October 2015 archive

The story has now changed four times in four days.. This is from the comprehensive reporting by Spenser Ackerman at The Guardian:

US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded. [..].

Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead. [..]

Campbell did not explain whether the procedures to launch the airstrike took into account the GPS coordinates of the MSF field hospital, which its president, Joanne Liu, said were “regularly shared” with US, coalition and Afghan military officers and civilian officials, “as recently as Tuesday 29 September”.  [..]

It is also unclear where the US special operations forces were relative to the fighting, but Campbell has said that US units were “not directly engaged in the fighting”.

Campbell instead said the hospital was “mistakenly struck” by US forces.

“We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility,” Campbell told US lawmakers, declaring that he wanted an investigation by his command to “take its course” instead of providing further detail.

But Jason Cone, Doctors Without Borders’ US executive director, said Campbell’s shifting story underscored the need for an independent inquiry.

“Today’s statement from General Campbell is just the latest in a long list of confusing accounts from the US military about what happened in Kunduz on Saturday,” Cone said.

“They are now back to talking about a ‘mistake’. A mistake that lasted for more than an hour, despite the fact that the location of the hospital was well known to them and that they were informed during the airstrike that it was a hospital being hit. All this confusion just underlines once again the crucial need for an independent investigation into how a major hospital, full of patients and MSF staff, could be repeatedly bombed.” [..]

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at the University of Notre Dame, said that according to international humanitarian law, the critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they had notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from the hospital.

“Any serious violation of the law of armed conflict, such as attacking a hospital that is immune from intentional attack, is a war crime. Hospitals are immune from attack during an armed conflict unless being used by one party to harm the other and then only after a warning that it will be attacked,” O’Connell said.

emphasis mine

Ths is today’s statement from MSF’s International President, Dr Joanne Liu on this blatant breach of international law

For four years, the MSF trauma center in Kunduz was the only facility of its kind in northeastern Afghanistan, offering essential medical and surgical care. On Saturday, October 3, this came to an end when the hospital was deliberately bombed. Twelve MSF staff and 10 patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured, including 19 members of the MSF team. The attack was unacceptable.

The whole MSF Movement is in shock, and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those affected. Nothing can excuse violence against patients, medical workers and health facilities. Under International Humanitarian Law hospitals in conflict zones are protected spaces. Until proven otherwise, the events of last Saturday amount to an inexcusable violation of this law. We are working on the presumption of a war crime.

In the last week, as fighting swept through the city, 400 patients were treated at the hospital. Since its opening in 2011, tens of thousands of wounded civilians and combatants from all sides of the conflict have been triaged and treated by MSF. On the night of the bombing, MSF staff working in the hospital heard what was later confirmed to be a US army plane circle around multiple times, releasing its bombs on the same building within the hospital compound at each pass. The building targeted was the one housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms and physiotherapy ward. Surrounding buildings in the compound were left largely untouched.

Despite MSF alerting both the Afghan and Coalition military leadership, the airstrike continued for at least another 30 minutes. The hospital was well-known and the GPS coordinates had been regularly shared with Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials, as recently as Tuesday, September 29.

This attack cannot be brushed aside as a mere mistake or an inevitable consequence of war. Statements from the Afghanistan government have claimed that Taliban forces were using the hospital to fire on Coalition forces. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital, which amounts to an admission of a war crime.

This attack does not just touch MSF, but it affects humanitarian work everywhere, and fundamentally undermines the core principles of humanitarian action. We need answers, not just for us but for all medical and humanitarian staff assisting victims of conflict, anywhere in the world. The preserve of health facilities as neutral, protected spaces depends on the outcome of a transparent, independent investigation.

emphasis mine

The “mistake” is that the US knowingly committed a war crime by  targeting and bombing a hospital, killing 22 people, wounding 37 and depriving Kunduz of its only hospital.

Of course the US, and the Afghan government don’t want an independent investigation, what criminal would?

You can warch Gen. Campbell’s full testimony before the Senate Aemed Services Committee below the fold.

If you’re a careful reader you know that I don’t exactly worship at the altar of Krugthulu.  He has good ideas about economic stimulus but willfully misses the point of Modern Monetary Theory, until you can demonstrate inflation the amount of fiat currency you circulate is meaningless, even though his research and analysis point to exactly that conclusion.

Still it’s useful and handy in some cases to appeal to the authority of his Nobel Prize.  Yes it’s a fallacy but arguments are won by rhetoric, not logic.  I quote him when I agree and mostly ignore him when I don’t.

One thing I’ve never gotten is his infatuation with Benjamin Bernanke (or for that matter Larry Summers).  They all went to the same schools and graduate seminars and had the same teachers so there is familiarity and a collegial aspect I suppose counts for a lot in the halls of Academe and, to be fair, much of what they are saying now that they’re out of the Beltway Bubble of Madness is perfectly sound Samuelson Economics (not that he was particularly Keynesian mind you, just that he had the intellectual integrity not to argue with the proven results of fiscal stimulus).

But I can’t help but remember that when these two cowards (Bernanke and Summers) had a chance in power to put into action the policies that they now say they favored all along they cravenly failed to do so.

Thanks for nothing assholes.

Ben has a new volume of preening mental masturbation out that prompted this assessment from Yves Smith (who is likewise wrong on some things, I only quote her when she’s right, meaning of course that she agrees with me).

Bernanke’s Cockroaches

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Posted on October 6, 2015

The idea that Bernanke did a praiseworthy job has been widely debunked. Bernanke continued the “Greenspan put” that stoked speculation all across the credit markets, to the point that anyone who was paying attention had heard of the “wall of liquidity” and massively compressed credit spreads by mid 2006. The Fed did even less to enforce the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act meant to curb subprime lending than the bank-cronyistic OCC did.

As the crisis unfolded, the Fed failed to take the risk posed by the credit default swaps market seriously, even though CDS contagion risk was the most important reason for bailing out Bear Stearns, otherwise too small to be deemed worthy of a rescue. Instead, the Fed went into “mission accomplished” mode after Bear’s bailout.

Worse, after the crisis, the Fed consistently pursued policies to save banks, in particular the bank executive incumbents, and let the cost of the crisis fall on Main Street, particularly workers and homeowners in the bottom 90%. Did Bernanke say a peep when the big financial firms that had just been saved from certain death went to pay their executives and staffs record bonuses in 2009 and 2010 rather than rebuild their equity bases? The Fed was so deeply complicit that it didn’t even attempt a private scolding.

And the central bank was fully on board with the Treasury’s treatment of the mortgage-backed securities market as too big to fail, which amounted to a second, stealth bailout. The refusal to pressure banks to do principal modifications resulted in unnecessary foreclosures, and a massive loss of wealth, not just to homeowners but also to investors in mortgage backed securities. The Fed joined the Treasury and OCC in all of the various bank “get out of liability for almost free” mortgage and servicer settlements. It was thus a full, albeit quiet, partner with the Geithner “foam the runway” program of wrecking borrowers’ lives for the dubious purpose of preserving bank profits.

Bernanke apparently feels compelled to up his game in self-hagiography a bit, since at least some of the public recognizes that he’s an arsonist trying to take credit for putting out a fire, except the fire-fighting wasn’t all that well done, since the rubble is still smoldering years later.

…

Bernanke conveniently conflates bailing out institutions (which was necessary) with the issue of responsibility, as in holding individuals accountable. The refusal to replace boards and top executives, particularly at institutions with obviously weak leadership (Citigroup and Bank of America were top of the list) was indefensible. Even if there was not enough readily locatable recently retired bank executives to fill the ranks of all the wobbly banks, forcing changes upon Citi and Bank of America would have sent a very powerful message to the rest. And we’ve argued at length, for years, that there was no dearth of legal theories that were simply not even attempted as far as prosecuting bank executives was concerned, starting with the one designed for the task, Sarbanes Oxley.

But what pathetic new line do we get from Bernanke? His feelers were hurt when he read a bumper sticker? People lost their businesses, their jobs, their homes as a result of the crisis, and we are supposed to feel sorry for his wounded feelings when he is called out in the tamest terms possible?

This illustrates how insulated and preening our ruling classes have become, that they are unable even to take mild criticism, let alone a remotely accurate assessment of the job they’ve done. By contrast, as Jim Collins found in his book on true top performers, Good to Great, the heads of those companies did the opposite of the diseased norms exhibited by Bernanke: they gave credit for success to their teams, and took full blame for failure.

The time is past to deal with these intellignce-insulting efforts at revisionist history. When I read a new, improved set of excuses from people like Bernanke, I feel like I’ve walked into my kitchen and turned on the lights after the exterminator paid a visit, only to find cockroaches scuttling all over my counter yet again.

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Robert Reich: Here’s Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is Just Plain Wrong

Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point to the administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the TPP would be a disaster.

If you haven’t heard much about the TPP, that’s part of the problem right there. It would be the largest trade deal in history – involving countries stretching from Chile to Japan, representing 792 million people and accounting for 40 percent of the world economy – yet it’s been devised in secret.

Lobbyists from America’s biggest corporations and Wall Street’s biggest banks have been involved but not the American public. That’s a recipe for fatter profits and bigger paychecks at the top, but not a good deal for most of us, or even for most of the rest of the world.

Ben Norton: Media Are Blamed as US Bombing of Afghan Hospital Is Covered Up

A US-led NATO military coalition bombed a hospital run by international humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders (known internationally as Medecins Sans Frontières, MSF) in Afghanistan, killing at least 22 people-12 staff members and 10 patients, including three children-and wounding 37 more. [..]

If you read US corporate media coverage of this incident, however, US culpability would likely not be evident. Instead, readers would learn that a hospital was bombed in Afghanistan, and that people died. Who exactly carried out the bombing would not be clear. [..]

Ambiguous, misleading and even downright dishonest language abounds throughout the coverage. US media spin the story to reflect positively on the culprit; they report that the US is investigating the atrocity, while failing to acknowledge that the US itself is responsible for the atrocity.

This technique is very reminiscent of the loaded language police departments use to downplay police brutality-language that is often repeated verbatim by journalists who just uncritically quote government press releases.

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

Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat assassinated; Yom Kippur War breaks out in Mideast; Top U.S. arms inspector reports on Iraq’s WMD; Actress Bette Davis dies; ‘The Jazz Singer’ heralds talking pictures.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.

Bette Davis

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.

October 6 is the 279th day of the year (280th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 86 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1927. The Jazz Singer makes its debut in New York City.

The first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of the “talkies” and the decline of the silent film era. Produced by Warner Bros. with its Vitaphone sound-on-disc system, the movie stars Al Jolson, who performs six songs. Directed by Alan Crosland, it is based on a play by Samson Raphaelson.

The story begins with young Jakie Rabinowitz defying the traditions of his devout Jewish family by singing popular tunes in a beer hall. Punished by his father, a cantor, Jakie runs away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer, but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.

The premiere was set for October 6, 1927, at Warner Bros.’ flagship theater in New York City. The choice of date was pure show business-the following day was Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday around which much of the movie’s plot revolves.  The buildup to the premiere was tense. Besides Warner Bros.’ precarious financial position, the physical presentation of the film itself was remarkably complex:

   

Each of Jolson’s musical numbers was mounted on a separate reel with a separate accompanying sound disc. Even though the film was only eighty-nine minutes long…there were fifteen reels and fifteen discs to manage, and the projectionist had to be able to thread the film and cue up the Vitaphone records very quickly. The least stumble, hesitation, or human error would result in public and financial humiliation for the company.

None of the Warner brothers were able to attend: Sam Warner-among them, the strongest advocate for Vitaphone-had died the previous day of pneumonia, and the surviving brothers had returned to California for his funeral.

According to Doris Warner, who was in attendance, about halfway through the film she began to feel that something exceptional was taking place. Jolson’s “Wait a minute” line had prompted a loud, positive response from the audience. Applause followed each of his songs. Excitement built, and when Jolson and Eugenie Besserer began their dialogue scene, “the audience became hysterical.”  After the show, the audience turned into a “milling, battling, mob”, in one journalist’s description, chanting “Jolson, Jolson, Jolson!” Among those who reviewed the film, the critic who foresaw most clearly what it presaged for the future of cinema was Life magazine’s Robert Sherwood. He described the spoken dialogue scene between Jolson and Besserer as “fraught with tremendous significance…. I for one suddenly realized that the end of the silent drama is in sight”.

Critical reaction was generally, though far from universally, positive. New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall, reviewing the film’s premiere, declared that

   

not since the first presentation of Vitaphone features, more than a year ago [i.e., Don Juan], has anything like the ovation been heard in a motion-picture theatre…. The Vitaphoned songs and some dialogue have been introduced most adroitly. This in itself is an ambitious move, for in the expression of song the Vitaphone vitalizes the production enormously. The dialogue is not so effective, for it does not always catch the nuances of speech or inflections of the voice so that one is not aware of the mechanical features.

Variety called it “[u]ndoubtedly the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen…[with] abundant power and appeal.” Richard Watts, Jr. of the New York Herald Tribune called it a “a pleasantly sentimental orgy dealing with a struggle between religion and art…. [T]his is not essentially a motion picture, but rather a chance to capture for comparative immortality the sight and sound of a great performer.” The Exhibitors Herald’s take was virtually identical: “scarcely a motion picture. It should be more properly labeled an enlarged Vitaphone record of Al Jolson in half a dozen songs.” The film received favorable reviews in both the Jewish press and in African American newspapers such as the Baltimore Afro-American, the New York Amsterdam News, and the Pittsburgh Courier. The headline of the Los Angeles Times review told a somewhat different story: “‘Jazz Singer’ Scores a Hit-Vitaphone and Al Jolson Responsible, Picture Itself Second Rate.” Photoplay dismissed Jolson as “no movie actor. Without his Broadway reputation he wouldn’t rate as a minor player.”

The New Kid

Web Exclusive!

You know, cinnamon and nutmeg can be a year round thing.

But aren’t they all?

Not a terrible start about which I may talk more about later but I am not in the mood for today.  Seth Rogen is utterly unmemorable and pretty much an ignorable asshole after The Interview which was not only offensive but also boring and unfunny.  The only good that came of it was the Sony Hack leaks which prove that Sony is a horrible company that discriminates against women and produces other pieces of crap like Paul Blart: Mall Cop parts 1 and 2 and has ruined the XMen, Spiderman, and The Fantastic Four for a generation of comic book readers.

This week’s guests-

Trevor Noah

• Tuesday 10/6: Aaron Sorkin
• Wednesday 10/7: Evgeny Afineevsky
• Thursday 10/8: Rachel Maddow

The New Continuity

General Regina Stalwart

Umm… Who blows up Médecins Sans Frontières hospitals again?  Why, that would be the United States of America.

We should all feel very proud that we murdered doctors and children to kill some “Taliban” who were wounded.

You know, we executed Germans and Japanese for less, about which we should feel very proud also.  USA!  USA!  USA!

Bitter?  Moi?  Not any more than Denatonium.

Tonightly’s panel is Mike Yard, Rory Albanese, and Ashleigh Banfield.  We will be talking about the Oregon shootings.

The Dancing Man

You know we only deal in the rankest most scurrilous rumors here and this one has been debunked more than once by the same “official” sources that claim “several” individuals were killed as the result of “collateral damage” in Kunduz, but the story goes like this-

Far from being a glamourous fighter jock, John “Wet Start” McCain drove an A-4 Bomb Truck because his Daddy was an Admiral and they figured that was where he could do the least harm.  Among his favorite things to do was “Wet Start” his airplane which means he dumped a lot of fuel in his engine and took off the deck with a long tail of trailing flame.  He was doing this on the U.S.S. Forrestal and accidentally cooked off a Zuni rocket on the plane behind him in the flight line which struck his jet and ignited a fire that killed 134 sailors.

He’s the most prolific guest in D.C.

Also on tonight are Yo-Yo Ma, and Misty Copeland.

This Week’s guests-

• Tuesday 10/6: Bill Clinton, Billy Eichner, and Florence and the Machine
• Wednesday 10/7: Gina Rodriguez, Ben Bernanke, and Tame Impala
• Thursday 10/8: Cate Blanchett and Brian Chesky
• Friday 10/9: James Corden, Shane Smith, and Halsey

Last week it was reported that the US Secret Service allegedly tried to embarrass House Rep. Jason Caffetz (R-UT) by releasing information from his Secret Service file. John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” wonders why they are wasting their time when given enough time Republicans will embarrass themselves>

   OLIVER: That’s right. The Secret Service attempted to embarrass one of their biggest critics, Congressman Jason Chaffetz, by leaking his rejected application to join them, essentially behaving like the high school table of mean girls. […]

   And I don’t know what’s worse here. The fact that the Secret Service is so petty that they broke the law to embarrass Jason Chaffetz, or that they’re so stupid, they didn’t realize, if you want to embarrass Jason Chaffetz, just wait, and he will do it for you.

H/t Heather, Crooks and Liars

The official story from the Afghan government and US military about the attack on the Kunduz hospital run by the international medical aid agency, Doctors Without Borders. At a press conference in Washington, DC early today General John Campbell, the American commander of international forces in Afghanistan, changed the original story about US forces requesting the air strike and “may have resulted in collateral damage.” He is now states that US forces were not under fire and that it was the Afghan forces who requested the air strike.

Campbell said that Afghan troops were under direct fire and “called in for fire to support them.” He acknowledged that initial statements from the coalition indicated that U.S. Special Forces were under direct fire, but that was not the case and he is “correcting that statement here.”

He said that U.S. Special Forces were in the area, just not under direct fire.

Campbell declined to answer whether the rules of engagement allow for the Afghans to call in American airstrikes and what kind of fall back or fail-safe system is in place.

Military officials told NBC News over the weekend that Afghans cannot call in airstrikes – that they do not have the training. However, they can report to the U.S. and coalition that they are under fire from a location and the U.S. or coalition partners there can call it in. Officials said the U.S. would not strike without target verification first.

It isn’t clear how the Afghans asked for air support, but Campbell seemed to suggest both of those policies were violated.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, this story is radically changing:

This obfuscation tactic is the standard one the U.S. and Israel both use whenever they blow up civilian structures and slaughter large numbers of innocent people with airstrikes. Citizens of both countries are well-trained – like some tough, war-weary, cigar-chomping general – to reflexively spout the phrase “collateral damage,” which lets them forget about the whole thing and sleep soundly, telling themselves that these sorts of innocent little mistakes are inevitable even among the noblest and most well-intentioned war-fighters, such as their own governments. The phrase itself is beautifully technocratic: it requires no awareness of how many lives get extinguished, let alone acceptance of culpability. Just invoke that phrase and throw enough doubt on what happened in the first 48 hours and the media will quickly lose interest.

But there’s something significantly different about this incident that has caused this “mistake” claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military, which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.

In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an organization – Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) – run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

MSF has used this platform, unapologetically and aggressively. They are clearly infuriated at the attack on their hospital and the deaths of their colleagues and patients. From the start, they have signaled an unwillingness to be shunted away with the usual “collateral damage” banalities and, more important, have refused to let the U.S. military and its allies get away with spouting obvious falsehoods. They want real answers. As the Guardian‘s Spencer Ackerman put it last night: “MSF’s been going incredibly hard, challenging every US/Afgh claim made about hospital bombing.”

In particular, MSF quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes. [..]

All of these facts make it extremely difficult – even for U.S. media outlets – to sell the “accident” story. At least as likely is that the hospital was deliberately targeted, chosen either by Afghan military officials who fed the coordinates to their U.S. military allies and/or by the U.S. military itself.

Even cynical critics of the U.S. have a hard time believing that the U.S. military would deliberately target a hospital with an airstrike (despite how many times the U.S. has destroyed hospitals with airstrikes). But in this case, there is long-standing tension between the Afghan military and this specific MSF hospital, grounded in the fact that the MSF – true to its name – treats all wounded human beings without first determining on which side they fight. That they provide medical treatment to wounded civilians and Taliban fighters alike has made them a target before.

In July – just 3 months ago – Reuters reported that Afghan special forces “raided” this exact MSF hospital in Kunduz, claiming an Al Qaeda member was a patient. [..]

News accounts of this weekend’s U.S. airstrike on that same hospital hinted cryptically at the hostility from the Afghan military. The first NYT story on the strike – while obscuring who carried out the strike – noted deep into the article that “the hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked Afghan security forces.” Al Jazeera similarly alluded to this tension, noting that “a caretaker at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike, told Al Jazeera that clinic’s medical staff did not favour any side of the conflict. ‘We are here to help and treat civilians,’ Abdul Manar said.”

As a result of all of this, there is now a radical shift in the story being told about this strike. No longer is it being depicted as some terrible accident of a wayward bomb. Instead, the predominant narrative from U.S. sources and their Afghan allies is that this attack was justified because the Taliban were using it as a “base.” [..]

The New York Times today – in a story ostensibly about the impact on area residents from the hospital’s destruction – printed paragraphs from anonymous officials justifying this strike: “there was heavy gunfire in the area around the hospital at the time of the airstrike, and that initial reports indicated that the Americans and Afghans on the ground near the hospital could not safely pull back without being dangerously exposed. American forces on the ground then called for air support, senior officials said.” It also claimed that “many residents of Kunduz, as well as people in Kabul, seemed willing to believe the accusations of some Afghan officials that there were Taliban fighters in the hospital shooting at American troops.” And this:

   Still, some Afghan officials continued to suggest that the attack was justified. “I know that there were civilian casualties in the hospital, but a lot of senior Taliban were also killed,” said Abdul Wadud Paiman, a member of Parliament from Kunduz.

So now we’re into full-on justification mode: yes, we did it; yes, we did it on purpose; and we’re not sorry because we were right to do so since we think some Taliban fighters were at the hospital, perhaps even shooting at us. In response to the emergence of this justification claim, MSF expressed the exact level of revulsion appropriate (emphasis added):

   “MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.

   “This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as ‘collateral damage.’

   “There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation.”

Christopher Stokes, the Director General of MSF, issued this statement in response to these latest developments:

October 05, 2015

“Today the US government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed 22 patients and MSF staff. Their description of the attack keeps changing-from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government. The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the US and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical.”

Dr. Gino Strada, co-founder of Emergency, an Italian NGO that provides free medical care to victims of war, spoke to Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman.

As Glenn said, “the U.S. seems to have picked the wrong group this time to attack from the air.”

No apology is acceptable. Only punishing the individuals responsible for this war crime is.

Donald Trump Says His Tax Cut Will Lead to 6% GDP Growth and President Obama Says TPP Will Boost Growth

Dean Baker, Center for Economic Policy Research

Published: 05 October 2015

The most favorable positive assessment comes from the Peterson Institute. It projects that the agreement would boost growth by 0.03 percentage points annually over the next dozen years. This would mean, for example, that if growth would have been 2.2 percent without the TPP, it would be 2.23 percent with the TPP. Other projections have been lower. For example, an analysis by the United States Department of Agriculture concluded that the gains would be too small to measure.

It is also worth noting that none of these studies took into account the negative impact on growth from the higher drug prices that would be the result of the stronger protectionist measures in the TPP. The United States currently spends more than $400 billion a year on prescription drugs. This amount will almost certainly increase in both the U.S. and elsewhere as a result of stronger patent and related protections in the TPP. Higher drug prices will pull money out of people’s pockets, leaving less to spend in other areas, thereby slowing growth.

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Glenn Greenwald: The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification

When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that. [..]

But there’s something significantly different about this incident that has caused this “mistake” claim to fail. Usually, the only voices protesting or challenging the claims of the U.S. military are the foreign, non-western victims who live in the cities and villages where the bombs fall. Those are easily ignored, or dismissed as either ignorant or dishonest. Those voices barely find their way into U.S. news stories, and when they do, they are stream-rolled by the official and/or anonymous claims of the U.S. military, which are typically treated by U.S. media outlets as unassailable authority.

In this case, though, the U.S. military bombed the hospital of an organization – Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)) – run by western-based physicians and other medical care professionals. They are not so easily ignored. Doctors who travel to dangerous war zones to treat injured human beings are regarded as noble and trustworthy. They’re difficult to marginalize and demonize. They give compelling, articulate interviews in English to U.S. media outlets. They are heard, and listened to.

Paul Krugman: Enemies of the Sun

Does anyone remember the Cheney energy task force? Early in the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney released a report (pdf) that was widely derided as a document written by and for Big Energy – because it was. The administration fought tooth and nail to keep the process by which the report was produced secret, but the list of people the task force met was eventually leaked, and it was exactly what you’d expect: a who’s who of energy industry executives, with environmental groups getting a chance to make their case only after the work was essentially done.

But here’s the thing: by the standards of today’s Republican Party, the Cheney report was enlightened, even left-leaning. One whole chapter was devoted to conservation, another to renewable energy. By contrast, recent speeches by Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – still the most likely Republican presidential nominees – barely address either topic. When it comes to energy policy, the G.O.P. has become fossilized. That is, it’s fossil fuels, and only fossil fuels, all the way.