April 2015 archive

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

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Belgian endive is a vegetable often served as is, uncooked and delicious. But this week Martha Rose Shulman brings the heat with a new recipe of seared endive that can be enjoyed as a main course.

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Trevor Timm: The hostages killed by US drones are the casualties of an inhumane policy

President Obama’s admission on Thursday that the CIA killed two innocent hostages in a US drone strike in Pakistan should definitively prove to the American public what the White House has been trying to hide from them for a while: the US government’s secretive use of drone strikes is a transparency nightmare and human rights catastrophe. It requires a full-scale, independent investigation.

The only thing surprising about the news that US drone strikes killed one American and one Italian civilian al-Qaida hostage – along with two alleged American members of al-Qaida who were supposedly not targeted – is that the US actually admitted it.

Secrecy, misdirection and lies have shielded much of the public from the realization that US drone strikes have killed countless civilians in the past decade. There is literally no public accountability – not in the courts nor in Congress – for the CIA and the military’s killings outside official war zones. It doesn’t matter who they kill, where, or under what circumstances.

Paul Krugman: Zombies of 2016

Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination. Well, O.K., it was actually Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. But it’s pretty much the same thing.

You see, Mr. Christie gave a speech in which he tried to position himself as a tough-minded fiscal realist. In fact, however, his supposedly tough-minded policy idea was a classic zombie – an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise, but somehow just keeps shambling along.

But let us not be too harsh on Mr. Christie. A deep attachment to long-refuted ideas seems to be required of all prominent Republicans. Whoever finally gets the nomination for 2016 will have multiple zombies as his running mates.

Start with Mr. Christie, who thought he was being smart and brave by proposing that we raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare to 69. Doesn’t this make sense now that Americans are living longer?

Since we were just talking about Homer, his other great work was The Odyssey which was considered by most to be as fictional as The Illiad until Schliemann discovered what he thought was Troy (and was, just not on the level he identified).  It is certainly peopled with exotic locales and fantasical monsters which may or may not correspond to actual geography and now extinct creatures (yes on the first, no on the second for me).

One thing that is hard in this day of 100 hour wars, instant communication, and rapid transit to wrap your mind around is that someone could go off and fight a 10 year war and take 10 years to get home.  To be fair, Troy was a seige with individual challenges and small unit skirmishes until Odysseus figured out a way to breach the walls.  We’ve spent spent how long in Afghanistan now?  And the Hundred Years War lasted, well, a hundred years more or less (this is not a trick question).

During his return Odysseus only spent 3 years wandering around (many sea voyages in the Age of Sail lasted as long or longer) and then another 7 as a captive of Calypso.  I’ve met people who were locked up longer than that.

Anyway, the central tale of The Odyssey (after eliminating all the crypto-zoology and magic) is the return of Odysseus in disguise to find his wife besieged by many moochers and people looking to steal his stuff who he then proceeds to kill in a bloodbath of epic proportions.

Remind me.  What are the Rules of Opera?

The 3 rules of Opera.

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

Why, this is perfect!  As for the wacky excuses?  Well, what would you tell your significant other after 10 years, 7 of them spent shacking up with someone else, standing covered in gore in the living room among heaps of dead bodies?

Honey, I’m home?

Montaverdi is considered one of the revolutionaries of Baroque music.  His L’Ofeo is just about the earliest recognizable Opera still regularly performed.  It was written in 1607 as near as we can tell when he was about 40.  Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria was written in 1640, 3 years before his death at the age of 76 and with L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642) is considered one of his 3 greatest works.

What distinguished Monteverdi from many other Opera composers of his generation was the lack of moral judgement (a hold over from the sacred music that was the money machine of the time) and humanity of his characters, something I think is captured by this contemporary performance in casual dress with period instruments and orchestration.

It little profits that an idle king, by this still hearth, among these barren crags, matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole unequal laws unto a savage race, that hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees!

All times I have enjoyed greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone on shore, and when through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades vext the dim sea-  I am become a name for always roaming with a hungry heart.

Much have I seen and known.  Cities of men and manners, climates, councils, governments.  Myself not least, but honored of them all.

And drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!  As though to breathe were life.

Life piled on life were all too little, and of one to me scant remains, but every hour is saved from that eternal silence something more, a bringer of new things.

And vile it were for some three suns to store and hoard myself and this gray spirit yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle, well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill this labour, by slow prudence to make mild a rugged people, and through soft degrees subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere of common duties, decent not to fail in offices of tenderness, and pay meet adoration to my household gods when I am gone.  He works his work, I mine.

…

There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail.

There gloom the dark broad seas.

My mariners, souls that have toiled and wrought, and thought with me; that ever with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine, and opposed free hearts, free foreheads…

You and I are old.

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.

Death closes all- but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks.  The long day wanes.  The slow moon climbs.  The deep moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends!  ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world, push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds!  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down.  It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are-

One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, Tennyson

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

April 25 is the 115th day of the year (116th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 250 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1859, ground broken is for Suez Canal

At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction.

Artificial canals have been built on the Suez region, which connects the continents of Asia and Africa, since ancient times. Under the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, a channel connected the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea, and a canal reached northward from Lake Timsah as far as the Nile River. These canals fell into disrepair or were intentionally destroyed for military reasons. As early as the 15th century, Europeans speculated about building a canal across the Suez, which would allow traders to sail from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea, rather than having to sail the great distance around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

The Suez Canal, when first built, was 164 km (102 mi) long and 8 m (26 ft) deep. After multiple enlargements, the canal is 193.30 km (120.11 mi) long, 24 m (79 ft) deep, and 205 metres (673 ft) wide as of 2010. It consists of the northern access channel of 22 km/14 mi, the canal itself of 162.25 km/100.82 mi and of the southern access channel of 9 km/5.6 mi.

It is single-lane with passing places in Ballah By-Pass and in the Great Bitter Lake. It contains no locks; seawater flows freely through the canal. In general, the Canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. The current south of the lakes changes with the tide at Suez.

The canal is owned and maintained by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Under international treaty, it may be used “in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag.”

Construction by Suez Canal Company

In 1854 and 1856 Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession from Sa’id Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, to create a company to construct a canal open to ships of all nations. The company was to operate the canal for 99 years from its opening. De Lesseps had used his friendly relationship with Sa’id, which he had developed while he was a French diplomat during the 1830s. As stipulated in the concessions, Lesseps convened the International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez (Commission Internationale pour le percement de l’isthme des Suez) consisting of thirteen experts from seven countries, among them McClean, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, and again Negrelli, to examine the plans of Linant de Bellefonds and to advise on the feasibility of and on the best route for the canal. After surveys and analyses in Egypt and discussions in Paris on various aspects of the canal, where many of Negrelli’s ideas prevailed, the commission produced a final unanimous report in December 1856 containing a detailed description of the canal complete with plans and profiles. The Suez Canal Company (Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) came into being on 15 December 1858 and work started on the shore of the future Port Said on April 25, 1859.

The excavation took some 10 years using forced labour (Corvée) of Egyptian workers during a certain period. Some sources estimate that over 30,000 people were working on the canal at any given period, that altogether more than 1.5 million people from various countries were employed, and that thousands of laborers died on the project.

The British government had opposed the project of the canal from the outset to its completion. As one of the diplomatic moves against the canal, it disapproved the use the slave labor of forced workers on the canal. The British Empire was the major global naval force and officially condemned the forced work and sent armed bedouins to start a revolt among workers. Involuntary labour on the project ceased, and the viceroy condemned the Corvée, halting the project.

Angered by the British opportunism, de Lesseps sent a letter to the British government remarking on the British lack of remorse a few years earlier when forced workers died in similar conditions building the British railway in Egypt.

Initially international opinion was skeptical and Suez Canal Company shares did not sell well overseas. Britain, the United States, Austria, and Russia did not buy any significant number of shares. All French shares were quickly sold in France

Back in 2013, in the aftermath of his murder of Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16 year old son, when Mr. Obama was trying to justify his arrogated powers to incinerate people with his fleet of flying death robots, he made certain assertions about the process by which he and his merry minions selected victims [bolding mine]:

First, there must be a legal basis for using lethal force, whether it is against a senior operational leader of a terrorist organization or the forces that organization is using or intends to use to conduct terrorist attacks.  

Second, the United States will use lethal force only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons. It is simply not the case that

all terrorists pose a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons; if a terrorist does not pose such a threat, the United States will not use lethal force.

Third, the following criteria must be met before

lethal action may be taken:

1) Near certainty that the terrorist target is present;

2) Near certainty that non – combatants will not be injured or killed;

3) An assessment that capture is not feasible at the time of the operation;

4) An assessment that the relevant governmental authorities in the country where action is contemplated cannot or will not effectively address the threat to U.S.

persons; and

5) An assessment that no other reasonable alternatives exist to effectively address the threat to U.S. persons.

Further on in the document Obama states:

These decisions will be informed by a broad

analysis of an intended target’s current and past role in

plots threatening U.S. persons.

Fast forward to 2015.

From recent news coverage:

The White House was forced to concede on Thursday that it killed two innocent hostages – one American, one Italian – in a drone strike that targeted an al-Qaida compound despite officials not knowing precisely who was in the vicinity. …

Conceding that the operation was not ordered against any individual targets, Earnest said the administration only discovered later that the compound was occupied by Weinstein, La Porto and another American named Ahmed Farouq, who the White House says was a “leader” of the terrorist group.

Farouq was not, however, the target of the operation. The drone strike was not targeted at known al-Qaida members; instead, it was directed against anyone in the vicinity of what the US believed was a compound being used by the terrorist group.

Here’s one of today’s headlines:

White House admits: we didn’t know who drone strike was aiming to kill

Here’s a little additional information:

The targets of the deadly drone strikes that killed two hostages and two suspected American members of al-Qaida were “al-Qaida compounds” rather than specific terrorist suspects, the White House disclosed on Thursday. …

The two US civilians killed, longtime English-language propagandist Adam Gadahn and Ahmed Farouq of al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, were not “high-value targets” marked for death, he confirmed.

What we have here is very strong evidence that at best Mr. Obama is operating in bad faith with the American people and at worst he is a devious liar.

The standards that he proclaimed in the document entitled “U.S. Policy Standards and Procedures for the Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations Outside the United States and Areas of Active Hostilities” are nothing but a sham.

To wit: Obama did not know that the persons he incinerated posed “a contniuing, imminent threat to US persons,” Obama did not know to a “near certainty that the [or any] terrorist target [was] present,” and one can only hope that he isn’t lying that he did not know to a “near certainty that non – combatants will not be injured or killed.”

Further, since Obama had no idea of who he was incinerating, it would be impossible to know whether they could have been captured, that the relevant authorities would not have cooperated in “effectively addressing the [unknown] threat” that the unknown persons posed, nor could Obama have known of any other reasonable alternatives existed.

There’s good reason to wonder if Obama ever really knows who is present when he sends his flying death robots. Amy Goodman points out on Democracy Now:

Despite hundreds of hours of surveillance, the White House said it had no reason to believe the U.S. and Italian hostages were being detained in the al-Qaeda compound targeted during the operation.

It appears that the methods by which Obama collects information in order to verify to a “near certainty that non – combatants will not be injured or killed” is horribly unreliable and hence amounts to a violation of his stated standards. Frankly, if the intelligence that Obama collects “hundreds of hours of” is this poor, then there would seem to be no reasonable basis for his flying death robot attacks at all.

Regardless of whether use of the intelligence was negligent, it is quite plain that no “broad analysis of an intended target’s current and past role in plots threatening U.S. persons,” was ever conducted, since of course, there was no intended target.

It’s not like this, “let’s blow some stuff up and see who we kill,” is something new for Obama, though:

Secrecy, misdirection and lies have shielded much of the public from the realization that US drone strikes have killed countless civilians in the past decade

For years, the vast majority of drone strikes victims have never been positively identified as terrorists. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has the most comprehensive data on drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, published a study last year showing only 12% of victims were identified as militants and only 4% were identified as members of al-Qaida. This study is backed up by the excellent reporting by McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, who gained access to years of classified CIA reports to show that the vast majority of drone strike victims were not high level terrorist operatives like the administration claimed.

And we know the government thinks it can kill US citizens overseas without a trial or even a finding by any independent body. Despite a clear public interest in knowing about such an extreme claim to power, the Justice Department has fought to keep its supposed legal authority for drone strikes on Americans completely secret.

When will there be accountability?

Unfortunately, members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee have been the biggest cheerleaders of drone strikes, rather than their biggest skeptics. … If there’s ever going to be accountability for the CIA and military drone program, we need a fully independent commission, divorced from the intelligence committees. Without it, this controversy will just fade back into the background, where it will stay hidden under the government’s ever-expanding veil of secrecy.

Obama has irresponsibly used the vast powers that come with the office of President. His use of the fleet of flying death robots under his command is both a crime and a national disgrace.

To use an idiom that the President is known for, it is time for Americans to step up and take away the car keys.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Eight US servicemen killed in Iran; Easter Rising begins in Ireland; Ottoman empire begins mass deportation of Armenians; Leftist students hold weeklong occupation at Columbia University; Barbara Streisand born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

Fisher Ames

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

(Click on images to enlarge)

April 24 is the 114th day of the year (115th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 251 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1916, Easter Rebellion begins.

On Easter Monday in Dublin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization of Irish nationalists led by Patrick Pearse, launches the so-called Easter Rebellion, an armed uprising against British rule. Assisted by militant Irish socialists under James Connolly, Pearse and his fellow Republicans rioted and attacked British provincial government headquarters across Dublin and seized the Irish capital’s General Post Office. Following these successes, they proclaimed the independence of Ireland, which had been under the repressive thumb of the United Kingdom for centuries, and by the next morning were in control of much of the city. Later that day, however, British authorities launched a counteroffensive, and by April 29 the uprising had been crushed. Nevertheless, the Easter Rebellion is considered a significant marker on the road to establishing an independent Irish republic.

Following the uprising, Pearse and 14 other nationalist leaders were executed for their participation and held up as martyrs by many in Ireland. There was little love lost among most Irish people for the British, who had enacted a series of harsh anti-Catholic restrictions, the Penal Laws, in the 18th century, and then let 1.5 million Irish starve during the Potato Famine of 1845-1848. Armed protest continued after the Easter Rebellion and in 1921, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties won independence with the declaration of the Irish Free State. The Free State became an independent republic in 1949. However, six northeastern counties of the Emerald Isle remained part of the United Kingdom, prompting some nationalists to reorganize themselves into the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to continue their struggle for full Irish independence.

Background

The Act of Union 1801 united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, abolishing the Irish Parliament and giving Ireland representation at Westminster. From early on, many Irish nationalists opposed the union and what was seen as the exploitation of the country.

Opposition took various forms: constitutional (the Repeal Association; the Home Rule League), social (disestablishment of the Church of Ireland; the Land League) and revolutionary (Rebellion of 1848; Fenian Rising). Constitutional nationalism enjoyed its greatest success in the 1880s and 1890s when the Irish Parliamentary Party under Charles Stewart Parnell succeeded in having two Home Rule bills introduced by the Liberal government of William Ewart Gladstone, though both failed. The First Home Rule Bill of 1886 was defeated in the House of Commons, while the Second Home Rule Bill of 1893 was passed by the Commons but rejected by the House of Lords. After the fall of Parnell, younger and more radical nationalists became disillusioned with parliamentary politics and turned towards more extreme forms of separatism. The Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and the cultural revival under W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, together with the new political thinking of Arthur Griffith expressed in his newspaper Sinn Féin and the organisations the National Council and the Sinn Féin League led to the identification of Irish people with the concept of a Gaelic nation and culture, completely independent of Britain. This was sometimes referred to by the generic term Sinn Féin.

The Third Home Rule Bill was introduced by British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in 1912. The Irish Unionists, led by Sir Edward Carson, opposed home rule in the light of what they saw as an impending Roman Catholic-dominated Dublin government. They formed the Ulster Volunteer Force on 13 January 1913.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) saw an opportunity to create an armed organisation to advance its own ends, and on 25 November 1913 the Irish Volunteers, whose stated object was “to secure and to maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland”, was formed. Its leader was Eoin MacNeill, who was not an IRB member. A Provisional Committee was formed that included people with a wide range of political views, and the Volunteers’ ranks were open to “all able-bodied Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics or social group.” Another militant group, the Irish Citizen Army, was formed by trade unionists as a result of the Dublin Lockout of that year. However, the increasing militarisation of Irish politics was overshadowed soon after by the outbreak of a larger conflict-the First World War  and Ireland’s involvement in the conflict.

Keeping it Water

Tonightly the topic is Creflo “Prosperity Gospel” Dollar.  What’s he up to now?  Our panelists are Mo’Nique Worldwide, Kevin Pollack, and Shenaz Treasury.

Continuity

Cheating

Next week’s guests-

• Monday 4/27: Elizabeth Olsen
• Tuesday 4/28: George Stephanopoulos
• Wednesday 4/29: Judith Miller
• Thursday 4/30: Kristen Wiig

Neil deGrasse Tyson will be on to promote Star Talk TV, a late night TV version of his ongoing radio series, Star Talk Radio.  The program started April 20th on the National Geographic Channel and at 11 pm ET goes head to head against Jon for at least a 10 week run.

Or maybe his role as Waddles the pig in Gravity Falls.

I really hate it when scum like Dana Perino get a web exclusive extended interview and I have to post it below.  Also the real news.

Syriza’s Choice: Bail on the People or the Troika

Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis: The Medicine of Austerity Is Not Working, We Need a New Treatment

Greece Flashes Warning Signals About Its Debt

By LANDON THOMAS Jr., The New York Times

APRIL 19, 2015

As the eurozone braced for the prospect of a default, financial markets were jittery last week and Greece’s own short-term borrowing costs were soaring. Repercussions of such a default are so difficult to predict that European officials have spent the last five years trying to avoid one.

…

After two international bailouts for Greece since 2010, about 90 percent of its debt is owed to its eurozone neighbors, the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank. At the moment, not one of those lenders is showing a willingness to give any additional payback relief to Mr. Varoufakis and the new left-leaning government in Athens.

Mr. Varoufakis’s next formal meeting with his country’s creditors is set for Friday in Riga, Latvia, where eurozone finance ministers are to assemble for their monthly gathering. Wolfgang Schäuble, the powerful German finance minister, said here last week that no one should expect the meeting on April 24 to resolve anything.

Unless the creditors agree soon to release the next allotment of bailout money, Greece could have trouble making a $763 million payment to the I.M.F. on May 12. It almost certainly would not be able to meet the €11 billion in payments to the European Central Bank, the I.M.F. and payments on Treasury bills in June and July.

Mr. Varoufakis’s main message in Washington was that Greece was doing its best to carry out painful economic overhauls called for under the bailout program, while remaining true to his government’s anti-austerity mandate. “We know we are bound to a program,” Mr. Varoufakis said in an interview late last week, before his private meeting with Mr. Buchheit. “But there is another principle here: democracy.”

…

When Mr. Varoufakis flew on short notice to Washington on Easter Sunday to ask Ms. Lagarde for some payment flexibility, he said publicly that Greece intended to meet its obligations. The statement at the time was taken as a commitment by Greece to do whatever it took to pay the I.M.F. and others.

Privately, however, Mr. Varoufakis told colleagues in Washington last week that he purposefully used the word “intend” as opposed to “will” in his public statements on Greece’s payment plans, according to people close to the finance minister who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Varoufakis is also well aware that if Greece continues to meet its payment schedule as currently mapped out, the country will end up paying about 12 percent of its gross domestic product to its creditors during his first term as finance minister.

He has said that such a dynamic is not sustainable for a left-wing government elected on a platform of putting the interest of Greece’s electorate before its creditors. The country was just emerging from a deep recession before the January elections and is thought to be slumping back into one.

…

But many outside experts are saying that the cycle of creditor-imposed austerity in Greece must stop and that the only clean way to alleviate it would be through a significant debt cut.

“Greece’s official-sector debt should be forgiven,” said Ashoka Mody, a former senior economist at the I.M.F. who oversaw the fund’s austerity program in Ireland. “And we really need to get rid of this Washington-Berlin-Brussels supervision of Greece – this is the most corrosive part of the arrangement, and it undermines both Greece and Europe.”

Greece Endgame Nears

By Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Thursday, 23 April 2015 11:16

Despite the market jitters of last Friday, which were triggered in part by the recognition that the odds of Greece reaching a deal with its creditors are far lower than had been widely assumed, Greek-related coverage has ratcheted down, even as Greece seems certain not to get any funds released in the April 24 Eurogroup meeting and is very likely to miss the end of April deadline for getting its reforms approved by the Troika and Eurogroup.

…

But the official enforcers have gotten even firmer in their position: Greece must do its homework, as in prepare detailed reforms, and has to hew closely to the existing structural reforms. Christine Lagarde of the IMF last week increased the pressure by saying it would not give Greece a grace period on its payments coming due, as some had hoped.

Never mind that Greece has actually done more in the way of complying than any other European victim and has also shown the worst economic results. Various European officials have stated that they’d rather not have Greece default but they are not prepared to cut Greece any favors in order to avert that outcome. Making sure Greece complies, in other words, is worth the cost of what they believe will be short-term disruption. And they clearly don’t care one iota as far as the cost in Greek lives is concerned.

It’s puzzling to see the Greek government’s apparent failure to acknowledge that the Troika is effectively insisting that it cross its famed “red lines” such as pension “reform” and implementing labor “reform” which means further lowering wage rates. With another government, there could well be important jockeying going on behind the scenes, but heretofore, the ruling coalition has been disconcertingly open about its schisms. And Tsipras still seems to be hostage to the more radical representatives, who represent one-third of Syriza’s block. If they bolt, he no longer has a working coalition.

But if the government plans to hold firm, it really should impose capital controls, which would allow it to talk more openly to the public about what will happen if they do not reach a deal with their creditors. Similarly, if Syriza were to call referendum to convince its creditors that Greece really will default (and maybe exit) if they don’t budge (something the lenders seem to understand full well), it is similarly not clear how they can campaign candidly with no financial firewalls in place.

…

It is still astonishing that the European elites have convinced themselves that adhering to the procedures used to implement clearly unsuccessful austerity programs are so important as to justify creating a failed state. Is this what the European project stands for? It’s sadistic and destructive, but there seem to be no cooler heads who can deter the power players, the ECB and the IMF, from this course of action.

Greek default? Wall Street says don’t risk it

By Ben White, Politico

4/23/15 12:31 AM EDT

Some say they are not as freaked out as they were in 2012 about the prospect of always-in-crisis Greece getting kicked out of the eurozone, which could happen if a deal isn’t reached quickly. Some would even like to let the Greeks go and move on with life.

But then people mention Lehman Brothers. And the Russian default. And even an assassination in Sarajevo in 1914. And theoretical discussion of how better prepared the world is for a Greek exit quickly turns into fevered rumination on how it still might spark global financial Armageddon.

…

Investors got a taste of just how risky a Greek default and possible euro exit could be last Friday when reports that a deal might not be reached helped spark a global sell-off that at one point saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average down over 300 points. Interest rates on Greek debt also rose to two-year highs.

Rates on other European debt, including the debts of Portugal and Italy, also initially rose before ECB buying kicked in, suggesting that if Greece falls, investors could then start to punish other nations viewed as vulnerable to default. Spiking rates could turn once manageable debt loads into crushing burdens.

Fears over this kind of vicious cycle leave many big Wall Street money managers and executives skeptical of the argument that the world is now prepared for a Greek exit and that such an outcome might actually be preferable to going through these near misses over and over.

These money managers say that if Greece does wind up leaving the eurozone, it will probably not be a “Grexit” at all. That phrase, they say, connotes an orderly process in which the country’s euros are carefully replaced with drachma and nobody panics and pulls all their money out of the bank.

Instead, many Wall Street executives say it’s more likely that a Greek departure would be an accident – now known on Wall Street as a “Graccident” – in which the county is forced out of the eurozone by bank runs and a collapse in investor confidence.

“If a ‘Graccident’ were to occur, it would be very messy,” said Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at global money management firm Allianz. “And the global economy is still too fragile to take a major shock. The good news is that Europe has done a lot to increase its defenses against contagion. But it could still be very dangerous to stumble into an accident.”

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The case for not caring much about a “Grexit” holds that most of the nation’s debt is now held by other countries rather than banks, making financial system failures less likely. Meanwhile, European economic growth is picking up and should be able to withstand a period of turbulence, this line of thinking holds. And Greece has a tiny economy whose collapse would cause localized pain but register barely a blip around the globe.

Some top executives on Wall Street argue that it would be much worse for creditors to cave in to demands for more lenient terms from Greek’s anti-austerity political leaders. Because that would mean other debtor nations would also soon clamor for relief. Better to rip the bandage off and put an end to the charade that Greece will ever pay back all its loans.

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But the more widely held view – in Washington and on Wall Street – is that while Europe has, indeed, built more firewalls and reduced private-sector exposure to Greek debt, the unknown reaction to a “Grexit” is potentially much worse than the annoyingly familiar and increasingly tiresome rounds of angst-ridden talks between Greece and its creditors.

“If Greece leaves, it will never be possible to say again that exit is impossible, and if exit is always possible then you put increasing pressure on the weaker countries,” said Summers. “Of course, it’s also not tenable for the euro area to firmly establish that exit is impossible, or no country will feel any disciplinary pressure. So the matter is quite delicate, and we all have to hope and push for a mutually satisfactory conclusion.”

At news conference, President Barack Obama expressed “profound regret” for killing two civilians, who were being held captive by Al Qaeda, during a counter-terrorism strike in an attempt to rescue them along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border this past January. The operation involved a drone strike.

The US president spoke shortly after the White House announced that intelligence officials had concluded that the January counter-terrorism operation had “accidentally” killed Dr Warren Weinstein, a US government aid worker, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian aid worker. [..]

Separately, the White House also disclosed that it had mistakenly killed two other Americans, both of whom were suspected of being high-level al-Qaida members but had not been specifically targeted.

Obama did not mention the two American al-Qaida members in the statement from the White House, in which he sought to explain how his counter-terrorism strike could have take the lives of two hostages. Neither did he use the word “drone”. [..]

Yet the president struck a surprisingly defiant tone, insisting that his administration had acted on the best intelligence available at the time and claiming that his decision to declassify the operation and initiate a review was a sign of American exceptionalism.

He said he had decided to make the existence of the operation public because Weinstein and Lo Porto’s families “deserve to know the truth” and “the United States is a democracy, committed to openness, in good times and in bad”.

Also mentioned in the article by a team of reporters at The Guardian was that, despite the president’s claim of “transparency,” there is still a great deal of secrecy surrounding the use of drones and a lack of accountability for the number of civilian killed during these raids.

The American Civil Liberties Union in March sued the Obama administration, which has proclaimed itself the most transparent in history, for disclosure of critical legal documents underpinning what the administration calls its “targeted killing” program – including the criteria for placement on a list permitting the US to kill people, including its own citizens, without trial.

Obama’s admission regarding the deaths of Weinstein and Lo Porto is likely to intensify criticism of the president’s worldwide drone strikes, conducted by the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. A recent analysis by human-rights group Reprieve estimated that US drone strikes intending to target 41 men had killed 1,147 people as of November.

These drone operations may get even more exposure due to the court on Germany that has allowed a law suit brought by families of Waleed bin Ali Jaber and Salim bin Ali Jaber, innocent civilians who were killed in a drone strike on August 12, 2012 in Yemen, to go forward. It may also put Germany in a awkward position

Salim and Waleed’s deaths sparked protests in their village, and the incident was later well-documented by international media and human rights groups. Their family representative, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, has met with Yemeni and U.S. national security officials and members of Congress. But the United States still has not formally acknowledged or apologized for the incident.

The previously unreported intelligence report, viewed by The Intercept, indicates that the U.S. government knew soon after the strike that it had killed two civilians. It could add fire to a lawsuit that Faisal bin Ali Jaber has launched in Germany, as further evidence that U.S. strikes put innocent Yemenis at risk.

Jaber will testify next month in front of a German court, alleging that Germany is violating a constitutionally enshrined duty to protect the right to life by allowing the United States to use Ramstein Air Base as part of its lethal drone operations.

It is the first time a victim of a U.S. drone strike will air his grievances in court, lawyers for the case told The Intercept. The lawsuit could put Germany in the awkward position of having to publicly defend its role in the U.S. drone program.

As The Intercept reported today, the U.S. military sees Ramstein as an essential node in the technical infrastructure for its armed and unarmed drone operations. A budget request for the Ramstein station stated that without the facility, “weapon strikes cannot be supported.”

The Obama administration has come under heavy criticism from international and human rights organizations over the legality of its drone program and the targeted assassinations of American citizens suspected of terrorist involvement without due process.

In a another case in Pakistan, a judge has ordered the [police to investigate the CIA for its authorization of drone strikes in 2009:

Last Tuesday, the Islamabad High Court ordered police to open a criminal case against former CIA Islamabad Station Chief Jonathan Bank and ex-CIA legal counsel John A. Rizzo for murder, conspiracy, terrorism and waging war against Pakistan.

The complainant is Kareem Khan, whose son Zahin Ullah Khan and brother Asif Iqbal were killed in an alleged December 2009 CIA drone strike in the mountainous Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan.

The case was lauded as the “first of its kind for directly implicating and naming a CIA official” by University of Hull international legal expert Niaz Shah. [..]

However, the case appears to rest on whether Pakistan’s political apparatus is willing to pursue a sensitive legal action that police say may imperil U.S.-Pakistan relations.

According to court documents seen by TIME, not only does Khan’s case implicate ex-CIA officials, it also calls for an investigation into the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, where Khan believes the drone strike was ordered. [..]

Even if the investigation receives the green light, bringing ex-CIA officials to trial will be an onerous battle in Pakistan. Should Bank and Rizzo fail to appear, one recourse is the international police body Interpol, which can extradite former CIA officials to stand trial, says Mirza Shahzad Akbar, the Pakistani attorney leading case. However, cases against CIA officials seldom succeed, even when Interpol is invoked, for reasons of diplomatic sensitivity. [..]

Even if the investigation receives the green light, bringing ex-CIA officials to trial will be an onerous battle in Pakistan. Should Bank and Rizzo fail to appear, one recourse is the international police body Interpol, which can extradite former CIA officials to stand trial, says Mirza Shahzad Akbar, the Pakistani attorney leading case. However, cases against CIA officials seldom succeed, even when Interpol is invoked, for reasons of diplomatic sensitivity.

Assassin and murder, this is Obama’s legacy.