February 19, 2010 archive

Greece: Strikes continue as EU demands more severe austerity measures

Original article, by Julie Hyland, via World Socialist Web Site:

A series of strikes are underway in Greece in advance of a planned general strike involving both the public and private sectors on February 24.

Beginning on Tuesday, workers in the finance ministry and customs officials began several days of strike action in protest against the social democratic PASOK government’s imposition of austerity measures.

I misjudged Limbaugh 20102019

I have never been a stranger to admitting when I have been wrong.  My philosophy is that is better to be wrong than to have no opinion.  Since I write many of my thoughts here and at Kos, I am never short for feedback to show me how I am wrong, and I actually appreciate it.  I always strive for accuracy, and welcome any corrections.

I have been very wrong about Limbaugh.  I started listen to him around 1993 (please do not ask why, because the answer is extremely convoluted and very personal, [thanks, Cruz]) so we will not go there.  Please follow my thoughts.

Mission Accomplished: Operation Iraqi Freedom Finally Over

We’ve all heard from the Obama WH about the fact the the Great War on Terror, sometimes called The Long War, ended shortly after Obama took office in 2010, as was evidenced by the renaming of it to “Overseas Contingency Operations” last year.

Now after seven bloody years and by some counts over a million Iraqi deaths the Obama Administration has announced that Operation Iraqi Freedom is, according to the White House and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, finally over as well.

ABC News reported Thursday evening that…

…the Obama administration has decided to give the war in Iraq — currently known as Operation Iraqi Freedom — a new name.

The new name: “Operation New Dawn.”

In a February 17, 2010, memo to the Commander of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the “requested operation name change is approved to take effect 1 September 2010, coinciding with the change of mission for U.S. forces in Iraq.”

You can read the memo — a copy of which was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen – HERE [.pdf].

[snip]

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell had no comment on the memo, saying it speaks for itself.

The move has met with some criticism. In a statement, Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United said, “You cannot end a war simply by changing its name.  Despite the Administration’s efforts to spin realities on the ground, their efforts do not change the situation at hand in Iraq. Operational military decisions should not be made for purposes of public relations, as the Secretary of Defense cites, but should be made in the best interests of our nation, the  troops on the ground and their families back home.”

If Gates was hoping that “Operation New Dawn” would convey a new period in the US-Iraq relationship, it’s not clear that was the best choice of name.

After all, Operation New Dawn was the name for the bloody and grueling 2004 battle for Fallujah.

Overnight Caption Contest

Van Cortlandt Park After the Snow

Good evening this is my second installment in an attempt to get a regular series started called Friday Evening Photoblogging. Cross-posted at Progressive Blue, La Vita Locavore and Firefly Dreaming, it is based but different from a posting from last week at DKos.

I often write about and I’m very much in love with the undeveloped parts of Van Cortlandt Park. It is the fourth largest park in New York City and just a few blocks from my apartment. I guess the most popular diary so far was called Just a Walk in the Park, Van Cortlandt Park.

Few Manhattanites know of the beauty of this 1,146 acre park located in the Bronx but this New York City oasis should be of special interest to visitors from drier areas of the nation. The green will just blow you away.

You won’t find much green in this diary that focuses on photographic composition but I found a little color to make it interesting. In this photo the underpass leads to the Van Cortland marsh where the story ends. An old bridge from the the abandoned “Old Putt” and an oak tree that likes to hold a few leaves each winter improves the composition.

“Old Putt” is the affectionate nickname that hikers and cross country bikers have given to the New York and Putnam Railroad. The right of way for the railroad bed is a trail that runs the length of the park and passes through almost every type of ecosystem that can be found in the northeast.

Below the fold are the best of the 465 pictures I took last Thursday. Most of them on the Van Cortlandt Lake and surrounding wetlands of the Bronx park. Mostly they are photos of geese but I experimented with ways to defeat the the most annoying property of snow, monochromatic and way too bright.

Why the Excise Tax Sucks

~Why the Excise Tax Sucks~

In the current Senate version of the Health Insurance Reform Bill, the funding mechanism is being called an “excise tax,”   and it is currently designed to be applied to HEALTH INSURANCE BENEFITS

There’s  4 major things wrong with the Senate version of the bill:

1.  This so called excise tax, which is regressive, hurting lower wage workers more than higher wage earners.

2.  The lack of a public option to provide a guaranteed alternative to the vampire blood sucking of private for profit insurance , and therefore, the lack of universal coverage-   this means insurers are guaranteed to have a rotating pool of “excludables,” perpetrating the caste system and the medical access lottery of the damned.

3.  The lack of universal health care coverage for all, which, aside from the moral implications, therefore still provides a mechanism for all the things wrong with the current cannibalistic system to continue.

4.  The Democrats in the Senate being unable, so far, to be willing to change the suckitudinalness and go for some serious reconciliation with the House.

Today, we’ll look at reasons to get rid of the excise tax.

READ IT

READ EVERY WORD OF IT.

From Joe Stack, an American . . .

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.

While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.

And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!

How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.

How did I get here?  

“Mass Casualties” and “Human Shields”

Dahr Jamail has just posted a review of “Mass Casualties: A Young Medic’s True Story of Death, Deception and Dishonor in Iraq,” by Michael Anthony, with extensive quotes from the book.

“Look around,” the drill sergeant said. “In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can’t stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there.”

“I think about why I’m fighting this war and my eyes tear up. I think of all the people we’ve killed. I think of all the people’s families – mothers, fathers, siblings – and how they’ll never see them again … I think about the war and I feel nothing. I think about life and death, mine and everyone else’s, and I feel nothing. I think about myself and I don’t care if I live or die. On these nights, mortars go off and I won’t get out of bed. I’ll lie in bed as the bombs go off. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I live or die, nothing matters – I like it when I feel nothing.”

“I had a friend who didn’t want to go to Iraq so he purposely failed five drug tests in a row (smoking pot and doing coke) he still got sent to Iraq. There was one guy in my unit who didn’t want to go to Iraq, he told our commanders he was suicidal, they said he still had to go. The soldier then went and got a swastika tattooed on his shoulder, he told the commanders that he was racist and hated everyone except white people; commanders said he still had to go to Iraq. The next day he takes a bottle of pills and tries to kill himself – and I’m sure if he were physically capable of it, he still would have had to go to Iraq. There was a guy in my unit who was on anti-depressant medication; our commanders said they couldn’t deploy him on that medication that he should stop taking it. The next day he tries to stab someone and is put in jail, he still went to Iraq with us. There are more and more of the same stories … There’s literally nothing you can do to not go to Iraq and I think that’s why suicidal and homicidal patients aren’t getting the care they need because before it’s time to go overseas, you’re going no matter what, and after you get back, the government doesn’t care.”

Meanwhile Fox News is screaming about “human shields” supposedly deployed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In an effort to create hostility between coalition troops and local Afghans, insurgents are also reportedly using civilians as human shields – deliberately trying to force coalition troops to fire upon non-combatants.

This very emotive phrase, “human shields,” was even solemly echoed by some dim-witted fourth-tier bloggers on usually progressive sites like firedoglake, where the in-house “expert” about Afghanistan Jim White wrote…

New reports are now suggesting that the largest civilian casualty event so far in the offensive may not have been due to improper targeting, but instead resulted from the use of civilians as human shields by Taliban fighters.

And the miserable Mr. White also quotes this steaming pile of horseshit…

The ISAF later suggested that the coalition’s initial apology (for killing 10 or 12 civilians including 6 children) had been in error. Coalition investigators now think that the rocket hit its target and two insurgents died in the strike in addition to the 12 civilians, ISAF officials said. They’re trying to determine whether those Taliban were holding the civilians prisoner.

White only adds that “it should not require pointing out that the use of civilian hostages as human shields is a war crime.”

So let’s retract that apology, because along with 6 children and 4 other civilians, maybe we also killed 2 Taliban!

And even supposing that the Taliban really were holding thoise civilians hostage, why is it supposedly okay, inevitable, no apology required, to kill ten civilians just to take out 2 Taliban? Ordinary policemen encounter hostage situations all the time, and it’s never okay, inevitable, no apology required if cops killed 10 civilians to take out 2 bank-robbers.

So what’s the tremendous, all-changing difference that somehow excuses civilian casualties in combat, no apology required?

In this particular instance, instead of making do with idiotic hand-waving about the “heat of battle” from some no-combat shit-head apologist for all things Obama, we actually have a specific explanation from an honest-to-God soldier in the combat zone, General Mohiudin Ghori.

Ghori, the senior commander for Afghan troops in the area, accused the Taliban of placing civilian hostages in the line of fire. “Especially in the south of Marjah, the enemy is fighting from compounds where soldiers can very clearly see women or children on the roof or in a second-floor or third-floor window,” he was quoted by Associated Press as saying. “They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians.”

His forces were having to choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians, Ghori said, echoing comments by British commanders in the area about Taliban tactics.

Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!

Choose between not returning fire and advancing much more slowly in order to distinguish militants from civilians!

The fiendish Taliban might force our forces to slow down and “distinguish militants from civilians!”

Unthinkable!

Bank lending collapses; money supply shrinks

   Today the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. Quantitative easing efforts (read: monetization) are also coming to an end.

  The central banks are worried about inflation due to the massive money printing of the past two years. Should they be worried? Probably not.

 David Rosenberg from Gluskin Sheff said lending has fallen by over $100bn (£63.8bn) since January, plummeting at an annual rate of 16pc. “Since the credit crisis began, $740bn of bank credit has evaporated. This is a record 10pc decline,” he said.

  Mr Rosenberg said it is tempting fate for the Fed to turn off the monetary spigot in such circumstances. “The shrinking in banking sector balance sheets renders any talk of an exit strategy premature,” he said.

 Bank lending is the money multiplier in a fractional-reserve banking system, and banks aren’t lending.

  All those trillions of dollars bailing out Wall Street was meant to fix the credit markets, which means to get the banks lending again. This effort was a complete and total failure…unless you count banker bonuses.

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