March 2009 archive

Betrayed in Iraq

March 30, 2009

Leila Fadel: Leaders of Awakening Councils are arrested, tortured and killed by Iraq government

Leila Fadel, Baghdad Bureau Chief of McClatchy Newspapers speaks to Paul Jay about the recent escalation in violence in Iraq’s capital. She says the former fighters termed the “Sons of Iraq” who have turned on Al Qaeda and joined the U.S. are now being persecuted by the Iraq government. She says the Maliki government is afraid of the power they’ve accumulated in the neighborhoods they were put to protect by the U.S. and many are now in exile or in hiding.

The Real News Network

Tim Geithner’s Oligarchs, Or How Financial Powers Control The US Government At Your Expense

Crossposted from Antemdius

Political Economist F. William Engdahl is author of the book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” Mr. Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively.

On Sunday Engdahl spoke with Real News CEO Paul Jay about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s so-called “Private Public Partnership” plan to rescue the financial institutions in the United States, explains what Geithner is not telling you, says the plan does nothing to address the concentration of financial power in the United States that is based in the five major financial institutions that compose what we refer to collectively as “Wall Street”, and describes the Geithner/Obama plan as a “band aid for a bad hemorrhage”, a hemorrage that will exponentially increase over the next two or three years and mushroom into something much worse than the 1930’s depression.



Real News – March 30, 2009 – 11 minutes 58 seconds

Geithner’s Oligarchs

Engdahl: Obama must confront the oligarchical power of Wall Street to solve crisis

Open Thread

 

Time to make the thread.

Obama forces Wagoner Out..Contracts only matter when they belong to WS

Apparently contracts and sacrifice from the people receiving taxpayer money are only off limits when it applies to Wall Street.

I have no clue if Wagoner was good or bad or should have or haven’t stayed.  What I am totally pissed at is the double standard.  I won’t detail it, we’ve all been living and paying for this administration’s double standards.  When it comes to Wall Street or bringing justice to war criminals and profiteers, they would rather “look forward”.  When it comes to bailing out Americans, whether it is their jobs or their homes, it is time to right the wrongs and make sacrifices for America.  

also posted

More/Detroit News.

Docudharma Times Monday March 30

Why Is That Rick Wagner

Is Forced To Resign

But Not A Single Wall Street Executive  

   




Monday’s Headlines:

Obama’s Nobel Headache

Afghanistan: soldiers’ reports tell of undue optimism, chaos, and policy made on the hoof

Chinese cyber spy network hacks into 103 nations

Hunt for the Monster of Florence

Turkish PM’s party leads in poll

Ivorian stadium stampede kills 22

Iraqis Snap Up Hummers as Icons of Power

Is the Arab League relevant?

In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself

GM Chief to Resign at White House’s Behest

Obama Pushes General Motors and Chrysler to Slim Down, Make More Concessions

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, March 30, 2009; Page A01


The Obama administration has forced the longtime head of General Motors to resign and said yesterday that it would withhold additional federal aid to the auto industry unless the ailing companies undertake changes they so far have been unwilling or unable to make.

The administration effectively rejected as untenable the business plans that GM and Chrysler had submitted to restructure their companies, saying that neither had fulfilled the terms of the federal loans the companies received in December.

The president is expected to announce today that both companies may still win additional federal aid but under stricter terms.

Gunmen storm Pakistan police academy

• At least 10 police officers killed at Lahore training centre

• Gunmen hold hundreds of officers and cadets hostage


?Saeed Shah in Islamabad and James Sturcke

guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 March 2009 08.49 BST


At least 10 police officers were killed when gunmen stormed a police training facility in Lahore this morning, the second major terrorist attack in the Pakistani city within a month.

Hundreds of police officers and cadets were being held hostage by at least 10 attackers, according to reports, as exchanges of gunfire took place with troops and police surrounding the Manawan police centre.

The interior ministry chief, Rehman Malik, said 52 officers were wounded in the attack but gave no word on the number killed, while Geo News television channel said the toll was 20.

Armoured personnel carriers were manoeuvring into place around the site, in an apparent attempt to seal the exits. Army marksmen took up position on surrounding rooftops and surveillance helicopters hovered above the complex.

USA

AIG crisis could be the tip of an insurance iceberg

The company’s situation reflects problems throughout the life insurance industry as investments suffer. Further strain could bring about a second financial crisis.

By Ralph Vartabedian and Tom Hamburger

March 30, 2009

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles — When insurance giant American International Group Inc. imploded last fall, the firm’s problems were quickly blamed not on its core insurance business but on an obscure operation that traded exotic mortgage securities.

But as the economic crisis deepens, it has become clear that AIG’s problems extend across most of its business lines, including its massive life insurance and retirement services operations, which reported a staggering $18-billion quarterly loss this month.

The company’s situation is emblematic of problems across the life insurance industry, which is suffering deep losses on investments that underlie policies for millions of American families.

So far, some of the biggest companies have suffered sharp drops in their stock prices, and many of them are asking for federal assistance.

Industry conditions last year were the worst in memory and are expected to grow deeper this year amid credit rating downgrades, declining revenue and investment losses, according to credit rating firm A.M. Best Co.

Barack, Barack, Barack . . . We Need To Talk

Barack Tells Detroit to Drop Dead . . .

The White House says neither GM nor Chrysler submitted acceptable plans to receive more bailout money, setting the stage for a crisis in Detroit and putting in motion what could be the final two months of two American auto giants.  President Barack Obama and his top advisers have determined that neither company is viable and that taxpayers will not spend untold billions more to keep the pair of automakers open forever.

But American taxpayers are supposed to keep spending untold billions more to keep those predator banks on Wall Street open forever, aren’t they, Barack.  GM and Chrysler aren’t viable according to you and your fiend Tim at the Treasury Department, but those big banks that imploded and turned America’s financial system into a black hole of toxic debt are still viable.  Yup.  They’re as viable as it gets, they’re so viable they only need a trillion dollars every few months so they don’t China Syndrome themselves right through the planet, blast the Great Wall of China into rubble on the other side, and soar off into space to boldly go where no Masters of the Universe have ever gone before.        

Let’s summarize what’s been happening, shall we?  The big banks tell Barack to jump and he asks them how high. They tell Barack to fetch a stick and he fetches a stick.  They tell Barack to hand them another trillion dollars and lay back down by his dish like a good dog, and he hands them another trillion dollars and lays back down by his dish like a good dog.        

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

An Opened Mind IV

Art Link

Black and White

Balance

It is all about balance,

so my book tells me.

What to balance with what?

Therein lies the difficulty.

Does the past

offset the future

or the present?

If it balances

the present

then how can Now

also be in balance?

And isn’t that important?

Cannot the present

only be the

balance point

if the past

and future offset?

But how can

the past

offset a future

which has not

yet occurred?

Perhaps this problem

needs more

dimensions,

a change in

the frame

of reference.

–Robyn Elaine Serven
–November 7, 2005

On Earl Avenue

Is there a soul to a house?

If we call it just a house and not a home, does it still possess a soul separate from the vagaries of mortgages, layers of paint, or crayon, or grease on the walls, busted pipes in the winter, the seepage stains that are like Mercatur projections of alien continents on whitewashed mortared walls?

Does the heart of a house exist outside any memory of the tangible moments that mark the living within? Or does the spirit of a house, soul-centered in an aging body of wood and brick and nail, pulse simply because there are lives, loves and deaths that pass through?  Perhaps an invisible, silent, tender skin of cares, of worries, of hopes, coats every moment exchanged. Coats the hallways, the rooms, the stairs, the steps leading away. In this old house on Earl Avenue.

Monday Morning Business Update

Old News

Saturday

1 Bank execs vow to work with Obama on recovery plan

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer

Sat Mar 28, 1:42 am ET

WASHINGTON – Top executives of the nation’s biggest banks said Friday after meeting with President Barack Obama that they will work with the administration on its economic recovery plans, but want more specifics from the White House. In an interview with CBS News, Obama said his overarching message was this: “Show some restraint. Show that you get that this is a crisis and everybody has to make sacrifices. They agreed and they recognized it. Now, the proof in the pudding is in the eating.”

Bankers said an administration proposal to jump-start lending, a problem at the heart of the industry’s crisis, is encouraging.

“People are looking at that. It’s positive,” Morgan Stanley’s John Mack told The Associated Press in an interview. “We think it’s the right thing to do and now we just need to get the details.”

Late Night Karaoke

Where In The World Is Bob

Pachydermicide, the Perennial Sport of Kings

I have always considered myself a sportsman, old boy. Not such a striking thing to admit, I’ll allow-but in the current age of crass exhibitionism and crude violence, the simple sportsmanship of big-game hunting does seem to still carry a certain cachet with the public imagination. As it should-and has, for many years, thanks to great men of the past-but of course, when I mention the word “hunting,” the unfortunate modern connotation is of half-wit archer-apes with cat scratch fever running around the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. However, those damn fools will have a long row to hoe before they do true damage to the hunting ideal, eh what? Quite.

Torture News Roundup: A Woman Tortured?

Top Story

  • Female prisoner at Bagram:  In an interview, Binyam Mohamed revealed that there was a female prisoner  when he was imprisoned at Bagram in June 2004 for around 3-4 months:

    1.  He saw a female prisoner wearing a shirt with the number 650 at Bagram prison.

    2.   The guards frightened the male prisoners into not talking with the woman prisoner for fear that the prisoners “would know who she was.”

    3.  In terms of how this woman may have been tortured, Binyam knew that the woman was kept in isolation and he “could tell that she was severely disturbed.”

    4.  Binyam heard that she had children, but did not see the children at Bagram.

    5.  The woman was from Pakistan and she had studied or lived in America.

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