the monitoring is a “necessary incident” to providing the service or it occurs with a user’s “lawful consent.” Since neither of those exceptions applied, DOD and DHS pressed DOJ attorneys to agree not to prosecute what were clearly prosecutable offenses by issuing an unknown number of “2511 letters,” which are normally used by DOJ to tell a company that its conduct fit within one of the lawful exceptions to the Act.
The purported “retroactive authorization” is similar to the “retroactive immunity” given the telecoms by Congress for their participation in illegal wiretapping and eavesdropping between 2001 and 2006. Likewise, former DHS official Paul Rosenzweig compared the case of the “2511 letters” to the CIA asking the Justice Department for legal memos justifying torture a decade ago. “If you think of it poorly, it’s a CYA [“cover your ass] function,” Rosenzweig says. “If you think well of it, it’s an effort to secure advance authorization for an action that may not be clearly legal.” Or may be clearly illegal.
In any event, Obama’s own expansion by mid-June of the snooping “to all critical infrastructure sectors,” defined as companies providing services whose disruption would harm national economic security or “national public health or safety” will proceed.
April 29, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | AT&T, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Internet service provider, Justice Department, Obama, United States Department of Justice |
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The Obama administration must release the names of graduates of a controversial training camp for the Latin American military, a federal district court has ruled.
Plaintiffs say releasing the names of attendees at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) at Fort Benning – formerly known as the U.S. Army School of the Americas – will help Congress ensure that U.S. funds aren’t used to train human-rights violators. The Defense Department argued that it would violate attendees’ privacy and create security and stigma risks.
The Obama administration “has not established that the privacy interests advanced are substantial, and has not shown through admissible evidence that the release of this information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, in light of the strong public interest in access to this information as shown on the record before the court,” ruled Phyllis Hamilton, U.S. district judge for the Northern District of California.The ruling drew immediate praise from Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), who has fought to close the school.
“The House has twice voted for the names to be restored to public disclosure, as they were for nearly 40 years prior to 2006 when they were inexplicably classified,” McGovern told The Hill in a statement. “I continue to believe that the WHINSEC should be shut down. In the meantime, I welcome the Court’s decision and I hope to see the WHINSEC return to genuine transparency immediately with the release of the names of its graduates, faculty and guest instructors.”
The decision was also applauded by the plaintiffs, School of the Americas Watch (SOA), which advocates the camp’s closure. The group was formed in 1990 after Salvadoran soldiers trained at the camp killed six Jesuit priests along with their housekeeper and her 16-year-old daughter.
“The decision by the court,” SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois said in a statement, “is [a] victory for transparency and human rights, and against government secrecy.”
The records of attendees from the camp’s opening in 1946 until 2003 were released to the SOA, but the information dried up after the group created a searchable database and alerted Congress to hundreds of examples of camp graduates engaging in human-rights abuses. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates later blocked further releases for “national security” reasons.
The School of the Americas was developed into an anti-communist counterinsurgency training program under President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Congress replaced it with the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001, whose stated goals include “promoting democratic values, respect for human rights, and knowledge and understanding of United States customs and traditions.”
April 25, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Fort Benning, Human rights, School of the Americas Watch, United States, Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC |
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The Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the United States and around Europe pose a direct threat to humanity.
Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks in a speech at meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in Geneva on Tuesday.
“The continued existence of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpile of the nuclear-weapon states, most of them on high-trigger alert, and their day by day modernization, constitute the most serious threat to the survival of mankind,” Soltanieh told the committee.
He also condemned the US for conducting its 27th subcritical nuclear test in Nevada in December 2012, saying the experiment was “a flagrant violation” of Washington’s “international obligations” and “a recipe for global destabilization.”
“Such subcritical tests and computer simulations to design new weapons, a case of non-compliance by the United States with its international obligations under the NPT, could be a resumption of the nuclear arms race and a revival [of the] risk of global disaster,” the Iranian ambassador stated.
The US National Nuclear Security Administration said the experiment, known as Pollux, was conducted to ensure that the United States “can support a safe, secure and effective stockpile” of nuclear weapons.
According to the United Nations, the US — which is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against human beings — has conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests since 1945.
Soltanieh noted that spending on nuclear weapons has increased dramatically since 2010 and will reach at least one trillion US dollars over the next decade, adding, “The United States itself will spend untold billions of dollars to operate its nuclear armada during its 50-year planned lifespan (from 2030 to 2080).”
He added that the British government’s plan to spend 100 billion pounds to upgrade its Trident nuclear-armed submarines is a “clear breach of Article VI of the NPT and the commitments [made] during the 2010 NPT Review Conference.”
He went on to say that the sale of German-made Dolphin-class submarines to the Israeli regime, which is not a signatory to the NPT, is “an unconcealed case of proliferation and non-compliance,” since the submarines are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Since 1958, when Israel began building its Dimona plutonium- and uranium-processing facility in the Negev desert, it has secretly manufactured over 200 nuclear warheads, making it the only player in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons.
April 24, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | 2010 NPT Review Conference, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Dimona, NPT, Nuclear weapon, Press TV, UK, United States |
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Proving that those who are not punished for their misdeeds are allowed to repeat them, the Wall Street banks that created and sold risky combinations of mortgages and loans during the pre-2008 boom—and crashed the world economy with them—are doing exactly the same thing again. Once again, financial products with obscure, complex-sounding names like “collateralized debt obligations” and “securitized mortgage instruments,” are being sold by Wall Street to people on Main Street.
The ominous return from the dead of these investments, also called structured financial products, has largely evaded new regulations meant to avert another crisis, prompting concern from financial industry observers. Manus Clancy, managing director at commercial real estate research firm Trepp, worries that “All of this seems like a fairly quick round trip. You are seeing a fair number of sins being forgiven.”
And the sinners who committed those sins are acting like they’ve been forgiven as well. “The players in the business are generally the same as they were before,” noted Tad Philipp, a commercial real estate analyst at Moody’s. “Because it’s the old players, they know how to push the boundaries.”
Wall Street is certainly pushing boundaries on securitized commercial mortgage-backed securities, in which a pool of commercial mortgages are mixed together into bonds, ranked by varying levels of risk. So far in 2013, banks have issued $33.5 billion in such bonds, slightly more than they did in early 2005. Before the 2008 crash, 57% of the outstanding money in such securities was in high-risk interest-only loans, a number that fell hard and fast, to just 11% two years ago. Today, that number has more than tripled to 34%.
Even faster to revive have been collateralized loan obligations, which are pools of loans given to companies with junk ratings. In the first quarter of 2013, banks issued about $26 billion of them—more than in the same period of the last boom year of 2007. Demand has been so strong that banks have started to loosen underwriting standards on the underlying loans and bonds, prompting the Federal Reserve to warn last month that “prudent underwriting practices have deteriorated.”
Those willing to learn from history will recall that securitization—the bundling of many loans into one investment—proved dangerous during the real estate bubble because when the bubble burst, investors learned that the complexity of the instruments had obscured their real risks, leading to unexpected losses by those investors, chaos in the financial system and the Great Recession. They will also recall that those who created these “shoddy deals” and then defrauded their investors escaped wealthy but largely unpunished, and are still working on Wall Street today.
To Learn More:
Wall St. Redux: Arcane Names Hiding Big Risk (by Nathaniel Popper, New York Times)
SEC Tricks Judge to Help Citigroup (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
Why No Prison for Banksters Who Caused Financial Crisis…Yet? (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
April 22, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Citigroup, Commercial mortgage-backed security, Federal Reserve System, Financial services, Wall Street |
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US President Barack Obama is accused of making a U-turn on his nuclear disarmament pledges as his administration plans to allocate billions of dollars for upgrading its atomic arsenal in Europe.
According to newly published figures, the United States will set aside more than USD 10 billion dollars for a life extension program for the B61 bombs and another USD one billion for adding controllable tail fins.
The plan to give new tail fins to nearly 200 B61 gravity bombs stored in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey would give them new mission and new capabilities. The bombs could be delivered by stealth F35 fighter-bombers.
“What will be going back to Europe will be a guided nuclear bomb… Especially when you combine it with F35 with stealth characteristics, that expands the targets you can hold at risk from Europe, because by placing the explosion closer to the target you can choose a lower explosive yield,” Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of Nuclear Scientists, told The Guardian.
“That is very important as there is less radioactive fallout. For many people this is a great concern because it means making nuclear weapons more ‘usable’,” Kristensen added.
In its Nuclear Posture Review in 2010, the US administration pledged to reduce its nuclear arsenal by not developing new nuclear warheads and vowing that it would not “support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”
According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the US is believed to have deployed approximately 1,950 strategic nuclear warheads, including about 200 B61 gravity bombs deployed in five NATO states (Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Germany, and the Netherlands).
It also keeps 2,650 non-deployed warheads in reserve, and 3,000 warheads which are reportedly awaiting disarmament.
“It flies directly in the face of the pledges Obama made in 2010 that he would not deploy new weapons,” Kristensen added.
The US is the only country to have used an atomic bomb in war. Hiroshima was devastated on August 6, 1945 after the US B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city, killing an estimated 140,000 people instantly or gradually from radiation sickness and cancers. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000.
The nuclear radiation emitted following the blasts continued to claim thousands of more lives over the past decades.
April 22, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Nuclear Posture Review, Obama, United States |
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