The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan

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Tom Andrews
May 7, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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President Obama said it best when he talked about U.S. policy in Afghanistan on the CBS news program 60 Minutes last month: "There's got to be an exit strategy".

Well, there isn't one. There is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy. The Appropriations Committee is expected to dutifully vote out their bill Thursday and send it to the floor of the House for a vote next week.

I realize how hard it would be for Congressional Democrats to require the Obama administration to develop an exit strategy as a condition for continued war funding. After all, this is our guy, right? The last thing our guy needs is a Democratic Congress second guessing, making demands, and putting conditions on the war funding.

But this is exactly what we and the administration need precisely because he is our guy.

Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. This is exactly the right time to engage the administration in a respectful but critical discussion about where this military escalation is leading us.

Sending tens of thousands of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan-without a plan to get them out-is a bad idea for many reasons.

First off, the ink on the President's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan wasn't even dry before the Pentagon acknowledged that it already has a request in to the administration for an additional 10,000 troops. What's worse, there are indications the Pentagon has even more requests waiting in the wings.

The fact is, there are simply not enough U.S. soldiers to secure Afghanistan. Estimates as to what would be required range for 200,000 to 600,000 troops. And, don't look to our NATO allies to be of any help. The leader of Canada's Liberal Party told me last week that the only way Canada citizens would support sending any troops was if there was a clear exit strategy with a date certain for their withdrawal. As a result, all Canadian soldiers will be on their way home by 2011.

Those of us who live on this side of the border should be demanding the same from our political leaders.

The lack of an exit strategy is already making things worse in Afghanistan. Failing to say when and how we will remove our forces is playing into the hands of Taliban leaders who are using the presence of our troops on Afghanistan soil-and the announced escalation-as their most powerful recruitment tool. The New York Times reports that the escalation has mended fences between the otherwise fractious leadership of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who announced that they are joining forces to fight the new troops as they arrive.

A BBC/ABC public opinion poll of Afghans reveals that fully 80% of the population is opposed to an escalation of American troops. Many of those who are shooting at our soldiers are not jihadists; they are proud Afghans who are famously sensitive to the presence of foreign forces on their soil.

The lack of an exit strategy also works against President Obama's regional strategy-outreach to the neighboring nations who have zero interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan because it would threaten their national security as much, if not more, than our own. How likely will China, Russia and particularly Iran be to join the U.S. if the outcome might be tens of thousands of U.S. troops on their border?

We need Congress to step up now and help prevent what has now become "Obama's War" from turning into a quagmire that undermines, if not destroys, the critically important agenda the President is fighting to pass here at home.

We need to step up too. We can start by contacting Members of Congress and urging them not to succumb to a vote-now, ask questions later approach to war funding even if it is our guy who is asking for it. We need a critical check-and-balance before it is too late to stop an endless war in Afghanistan.

The war spending bill is on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

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Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.

Stressing the Positive

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Paul Krugman
May 7, 2009 - The New York Times

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Hooray! The banking crisis is over! Let's party! O.K., maybe not.

In the end, the actual release of the much-hyped bank stress tests on Thursday came as an anticlimax. Everyone knew more or less what the results would say: some big players need to raise more capital, but over all, the kids, I mean the banks, are all right. Even before the results were announced, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told us they would be "reassuring."

But whether you actually should feel reassured depends on who you are: a banker, or someone trying to make a living in another profession.

I won't weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn't have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks' assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A rigorous audit it wasn't.

But focusing on the process can distract from the larger picture. What we're really seeing here is a decision on the part of President Obama and his officials to muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.

It's a strategy that might work. After all, right now the banks are lending at high interest rates, while paying virtually no interest on their (government-insured) deposits. Given enough time, the banks could be flush again.

But it's important to see the strategy for what it is and to understand the risks.

Remember, it was the markets, not the government, that in effect declared the banks undercapitalized. And while market indicators of distrust in banks, like the interest rates on bank bonds and the prices of bank credit-default swaps, have fallen somewhat in recent weeks, they're still at levels that would have been considered inconceivable before the crisis.

As a result, the odds are that the financial system won't function normally until the crucial players get much stronger financially than they are now. Yet the Obama administration has decided not to do anything dramatic to recapitalize the banks.

Can the economy recover even with weak banks? Maybe. Banks won't be expanding credit any time soon, but government-backed lenders have stepped in to fill the gap. The Federal Reserve has expanded its credit by $1.2 trillion over the past year; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become the principal sources of mortgage finance. So maybe we can let the economy fix the banks instead of the other way around.

But there are many things that could go wrong.

It's not at all clear that credit from the Fed, Fannie and Freddie can fully substitute for a healthy banking system. If it can't, the muddle-through strategy will turn out to be a recipe for a prolonged, Japanese-style era of high unemployment and weak growth.

Actually, a multiyear period of economic weakness looks likely in any case. The economy may no longer be plunging, but it's very hard to see where a real recovery will come from. And if the economy does stay depressed for a long time, banks will be in much bigger trouble than the stress tests — which looked only two years ahead — are able to capture.

Finally, given the possibility of bigger losses in the future, the government's evident unwillingness either to own banks or let them fail creates a heads-they-win-tails-we-lose situation. If all goes well, the bankers will win big. If the current strategy fails, taxpayers will be forced to pay for another bailout.

But what worries me most about the way policy is going isn't any of these things. It's my sense that the prospects for fundamental financial reform are fading.

Does anyone remember the case of H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent New York lawyer whom The Times has described as a "Wall Street éminence grise"? He briefly made the news in March when he reportedly withdrew his name after being considered a top pick for deputy Treasury secretary.

Well, earlier this week, Mr. Cohen told an audience that the future of Wall Street won't be very different from its recent past, declaring, "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system." Hey, that little thing about causing the worst global slump since the Great Depression? Never mind.

Those are frightening words. They suggest that while the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration continue to insist that they're committed to tighter financial regulation and greater oversight, Wall Street insiders are taking the mildness of bank policy so far as a sign that they'll soon be able to go back to playing the same games as before.

So as I said, while bankers may find the results of the stress tests "reassuring," the rest of us should be very, very afraid.

Civilians Pay Price of War from Above

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Robert Fisk
May 7, 2009 - The Independent/UK

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Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as "human shields" by the Taliban and we shall say that we "deeply regret" innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it's all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.

When the Americans destroy Iraqi homes, there is an inquiry. And oh how the Israelis love inquiries (though they rarely reveal anything). It's the history of the modern Middle East. We are always right and when we are not, we (sometimes) apologise and then we blame it all on the "terrorists". Yes, we know the throat-cutters and beheaders and suicide bombers are quite prepared to slaughter the innocent.

But it was a sign of just how terrible the Afghan slaughter was that the powerless President Hamid Karzai sounded like a beacon of goodness yesterday appealing for "a higher platform of morality" in waging war, that we should conduct war as "better human beings".

And of course, the reason is quite simple. We live, they die. We don't risk our brave lads on the ground - not for civilians. Not for anything. Fire phosphorus shells into Fallujah. Fire tank shells into Najaf. We know we kill the innocent. Israel does exactly the same. It said the same after its allies massacred 1,700 at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 and in the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Lebanon in 2006 and after the death of more than a thousand Palestinians in Gaza this year.

And if we kill some gunmen at the same time - "terrorists", of course - then it is the same old "human shield" tactic and ultimately the "terrorists" are to blame. Our military tactics are now fully aligned with Israel.

The reality is that international law forbids armies from shooting wildly in crowded tenements and bombing wildly into villages - even when enemy forces are present - but that went by the board in our 1991 bombing of Iraq and in Bosnia and in Nato's Serbia war and in our 2001 Afghan adventure and in 2003 in Iraq. Let's have that inquiry. And "human shields". And terror, terror, terror.

Something else I notice. Innocent or "terrorists", civilians or Taliban, always it is the Muslims who are to blame.

Florida's GOP Governor to Be Outed in Explosive Documentary Released Today

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"Outrage" film goes after closeted hypocritical Republicans who push anti-gay legislation.

John Byrne
May 8, 2009 - Raw Story

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The Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, who is strongly considering a run for Senate, will be outed in a independent film being released today.

The film, Outrage, tracks the outings of prominent gay political figures, such as Crist and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. It's being produced by Magnolia Pictures and will appear in Landmark Theaters across the country.

"Using some firsthand accounts of former sexual partners, old campaign footage (to occasionally humorous effect) and commentary from gay political media watchdogs, the film makes the case for each man's homosexuality, and presents his lifetime gay rights voting record," according to one reviewer. "In each instance, the disconnect is staggering.

"The usual suspects are all there: Craig, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former New York mayor Ed Koch, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, former Rep. Ed Schrock, even dusty McCarthy relic Roy Cohn."

A top Republican leader signaled Wednesday that Crist will likely enter the Senate race for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who is quitting.

"All the signals I've been getting is that he probably will [get into the race], but I don't want to make any announcements for him, because he's the one who will ultimately decide whether to pull the trigger or not," Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senator John Cornyn told Politico for Thursday editions.

Cornyn told the site that if another conservative ran, he wouldn't pick sides — also eyeing the post is former Florida House Speaker Mario Rubio, who announced his candidacy Tuesday.

But Crist's only contender wouldn't be Rubio. It would also be himself.

Crist was "first" outed in a 2006 Palm Beach Post article by Bob Norman, prior to his election as governor.

A young rising star in the Republican Party has boasted to witnesses of his sexual relationship with Charlie Crist, the frontrunner in the Florida governor's race who has repeatedly denied that he is gay.

The GOP staffer, 21-year-old Jason Wetherington, told friends at separate social functions in August that he had sex with Crist, according to two credible and independent sources who heard Wetherington make the claim first-hand.

Wetherington, who recently worked as a field director for U.S. Senate candidate Katherine Harris and currently works for state representative Ellyn Bodganoff's reelection campaign, also named a man whom he said is Crist's long-term partner, a convicted thief named Bruce Carlton Jordan who also recently worked for Harris in her long-shot Senate bid.

Salon notes that Crist is the biggest fish in the film for critics.

"The person most reviewers have been focusing on is Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was recently married -- his engagement was announced right around the time when speculation was mounting that he could be chosen as John McCain's running mate," Salon's Alex Koppelman writes. "He was actually first outed back in 2006, by Bob Norman, a reporter for the New Times Broward-Palm Beach, who was also the first reporter to the story of former Rep. Mark Foley's sexuality, in 2003.

"And, in cases like Crist's, it means that the media knows something its audience doesn't, and is holding back information about people who are running for public office," Koppelman added. "When his engagement was announced, there was largely no discussion of what most every national political reporter was probably thinking. What there was instead was a sort of inside joke, which was easy to catch if you were in on the secret, but not obvious to most readers and viewers. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, for example, could barely suppress an impish smile when talking about the news. It's time to move past that in some form or another, and if the movie helps in that respect, then that's a good thing -- even if it's not actually outing anyone itself."

Crist was recently engaged, and then married -- quietly.

"A Republican operative close to Crist" told Politico "he expects the governor to announce his future political plans 'very soon,' perhaps as early as Monday. Crist has said he will decide after the state legislature wraps up its session, which ends on Friday."

Full disclosure: I appear in the film, speaking in favor of outing hypocritical gay politicians. Raw Story has "outed" closeted politicians before, including Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) and the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman

Pirates vs. Emperors

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Joseph Nevins
May 7, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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History shows that when a powerful empire sets sail overseas its spokespeople often depict the undertaking as an effort to create order and bring peace. When a pirate ship ventures into the open seas, by contrast, the empire portrays the endeavor as a crime against humanity. The difference is not so much what emperors and pirates do—both pillage and plunder, albeit to vastly different degrees. What matters most is which of the two is in a position to effectively define right and wrong.

This history seemed to repeat itself on April 20—only days after Barack Obama called the United States a "nation of laws" and said that his administration would not prosecute Americans for torture. On that night, police and FBI agents led a shackled Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, a teenager from war-ravaged, poverty-stricken Somalia accused of piracy, into federal detention for his role in an American ship captain's kidnapping. While presented as a step toward law-based accountability, the scene evokes images of an old story—the reigning double standards of what passes for international justice.

About 16 centuries ago the renowned theologian St. Augustine related a tale about a pirate captured by Alexander the Great who asked his prisoner "how he dares molest the sea." "How dare you molest the whole world?" responded the pirate. "Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor."

Centuries later, this unjust dynamic became widespread as Western powers carved up the globe. Throughout their colonies they established courts that prosecuted crimes defined by the occupying power. Not surprisingly, the courts typically focused their efforts on the alleged crimes of imperial subjects, while upholding the institutionalized injustices and the acts of physical violence needed to sustain it.

The creation of the United Nations was, among other things, an attempt to overcome the resulting impunity for the relatively powerful. But while the U.N. has had much success in setting international legal and human rights standards, it has been largely ineffective in enforcing them, especially when doing so would challenge the interests of powerful member-states.

This failure is principally one of design, one embedded in the United Nations' very structure due to the World War II victors' efforts to ensure that the new international body would allow them to pursue their interests on the global stage. As the Mexican delegate to the founding convention in San Francisco in 1945 noted, the U.N. Charter assured that "the mice would be disciplined, but the lions would be free."

More than 60 years later, his words have proven to be prophetic. Accountability for "mice" and impunity for "lions" — and the mice with whom they are on good terms — has become the rule, not the exception in international affairs.

Among many examples, witness the current international tribunal in Cambodia. Between 1969 and 1973, the U.S. military carpet-bombed Cambodia, causing the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of civilians, while indirectly contributing to the Khmer Rouge's seizure of power. Yet the U.N.-backed court will not try any U.S. officials for committing serious crimes.

As Marlon Brando, in his role as a human rights lawyer in apartheid-era South Africa in the 1989 film, A Dry White Season, explained, "Justice and law could be described as distant cousins, and here … they're not even on speaking terms."

Bridging the gap between law and justice requires that we in the United States acknowledge the double standards that effectively allow a small number of powerful countries to determine who should face international justice, while exempting themselves from scrutiny. We must reject President Obama's statement upon the recent release of the torture memos that "nothing will be gained by … laying blame for the past" —words that seem to apply only to some crimes and wrongdoers.

It requires that we imagine the possibility that people like "us," and the officials from countries with which we ally ourselves, might also be held legally accountable for actions abroad, and to endeavor to make the possibility real.

Until we do so, let us not pretend that law and justice are one and the same, or that emperors and pirates are compelled to live by the same standards.

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Joseph Nevins is an associate professor of geography at Vassar College. His latest book is Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30610029

Can the Neocons Jump to the Dems?

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Ivan Eland
May 4, 2009 - Consortiumnews

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Consortiumnews Editor's Note: Just a few years ago, the acolytes of George W. Bush were dreaming about transforming the United States into essentially a one-party state with the Republicans as the permanent majority, the neoconservatives as the party's intellectual core, and the Democrats kept around for show.

However, a series of policy disasters – many caused by the neocons, like the Iraq War – have left the Republicans foundering as a national party, which may mean the neocons will attempt to jump ship to the Democrats, as the Independent Institute's Ivan Eland notes:

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Neoconservatives used the Republican Party as a vehicle to promote and employ their policies of muscular nation-building overseas.

But like the parasite that eventually kills its host, the Republican Party's virtual collapse, in large part because of the failed nation-building adventure in Iraq, has left neoconservatives discredited and facing policy extinction. Unfortunately, neoconservatism will probably live on by changing hosts.

Throughout American history, the structure of the political systems has ensured that only two major parties would be viable at any one time. They haven't always been the Democrats and Republicans. They have always been the Democrats and one other party. First, it was the Federalists, then the Whigs, and finally, from just prior to the Civil War to the present, the Republicans.

The Republicans started out as a regional party of the Northeast. The only reason they ever took power away from the Democrats, the only true national party at the time of the Civil War, was because the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings over the slavery issue.

Thus, the Civil War was essentially caused by the fracture of the Democratic Party. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 39.8 percent of the national popular vote, beating two Democrats and one minor party candidate. Southern states, fearing a Republican's potential policies on slavery, didn't even wait until Lincoln's inauguration before they began to secede from the union.

Ironically, today, the Republican Party, which once had hopes of becoming the majority party in the country, has followed George W. Bush over a cliff and has once again been reduced to largely a regional party of the old South and a few other conservative states.

As long as Democrats in more libertarian mountain states stand up for gun rights, most states in that entire region are ripe for permanent status in the Democratic column. The most telling moment in the 2008 election was when Arizona, the Republican nominee's home state, was too close to call. It would have gone Democratic had a native son not been running.

If the Republican Party doesn't now move to extinction like its Federalist and Whig predecessors, it is likely to remain only a regional party for a long while.
It's intolerant conservative social views scare most other Americans. More important, the one issue on which many Republican conservatives differed from President Bush — immigration — could be the death knell of the party.

When the party alienated Hispanics (including even some Cubans, who were previously one of the most loyal Republican constituencies), the fastest growing minority in the United States, with nativist diatribes on immigration, other minorities, such as Asians and Native Americans realized that they could be victimized too.

In the 1990s, Republican Governor Pete Wilson made California overwhelmingly Democratic with his immigration policies. The same has just happened at the national level. After the immigration debate in the late Bush years, it will be hard for the Republican Party to ever woo back Hispanics.
Does the long-term demise (and maybe extinction) of the GOP leave the neoconservatives up the creek without a paddle? Not necessarily.

The neoconservatives started out as liberals and socialists in the Democratic Party. They were never really that conservative on economic policy, only belligerent in foreign and defense policies. And in those two latter policy areas, the Democratic Party is still dominated by their close cousins, the liberal Wilsonian interventionists.

Although the liberal Wilsonians — such as Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright — are less unilateralist than the neoconservatives and are much more in love with international organizations, they share the neoconservatives' passion for armed social work and nation-building.

Besides, when you're deep in the wilderness and your horse is dying, you can't be too concerned with pimples on your new steed.

The neoconservatives will probably eventually realize that the Republican Party is dying, and will seamlessly re-infest the Democratic mother ship to preserve themselves. And again, they will probably severely debilitate their host.

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Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland has spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. His books include The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, and Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy.

US Security Firm Blackwater Ends Iraq Operation

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May 07, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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US security firm Blackwater ended its operations in Iraq on Thursday closing a controversial era for the company whose guards shot dead 17 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

"The task order for security protection operations held by Blackwater comes to an end today in Baghdad," American embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh said, adding that Triple Canopy will replace it.

Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm, was appointed at the end of March by the US State Deparment to take over the multi-million-dollar contract to protect US government personnel working in Iraq.

Linked agreements such as that for Presidential Airways, part of Blackwater that operates helicopter escorts throughout the country for secure air travel, will expire soon, Ziadeh added.

The State Department refused to renew annual contracts for Blackwater which renamed itself Xe after the Iraq government banned it in January over the killings in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007.

An Iraqi investigation found that 17 civilians died and 20 were wounded when Blackwater guards opened fire with automatic weapons while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through the square.

US prosecutors say 14 civilians were killed in the incident. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty at a federal court in Washington in January to manslaughter charges.

The shooting focused a spotlight on the shadowy and highly lucrative operations of private security operations. Blackwater guards were reported to earn as much as 1,000 dollars a day each in Iraq.

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Xe, said the firm remains proud of its work in Iraq.

"When the US Government initially asked for our help to assist with an immediate need to protect Americans in Iraq, we answered that call and performed well," she said in comments emailed to AFP.

"We are honored to have provided this service for five years and are proud of our success - no one under our protection has been killed or even seriously injured."

"We always knew that, at some point, that work would come to a close."

Foreign security teams in Iraq have long operated in a legal grey area, but under a military accord signed with Washington last November, Iraq won a concession to lift the immunity to prosecution previously extended to US security contractors.

Blackwater first came under scrutiny on March 31, 2004, when four of its employees were killed by an angry mob in Fallujah, then a Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold.

The crowd mutilated their bodies and strung them from a bridge, shocking images that were broadcast worldwide and led to a month-long assault on Fallujah that left 36 US soldiers, 200 insurgents and 600 civilians dead.

North Carolina-based Blackwater has been protecting US government personnel in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and has had around 1,000 staff in the violence-wracked country, making it among the largest security firms operating there.

In the wake of the scandal over civilian deaths in Iraq, its founder Erik Prince announced in March that he was stepping down as chief executive, but would stay on as chairman.

Michael Moore Takes On The "Beast" Of Capitalism

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Bill Gallagher
May 6, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Michael Moore, the Academy Award winning filmmaker and disturber of the peace for the powerful, is preparing a scathing assault on America's economic system with his new film set for release in October. As usual, Moore pulls no punches proclaiming the three things wrong with capitalism: "It's anti-Jesus, it's anti-democratic and it just doesn't work."

Moore previewed the themes in the film during a speech last Saturday at a Michigan Peace Team dinner and fundraiser. The MPT trains ordinary citizens in the creative use of nonviolent conflict interventions and the origination has built an admirable record working in troubled spots of the world such as Bosnia, Palestine and along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Father Peter Dougherty, a Catholic priest and a founder of MPT, is a long time friend of Moore's who introduced him as a man with "a passion for justice" and reminded the audience that the Flint, Michigan native - who is a lightning rod for right wing rage - is "very real" and "what you see is what you get."

I can vouch for that. I met Michael when he was poor and obscure and we've been friends for nearly 25 years. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Moore's first film, "Roger and Me." I had the privilege of helping to collect some of the video used in the film and made my silver screen debut in an excerpt from a news report where I stood in Flint describing the devastating impact General Motors' plant closings were having on the town where the giant corporation began.

"Roger and Me" was a seminal piece of filmmaking, revolutionizing the documentary genre. As Moore said in his remarks, the film was not really about Roger Smith, the late GM chairman who squandered billions of dollars in non-auto business fiascos, nor was it about Michael and his zany quest to confront the isolated and aloof executive. The film was about "an economic system that is unfair, unjust and not democratic," Moore said.

"Roger and Me" was prescient and prophetic and, had General Motors and the other domestic automakers paid attention to its message instead of denouncing Moore as a grandstanding trouble maker, they might be in better shape today.

As Chrysler plunges into bankruptcy and General Motors could soon follow, Moore reminded us that GM "has brought about its own demise." He recited the corporate legacy where "They have fought everything good for the planet and good for people." At one time GM opposed rear view mirrors and turn signals and "dragged every step of the way to build safe and fuel efficient vehicles."

Moore blasted the years of planned obsolescence in U.S. auto making where the martini sippers who ran the companies decided, "Let's build a piece-of-shit vehicle that will last three years." In the short term, that strategy lined the pockets of the executives that forged it, but long term it perversely branded American products as poor in quality even when they had improved. That "arrogance and greed drove Detroit where we are," Moore sadly noted.

Moore's films are timely, poignant and pointed - made for people to understand what's really happening in the world rather than the bland, sanitized and ultimately distorted messages the mainstream media feeds to the uninformed.

"Bowling for Columbine" showed how a gun-worshiping society spawns promiscuous violence and human degradation. Moore's microphone was shut-off and he was booed off the stage as he used his Academy Award acceptance speech for "Bowling" to denounce the war in Iraq which began five days earlier. The blood still flows in Iraq six years later; the war is a recruitment gift for Islamic revolutionaries. Moore had the guts to speak the truth and those who booed him should feel shame today.

"The president lied to invade another country," Moore said. "Is there a greater crime than that?" He called the war a "black mark on the American soul" and asked, "What do we have to do to redeem ourselves?"

"Fahrenheit 911," Moore's brilliant film about George W. Bush, his exploitation of the Sept. 11th attacks, and the rush to war in Iraq, will become a standard in high school American History classes used to help students understand the madness that gripped this nation.

"Sicko" exposed the failures of a greed-driven health care system where even those with insurance suffer and are denied basic coverage. Moore dissected a failed system that costs twice as much as anywhere in the industrialized world while falling behind "Third World" nations in basic health measurements such as life expectancy and infant mortality rates.

Moore's newest film project pits him against American "banksters", the crooks in suits responsible for "The largest robbery in the history of the world." That's not hyperbole. Look at the numbers.

Moore calls the evolution of unbridled capitalism in America, "The beast." He sees these money-addicted bastards - with their indispensable allies in politics - coming up with trick after trick to lure and push working-class people into economic slavery locked in "the chains of debt."

The banks are the "new conquistadors", who brought slavery to the Western Hemisphere and committed genocide on many of the native peoples to accelerate a rapacious and bloody capitalism aimed at amassing unrivaled wealth. The methods are different, less openly brutal, but the enslavement is similar.

Moore argues that wildly expanded credit offered to those unable to afford it, usurious interest rates for credit cards, costly student loans that force recent graduates into low-paying jobs to pay back the banks, home equity loans, mortgage refinancing, and the whole sub-prime scam suck up the limited resources of working people and pump the proceeds into the pockets of the already filthy rich.

Moore sees the dream world of George W. Bush's "ownership" society - where Americans rely on 401 k accounts as a substitute for employer-employee supported fixed pension benefits - as a disaster, that would have been devastating had Bush succeeded in his mad quest to funnel Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market.

"Enough" is the dirtiest word among the rich capitalists who've been gaining a greater share of our total national wealth since 1980, when Ronald Reagan first came into office, while their tax burden has been reduced significantly. The debt-financed tax cuts were passed out to wage earners who accepted Reaganomics, as Moore contends, in a bizarre social contract where "the oppressed believe the oppressor is their friend."

Moore showed a snip of the trailer for his new film (rumor is it's titled "Bailout" but he's not saying) where he's looking into the camera wearing his signature baseball cap, making what sounds, at first, to be a sincere appeal to help those suffering in the economic melt-down.

He's holding a coffee can, asking for donations. Then - with a straight face - he pleads for money for Bank of America, Citi Group and the other suffering banks. The label on the can reads: "Save Our CEOs."

The film is being shot in Michigan and Michael is secretive about the project because, he said, "I want to live to finish it." He quipped the Bush people he took on were "pretty dumb" but the "banksters" are smarter, and even more ruthless than his earlier adversaries.

Reporter Amy Lange and her husband, photographer Michael Shore, are friends and colleagues and vigilant voices for the suffering in our society. Amy ably served as emcee for the packed crowd at MPT's "Evening with Michael Moore."

Amy and Mike are preparing a visual and narrative display for Marygrove College in Detroit called "Portraits in Social Justice," Michael Moore among them. Shore's compelling photographs of these committed people present faces etched in high purpose.

After his speech, we ushered Moore into an adjoining room where Shore had to shoot some photographs of him for the display. Moore already had a long day shooting his own interviews for his upcoming film.

As Shore got him to pose, he hoped for a serious expression and asked Moore to think of Dick Cheney. Moore obliged, looking somewhat severe, while never fully suppressing the ever-present twinkle in his eyes.

He is an extraordinarily creative communicator who breaks down complex issues into understandable human stories. He is an exceptional filmmaker and the most effective social critic of our times.

Like Mark Twain, his predecessor on this American stage, his wonderful wit usually wins the day. And also like Twain, my old friend Michael Moore's greatest gift is that he knows and shares the awful truth.

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Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.

Justice Dept. Finds Many Flaws in FBI Terror Watch List

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Eric Lichtblau
May 6, 2009 - The New York Times

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has improperly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list based on outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while it missed others with legitimate terror ties who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.

The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual suspected terrorists, as well as an unnecessary nuisance for non-suspects who may be questioned at a traffic stops or stopped from boarding an airplane.

By the beginning of 2009, the report said, the government's terrorist watch lists included about 400,000 people, listed as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it included fewer than two dozen people.

Intelligence officials say the watch lists have allowed different agencies to work together in an effort to prevent the type of breakdown that allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to enter the United States even though they were known to the Central Intelligence Agencies for their terrorist ties.

The new Justice Department report provided the most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the watch lists and confirmed some assertions made by critics of the process. An earlier report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system.

The list has long been a target of public criticism, particularly after well-publicized incidents in which politicians including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Lewis of Georgia accidentally showed up on the lists. People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to remove their names from the list, and civil rights advocates charge that anti-war protesters, Muslim activists and others have been put on the lists and stopped at airports for political reasons.

The report, by the Justice Department inspector general's office, looked mainly at the F.B.I., which took the lead in 2004 for maintaining a consolidated terrorist watch list for all agencies throughout the federal government.

One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the F.B.I.'s own terror watch list. The report examined nearly 69,000 watch lists referrals brought or processed by the F.B.I. and found that 35 percent of the people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate justification.

"Many of these watch-listed records were associated with outdated terrorism case classifications or case classifications unrelated to terrorism," the report said. In some cases, the people on the watch lists were the subjects of F.B.I. investigations that had been closed years earlier without action, yet their names had either never been removed, or not in a timely fashion.

Potentially even more problematic were the cases of people who were not on the watch lists despite evidence of terrorist ties.

The inspector general looked at a sampling of 216 F.B.I. terrorism investigations, and found that in 15 percent of those cases, a total of 35 subjects were not referred to the terror watch list even though they should have been.

In one case, for instance, a United States Army Special Forces soldier was investigated and ultimately convicted for stealing some 16,500 round of ammunition, C-4 explosives and other material from Afghanistan and shipping them to the United States in what investigators suspected might be the makings of a domestic terror plot. Yet the suspect was not placed on the watch list for nearly five months after the investigation was opened against him.

"We believe that the FBI's failure to consistently nominate subjects of international and domestic terrorism investigations to the terrorist watch list could pose a risk to national security," the inspector general said. The director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, Caroline Fredrickson, said her group's monitoring of the watch lists indicates that the problems identified at the F.B.I. are endemic to entire system.

"What this report really shows is that on both ends, the lists are really over-inclusive and under-inclusive," she said in an interview. "With 1.1 million names, there's all sorts of problems that have larded it up, and the whole thing just really needs to be torn down and start a new system."

The F.B.I. adopted all 16 of the inspector general's recommendations for improving watch list operations, including better training and faster processing of referrals. The agency said in a statement that "we remain committed to improving our watch list policy and practices to ensure the proper balance between national security protection and the need for accurate, efficient and streamlined watch-listing processes."

Young Americans Losing Their Religion

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New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply

Dan Harris
May 6, 2009 - ABC News

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New research shows young Americans are dramatically less likely to go to church -- or to participate in any form of organized religion -- than their parents and grandparents.

"It's a huge change," says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam, who conducted the research.

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a "stunning development." He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace."

US center names 25 lenders blamed for financial crisis

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Jitendra Joshi
May 6, 2009 - AFP

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US and foreign banks were not unwitting victims of circumstance but deliberately culpable in the financial meltdown that engulfed the United States last year, a campaign group said Wednesday.

The Center for Public Integrity named 25 "subprime" mortgage companies whose risky lending was blamed for the US property market collapse and the subsequent global economic crisis.

Many of the lenders were either controlled by US and European banks, or could not have indulged in their high-risk lending spree without the connivance of banks, the investigative journalism group said in a new study.

"The mega-banks that funded the subprime industry were not victims of an unforeseen financial collapse, as they have sometimes portrayed themselves," the center's executive director Bill Buzenberg said.

"These banks were deliberate enablers that bankrolled the type of lending that's now threatening the financial system," he said.

The study was released as the US House of Representatives was set Wednesday to vote on a Senate-approved bill that would set up a 9/11-style commission of experts to probe the root causes of the financial crisis.

The purpose is not "to point fingers and place blame," Republican Representative Darrell Issa said, "but rather to identify mistakes" to prevent a future recurrence.

The Center for Public Integrity said it had forwarded its report to leading members of Congress.

Lead author John Dunbar said the study highlighted "a catastrophic regulatory failure" that had required trillions of taxpayer dollars to rescue the banking industry.

"There was nobody watching the store all the way through this process," he told reporters.

The center analyzed US government data on more than seven million subprime loans made from 2005 to 2007, when the real estate bubble was at its peak.

It said the "Subprime 25" accounted for nearly one trillion dollars or about 72 percent of industry-reported loans extended to risky borrowers who would not normally have qualified for a mortgage.

At least 21 of the 25 were financed by banks that received US government bailout money, and 11 of them have made hefty payments to settle prosecution claims of widespread lending abuses, it said.

Four of them have received bailout funds, including collapsed insurer American International Group and banking behemoth Citigroup.

Top of the list with at least 97.2 billion dollars in subprime loans was Countrywide Financial, which was bought by Bank of America last year to avert bankruptcy for the giant mortgage company.

Second with 80.6 billion dollars in loans was Ameriquest Mortgage, now part of the Citigroup family. Third with 75.9 billion was New Century Financial Corp, which went bust in 2007 and now faces a federal investigation.

"The center found that US and European investment banks invested enormous sums in subprime lending due to unceasing demand for high-yield, high-risk bonds backed by home mortgages," Dunbar said.

"The banks made huge profits while their executives collected handsome bonuses until the bottom fell out of the real estate market."

Two of the subprime lenders have been seized by the US government: Washington Mutual, owner of Long Beach Mortgage (fifth on the list), and IndyMac Bank (number 14).

The top foreign-owned lender at number nine was HSBC Finance, part of the British-based banking giant HSBC. EquiFirst (16th on the list) was shut down by its British owner Barclays Bank in February.

Others such as RBS Greenwich Capital Investments -- part of the Royal Bank of Scotland -- and Swiss bank Credit Suisse First Boston were major backers of subprime lenders, the study said.

There are no geniuses in the outhouse

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Joe Bageant
May 5, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Sometimes you overhear a remark so wonderfully prescient you wish you'd said it yourself. Especially if you are a writer. Sitting in back of the Troubadour Club, a West Virginia honky tonk high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I'm listening to Petie Yost, an auctioneer, talk to Bud Shanholtz, who lives on Social Security and drives a snowplow occasionally during the winter.

Now ole Petie uses exotic economic terms such as "investment return" and "percentage." He says things like, "I don't do household auctions 'cause there ain't no real percentage in it." Which makes him an economic expert in these beery circles. And right now he is telling Bud why our Social Security and the FDIC do not exist.

"Whadaya mean they don't exist?" asks Bud.

"Because they are both absolutely broke," replies Petie. "Tits up. Nada."
"How do ya mean?"

"Well, it's like this. If you only have $100, and no job, but you owe $15 on your phone bill, and $700 for your rent and $400 on your credit card, you're in deep shit. Right? You can't just pay one of those bills and figure you're OK. Right?"

"I'd say so" agrees Bud.

"Well, that's the fix the U.S. Government is in. If you ask if the government has enough money to fund the FDIC during a bank run, and sure as Nellie's goat eats cans there's gonna be one, the government says yes. And if you ask if the Social Security checks will keep coming and never bounce, it says yes. But it's one set of bills that comes out of one government pocket. Ain't no special safe in Fort Knox where they keep the Social Security money or the FDIC money. So the government pays the $15 light bill and hope people never ask for their bank savings to be covered by the FDIC. Lucky for them, ain't many people even got savings anyway."

Bud nods and Petie continues.

"Meanwhile, they pay out the Social Security money as it dribbles in from kids flippimg hamburgers, and pay the $15 light bill, and pray to hell the Ay-rabs keep loaning them some dough now and then, until they can pawn off the rest of the country and maybe break even in the long haul. That is, if the bailouts keep the bankers' shell game going long enough so nobody can figure out what's up. Of course the bankers ain't gonna squeal on the whole deal because they're the only ones getting richer in this thing. But still the government is working out of one pocket where the hundred bucks used to be."

Bud makes a sour face, and says, "Well, that stinks like a country outhouse in July, don't it?"

"Worse, I'd say. Nobody expects a whole country to be run out of a shithouse. But everybody figures the shithouse in Washington is full of geniuses."

I bought them both a round just for the pleasure of hearing some common sense for a change.

More than one in five homeowners underwater: Zillow

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May 6, 2009 - Reuters

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Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.

U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold.

U.S. homes lost $704 billion in value during the first quarter and have depreciated $3.8 trillion in the past 12 months, according to analysis of the reports.

Declining home values left 21.9 percent of all American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter, Zillow said.

By comparison, 17.6 percent of all homeowners owed more on their mortgage than their property was worth in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 14.3 percent were underwater in the third quarter of last year, the reports showed.

Nine consecutive quarters of declines have left eight regions -- including the Modesto, California, Stockton, California, and Fort Myers, Florida regions -- with median value declines of more than 50 percent since those markets peaked.

In 85 of the 161 markets covered in the report, the annualized change over the past five years is negative or flat, the reports showed.

But in an early sign of improvement, 17 metropolitan areas across the country -- notably several hard-hit markets in California, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Modesto -- have seen two or more consecutive quarters of smaller year-over-year declines in home values, the reports showed.

Meanwhile, potential sellers appear to be holding back until evidence of an improved housing market. In a separate survey of homeowner sentiment, nearly one-third, or 31 percent, of homeowners said they would be at least somewhat likely to put their homes on the market in the next 12 months if they saw signs of a recovering real estate market, the reports showed.

"Slowing declines in select markets are a bright spot or, at least, what passes for one given current market conditions," Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow vice president of data and analytics, said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, given the magnitude of the current rates of decline, we're still many months away from a bottom even as depreciation slows," he said. "Moreover, the additional information we have this quarter on 'shadow inventory,' with one-third of homeowners indicating they would like to put their home on the market if conditions improve, confirms our earlier fears that a bottom in home values could be quite protracted."

"By our calculations, this could translate into as many as 20 million homes that could seep into the market as prices stabilize, maintaining a constant stream of supply that far outpaces demand, thus keeping prices flat. I'm doubtful that we'll see the bottom until 2010, and thereafter it's increasingly clear that we're likely to have a long bottom before we see meaningful recovery in home values," Humphries said.

Of all transactions is the past 12 months, 20.4 percent were foreclosures, up slightly from 19.9 percent in the fourth quarter, while 11.9 percent of homes sold were short sales, also up slightly from 10.9 percent in the fourth quarter, the reports showed.

Falling Wage Syndrome

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Paul Krugman
May 3, 2009 - The New York Times

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Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at The Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market: workers don't dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don't think they can find other jobs.

Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they're a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.

First things first: anecdotes about falling wages are proliferating, but how broad is the phenomenon? The answer is, very.

It's true that many workers are still getting pay increases. But there are enough pay cuts out there that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of employing workers in the private sector rose only two-tenths of a percent in the first quarter of this year — the lowest increase on record. Since the job market is still getting worse, it wouldn't be at all surprising if overall wages started falling later this year.

But why is that a bad thing? After all, many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs. What's wrong with that?

The answer lies in one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now. We're suffering from the paradox of thrift: saving is a virtue, but when everyone tries to sharply increase saving at the same time, the effect is a depressed economy. We're suffering from the paradox of deleveraging: reducing debt and cleaning up balance sheets is good, but when everyone tries to sell off assets and pay down debt at the same time, the result is a financial crisis.

And soon we may be facing the paradox of wages: workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.

Here's how the paradox works. Suppose that workers at the XYZ Corporation accept a pay cut. That lets XYZ management cut prices, making its products more competitive. Sales rise, and more workers can keep their jobs. So you might think that wage cuts raise employment — which they do at the level of the individual employer.

But if everyone takes a pay cut, nobody gains a competitive advantage. So there's no benefit to the economy from lower wages. Meanwhile, the fall in wages can worsen the economy's problems on other fronts.

In particular, falling wages, and hence falling incomes, worsen the problem of excessive debt: your monthly mortgage payments don't go down with your paycheck. America came into this crisis with household debt as a percentage of income at its highest level since the 1930s. Families are trying to work that debt down by saving more than they have in a decade — but as wages fall, they're chasing a moving target. And the rising burden of debt will put downward pressure on consumer spending, keeping the economy depressed.

Things get even worse if businesses and consumers expect wages to fall further in the future. John Maynard Keynes put it clearly, more than 70 years ago: "The effect of an expectation that wages are going to sag by, say, 2 percent in the coming year will be roughly equivalent to the effect of a rise of 2 percent in the amount of interest payable for the same period." And a rise in the effective interest rate is the last thing this economy needs.

Concern about falling wages isn't just theory. Japan — where private-sector wages fell an average of more than 1 percent a year from 1997 to 2003 — is an object lesson in how wage deflation can contribute to economic stagnation.

So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn't enough: we need a real recovery.

There has been a lot of talk lately about green shoots and all that, and there are indeed indications that the economic plunge that began last fall may be leveling off. The National Bureau of Economic Research might even declare the recession over later this year.

But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come — which is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy weak.

To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America will turn into Japan — that we'll face years of deflation and stagnation — seems, if anything, to be rising.