Obama’s Latest Ruse: the Bank Tax
The Big Lies Just Keep Coming
By Alan Nasser | January 15, 2010
When president Obama was awarded Advertising Age’s 2009 Marketer of the Year award, we were alerted to expect carefully crafted public relations posturing in defense of the reputation of Brand Obama. We have not been disappointed. The president has regularly taken verbal pot shots at the financial oligarchy in a cynical effort to convey the impression that he shares the public’s outrage at the behavior of the plutocrats. But he has thrown no sticks and stones at the banksters, who know as well as you and I that mere words can never hurt them.
None of Obama’s faux outrage has been as disingenuous as his Wednesday announcement that he will finally respond sympathetically to the public’s deep resentment of the administration’s tolerance -and therefore encouragement- of the bad guys’ looting of the public treasury.
Obama assured his constituents that he would “recoup every last penny for American taxpayers” by taking back, in the form of taxes on the banks, the wealth that households have been forced to transfer to the coffers of the instigators of the financial crisis.
The announcement was timed to offset what will surely be another surge of public anger at the expected announcement this week of the banks’ year-end bonus payments.
The proposed taxes would apply to financial institutions with more than $50 billion in assets and would extract about $90 billion from them over ten years. Obama’s central claim is that this would cover all losses incurred by the government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). We are supposed to be relieved that households will in the end be repaid all that has been transferred from them by TARP. “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it,” said Obama.
Obama is perpetrating a massive ruse. The tax-the-banks proposal rests on conspicuously false empirical assumptions and appalling math.
A key premise of the tax proposal is that TARP is the government’s sole gift to the financial elite. This is of course false: TARP is in fact a relatively small fraction of the State’s total rescue effort. Financial institutions have also been treated to no-cost and virtually unlimited access to credit, broad guarantees against losses and lax regulation, to mention only the most conspicuous gifts. Even if TARP did represent the administration’s total commitment to financial institutions, Obama’s claim would still be nonsense. TARP handed $700 billion to the banks. How does $90 billion “recoup every last penny” of $700 billion? The president thinks, with good reason so far, that he can get away with anything. Anything. Hence the screamingly counterfactual premise and the slapstick math.
That’s not the worst of it. Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General charged with overseeing the bailout plan, reports that the bailout could end up costing $23.7 trillion. Critics of Barofsky accuse him of exaggeration. Let’s suppose they are right. Say Barofsky doubled the true cost of the government’s commitment. So what? Bloomberg reports, with no challengers, that the cumulative commitment to financial rescue initiatives amount so far to more than $8.5 trillion. $90 billion is a small drop in a big bucket.
How do these figures compare to what working people have lost? Households have so far lost $12 trillion in wealth in the wake of the crisis. By the end of the third quarter of 2008, shortly after the announcement of an impending collapse of the entire financial system, households had already lost $647 billion in real estate, $922 billion in stocks, $523 billion in mutual funds and $653 billion in life insurance and pension funds reserves. Total destruction of household wealth in Q3 2008 came to $2.8 trillion, the worst decline on record. That comes to four times TARP’s $700 billion. If “[w]e want our money back,” we’re dead out of luck. Obama knows this, but the man is an instrument of his financial masters, and the ad campaign functioning to obscure this reality requires big lies. The president has these coming out of his ears.
Alan Nasser is professor emeritus of Political Economy at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He can be reached at nassera@evergreen.edu
Democrats Going Down in Flames
Martha Coakley’s Corporate Connections
By Russel Mokhiber | January 15, 2010
Martha Coakley is going down in flames.
So is the Democratic Party.
Why?
We found the answer earlier this week at – of all places – The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
Timothy Carney was giving a powerpoint presentation about his new book: Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses.
Here’s the book in a nutshell:
“Both parties are the parties of big business,” Carney said. “They both promote corporate socialism.”
I sat there in the front row at Cato, in wonder.
Listening to the talk – as Carney outlined how Obama had cut deals with Billy Tauzin and the pharmaceutical industry.
Thinking to myself – is this why Martha Coakley is having such a hard time in Massachusetts?
She’s just another corporate Dem — just like Obama?
Then, lo and behold, as if I was channeling Carney, he calls up a slide on his powerpoint.
On the big screen at Cato is an invitation to a corporate fundraiser – that night at the Sonoma Restaurant on Capitol Hill – for Coakley.
And I say to myself – wait a second.
Coakley is in the middle of a tight race and she’s flying to DC one week before the election to be with a group of corporate lobbyists?
Yes.
She is.
And then Carney went down the list of 22 members of the host committees – meaning they each raised $10,000 or more for Coakley.
“Seventeen are federally registered lobbyists, 15 of whom have health-care clients,” Carney said.
“You see the names – Gerald Cassidy, David Castagnetti,, Tommy Boggs – those are all lobbyists I’ve highlighted there who have clients who are drug companies, health insurers, hospitals or all three,” Carney said. “AHIP, Phrma, Pfizer, Blue Cross – everybody is covered there. Aetna somehow isn’t. I don’t know how they got left out.”
“These are the special interests,” Carney said. “These are the people trying to elect Martha Coakley to be vote number 60 for health insurance.”
Carney then puts up a slide showing how the Phrma cash went from supporting Republican candidates for President in the past – to supporting Barack Obama in 2008.
“Barack Obama raised $2.1 million from drug companies in 2008,” Carney said. “That’s about equal to what John McCain raised plus what George Bush raised in both of his elections. It’s the most by far any candidate has raised from the drug industry.”
The people of Massachusetts already have tried a corporate reform that forces them to buy junk insurance.
They don’t like it.
They’re waiting for a candidate that will deliver a message they’ve been waiting to hear.
Single payer.
Everybody in.
Nobody out.
Put the private insurance companies out of business.
Drive down the cost of drugs to the levels of say Canada or the UK.
But Obama, Coakley and the Democrats are awash in corporate cash.
They have made their choice.
And they deserve to lose.
Onward to single payer.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of Single Payer Action.
Obama’s screwing of American workers and his and Hillary’s links to India
By Wayne Madsen | Online Journal | January 15, 2010
There is a reason why the corporate media focused on White House state dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi at last year’s gala honoring Indian Prime Minister Monmohan Singh. The media, which acts in lockstep with major corporate owners like Microsoft and General Electric in pushing for the import of low-wage Indian information technology and other high-technology workers into the United States on H1-B visas, did not want anyone focused on the deal worked out between President Obama and Singh.
Obama was cementing a deal on further Indian workers coming to the United States, a “deal” Obama announced during the height of the primary battle in early 2008 as he was raking in campaign contributions from wealthy Indians — citizens and non-citizens alike.
Obama stated, “I will support a temporary increase in the H-1B visa program as a stopgap measure until we can reform our immigration system comprehensively. I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes improvement in our visa programs, including our legal permanent resident visa programs and temporary programs, including the H-1B program, to attract some of the world’s most talented people to America. We should allow immigrants who earn their degrees in the U.S. to stay, work, and become Americans over time. As part of our comprehensive reform, we should examine our ability to replace a stopgap increase in the number of H1B visas with an increase in the number of permanent visas we issue to foreign skilled workers.”
However, Obama never intended to reform the H-1B system that robs educated and talented Americans of their jobs in the American economy and wage earning potential.
WMR has learned from a reliable Indian source that a majority of the Indian workers arriving in the United States graduated from 40,000 engineering colleges that opened in India between 1990 and 2000. Many of these Indian engineering colleges were never properly licensed or received their dubious accreditation courtesy of Indian politicians anxious to export Indian workers to the United States and, in return, see wage remittances pour into their constituencies from America, thus boosting India’s foreign reserve strength. Many of the engineering colleges that grant degrees to Indian engineers lack sufficient infrastructures and employ faculty with questionable credentials, according to WMR’s source.
In Chennai, for example, almost every street has an engineering college. There is also a direct pipeline between the dubious engineering schools’ job placement offices and the U.S. Embassy visa office in New Delhi.
The exodus of Indian graduates to the United States also involves an Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) program to glean sensitive and classified technology from U.S. companies that employ the engineers and technicians. The mass migration of Indian labor has been linked directly to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials in the Democratic Party. Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have substantial financial interests in India.
Part of the funding for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, WMR has learned, came from money scammed by Indian stockbroker Harshad Mehta who gamed the Bombay Stock Exchange into seeing a sharp rise in stock. Mehta raked off the profits from his “Ponzi scheme” but when banks called in their investments, the Bombay Stock Exchange collapsed. The Clintons continue to maintain a close financial arrangement with the multi-billionaire Tata family of India through the clan’s sizable donations to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2008, the Indian stock market saw a 50 percent decrease in value. WMR has learned that the earlier “bubble” in the market saw large amounts of money from Indian financial interests pour into the presidential campaign coffers of Barack Obama.
The program to introduce low-paid Indian engineers into the United States began in 1960 with a test population of graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). After the first engineers were placed in U.S. high-technology positions, the RAW and the Indian government built up the program. The Indians had noticed that Israel’s Mossad had successfully penetrated a number of American research and development centers using Jewish engineering graduates from Israel who were obtaining the technical know-how for Israel to build its nuclear arsenal.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com
A second Gaza war around the corner?
Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January 2010
Israel is once again complaining that its “security” is being threatened by new eruptions of violence along the border with Gaza. About two dozen Qassam rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza in recent days. Although they fell in (and may have been deliberately targeted at) open areas, causing no damage or injuries, Israel took revenge with destructive air raids that did cause damage and killed several people, including a 15-year-old boy.
Before asking who should stop first, one should recall who started the latest ugly round of violence.
On 26 December, Israel carried out double attacks in the West Bank city of Nablus and in Gaza, murdering three people in each place. In Nablus, Israeli death squads carried out cold-blooded extrajudicial executions in revenge for the killing of a West Bank settler several days before. According to the wife of one of the Nablus victims, her husband was at home in his living room, completely unarmed when the death squad burst in and shot him in the face. Neither he nor the other victims of these state-sponsored terrorists had been accused, tried or convicted of any crime in a court of law.
In Gaza, the three victims were reportedly workers scavenging near the border fence to salvage building supplies from the rubble of previous destruction.
Since late December, Israeli attacks have killed more than a dozen Palestinians, routine violence which is ignored by the “international community” and for which Israel is never held accountable. On the contrary, Israel’s Western friends continue to justify this terrorism as “self-defense.”
Israel’s recent aggressions look ominously like the 4 November 2008 attack on Gaza, which killed six persons and shattered the four-month-long truce meticulously respected by Hamas. Predictably, Hamas and other factions retaliated for that Israeli provocation and then Israel used their response to justify its massacre of 1,400 people in Gaza this time last year.
It seems that whenever there is relative calm on the Gaza front, Israel is keen to destroy it. Prior to the November 2008 attack, the Gaza situation, despite the siege and the intense international pressure on Hamas, was stable — that was the last thing Israel wanted. And despite the truth that Israel sabotaged the truce and then refused to renew it even though Hamas wanted to, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, some Arab states and the so-called international community led by the United States blamed Israel’s attack on Gaza on Hamas rockets, and claimed that Hamas — not Israel — had rejected renewing the truce.
When Israel ended “Operation Cast Lead” last year, it refused to enter into a new formal truce with Hamas. Nevertheless, Hamas has observed a unilateral ceasefire, only using force occasionally in retaliation for Israeli attacks, say, on tunnels that bring vital supplies into Gaza from Egypt, circumventing the siege. Moreover, Hamas — in the face of much local criticism — has enforced the truce on other Palestinian factions.
Could Israel be following the same pattern again now with its escalating violence against Gaza? Neither last year’s war nor the tightening blockade that has prevented any meaningful reconstruction have succeeded in their clear but unstated goal of toppling Hamas.
Is Israel then preparing to do again what it does best: use wanton murder and destruction to try to achieve its political goals?
It is hard to say, but this is an alarming possibility, especially as senior Israeli officials have been dropping hints about preparations for a “second Gaza war.”
Israel, which does not act according to any normal or civilized standards, could have several motives for this; not least, another “small war” could give Israel a welcome distraction from the continuing diplomatic impasse or any threat of a renewed American-led peace initiative, no matter how timid.
Up to this point, it looks like Israel has been in the diplomatic driver’s seat. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily dismissed US President Barack Obama’s initial demand for a freeze on construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The Obama Administration not only backed down, it also fully adopted Israeli positions and has been continuously putting pressure on the moribund Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations without “preconditions.” (Of course “without preconditions” means only that Israel is not obligated to meet any conditions; Palestinians are always presented with lengthy lists of Israeli preconditions.)
But if this seems like a diplomatic victory for Israel, it may only be temporary. If, as expected, the Palestinian Authority eventually succumbs to pressure and returns to “negotiations,” it will become instantly apparent that, given Israeli intransigence and expansionism, there is absolutely nothing to discuss and not even an infinitesimal prospect of any sort of peace deal.
It is doubtful that the bankruptcy of the Israeli and American positions can simply be covered up with more empty process, and expect the situation on the ground to remain quiet and stable. Bringing the crisis closer, on its own terms, and once again blaming Hamas, may be the “ideal” way out for Israel.
Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times.
Health care “reform” – The liberals fall in line
By Lance Selfa | January 11, 2010
AS HEALTH care reform legislation in Congress limps to what National Nurses United President Rose Ann DeMoro called an “inglorious end,” it’s remarkable how few liberals feel enthusiastic about a bill that is supposed to represent a crowning achievement for them.
Aside from a few policy wonks, many (if not most) liberals feel that the health care legislation that will emerge from Senate and House negotiations is insufficient–and, in parts, harmful to ordinary people’s health care. The most ardent supporters of reform know that the likely “compromise” modeled on the more conservative Senate version of the bill will be a huge gift to the insurance industry. At the same time, they feel that Democrats have gotten far less than they could or should have, in large part because they didn’t even try.
What happened to all the brave announcements of “lines in the sand” and “standing up for real reform?” Over the summer, the House Progressive Caucus threatened to vote as a bloc against any legislation that didn’t include a “public option”–a publicly financed insurance system to compete with private insurers. Today, it’s almost certain that the final version of the bill will not include a public option.
So will the House progressives follow through on their threat to defeat the bill? Don’t count on it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might give a few progressive caucus members a “free vote” to oppose the bill if there’s enough of a cushion to pass it, but if progressives stand between passage of the bill and its defeat, don’t expect them to vote to defeat it.
What about Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chair who made news in December when he took a very public stand against the bill that was about to pass the Senate. In a December 17 Washington Post op-ed article, Dean wrote:
Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform…Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.
Dean was right on target with that criticism. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs even attacked him for it during a press briefing.
Yet of late, Dean has become a lot less vocal and a lot more accepting of the legislation as it stands. As he told Meet the Press on December 20: “I would let this bill go to conference committee and see if we can fix this bill more…Let’s see what they add to this bill and make it work. If they can make it work without a public option, I’m all ears.”
According to Newsweek reporter Suzy Khimm, Dean’s somersault resulted from back-channel contact with the White House and the realization that the Senate bill was going to pass. As Khimm explained:
While he attempted last week to use the failure of the public option as a new point of leverage, Dean only succeeded in alienating himself from the key players in the debate (and the flip-flops that riddled his other criticisms of the bill didn’t help his credibility). In the end, Dean wants to be at the negotiating table–not cast outside it–and he probably decided to adjust accordingly.
Then there are the elected representatives who have been on record for years as favoring a single-payer health care system eliminating the role of private health insurers. For them, even the prospect of a “public option” represented a retreat from their longstanding public positions. Surely they would hold up the banner of genuine health care reform, right?
Not really. In fact, they proved more adept at talking about real reform than actually voting for it.
Take Rep. Anthony Weiner, the telegenic New York congress member who made the rounds of television talk shows throughout the fall, bashing the insurance industry and calling for genuine health reform. During the House debate on its bill, Weiner extracted a promise from Pelosi that his amendment supporting a single-payer system would receive an “up-or-down” vote.
As the October deadline for the vote drew near, Pelosi–reportedly with White House encouragement–began wiggling out of the deal. Single-payer advocates mobilized to hold Pelosi to her promise, but Weiner withdrew his amendment. Single-payer advocates Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) issued a letter supporting the climbdown. It read, in part:
Many progressives in Congress, ourselves included, feel that calling for a vote tomorrow for single-payer would be tantamount to driving the movement over a cliff…We are now asking you to join us in suggesting to congressional leaders that this is not the right time to call the roll on a stand-alone single-payer bill. That time will come.
Pelosi’s cover story was that allowing Weiner’s amendment would open the floodgates to other amendments, like those banning abortion. So what happened? Weiner withdrew his amendment, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) introduced his, banning coverage for abortion. The bill, with the Stupak amendment included, passed the House.
Of all the House progressives, only Kucinich and Rep. Eric Massa of New York voted against it. Though Kucinich did the right thing in voting against the House bill, his and Conyers’ letter had already given other progressives justification in voting for it.
Another articulate critic of pro-corporate health insurance reform–and a regular on liberal shows like MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show–Vermont’s independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, got further than Weiner. He actually introduced his single-payer amendment to the Senate and, under Republican pressure, spent six hours on the Senate floor, reading it line-by-line.
Senate leaders, worried that Sanders’ amendment was delaying the vote they needed to move the bill forward, pressured him to stand down. He did, after receiving a pledge that $10 billion would be invested in community health centers. Sanders’ office later issued a press release saying the provision will “revolutionize” health care. Sanders’ was one of the 60 votes that moved the Senate bill along.
So as Congress, in closed-door negotiations, moves toward a final vote on health care reform, liberals are preparing themselves to accept a pro-corporate health care bill that is unlikely to fix more than a few of the problems associated with the current dysfunctional system.
The chorus of liberal opinion selling this rotten compromise to the most committed supporters of health care reform will grow louder. We will hear all of the claptrap that always gets hauled out in these situations: “We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” “We can improve the bill in the future,” “If the Republicans hate this bill, there must be something good about it,” and “If this bill goes down to defeat, it will embolden the right, and chances for any other reforms will be finished.”
As always, the liberals will play the loyal soldiers for an administration that has shown it is much more interested in winning the support of industry “stakeholders” and conservatives like Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) than in fighting for any genuine health reform.
Even the prospect of the oft-cited positive effects of the bill–30 million uninsured Americans covered, a ban on the insurance industry policy of “rescission” (dropping coverage for sick people on technicalities) and denial of insurance to those with “pre-existing conditions”–may turn out to be mirages.
The liberals who are now convincing themselves that these are reasons to vote for the bill may find out that most Americans won’t consider forcing people to buy private insurance as “universal coverage.” And they may also find out that loopholes in the bill allowing insurers to jack up prices to unaffordable levels will neuter the other tough-sounding insurance reforms. If the Senate plan to tax “Cadillac” health care plans remains in the bill–as Obama prefers that it does–substantial numbers of Americans are going to see a cut in their current health care benefits.
Unfortunately, that may be where we end up because of liberalism’s hard-wired propensity always to accept “half a loaf” without even trying to fight for the whole loaf. In an insightful commentary focused predominantly on liberalism’s putative leader, President Obama, Huffington Post contributor Drew Westen put his finger on this point:
I don’t honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn’t figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he’s not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he’s going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they’re seeing right now is “liberalism,” and they don’t like what they see.
Thanks to Helen Redmond for information on the role of Reps. Kucinich, Conyers and Weiner.
Liberal Democrats call peace candidate “alarming”
Waxman abandons America in his blind support for Israeli racism
By Linda Milazzo | LA Progressive | January 11, 2010
At the behest of his congressional ally, Jane Harman (CA-36), Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman (CA-30) has launched a mean-spirited ideological assault on Harman’s Democratic primary challenger, Marcy Winograd, that is garnering disfavor for Waxman and Harman amongst Democratic voters.
In a move characterized by one Harman constituent as desperate, Waxman sent the following letter to Harman’s Jewish supporters, attacking and misquoting Winograd’s position on the issue of Israel/Palestine. Here is the text of Waxman’s letter, distributed on his letterhead:
FROM THE DESK OF CONGRESSMAN HENRY A. WAXMAN
Dear Friend,
Recently, I came across an astounding speech by Marcy Winograd, who is running against our friend Jane Harman in her primary re-election to Congress. Ms. Winograd’s views on Israel I find repugnant in the extreme. And that is why I wanted to write you.
What has prompted my urgent concern is a speech Ms. Winograd gave, entitled, “Call For One State,” at the All Saints Church in Pasadena last year. The complete text is attached, but in it she says:
– “I think it is too late for a two-state solution. Israel has made it all but impossible for two states to exist.”
– “Not only do I think a two-state solution is unrealistic, but also fundamentally wrong…”
– “As a citizen of the United States, I do not want my tax dollars to support institutionalized racism. As a Jew, I do not want my name associated with occupation or extermination.”
– “Let us declare a one-state solution.”
To me, the notion that a Member of Congress could hold these views is alarming. Ms. Winograd is far, far outside the bipartisan mainstream of views that has long insisted that US policy be based upon rock-solid support for our only democratic ally in the Middle East.
In Marcy Winograd’s foreign policy, Israel would cease to exist. In Marcy Winograd’s vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights. These are not trivial issues; they cannot be ignored or overlooked. Jane’s victory will represent a clear repudiation of these views.
In addition to Jane Harman’s expertise and leadership on national security, intelligence and foreign policy, she is my ally on the Energy and Commerce Committee and our fights for health care reform, energy independence and curbing global warming. Jane’s staunch leadership and commitment to Israel are internationally recognized.
I ask you to join me in showing maximum political support for Jane. I have already done so through my federal campaign and PAC.
Sincerely,
Henry A. Waxman
FEC# C00255141
Not printed at taxpayer expense
Paid for by Friends of Jane Harman
I contacted Waxman’s office to ask who the intended recipients of the letters were, who supplied the recipient list, and why the letter wasn’t dated. The Congressman’s representative, David Sadkin, responded with the following:
Rep. Waxman has endorsed Jane Harman for her re-election, and wrote the letter of support for use in her campaign. The letter was prompted by a speech given by Ms. Winograd entitled “A Call for One State.” A copy of that speech is attached.
The letter was originally distributed in November 2009, though Mr. Waxman chose to leave it undated so that the Harman campaign would have the option to use it again at a later date.
The letter was sent both electronically and by mail, and was sent primarily to friends and supporters in the Jewish community. The recipient list was developed by the Harman campaign.
Unlike the substantial Jewish population in Waxman’s affluent 30th Congressional District whom he relies on for financial support, the Jewish population in Harman’s 36th Congressional District is significantly smaller. Issues concerning Israel don’t regularly affect the day to day lives of the majority of its residents who care mostly about jobs, healthcare and housing. 18.3% of the under 65 population of the 36th CD have no health insurance. Over 7,500 home foreclosures took place in 2009 and another 25,000 foreclosures are anticipated over the next four years.
Marcy Winograd
Though Harman stresses Israel as more relevant to her reelection, Winograd bases her election on a platform of policies on issues most relevant to her constituents, which she outlines on her website.
That Waxman and Harman stress Harman’s devotion to Israel as the primary catalyst for Harman’s reelection is illuminating, and underscores to what extent their legislative focus is defined more by the welfare of Israel and Israelis and less by the welfare of America and Americans.
One Jewish resident of the 36th, Frances W. Wells, was so incensed by Waxman’s Israel-based assault on Winograd, that she confronted him in person at his recent Women’s Club speaking engagement in Pacific Palisades.
In that exchange, Wells, who is in her 90s, and who vividly recalls the era of World War II and the pivotal events in the formation of Israel, asked Waxman, a self-described progressive, why he supported blue-dog conservative Harman over Winograd with whom he should share more common ground. Here’s their exchange summed up by Wells:
Wells: You’re supporting Jane Harman instead of Marcy Winograd?
Waxman: Jane’s on important committees.
Wells: Yes, but she never votes the way I want her to.
Waxman: Marcy’s for a one-state solution for Israel.
Waxman then walked away, leaving Wells even further incensed.
Another resident of the 36th, Lillian Laskin, an affiliated Jew [belonging to a synagogue] who lives in the community of Mar Vista, was similarly angered by the Waxman/Harman letter. In an interview Laskin told me, “Harman had Waxman send this letter because she’s desperate Winograd will give her a strong challenge.” Laskin went on to say, “I’m a constituent in the 36th and Israel is a separate issue that shouldn’t be the driving factor in determining our leadership in the district. We need leadership that focuses on the needs of the people – like jobs.”
With his hyperbolic letter, Henry Waxman has stepped into a firestorm of controversy that includes criticism from Harman’s constituents, his own constituents, the blogosphere, and prominent members of the Jewish community. Although Waxman doesn’t face a strong challenge this November, many of his constituents believe this ideologically based letter goes way too far; dwelling too much on Israel and too little on America.
Blackwater/Xe mercs arrive in Somalia, Al-Shabab says
Press TV – January 12, 2010 01:34:41 GMT
At least 18 people have been killed in clashes between rival factions in southern and central Somalia, and there are reports that Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have entered the country.
A battle broke out between the pro-government Ahlu Sunnah militia and Hizbul Islam fighters in the town of Baladwayne on Sunday and went well into Monday, during which at least 13 people lost their lives, witnesses said.
In addition, five people were killed when Hizbul Islam fighters engaged Al-Shabab fighters in the town of Dhobley near the Kenyan border, Reuters reported.
There are also allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in the capital.
The bombings will be carried out in order to create a pretext to launch a campaign against Al-Shabab, a spokesman of the group, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, told Reuters.
“We have discovered that US agencies are going to launch suicide bombings in public places in Mogadishu,” he told reporters. “They have tried it in Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan… We warn of these disasters. They want to target Bakara Market and mosques, then use that to malign us.”
At a meeting with tribal elders in Mogadishu on Monday, the Al-Shabab spokesman said that mercenaries of the Xe private security firm — formerly known as Blackwater — have arrived in the Somali capital, the Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu reported on Monday.
Blackwater/Xe mercenaries plan to carry out bombings in Mogadishu in order to accuse Al-Shabab of being the culprits in the attacks, the Al-Shabab spokesman added.
He went on to say that the Blackwater/Xe mercenaries have already recruited many lackeys to help them carry out bombings targeting prominent individuals and innocent civilians.
The Al-Shabab spokesman also told the tribal elders that a system based on Islam should be established in Somalia.
DOE grants moratorium on safety inspections for nuclear weapons labs
Project on Government Oversight | January 7, 2010
If your kid accidentally blew apart a building, would you give them less supervision? This hands-off approach is exactly what the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is doing by giving the contractors who manage the nation’s eight nuclear weapons sites (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Nevada Test Site, Sandia National Laboratory, Savannah River Site, Pantex, Y-12, and the Kansas City Plant) a six-month break from many regularly scheduled oversight reviews.
On December 18, 2009–two days after researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) accidentally blew apart a building, causing an initial estimate of $3 million in damage–NNSA Administrator Tom D’Agostino signed a directive “placing a six-month moratorium on NNSA-initiated functional assessments, reviews, evaluations and inspections.” Project on Government Oversight (POGO) saw this directive coming, as DOE and NNSA have initiated reforms to put contractors in charge of their own oversight, “Reforming the Nuclear Security Enterprise.” POGO is not convinced that this moratorium is so temporary, and is interested to know what NNSA is going to do with all of the federal full time employees at the site offices and headquarters it no longer needs as a result of this directive.
Getting a hiatus from regular reviews are many of the areas that have had recent serious problems—security, nuclear safety, cyber security, Material Control and Accountability (MC&A), contractor assurance systems that relate to contract oversight, property accountability, and nuclear weapons quality. For example, the weaknesses with Los Alamos’s MC&A program were so significant it took NNSA more than a year and a half to resolve them. Additionally, it was NNSA, not the contractor that found that Los Alamos treated its loss of more than 67 computers merely as a property management issue, and not as a potential lapse in cyber security. Over the last few years, POGO has also discovered countless security and safety incidents at Los Alamos, Livermore National Laboratory, Pantex, and Y-12, that the contractors had not provided oversight sufficient to prevent and resolve the problems. In the past, a senior manager at Los Alamos and his sidekick went to jail when the procurement system got out of control. Now, the directive exempts Los Alamos from a procurement management review.
“It seems foolish for NNSA to abdicate its management, given the last few years of debacles at the labs,” says POGO Senior Investigator Peter Stockton. “NNSA needs to recognize its role in overseeing the labs, as that was one of the major reasons it was created.”
NNSA’s new approach to federal safety and security oversight is irresponsible—stopping it in its entirety for six months. POGO would instead like to see NNSA make a New Year’s resolution to conduct smarter, more rigorous oversight of its labs. Such a move could prevent some of the costly contractor errors that occurred in 2009, such as Los Alamos’s Plutonium Facility (PF-4) needing to stop its main operations for more than one month, once again, because of the contractor and NNSA’s inadequate oversight of its fire suppression system.
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Orange sunset as Ukraine poll heralds turn to Russia
Five years after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, its next presidential election is between two pro-Moscow candidates
By Miriam Elder | The Observer | January 10, 2010
Five years ago, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was hailed as a new start for a country that had begun to look west towards the European Union and Nato. But as voters prepare to go to the polls next Sunday in the first presidential election since they cast out the country’s Soviet-era leadership, Europe’s most famous colour-coded reform movement seems to have run out of steam.
Both of the front-running candidates in the poll have indicated that firmer ties with Russia, whether for pragmatic or ideological reasons, will be a priority. The poll will thus ring the death knell for a pro-western revolution that degenerated into a morass of political infighting, compounded by economic crisis.
Leading the polls is Viktor Yanukovych, a former prime minister whose initial victory as the Russia-backed candidate in 2004 sparked allegations of a rigged vote. His only serious rival is Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister and Moscow’s new favoured candidate. President Viktor Yushchenko, hero of the Orange Revolution, now has an approval rating below 3%. Last week he accused Yanukovych and Tymoshenko of comprising a “single Kremlin coalition”, such was their joint desire for warmer relations with Moscow.
Yanukovych is expected to garner 33.3% of the vote, according to a mid-December opinion poll by Ukraine’s R&B Group, with Tymoshenko scoring 16.6%. A collection of 16 candidates, including Yushchenko, are expected to split 40% of voters between them, while more than 10% of the electorate remain undecided. A second round between the two frontrunners is widely expected – it is scheduled for 7 February – with Yanukovych likely to be in pole position.
Whether Yanukovych or Tymoshenko wins, the goal of Nato membership, still aspired to by Yushchenko, is almost certain to be abandoned. Officials close to the Kremlin have said that Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia was seen as an “existential threat” to Russia.
Yanukovych last week repeated his long-held stance that he would take Ukraine off the path to Nato membership. “Ukraine was and will be a non-aligned nation, as it is now,” he told Ukraine’s Komsomolskaya Pravda.
While he also said he would keep the country out of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Moscow-led defence grouping, he would push to join the economic union being formed by Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Russia has lately favoured economic integration, and pushed for the rouble to become a regional reserve currency, as a means of spreading its influence.
Russia has not openly backed a candidate, unlike in 2004 when it threw all its weight behind Yanukovych. “They don’t want to be in a situation like 2004, where they put all their eggs in one basket and lost Ukraine for some years,” said Alexander Rahr, head of the Russia/Eurasia programme at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Yanukovych is understood to have angered Moscow by supporting Ukraine’s attempt to join the EU. But Tymoshenko has become the unexpected hero of the Kremlin, after tempering the anti-Russian stance that was a hallmark of her 2004 campaign and early premiership. While remaining avowedly pro-EU, she has built a pragmatic alliance with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. The two very publicly ended the drawn-out gas dispute between the two countries last winter and were credited with avoiding a repeat this year. Tymoshenko now calls the Orange Revolution “a revolution of lost opportunities”.
The near annual gas dispute first erupted after the inauguration of the Yushchenko government, when Russia suddenly hiked gas prices on the eve of 2005, eager to stop subsidising a neighbour that was no longer a de facto vassal state. Political punishment came in the form of increasingly aggressive rhetoric over the status of Crimea, an autonomous region on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast that used to form part of Russia. That rhetoric is taken seriously after the Russian-Georgian war over South Ossetia in summer 2008.
Yushchenko – who is sixth in the vote with an expected 3.8% – has lost his traditional support in the country’s western regions to Tymoshenko and lesser-known candidates. Yanukovych has retained his popularity in the Russian-speaking east and south.
In Ukraine the words of the day on Russia are “pragmatism” and “balance”. “Both [Yanukovych and Tymoshenko] will find a balance of interests between Russia and the west,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, of the Kiev-based Penta Centre for Applied Political Studies.
The election comes as Ukraine wallows in a financial crisis that saw the economy shrink by 15% last year. The country is due to repay £12.5bn of foreign, mainly corporate, debt this year, and the hryvnia is down 50% since the crisis began. Kiev became one of the few governments to appeal to the International Monetary Fund for emergency aid, taking more than £10bn in loans. The IMF has frozen delivery of some tranches, citing a lack of internal reforms.
“The enthusiasm of the west vanished very quickly after 2004,” notes Rahr. “We don’t know what to do with Ukraine. We know what we don’t want – we don’t want Ukraine to become part of Russia again. But that’s not enough, and that’s our strategy.”
Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets ‘intercept US warplane’
Press TV – January 9, 2010 08:15:32 GMT
Venezuela has scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to ward off a US ‘military plane’ amid reports of “US trespassing the country’s airspace.”
President Hugo Chavez has ordered the fighters to confront a US P-3 maritime patrol aircraft that had purportedly violated Venezuela’s airspace, Reuters quoted the Venezuelan president as saying on Friday.
“They are provoking us … these are warplanes,” Chavez noted, showing a picture of the plane, which he said, had taken off from US military bases on the Netherlands’ Caribbean islands and from neighboring Colombia on two separate occasions.
He said the Venezuelan fighter jets forced the US plane away after the ‘incursions.’
Meanwhile, Pentagon officials have denied the charges and expressed unawareness of the latest development.
“We can confirm no US military aircraft entered Venezuelan airspace today. As a matter of policy we do not fly over a nation’s airspace without prior consent or coordination,” Reuters quoted an unnamed Defense Department Spokesperson as saying on January 8.
The US Southern Command claims that its surveillance operations are ‘only’ meant to counter drug trafficking in South America.
US-Pakistan “diplomatic” dispute escalates
By Ein Katzenfreund | Aletho News | January 9, 2010
The neoconservative Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many other English-language media and even the Chinese news agency Xinhua just wrote in bold headlines that the US has asked Pakistan to stop “harassment” of their “diplomats”. It is quite uncommon that a country tries to escalate diplomatic differences with a friendly country over the mass media, rather than resolving it discreetly. Pakistan is an important “partner” for the United States in its struggle to dominate the Middle East, which it sells to the public as a global war on terror.
In the Wall Street Journal version and the associated Western media, the story of the diplomatic dispute is told somewhat like this: Pakistani authorities and security forces are harassing US diplomats in Pakistan by temporarily arresting them, searching their cars and systematically delaying visa requests. Due to this harassment the US now has difficulty implementing its five-year program to support civilian projects in Pakistan worth 1.5 billion US dollars annually. The Pakistani government demands direct payment so that it can spend the money where it is needed but the US doesn’t do this as it wants full administrative control. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the Pakistani intelligence service ISI is behind the harassment campaign and that the ISI is impeding peace and development in Pakistan. That’s what the story looks like in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The New York Times adds that the US embassy in Islamabad has plans to increase its staff to implement its assistance program in Pakistan from 500 to 800 people and casually states that President Zardari has demanded a cessation of air strikes by US drones on Pakistani territory, and instead proposes that the US give Pakistan the drone technology.
In Pakistan the story appears a bit different. First of all, it is carefully noted in Pakistan that the US hires death squads from the notorious Blackwater outfit as “diplomats”. The US government officially denies that it uses Blackwater for assassinations, but since it was announced that the suicide attack on the secret drone base in Afghanistan’s Khost killed two mercenaries from Blackwater the official claims have been exposed as a blatant lie.
However the troubles of the US in Pakistan are even more serious. Zahid Malik explained on December 7th in the Pakistan Observer in detail that the head of the ISI, General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, personally confronted the CIA boss Leon Panetta with evidence that the US backs warlords and terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the purpose of destabilizing Pakistan. The role Stanley McCrystal’s JSOC terrorist group plays in this dirty war is also public knowledge. None of this surprises Pakistanis as everyone in Pakistan knows that the US runs a secret war against Pakistan. This is becoming disastrous for the US because in the eyes of the Pakistani population the US is widely decried as a state sponsor of terrorism and any Pakistani government making common cause with the United States is considered to be treasonous.
The most important point is that the United States under Obama is trying to deceive Pakistan. The US promised to fight alongside Pakistan but they secretly fought against Pakistan and they were caught. It couldn’t be worse for the US. In this situation even the $1.5 billion annual bribe won’t help them out. If the US does not maintain the cooperation of Pakistani security services there will be no reliable transit of supplies for the U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan via Pakistan anymore. Pakistan can add to its demands whatever it wants whenever it wants, because the US is so dependent on the supply routes through Pakistan. Obama would like to increase US troops in Afghanistan by about 30 – 40,000 official soldiers. As for supply routes for his troops in Afghanistan he has the following possibilities: Pakistan, Russia, and Iran. As the US has no internal influence in Iran and Russia, these countries are not ideal options. The result is that if Pakistani supply routes are closed Obama’s occupation of Afghanistan will end and Pakistan wins influence. Until then Pakistan may ask what it wants of the US, and the US must pay whatever the price is. If the US is escalating its diplomatic dispute with Pakistan now in the media, that suggests that the US administration has just now realized what kind of an ugly trap they have fallen into in Afghanistan.
Was this really that hard to foresee? Honestly, who is stupid enough to choose to occupy Afghanistan? OK, the think tank IASPS proposed it, but they also called for war on Iraq for the reorganization of the Middle East in Israel’s favor. It is noteworthy that Barack Obama still follows this Zionist-designed war policy even though it brings nothing but predictable disaster for the US.
Iran’s Press TV is modest: it reported that five Americans were arrested because they used fake license plates, but that they were released later because the US embassy said that they were diplomats. Oh, but of course when US Marines raided the Algerian embassy in Baghdad it was something entirely different and in no way harassment or a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
The author manages a German language news blog at – http://www.mein-parteibuch.com/
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Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
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- If Americans Knew
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- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
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- One Gaza is not enough: Israel is turning southern Lebanon into another Gaza – Daily Update
- As Palestinians die, Ben-Gvir celebrates birthday with golden noose cake – Daily Update
- Israel’s New Ambassador to the ‘Christian World’ Served as Envoy to Azerbaijan During the Ethnic Cleansing of Christians from Nagorno-Karabakh
- No Tricks Zone
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
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