What Rough Beast

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Now we know, the beast Blankfein, the beast Braly

We the People need to provoke a suit for libel by Angela Braly or Lloyd Blankfein so that, via discovery, we can uncover the hideous beast

Perhaps a new subspecies has evolved, so retrograde devolution from Homo sapiens - Homo moneta, Man of money. That crawling creature, leech

We need a new word, not "lust", to describe the ravenous hunger for money of Lloyd Blankfein/Goldman Sachs or Angela Braly/Wellpoint

RT @nytimes Movie Studios See a Threat in Growth of Redbox http://bit.ly/6znXn (translation: studios see threat in competition)

RT @ThePublicRecord Growing Number of Guantanamo Detainees Cleared For Release Remain Imprisoned. http://bit.ly/4x83wa

DISNEY BUYS MARVEL COMICS

What are things coming too? I confess, I do not believe that Marvel Comics is that cat's jimjams of comics. But, DAMN!

Snow White, Mickey Mouse, TinkerBell versus SpiderMan, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Captain America

Captain America, my fellow Americans. Snow White and Mickey Mouse own Captain America.

@wired @harrymccracken Who would win fight? Mickey Mouse v SpiderMan http://wp.me/pg9un-4gg SpiderMouse? SnowMan? The Frankenstein Minstrel?

Snow White hooks #Spiderman. #Disney buys #Marvel Comics. #MickeyMouse = SuperHero? End of world as we know it http://bit.ly/a7vdn

I'm raving. I know it. I'm shocked, stunned, dumbfounded, gobsmacked.

Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY

Let's make this intuitive. Suppose we had $10,000 to distribute to 10,000 people. The current inequality means that 1 (one) person would receive $600. The top ten percent (10%) or 1000 people would receive about half the money ($4970 to be precise). The remaining 90% would receive the other half. So the remaining $5000 would be split among 9000 people. So one person would get $600 while 9000 would have to make do with about 55 CENTS each. (Of course the distribution for the 90% is not linear, so in fact the poorest 20 percent probably have to make do with something like 10 cents each).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Another Great Example of How Economics 'Reporting' Works

Yesterday the big economics news was that home prices were up in May. Today the big news is that first-time unemployment claims are up above what was expected.

Yesterday, the good news was universally hailed as a sign of more good news to come: a 'trough' has been reached, the drop in home prices has bottomed out, etc.

Today, the bad news on jobs is just an 'aberration': "Proper accounting of seasonal factors would explain away this unexpected increase in unemployment." (Note that everyone expected some kind of increase in jobless numbers, just not by this much.) NPR, for example, emphasizes that "the trend is down" in numbers of first-time unemployment claims (again, not down in overall numbers of unemployed).

Some have pointed out that there are seasonal variations in home prices. Easier to look in warm weather, properties look more appealing, problems like heating, are less apparent, more people are moving (students, families with kids out of school for the summer). Curiously, this was not immediately or prominently offered as a caveat with regard to the 'good news' about home prices.

Contrary to what some assert, the media does indeed get to pick and choose its facts. The excuse is "editorial necessity" or "experts tell us". The same editorial necessities and expert advice that guided reporting on Iraq, the entire Middle East, and of course, the economy.

Unemployment Up,Durable Good Orders Down,Profits Down, But ... Home Prices Up So ... ?

Yes, one bit of good news — good news especially for huge property owners — and that is sufficient for economists, politicians, journalists and pundits to start hailing the "trough". The economy has bottomed out.

One month, one statistic, and the sunlit uplands are hailed:

• The New York Times. 3-Year Descent in Home Prices Appears at End. "a possible signal that the market has bottomed". The Times apparently thought better of this after the fact and changed the online headline to "Recovery Signs in Housing Market Stir Some Hope"

• WNYC. Housing Price Low Mark. "the market may have hit bottom"

By contrast, here is some of the news that evidently can be ignored when asking how the economy is doing:

• 584,000 Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week. This was instantly dismissed as a seasonal anomaly; nevermind that, even if anomalous, it proves that unemployment is still climbing rapidly. The total number of people collecting benefits decreased — probably because people are reaching the end of the alloted time for collecting.

• There remains near-universal agreement that unemployment will exceed 10% nationally.

• Durable goods orders are down. Unless you exclude automobiles and aircraft, in which case they're up. When data element x or y upsets the picture you are trying to paint, come up with an ad hoc reason to exclude that data.

• Sony posts a loss of $390.5 million

• Profits down 66% for quarter at Exxon Mobil

• Volkswagen 6-month profit down 81%

More on Obama on Gates

This was written in response to an essay by Melissa Harris-Lacewell in The Nation.

I largely agree with Harris-Lacewell on the Gates affair. I find Obama's involvement more interesting. Some thoughts:

1. My impression of Gates is that he is a prima donna at an institution specializing in prima donnas. There are a great many African-American scholars doing better, more insightful work elsewhere. Gates is a great promoter and popularizer (needed in their own right, but not scholarship).

2. If Gates were the edgy radical that some want to condemn him as, he would not be at Harvard, which is notoriously hostile to independent thinking. It is an essentially conservative, money-driven institution.
This point is best illustrated by the case of Cornel West, driven out of Harvard by the intolerant bigotries of then-president Lawrence Summers who is now -- surprise! -- a member of the Obama administration. So much for Obama's concern about bigotry. (Summers has repeatedly express revolting positions regarding women, blacks, Arabs and all who criticize Israel.)

3. Let's be blunt. Racism is rampant in the US. Arab-Americans can best attest to this today. But Gates and Obama both enjoy singular privilege. By no stretch of the imagination do they instantiate anyone's common experience. To me, Gates has appeared eager to appear a victim (which he may indeed be, but his reaction is a distinct phenomenon in its own right).

5. More interesting, Obama's reaction --(A) Were this a white person victimized by standard police excesses (as were many in NYC by Mayor Bloomberg's totalitarianism during the '04 RNC), Obama wouldn't dream of criticizing the police. --(B) Were this a black man in Harlem shot by cops for Living While Black, Obama would be silent. And worst --(C) Obama has actively rejected justice in the case of Bush et al., greatest war criminals in 30 years.

Obama, Justice for a Friend, Justice for the Rest of Us

A letter I have written to Barack Obama:

Dear Mr. Obama:

Regarding your eagerness to jump in without knowing the facts, you show yet again your indifference to fact, substance and justice. As you have with your bailout, your exclusion of labor from discussions on stimulus packages, your exclusion of single-payer as an option on healthcare, you show yet again that you are a president of the privileged -- indifferent to the circumstances of the people whom you serve.

You work for us. You are our servant, lest you forget.

Henry Louis Gates may be right. The officer may be. They may both be wrong. Who knows -- probably not even them. We do know that Gates, like you, is among the most privileged people of color in the entire world. He has little if any first-hand experience of the conditions of those people he now claims to represent. You, admittedly, have somewhat greater claim in that regard. But let's not pretend that you have any idea what it is like to be black in Bedford-Stuyvesant and confronting a cop determined that you are guilty. You are utterly ignorant on the conditions of any such person or the conditions of roughly 300 million other Americans. If you did, you could not now be displaying such revolting hypocrisy on economic justice or civil liberties.

Whatever the facts and ultimate outcome in Cambridge, you jumped in -- for a personal friend -- without any more facts at hand than any of us. YET you won't say WORD ONE in criticism of ANYTHING the Bush administration did -- torture, war in Iraq, attacks on civil liberties. You say NOTHING in substantive pursuit of justice. You rule out any investigation of likely Bush war crimes.

YET you leap to pre-judge a tempest in a teapot in Cambridge, MA.

Inexcusable.

With regards,

Hugh Sansom

American Gods

Michael Jackson has ascended to the throne of the Gods. He has become what Americans needed him to be, something he grasped he had to be . . . infinitely maleable, all things to all people. The formless matter suitable for any person to fashion into whatever idol was needed.

No surprise that Jackson worked so hard to refashion himself. He was American culture's Frankenstein monster, simultaneously a masterpiece and a horror.

Now he has done what Elvis did before him, and so too the lesser god John Lennon . . . . He's made a good career move. Now he can be fully commodified. Utterly vilified by that petty moronic bigot, Congressman Peter King. Canonized by that self-serving greasy opportunist, Reverend Al Sharpton.

Elvis departed to the realm of Graceland, Lennon to Strawberry Fields, Jackson to Neverland. The manufactured realm of the unreal.

So I have a response to the response to his death. I do not understand the popular reaction. I did not understand Michael Jackson. I rarely thought of him in any connection. Nevertheless, on hearing of his death, I called my ex with a sense that something that marked our youth had passed. So be it.

I am more interested in the contempt thinly veiled in the remarks of some in the media and elsewhere, a contempt expressed unambiguously by Peter King. King himself can be tossed aside. Anyone who's had the misfortune to hear two syllables uttered by him knows him to be one of the stupidest idiots in a Congress of Idiots.

What was so clear in the reactions of some, like Brooke Shields, was genuine compassion. And in truth, I feel great pity for Michael Jackson. Who knows what was really going on for him. But the sight of his daughter breaking down on the stage of that mass market fare-thee-well must move any person (but not Peter King).

He was indeed destined. Destiny is the application of force by a higher power. For him, the higher power was his father. His Son had to die for somebody's sins. Might as well be the father's.

So, deprived of any childhood, he spent his life trying to invent one, recover one, discover one — the search for lost time.

And let's be perfectly honest. Let us suppose that Michael Jackson really was the person that Peter King claimed. In the scheme of things, the also recently departed Robert McNamara was vastly worse. McNamara, a true war criminal, was treated with the greatest respect by many of the same media hacks marvelling at the send-off for Jackson. But Jackson, even under the worst possible light, did nothing remotely as reprehensible as McNamara.

In time, other gods of the powerful will kick off — Henry Kissinger, Ariel Sharon, Dick Cheney, George W . . . take your pick. Every one of them will be treated with near-reverence by the likes of The New York Times or CNN or NPR. Yet every single one of those icons of power is guilty of vastly greater crimes — crimes against humanity — than Michael Jackson.

No prominent figure in government or the media will dare speak ill of any of those war criminals when the time comes. Obama, President of the United States, won't dare speak ill of them now.

So a word to all those who sneer at the hullabaloo over Michael Jackson. If you are capable of lionizing some of the worst Americans ever to crawl across the Earth, what does that make you?

Biden Relays an Obamal Bull on Foreign Policy

In the flea circus of Sunday morning blab sessions among politicians, pundits and 'experts', Vice President Joseph Biden dropped a clanger. Asked by George Stephanopoulos about a possible Israeli attack on Iran, he said, "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else." (For example, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories of Palestine.) Biden said further that the US cannot "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do."

This directly contravenes the express American position with respect to North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and of course, Iran. It's a position we all know the US takes; thus, according to the BBC, "White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Mr Biden was not signalling any change of approach on Iran or Israel."

Some nations, we know, are more equal than others. Israel is the first among equals in timid, sheepish, money-grubbing Washington. So Israel has blanket immunity. Other friends do not. Britain's sovereignty does not give it the right to investigate American war crimes. The US threatened to withhold key intelligence info, purportedly vital to British security, if Britain did not quash any investigations into torture and other crimes at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Spain is certainly under similar or greater pressure.

While this does not mark a major shift in American policy, it does serve as declarative punctuation in the US position on Iran. It marks the official cessation of any US government concern or support for pro-democracy activists in Iran. Iran must be popularly demonized to lay the foundation for American acquiescence in a new round of Israeli war crimes.

The Mountain Men, Modern and Old, and Those Who Follow Them

The New York Times runs a story on July 5th on the story and mystery of Everett Ruess, a young, 'modern' mountain man, who disappeared in Utah three quarters of a century ago — in 1934 — at just 20 years of age.

His remains were believed found and confirmed by DNA analysis until the Utah State Archaeologist raised questions about the dentition.

I put "modern" in scare quotes (thus, 'scare') because some might dispute 1934 being "modern" and Utah was far more wild then than it is now.

Ruess "followed his bliss", as Joseph Campbell would have said, lived very much by his own devices, traded his woodcut prints for food, trekked about with a horse or burro. Lived Henry David Thoreau's imagined ideal — simple.

Jon Krakauer writes of Ruess briefly in "Into the Wild" (briefly, because there is little to be said about him).

It's a mystery. A young wanderer probably murdered. Of kind, I think, with Kit Carson, John Colter, Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, and others who seemed to prefer comparative isolation, the wilderness.

I am among their admirers, even idolaters. The idolaters of those who go alone, or near alone, into the wilderness (rarely, but nevertheless occasionally, against the wilderness). A simpler life. A life of pure beauty, pure art.

I sound like a fucking self-help book.

More to come.

Questions and At Least One Comment for South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Doesn't the Gov look like the cat that swallowed the canary?
(Bush still manages those "please don't hit me!" eyes.)

Some questions and comments for Gov. Mark Sanford:

1. Did you use a love glove, Gov?

2. Argentina and Appalachian both start with "A" but that's as far as it goes.

3. Did you study at the Strom Thurmond School of Family Values?

4. Do you now see a need for stimulus money? Could go to spelling skills. Compare "Argentina" & "Appalachian"

5. How surprised were you when the space aliens dropped you in Argentina? Did they 'probe' you?

6. Are you being un-American for passing over American affairs for Argentine?

7. Do you plan to join the Silvio Berlusconi Club?

8. Do you plan to join fellow Republican Bob Dole as a spokesman for Viagra?

9. Given your special needs, was Viagra enough?

10. Governor, how much did it cost taxpayers for you to 'go south'?

Suddenly, There Is a Martyr

Then can a I drown an eye, unused to flow. . .

Barack Obama seemed near to a tear on speaking of "the 'heartbreaking' video of a 26-year-old Iranian woman whose last seconds of life were captured by video camera after she was shot on a Tehran street."

"'While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful,' he said, 'we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.'" So he was quoted in The New York Times.

"No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness." But his iron hypocrisy is. He has quite effectively "shut off the world from bearing witness" to American crimes at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and elsewhere.

Obama did not show anything like his emotion over Tehran when Israel took the lives of 1500 Palestinians standing up for justice and self-determination just before he took office. Indeed, he defended Israel's war crimes (as most of the world seems the assault). Many members of Congress were even more enthusiastic in their support for Israel's rampage, including some (like John McCain) who now decry Iranian government crimes in Tehran.

Obama has shown no emotion at all for the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in an unjust, unjustified and unjustifiable American war in Iraq. No emotion for the tens of thousands of civilians dead in Afghanistan, numbers bound to grow as he expands the war there.

The most recent tragedy in Afghanistan? The deaths of some 60 people attending a funeral — killed by in American Predator drone attack. The New York Times picked up the story almost a full day after the BBC had first run it. The Times headlines the report on page A6 of the June 24 edition, but devotes only four column inches (including the standard caveats about 'nothing being confirmed') of about seventeen devoting most of the report to Pakistani efforts against specific members of the Taliban.

The New York Daily News (granted, no 'newspaper of record') splashes "Obama grieves for Iranian martyr Neda" above it's full-page headline "Death That Broke His Heart". The Daily News carries no mention of the Predator attack in Pakistan.

The Wall Street Journal, front page, proclaimed "Obama Rips Iran in Tactical Shift". On page A11, under the headline "Rival of Pakistan Taliban Chief is Assassinated", the paper devoted two paragraphs, two column inches, saying "up to 50 militants were reported killed in suspected missile strikes by U.S. pilotless drones" [emphasis mine]. Militants. Both the Times and the BBC refer to the dead as "people". Only the BBC reports that people on the ground say only five of the dead were militants.

The American media mirrors the president's responses. Outrage over Iran. Silence or actual support for Israeli attacks in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank.

If the Iranian government were to use the standards endorsed by Obama, they would ban (as indeed they have) the distribution of footage like that of suffering protesters on the grounds that it might inflame opinion against the Iranian regime. That is the 'justification' that Obama has used to ban further release of photos of American crimes at Abu Ghraib.

Is it possible Obama does not see the parallel? Is it possible that he has not seen those photos? Not one? If he has seen them, has he not been moved by the injustice of American war criminals?

Obama Decries 'Unjust' Violence

She is dead. A crime justified by nothing more than a brutal determination to silence dissent. Now ask yourself a question: Have you ever seen so graphic an image of an innocent killed by an American attack?

I can think of one — the young girl burned in a napalm attack running naked down a road in Vietnam, over 35 years ago. I can think of no such image, certainly not one receiving such coverage, from an American attack in the past 20 years.

Unjust. Unjustified. Violence.
___________________

President Obama hardened his tone toward Iran on Tuesday, condemning the government for its crackdown against election protesters and accusing Iran’s leaders of fabricating charges against the United States.

In his strongest comments since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, Mr. Obama used unambiguous language to assail the Iranian government during a news conference at the White House, calling himself “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the past few days.”

So reports The New York Times on the new found indignation of Barack Obama.

"Appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments. . . ."

Is it possible that this man is so small-minded that he does not see the absurdity, the hypocrisy in an American president, in this American president, saying such things?

This is the president who refuses categorically to prosecute or even investigate the Americans who drove this country into a war that has seen tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of deaths — for nothing — for the trumped up fictions eagerly accepted and elaborated by American media and politicians .

This is the president who has hired a significant number of leftovers from the Clinton years, Clinton being the man responsible for years of sanctions and bombings in Iraq which caused something like half a million deaths among children. His henchmen including his partner Hilary, Dennis Ross (now ensconced at the White House), among others.

This is the president who has endorsed continued denial of basic human rights to people who have been imprisoned without charge of due process of any kind for years. The justification for continued imprisonment? "If they weren't guilty before, they are likely to have been radicalized by their imprisonment."

The president who has expanded a war in Afghanistan which has to date seen at least 30,000 civilian deaths at American hands.

This president, who has to date done nothing more than pay lip service to Palestinian democratic aspirations for self-determination. Indeed, Obama endorsed Israel's atrocities in Gaza at the end of the Bush term. He has repeatedly reiterated exactly the 'justifications' Israel itself offers for killing hundreds of civilians to get at one (if any) 'militant'.

And he is only months into his reign.


Unjust?

Unjust. Just. Unjustified. Justified. Violence.

The Iranian despots clearly think themselves justified. Theirs is an act, they think, of self-preservation. The Chinese thought themselves justified in their attacks on Tibetans before, during and after the Olympics.

Most notably in recent history, Israel thought itself 'justified' in a murderous campaign against all 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. In that case, many American politicians, pundits and 'journalists' applauded Israeli 'justice'.


The Principle of the Excluded Left

There is actually a principle at work here, one described at length and repeatedly by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and many many others (all from the excluded left).

An act is justified and just by definition, if it is carried out by the United States. This is a broad statement of the principle stated explicitly by Nixon: "If the president does it, that means it is not illegal."

This principle is widely used in the United States. It is the principle in use when The New York Times or NPR or CNN fail to call torture by Americans torture. It the principle at work when Americans react with genuine indignation on the suggestion that the United States has committed crimes against humanity.

It is more than just a dictionary-style definition. It is a defining element of the way most Americans think. It is certainly not isolated to the US. The Chinese clearly just cannot imagine why anyone would oppose their actions in Tibet. The Israelis, in large majority, cannot grasp that people might think that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon. The British, the French, take your pick. Very nearly every aggressive power simply does not see itself as an aggressor.

Journalists and Professional Liars

Excellent 2007 talk by John Pilger — a journalist strictly excluded from the pages of The New York Times, the airwaves of CNN or NPR.

NSA Spies On US — Let's Spy on the Spies

More on this soon. In the meantime, click here or on the image below for the list of US nuclear sites, here in the US and abroad. The big thing here is not the locations — they're widely known — but what is at those locations. Some foreign governments may be surprised by how the US is playing them for patsies. (The US pulled a big one on Iceland during the Reagan years by storing nuclear weapons in Iceland, unbeknownst to the Icelandic government and in direct violation of Icelandic law and promises made by the US to Iceland.)

This is placed on this site as an Act of Political Defiance
of a US Government and an Obama administration
that is spying on US citizens
in direct violation of Article IV of the Bill of Rights
of the Constitution of the United States.

Do not forget that Barack Obama has supported FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), the prison at Bagram in Afghanistan (where prisoners have been abused every bit as much as at Guantánamo). Obama has defended American war criminals, defended American banking criminals.

Obama Welcomes America's Grand Old War Criminal

'President' Obama again demonstrated his commitment to justice and law with his warm welcome to that fat old mass murderer Henry Kissinger.

The Obamobile

Barack Obama Pontificates on 'Values' (Whatever They Are)

According to the BBC, 'President' Obama has said that "the US cannot impose its values on other countries."

But he insisted that "democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion" were "universal values".

"These are values that are important, even when it's hard," he said.

Sounds like a Second Grade reader. "Even when it's hard." How hard would it be to investigate Bush-era war crimes? How hard would it be to refrain from committing more of the same crimes?

Democracy. The majority of Americans, when asked outside the push-poling of the Republicans, Democrats, New York Times, CNN and NPR, overwhelming support single-payer health care. The 'president' has categorically ruled out single-payer. The majority of Americans oppose the Obama-Geithner-Bernanke kickbacks to Wall Street. Most Americans are tired of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan. Most Americans think torturers should be prosecuted.

So much for Obama's Democracy.

Rule of Law. Torture, bombing civilians, bankrupting the United States while passing the bill on to common people of modest means.

'President' Obama has made clear his values: Serve the rich, hobble everyone else. Apologize to foreigners even as you bomb them. Cultivate the Obama Cult of Personality.

. . .

O, who r u, little i?
all z z zing away
the daze of our li(v)es?

Jonathan Turley on Obama'sAnti-Democratic, Unconstitutional Tyrany

Transforminators — The Future Is Yesterday

Rachel Maddow Skewers Obama'sAnti-Constitutional Proposals

Liars, Damn Liars, and Barack Obama

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship offer comments on Barack Obama's reversal on single payer health care — a nice summary of how the discussion on health care hasn't jumped the tracks, it's never even left the station.

Moyers and Winship are fair, insightful and keep their opinions modest and moderate.

I'll state things more dramatically. Barack Obama is a self-serving liar who, as with the bailout, is sacrificing the well-being of the American people in the pursuit of political gain.

I see no evidence of any kind that Obama is making unavoidable sacrifices to the political reality of the United States. Almost wholly, systematically excluded from Obama's 'team of rivals' are the voices of Labor, Human Rights, Single Payer health care, . . . . I say almost because, as Amy Goodman revealed in an interview with Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Obama will tip his hat to, say, human rights lest he be susceptible to the charge of hypocrisy by ignoring preogressives absolutely.

But this is the president who began the discussion of health care reform by ruling out single payer, just as Bill Clinton did in 1993. This is the president who, through his puppet Timothy Geithner, ruled out nationalizing banks despite numerous calls to do so by leading, non-right-wing economists. This is the president who has repeatedly turned to the very architects of economic calamity to 'oversee' and 'regulate' the reform.

I cannot overstate how revolting I find this 'democrat', a liar in the deepest sense, a con-artist, a traitor to the people who (still overwhelming delusional) voted for him in droves.

Here the text of the Moyers/Winship essay:

Rx and the Single Payer

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program."

Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.

There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."

Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed -- Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what's happened to single payer?

A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," the President replied. "That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.

"The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy."

So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, health care is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.

Nor is single payer getting much coverage in the mainstream media. Barely a mention was given to the hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who came to Washington last week to protest the absence of official debate over single payer.

Is it the proverbial tree falling in the forest, making a noise that journalists can't or won't hear? Could the indifference of the press be because both the President of the United States and Congress have been avoiding single payer like, well, like the plague? As we see so often, government officials set the agenda by what they do and don't talk about.

Instead, President Obama is looking for consensus, seeking peace among all the parties involved. Except for single payer advocates. At that big White House powwow in Washington last week, the President asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him. "What's brought us all together today is a recognition that we can't continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years," he said, "that costs are out of control; and that reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait."

They came, listened, made nice for the photo op. and while they failed to participate in a hearty chorus of "Kumbaya," they did promise to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. The press ate it up -- and Mr. Obama was a happy man.

Meanwhile, some of us looking on -- those of us who've been around a long time -- were scratching our heads. Hadn't we heard this before?

Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about the government clamping down. When he got to the White House, drug makers, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors -- the very people who only a decade earlier had done everything they could to strangle Medicare in the cradle -- seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily."

So Uncle Sam backed down, and you guessed it. Pretty soon medical costs were soaring higher than ever.

By the early '90s, the public was once again hurting in the pocketbook. Feeling our pain, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried again, coming up with a plan only slightly more complicated than the schematics for an F-18 fighter jet.

This time the health industry acted more like Tony Soprano than Mother Teresa. It bludgeoned the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived -- paid for, of course, from the industry's swollen profits.

As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again they said don't worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.

If you believed that, we've got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we'd like to sell you.

So anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the health care industry's latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry abut the voluntary reductions. "We believe that we can do it without undermining the viability of companies," he said, "and in effect enhancing the payment to physicians and hospitals." In other words, their so-called voluntary "reforms" will in no way interfere with maximizing profits.

Also last week, John Lechleiter, the chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly, blasted universal health care in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I do not believe that policymakers have yet arrived at a full and complete diagnosis of what's wrong and what's right with U.S. health care," he declared. "And I am very concerned that some of the proposed policies -- the treatments, to continue my metaphor -- will have unintended side-effects that make our situation worse."

So why bother with the charm offensive on Pennsylvania Avenue? Could it be, as some critics suggest, a Trojan horse, getting the health industry a place at the table so they can leap up at the right moment and again kill any real reform?

Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren't waiting for that moment. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, they've spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.

The Washington Post's health care reform blog reported Monday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama's public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients' Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They've hired a public relations firm called CRC -- Creative Response Concepts. You remember them -- the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry's service record in Vietnam.

The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, Rick Scott. Who's he? As a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, "He hopes people don't Google his name."

Scott's not a doctor; he just acts like one on TV. He's an entrepreneur who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Feds and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.

Rick Scott got off, you should excuse the expression, scot-free. Better than, in fact. According to published reports, he waltzed away with a $10 million severance deal and $300 million worth of stock. So much for voluntarily lowering overhead.

With medical costs rising six percent per year, that's who's offering himself as a spokesman for the health care industry. Speaking up for single payer is Geri Jenkins, a president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee -- a registered nurse with literal hands-on experience.

"We're there around the clock," she told our colleague Jessica Wang. "So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. Now, you can talk about policy but when you're staring at a human face it's a whole different story."

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers. Research provided by editorial producer Rebecca Wharton.

SEE ALSO

The Bill Moyers Journal, 22 May 2009. And, from The Bill Moyers Journal website:

Public Citizen Health Research Group
"Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts"

Physicians for a National Health Program
"Physicians for a National Health Program is a non-profit research and education organization of 16,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance."

Side-by-side comparison the major health care reform proposals.
Assembled by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

"Why Not the Best? Results from the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008"
THE COMMONWEALTH FUND, July 17, 2008.

Senate Finance Committee white paper on health care
White paper by Senator Max Baucus's committee discussed in the interview.

"Obamacare to Come: Seven Bad Ideas for Health Care Reform"
By Michael D. Tanner, CATO INSTITUTE, May 21, 2009.

"The Moral-Hazard Myth"
By Malcolm Gladwell, THE NEW YORKER, August 29, 2005.

"TIMES TOPICS: Health Care Reform"
THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Rights? Who Gives a Damn. (Not Barack Obama.)

Rumor has it that (President) Barack Obama taught constitutional law — at the University of Chicago. Given the right-wing leaning of many at Chicago, he might be forgiven if he is hazy on the notion that human beings have rights. But he also, according to rumor, studied at Harvard, home then to the late John Rawls (though also to the likes of Charles Fried and Alan Dershowitz).

One way or another, it seems at least plausible that Obama may have, at least once, have come across this line:

Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.

This comes from John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. It expresses one of the core principles of Western moral thought, one that has spread around the world and motivated countless movements for human rights.

It a notion that Barack Obama is, despite his rhetoric, abandoning in his support for Bush-era crimes supposedly in the name of "national security".

The simple fact is this: There are some acts that cannot be justified, no matter what the 'good' that is promoted by the act. This is a notion that Americans embrace with near universality (the likes of Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, Condoleezza Rice being among the few exceptions). It is worth noting that no one is promoting the "ticking time-bomb" argument with regard to strictly domestic criminals.

The only reason that Obama might get away with his criminal denial of rights to Guantánamo detainees is that they are (1) Arab (or Afghan, or 'Middle Eastern') and (2) Muslim. There is a long history of due process being accorded to the most dangerous, most reprehensible individuals. Think of some American organized crime bosses, or Nazi war criminals, or serial killers. Surely profoundly dangerous. In the case of organized crime figures, surely individuals with wide networks that could threaten communities home to the prisons holding these criminals.

I find ite nearly impossible to believe that Barack Obama, whom people routinely describe as the 'smartest person' they've ever met, doesn't grasp this. That he is willing to sacrifice so fundamental a priniciple of American law for the sake of political expediency condemns him and his presidency to the same moral status as his loathesome predecessor.

Alien — The Musical

Coming soon to Broadway! Alien — The Musical!

Check back here for more on this exciting new musical extravaganza! Auteur Hugh Sansom is currently seeking a composer to collaborate on this new, innovative musical.

AlienTheMusical.com will soon be live with updates on creative development.

Barack Obama Is a Public Servant

Neither President Obama nor his predecessors nor any of his peers in Washington or in state and city governments around the nation seem to remember that they work for us. They are our servants.

Why do people stand as the president enters a room? Why do they say, "Mr. President"?

They should be address us — The People — with honorifics.

But now, rather than respect public demands, Mr. Obama is treating us again with the contempt for the common people that he has displayed throughout the bailout. He and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have resolved that none shall be prosecuted in the case of Bush administration war crimes. Granted, this has not been officially proclaimed, but we now have reports that Holder's justice department has determined not to press criminal charges against the authors of the "torture memos" (Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury). I'll eat my hat if they do anything more than offer vague criticisms of the conduct of even the most reprehensible of the Bush brigade.

Just to review, here is the short list of Bush-era war criminals:
Remind us, Mr. Obama, why did we vote for you? Why did we choose you to work for us? And just what is it, if anything, that you plan to do for us? You've made it fairly clear:

• no national health care (rather, some handwaving that will keep insurers happy)

• bailouts for billionaires, lifetimes of tax burdens for The People

• coddling of Republicans and right-wingers

• continued war in Iraq, and ramped-up war in Afghanistan and Pakistan

• rumblings of attacks on social security

• the beginnings of a capitulation to major corporate polluters

Yep, sounds like a mighty big change.

Manhattan, President's Aide, . . .

The newest developments in the spread of swine flu include a 20 year old student at Pace University in Manhattan and an aide to President Obama. This follows one day on the first death in the United States (a terribly sad case of a 23 month old toddler).

What is notable here is not the spread of the illness, but the persistent misrepresentations of government officials from President Obama down to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York and on. These officials have consistently said that the spread is something to take seriously but that there is no substantial reason for concern on the part of the public.

Mayor Bloomberg's response has approached being dismissive, even glib.

Honesty combined with calls for calm and caution is needed here. Not dismissiveness and not belittling of concerns people have.

Economic Treason?

At what point does an official's abrogation of duty cease to be mere incompetence and rise to the level of crime? At what point does a public official's crimes rise to the level of treason, particularly when those crimes seem entirely domestic in scope?

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

So reads the Constitution. George W. Bush gave us a new definition of "enemy," one President Obama has yet to reject. Nevertheless, it is little more than rhetoric to charge Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with treason. To do so seriously, we would have to suppose that the Oligarchs of Wall Street are enemies of the United States. That case could be made. They have enriched themselves at the expense of 300 million Americans. But we know that case will never be made by anyone other than lefty ranters like yours truly.

As president of New York Federal Reserve, Geithner was merely a conniving, grovelling servant of the American Oligarchs. Now he is conniving, grovelling servant endorsed, abetted, and presumably directed by President Obama. (Obama is playing the political plausible deniability well by just keeping largely silent, except for the occasional pitch for stocks.)

This administration, a public 'champion' of transparency, has recently been forced, by lawsuit, to make its and Bush's scheming public. So we now know who Geithner, a public servant, really served.

The New York Times reports,

Last June, with a financial hurricane gathering force, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. convened the nation’s economic stewards for a brainstorming session. What emergency powers might the government want at its disposal to confront the crisis? he asked.

Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer. He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.

The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

[...]

But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription. Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.

And more often than not, Mr. Geithner has been a leading architect of those bailouts, the activist at the head of the pack. He was the federal regulator most willing to “push the envelope,” said H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent Wall Street lawyer who spoke frequently with Mr. Geithner.

Today, Mr. Geithner is Treasury secretary, and as he seeks to rebuild the nation’s fractured financial system with more taxpayer assistance and a regulatory overhaul, he finds himself a locus of discontent.

Even as banks complain that the government has attached too many intrusive strings to its financial assistance, a range of critics — lawmakers, economists and even former Federal Reserve colleagues — say that the bailout Mr. Geithner has played such a central role in fashioning is overly generous to the financial industry at taxpayer expense.

An examination of Mr. Geithner’s five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions.

His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry’s interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records.

[...]

[F]or all his ties to Citi, Mr. Geithner repeatedly missed or overlooked signs that the bank — along with the rest of the financial system — was falling apart. When he did spot trouble, analysts say, his responses were too measured, or too late.

In 2005, for instance, Mr. Geithner raised questions about how well Wall Street was tracking its trading of complex financial products known as derivatives, yet he pressed reforms only at the margins. Problems with the risky and opaque derivatives market later amplified the economic crisis.

As late as 2007, Mr. Geithner advocated measures that government studies said would have allowed banks to lower their reserves. When the crisis hit, banks were vulnerable because their financial cushion was too thin to protect against large losses.

In fashioning the bailout, his drive to use taxpayer money to backstop faltering firms overrode concerns that such a strategy would encourage more risk-taking in the future. In one bailout instance, Mr. Geithner fought a proposal to levy fees on banks that would help protect taxpayers against losses.

The bailout has left the Fed holding a vast portfolio of troubled securities. To manage them, Mr. Geithner gave three no-bid contracts to BlackRock, an asset-management firm with deep ties to the New York Fed.

To Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia and a critic of the bailout, Mr. Geithner’s actions suggest that he came to share Wall Street’s regulatory philosophy and world view.

[...]

A bill sent recently by the Treasury to Capitol Hill would give the Obama administration extensive new powers to inject money into or seize systemically important firms in danger of failure. It was drafted in large measure by Davis Polk & Wardwell, a law firm that represents many banks and the financial industry’s lobbying group. Mr. Geithner also hired Davis Polk to represent the New York Fed during the A.I.G. bailout.

Condoleezza Rice — War Criminal

Condoleezza Rice, guilty of crimes against humanity.

Britain's Guardian newspaper, among others, has confirmed what we already knew — that Condoleezza Rice was just as vile a war criminal as anyone in the Bush administration. Indeed, it now appears that she provided the first official approval for waterboarding. She has worked harder than most of the Bush war criminals to cover her tracks, but the report newly released by the Senate intelligence committee lays bare her role.

Moreover, this means that she lied to Congress and the American people last fall.

Rice gave early approval for CIA waterboarding,
Senate report reveals

• Go-ahead in July 2002 is first known official approval
• Finding suggests greater Rice role than she admitted

Condoleezza Rice gave permission for the CIA to use waterboarding techniques on the alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah as early as July 2002, the first known official approval for the technique, according to a report released by the Senate intelligence committee yesterday.

The revelation indicates that Rice, who at the time was national security adviser and went on to be secretary of state, played a greater role than she admitted in written testimony last autumn.

The committee's narrative report (pdf) also shows that dissenting legal views about the interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly. The mood within the Bush administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a December 2002 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" he asked.

The intelligence committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate armed services committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the harsh interrogation programme of the CIA and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

The latest report, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, indicates that Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding Zubaydah to the then CIA director, George Tenet, in July 2002.

Last autumn, Rice acknowledged to the armed services committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Within days, the justice department secretly approved the use of waterboarding. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002.

In the years that followed, according to yesterday's report, there were numerous internal legal reviews, suggesting government lawyers were concerned that methods such as waterboarding might violate federal laws against torture and the US constitution. Bush administration lawyers continued to validate the programme, but the CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding after 2005.

The 232-page armed services committee report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercut the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

Its release yesterday added to the debate raging within the US after President Barack Obama, who regards the techniques as torture, opened the way for possible prosecution of members of the Bush administration.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots." The report shows a paper trail going from Rumsfeld to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq.

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, revealed that the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned the morality and the reliability of information gained.

The report condemned the techniques adopted, saying: "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

The report disclosed that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, but the armed forces pointed out this was intended to train troops in resisting torture during the Korean war, rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods.

A New York Times report says that, even then, it was appreciated that the techniques induced false confessions from the American personnel on which it was tried. The paper adds that the US prosecuted torturers who employed waterboarding in war crimes trials following the second world war and that it was a technique known to have been used by despots including Pol Pot in Cambodia.

The New York Times says administration officials briefed by Tenet were not aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading the CIA to use waterboarding had never conducted a real interrogation and that the justice department lawyer most responsible for declaring the method legal had "idiosyncratic ideas" that the department would later renounce.

Bush administration memos released by Obama last week were confined to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA secret prisons around the world, but the Senate report goes wider, including prisons run by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the Year of Our Obama . . .

The cult of Obama is taking some hits. The "hope and change" mantra is proving to mean change, as in the loss of hope. Obama is looking like a coward or an accomplice in Wall Street's looting of the United States. He is looking like a coward or an accomplice in the immunizing of Bush-era war criminals against prosecution for crimes domestic and foreign.

The issues of economics are so complicated and so veiled by the secrecy guaranteed by Geithner, Bernanke, Summers — all under the aegis of Obama — that it is difficult even for those well-versed in economics to describe clearly what is happening. Not so in the case of torture.

Moreover, in the case of Bush torture policy, the public sentiment is unambiguously and overwhelmingly in favor of investigation and probably prosecution. Yet the coward Obama won't even go so far as to investigate.

Jeremy Scahill, author of the key study of Blackwater's crimes in Iraq, has an excellent essay examining Obama's stance on investigation and prosecution.

This development [release of a new report on Bush torture policy] comes as the movement to try to hold senior Bush administration officials, their torturers and their lawyers accountable for their crimes is gaining new momentum. President Obama’s comments on Tuesday, made during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah, has been reported in the press as Obama keeping the door open to prosecuting former Bush administration officials. What he actually indicated is that he may take the position that it “is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws” and is open to Congress forming a bipartisan commission to conduct an inquiry. The statement on Attorney General Eric Holder is perhaps a small step forward, but the “commission” idea is very problematic (more on this in a moment). The fact is that the president already did incredible damage to the accountability movement, and possibly acted unconstitutionally and in contravention of international law, by publicly—and repeatedly—stating that he will not allow prosecution of the CIA torturers because they were “in good faith” following evil orders. One of the most recent comments by Obama about this was made at CIA headquarters:

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.”

Legal experts have pointed out that the decision not to prosecute the torturers was not Obama’s to make. “The attorney general is entrusted with upholding the law where crimes are committed, not making a political decision as to whether the president believes it is expedient to do so,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights.

[...]

Scahill notes that Senator Diane Feinstein seems to be taking a "sit on it 'til things blow over" approach, much as the Senate did in the Iran-Contra investigations during the Reagan administration.

President Obama seems be a master of nothing so much as the balancing act of political neutrality, in the service of . . . what? Self-preservation, I think. Anyone from a country with a more blatantly corrupt government would recognize the pattern. Corrupt officials of one party ensure their own immunity by guaranteeing that of the other equally corrupt parties. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Just as Wall Street is proving wholly immune to accountability for robbing the American people blind, so too are our elected leaders proving immune to accountability for crimes against humanity. This is an essential feature of oligarchy.

It's 35 years since we last really held a president - Nixon - even remotely accountable. Reagan committed impeachable offenses, and Congress ultimately did nothing. (I remember well seeing Rep. Thomas Foley responding to a reporter's question saying that it seemed that impeachable offenses might have been committed.)

George W. Bush surpassed Nixon and Reagan combined in the sheer criminality of his administration. But Obama, who will in due course commit his own crimes in Afghanistan or in abetting the annihilation of the American economy, will in due course seek his own immunity. And in the case of torture specifically, plenty of Democrats were happy to applaud as long as it seemed the president enjoyed some popularity.

The general point is, that the United States has a leadership -- public and private, Democratic and Republican -- that wants, expects, demands immunity from the will of the people. It has passed the point of a mere desire to being understood as a right. The Divine Right of Oligarchs. Look at the response of Jane Harman to being subjected to a legal version of the very invasion of privacy that she supported in illegal instances.

The Quiet Sun

Amateur astronomers have probably already heard that the weather on the sun has been remarkably tame all year. The BBC has a story on astronomers scratching their heads and on possible climatic effects on Earth.

'Quiet Sun' baffling astronomers
By Pallab Ghosh

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

According to Prof Louise Hara of University College London, it is unclear why this is happening or when the Sun is likely to become more active again.

"There's no sign of us coming out of it yet," she told BBC News.

"At the moment, there are scientific papers coming out suggesting that we'll be going into a normal period of activity soon.

"Others are suggesting we'll be going into another minimum period - this is a big scientific debate at the moment."

In the mid-17th Century, a quiet spell - known as the Maunder Minimum - lasted 70 years, and led to a "mini ice-age".

This has resulted in some people suggesting that a similar cooling might offset the impact of climate change.

According to Prof Mike Lockwood of Southampton University, this view is too simplistic.

"I wish the Sun was coming to our aid but, unfortunately, the data shows that is not the case," he said.

Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun's activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.

"If you look carefully at the observations, it's pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that's been going on for a couple of decades.

"If the Sun's dimming were to have a cooling effect, we'd have seen it by now."

'Middle ground'

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

Professor Lockwood believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years.

He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum marked its low point.

"We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood.

"We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum."

He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

"What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid."

Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.

And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.

No-one knows how the centuries-long waxing and waning of the Sun works. However, astronomers now have space telescopes studying the Sun in detail.

According to Prof Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, this current quiet period gives astronomers a unique opportunity.

"This is very exciting because as astronomers we've never seen anything like this before in our lifetimes," he said.

"We have spacecraft up there to study the Sun in phenomenal detail. With these telescopes we can study this minimum of activity in a way that we could not have done so in the past."

Follow-Up on Obama's Tacit Endorsement of Torture

Two days ago I wrote, "Obama's rejection of law could itself constitute a violation of international law." The BBC now reports that Manfred Nowak, UN special raporteur on torture has said that, "US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it."

CIA torture exemption 'illegal'

US President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA agents who used torture tactics is a violation of international law, a UN expert says.

The UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, says the US is bound under the UN Convention against Torture to prosecute those who engage in it.

Mr Obama released four "torture memos" outlining harsh interrogation methods sanctioned by the Bush administration.

Mr Nowak has called for an independent review and compensation for victims.

"The United States, like all other states that are part of the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court," Mr Nowak told the Austrian daily Der Standard.

The memos revealed by Mr Obama approved techniques including simulated drowning, week-long sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and the use of painful positions.

Torture trials

Mr Obama on Thursday said he would not prosecute under anti-torture laws CIA personnel who relied in good faith on Bush administration legal opinions issued after the 11 September attacks.

Mr Nowak - who is due to travel to Washington to meet with officials - said that could be a mitigating factor, but does not absolve those involved.

"The fact that you carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility," he was quoted as saying by AP news agency.

Mr Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said US courts could still try those suspected of carrying out torture, as Mr Obama has not sought an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel.

He called for an investigation by an independent commission before suspects were tried and said it was important that all victims receive compensation.

Human rights groups have criticised President Obama's decision to protect CIA interrogators, saying charges were necessary to prevent future abuses and hold people accountable.

President Obama banned the use of the controversial interrogation techniques in his first week in office.

Olbermann on Obama

Too simplistic a view offered here, especially on what happened post-WW1, but refreshing to see that a moderately liberal voice will challenge the lies that Obama is offering.

Obama Rules: "Torturers are OK If They Were Following Orders"

It is "time for reflection, not retribution."

"In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carrying out their duties relying in good faith upon the legal advice from the department of justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

Thus Barack Obama joins the ranks of apologists for American war crimes, offering the conclusively rebutted defense that "they were following orders." Pathetic, shameful, revolting. And sufficient reason to reject a second term for a 'compromising' toad who seems bent upon joining the ranks of American war criminals with an expanded war in Afghanistan. And, as if this were not enough, Obama has embarked on the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the rich in American, and perhaps world, history.

Eric Holder, already distinguished in his contempt for the average American, added "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the justice department." One wonders how far this insane illogic could be carried.

And Leon Panetta, CIA Director, jumped in also, promising legal and financial help for any CIA employees who might face Congressional or foreign legal or court actions: "CIA’s detention and interrogation effort was authorized and approved by our government. For that reason, as I have continued to make clear, I will strongly oppose any effort to investigate or punish those who followed the guidance of the Department of Justice.... In addition, the Department will provide legal representation to CIA personnel subject to investigations relating to these operations."

Even investigation is being ruled out. (Wouldn't want to turn up any info that might undermine the Obama line.)

The Obama administration understanding of law is nothing more than an assertion by Obama that "I am the law". It is legal just in case the executive branch says it is legal. Remember Nixon saying that "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal"? Obama has tacitly endorsed the legal strategy of the Bush administration: An officially contrived legal excuse is all that is needed to act illegally.

The American Civil Liberties Union has noted that this effective immunity is being granted before we know all, or even most, of the facts. Much remains, and will remain, secret and uninvestigated.

Also unaddressed, though the implications seems clear, is whether Obama will hold accountable the higher-ups who provided the legal excuse — Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rice, Yoo, Addington, Bybee, and others. And could Obama administration figures become liable if they provide safe harbor for known war criminals?

It must again be noted that Obama was a professor of law at what is routinely touted as the nation's leading law school — Harvard, once and future home of war criminals, apologists for war criminals and training ground for architects of economic disaster.

Sadly, Spain has backed away from the precedent it established in the case of Chilean president Augusto Pinochet. Spain's attorney general said, "If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States."

Let us summarize some of the points that are either lost on a dimwitted Obama or deliberately ignored or dismissed by a malicious Obama:

• The Obama administration is still keeping classified most of the Bush documents and is swearing off investigation of Bush actions.
  

• Ignorance of the law is no defense. Willfully twisting the law certainly isn't.

• Obama, AG Eric Holder, and CIA Director Leon Panetta have effectively granted federally-backed immunity for American war criminals.

• The US has repeatedly and explicitly rejected exactly the kind of defense Obama now offers for American war criminals. This includes both the precedents of US actions against foreign nationals and several long-standing American treaty obligations. Indeed, Obama's rejection of law could itself constitute a violation of international law.

• The defense is the notorious Nuremberg defense: "We were following orders." Wrong wrong wrong.

The issue ultimately is one of Justice, and once again the United States is telling the world that there is one standard for the world and another for the United States.

When does Justice apply? Common Sense emphatically says always. President Obama says "when it suits us". This is commonly called 'pragmatic' or 'realistic'. In truth, it is cowardly, craven, criminal. If 'pragmatism' and 'realism' are frames for justice, when will a crime be a crime? If Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez (or or their Obama adminstration counterparts) say killing civilians is legal and US forces simply kill people on the street, are they exempt from prosecution because they 'believed they were acting legally'?

On the Bright Side

A terrific surprise on something called Britain's Got Talent. Also available in its entirety on YouTube.

And the Military Budget

ABC, NPR, CNN, The New York Times were falling all over themselves to applaud the 'drastic change' in the approach to the Pentagon and the military budget. A four percent reduction was described as "huge", "drastic", etc. Meanwhile, cutting entire social programs is routinely described as 'trimming waste'. It is true, of course, that the Pentagon's gravy train has finally been superceded by something more important — the Bailout for Billionaires. So now we see the true hierarchy in the US — rich fucks first (including our 'representatives'), then the military, then the rest of us sorry shites.

Once again, it took lefties and comedians to get it right. So here is Jon Stewart's take:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Military Budget Cuts
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Stephen Colbert Says About Ted Stevens What the Times, CNN and NPR Won't Dare Say

I have never heard NPR come to the defense of a liberal, much less a lefty, but they sure as hell sounded like they were in Ted Stevens's camp this past week as the former senator's conviction was overturned on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct.

There is little if any evidence in Stevens's record of support for the rights of the accused against prosecutors or even of upholding long-standing constitutional principles like habeus corpus. Yet here he is standing on his constitutional rights. It took Stephen Colbert to note this irony because the Times and NPR are to cowardly or too conservative to do so.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alpha Dog of the Week - Ted Stevens
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President Obama Tells Muslims, "Some of My Best Friends Are Muslim."

Before the Turkish Parliament, President Obama has asserted that the United States "is not and never will be at war with Islam". Never mind that the war currently under way, now to be prolonged in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was early characterized by George W. Bush as a "Crusade."

President Obama has to be given some credit here. No president before him and few American political leaders have spoken warmly to Muslims. Moreover, he still faces an American population with a significant minority that persists in insisting that he is Muslim. We live in a nation where members of Congress and prominent popular speakers (almost all on the right wing) happily assert that no Muslim should be allowed to serve in Congress, that Muslims should be forced to take loyalty oaths, and worse.

As the Times noted in an April 6th story, "Mr. Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, is calculating that the benefits of demonstrating to the Muslim world that Americans are not antagonistic toward it outweigh the potential political fallout back home." It is a sobering commentary on the state of tolerance in the United States that the President must fear the political repercussions of merely seeking closer ties with another people.