Author's posts
Jul 09 2012
The Dragging US Economy
Austerity is not going well for Europe or the US.
U.S. Stocks Post Longest Slump in 1 Month on Europe Woes
by Rita Nazareth and Julia Leite
U.S. stocks fell, giving benchmark indexes the longest slump in more than a month, after a jump in Spanish bond yields above 7 percent intensified concern about Europe’s crisis and as investors awaited Alcoa (AA) Inc.’s results.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 0.2 percent to 1,352.45 at 4 p.m. New York time, according to preliminary closing data, paring an earlier loss of as much as 0.6 percent. The benchmark index dropped 1.6 percent over three days. [..]
Stocks joined a global slump as the yield on Spain’s 10- year bond rose above the threshold that prompted bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble dismissed a rapid move toward direct bank recapitalization by the European rescue fund, limiting the tools for shoring up Spanish banks as the euro-area crisis simmers.
Stocks Retreat as Spanish 10-Year Bond Yield Exceeds 7%
By Stephen Kirkland and Rita Nazareth
U.S. stocks fell for a third day as Spain’s 10-year debt yield topped 7 percent, fueling concern the debt crisis is worsening, and investors awaited the start of the earnings season. Corn and soybeans surged on forecasts for more dry U.S. weather. Treasuries rose.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slipped 0.2 percent at 4 p.m. in New York and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 0.4 percent. Ten-year Spanish yields jumped 11 basis points to 7.06 percent after rising as high as 7.108 percent. The euro climbed 0.2 percent to $1.2319, rebounding from a two-year low of $1.2251. Corn rose as much as 5.8 percent and soybeans jumped to a four-year high. Oil added 1.8 percent to $85.99 a barrel and natural gas rallied as a strike threatened supplies from Norway.
E.U. Seeks to Dispel Doubts About Bank Bailouts
by Paul Geitner and Stephen Casstle
BRUSSELS – With borrowing costs for Spain and Italy climbing again to critical levels, European officials sought Monday to dispel doubts about a deal struck last month to break the “vicious circle” between shaky banks and weak governments.
Spain, suffering through its second recession in three years, was also expected to win more time to rein in its budget deficit even as euro zone finance ministers haggled in Brussels over terms of a bailout for its troubled banks.
Amid the unrelenting market pressure, the European Central Bank reaffirmed that it stood ready to do more to stem the crisis – within the limits of its mandate – while urging euro zone governments to press ahead with closer integration.
Even here in the US, the Federal Reserve admits that they may be reaching there limits on their ability to fix unemployment and are at odds as to what to do next.
Fed’s Lacker Says U.S. May Be Close to Maximum Employment
By Kathleen Hays and Jeff Kearns
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker said the U.S. may already be close to maximum employment from a monetary policy standpoint and that policy makers can’t do much more to cut the jobless rate.
“Given what’s happened to this economy, I think we’re pretty close to maximum employment right now,” Lacker said today in a Bloomberg radio interview on “The Hays Advantage” with Kathleen Hays and Vonnie Quinn. “That might be shocking. That might be surprising.”
Fed policy makers believe the U.S. central bank has limited control over the jobless rate because the employment level is driven by “non-monetary factors that affect the structure and dynamics of the labor market,” according to the January statement from the Federal Open Market Committee. The jobless rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent in June.
Lacker, who has dissented from all four FOMC decisions this year, is at odds with colleagues on what the Fed should do to boost the economy. He said in a June 22 statement that he opposed the FOMC’s $267 billion extension of its Operation Twist program because it may spur inflation and won’t give the economy a significant boost.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams said today the U.S. central bank must maintain “extraordinary vigilance” to see if the slowing economy requires additional monetary stimulus. “If further action is called for, the most effective tool would be additional purchases of longer-maturity securities, including agency mortgage-backed securities,” Williams said in a speech in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.
While all the PTB debate how to save banks and the markets, the 99% are getting poorer putting an even bigger drag on the economy. For most the recession never ended.
Jul 09 2012
Punting the Pundits
“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
Paul Krugman: Mitt’s Gray Areas
Once upon a time a rich man named Romney ran for president. He could claim, with considerable justice, that his wealth was well-earned, that he had in fact done a lot to create good jobs for American workers. Nonetheless, the public understandably wanted to know both how he had grown so rich and what he had done with his wealth; he obliged by releasing extensive information about his financial history.
But that was 44 years ago. And the contrast between George Romney and his son Mitt – a contrast both in their business careers and in their willingness to come clean about their financial affairs – dramatically illustrates how America has changed.
Simon Johnson: Banks’ Living Wills Don’t Defuse Systemic Risk
On July 3, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve made public portions of the “living wills” developed recently by major U.S. financial institutions. The documents are the first suggestions from those organizations of what they believe should happen when insolvency looms.
The living wills were prepared in compliance with the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and are a major step forward in terms of revealing how global megabanks are structured. Yet they are shockingly incomplete and flawed in one crucial aspect: They neglect to explain how cross- border assets and liabilities would be handled in different legal jurisdictions.
The plans should be rejected by officials and sent back to the banks to be revised. As these proposals now stand, they are a blueprint for further financial disaster, and additional taxpayer-backed bailouts.
The guilty verdicts in two major child sex abuse cases, and the e-mails revealing the extent of the cover-up in one of the cases, the Penn State nightmare, could be more than just examples of justice delivered – if they provide impetus for new accountability and deterrence. [..]
Children who are sexually abused can take many years to speak about their ordeals, if they ever do. Much of the evidence for the cover-up in the Lynn case came from victims barred from bringing criminal charges or civil claims under the applicable statute of limitations.
Existing laws need to be recalibrated to make them more protective of children and less protective of adults who prey on them. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders have failed to heed rising calls for such reforms. But some other jurisdictions are beginning to take action.
Robert Reich: The Wall Street Scandal of All Scandals
Just when you thought Wall Street couldn’t sink any lower — when its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system, giving birth to Tea Partiers and Occupiers and all manner of conspiracy theories; when its excesses have already wrought havoc with the lives of millions of Americans, causing taxpayers to shell out billions (of which only a portion has been repaid) even as its top executives are back to making more money than ever; when its vast political power (via campaign contributions) has already eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to rein it in, including the so-called “Volcker” Rule that was sold as a milder version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment from commercial banking — yes, just when you thought the Street had hit bottom, an even deeper level of public-be-damned greed and corruption is revealed.
Sit down and hold on to your chair.
Joe Conason: Defining American Exceptionalism
The Fourth of July is the birthday of American exceptionalism-originally, the idea cherished by the nation’s Revolutionary Founders that the practice of liberty, equality and democracy in these United States would kindle hope in a world downtrodden by every form of despotism, hierarchy and oppression.
Independence Day marked the determination of a new and diverse people to throw off the old yoke of hereditary rule, with all its attendant traditions of social and economic stratification. The Founders believed that America would inspire other nations as an ally and friend, rather than dominate them by force of arms or money. They did not regard their weak new republic as intrinsically superior or chosen by God to rule the world-but argued instead that the ideals of popular sovereignty and constitutional freedom represented the natural rights and the future of humanity everywhere.
Robert Parry: The Silence on Global Warming
Harrowing predictions of climate scientists are coming true, as glaciers melt, forests burn, heat waves proliferate and freakish weather strikes in unexpected places. But the propagandists of global-warming denial have succeeded in silencing most politicians and the mainstream press
Something called a “derecho” – a fast-moving line of thunderstorms – strikes the Washington area knocking out power for days. Massive forest fires ravage Colorado. A record heat wave covers much of the country. The U.S. press treats these events as major stories, but two words are rarely mentioned: “global warming.”
What has become most striking about the growing evidence that climate change is a clear and present danger – indeed an emerging existential threat – is the simultaneous failure of the U.S. news media to deal seriously with the issue, another sign of how the Right can intimidate the mainstream into going silent.
We have seen this pattern before, as the Right sets the media agenda by bullying those who threaten its ideological interests. Before the Iraq War, anyone who dared raise questions about the Bush administration’s justifications could expect to be marginalized or worse. Just ask Phil Donahue, Scott Ritter and the Dixie Chicks.
Jul 09 2012
On This Day In History July 9
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.
July 9 is the 190th day of the year (191st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 175 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1995, the Grateful Dead gave their last concert at Soldier Field in Chicago, IL.
For mishima
Jul 08 2012
Rant of the Week: Bill Maher
What two grown men do behind closed doors is between them and airport security.
Jul 08 2012
On This Day In History July 8
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.
July 8 is the 189th day of the year (190th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 176 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1951, Paris celebrates 2,000th birthday. In fact, a few more candles would’ve technically been required on the birthday cake, as the City of Lights was most likely founded around 250 B.C.
The earliest archaeological signs of permanent settlements in the Paris area date from around 4200 BC. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the area near the river Seine from around 250 BC. The Romans conquered the Paris basin in 52 BC, with a permanent settlement by the end of the same century on the Left Bank Sainte Geneviève Hill and the Île de la Cité. The Gallo-Roman town was originally called Lutetia, but later Gallicised to Lutèce. It expanded greatly over the following centuries, becoming a prosperous city with a forum, palaces, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.
The collapse of the Roman empire and the 5th-century Germanic invasions sent the city into a period of decline. By 400 AD, Lutèce, largely abandoned by its inhabitants, was little more than a garrison town entrenched into a hastily fortified central island. The city reclaimed its original appellation of “Paris” towards the end of the Roman occupation.
The Paris region was under full control of the Germanic Franks by the late 5th century. The Frankish king Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. The late 8th century Carolingian dynasty displaced the Frankish capital to Aachen; this period coincided with the beginning of Viking invasions that had spread as far as Paris by the early 9th century. Repeated invasions forced Parisians to build a fortress on the Île de la Cité; one of the most remarkable Viking raids was on 28 March 845, when Paris was sacked and held ransom, probably by Ragnar Lodbrok, who left only after receiving a large bounty paid by the crown. The weakness of the late Carolingian kings of France led to the gradual rise in power of the Counts of Paris; Odo, Count of Paris was elected king of France by feudal lords, and the end of the Carolingian empire came in 987, when Hugh Capet, count of Paris, was elected king of France. Paris, under the Capetian kings, became a capital once more.
Jul 08 2012
Rep. Barney Frank Marries Jim Ready
Rep. Barney Frank married his partner Jim Ready Saturday in Newton, MA. Mr. Frank met his husband at a fund raiser in 2005 and they started dating in 2007 after Mr. Ready’s longtime partner, Robert Palmer, passed away after a long illness. The modest ceremony took place in the Marriott hotel in Newton and was preformed by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Guests included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator John Kerry and Representatives Dennis J. Kucinich and Steny H. Hoyer and other close friends and family of the grooms.
Mr. Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, became, in 1987, the first sitting member of Congress to volunteer that he was gay. He is now the first to be married to a partner of the same sex. Both bridegrooms said they recognized the historical significance of the ceremony, which lasted less than five minutes. Gov. Patrick told the guests that Mr. Frank had requested that the service “be short and to the point.”
And in vows written by the couple, Mr. Frank and Mr. Ready pledged to love each other “on MSNBC or on Fox” and “in Congress or in retirement,” a reference to Mr. Frank’s decision not to seek another term. [..]
They had long discussions about marriage; Mr. Frank wanted to be married while still serving in Washington. Mr. Ready was worried about the public scrutiny. But he remembered how he felt in high school in Tewksbury, Mass., when Mr. Frank came out publicly.
“The kids that are going to see us, and feel strong enough to be able to come out and be who they are. That gives me more encouragement that I’m doing the right thing,” he said.
Their wedding bands were made of black diamonds set in tungsten, a metal used in welding. Mr. Ready picked the material. “It helps keep me grounded, after going to lunch with the president,” he said.
The wedding took place at a no-frills Marriott hotel in Newton. (Mr. Frank said he chose the location for ease of access.) The bridegrooms planned to wear tuxedos by Joseph Abboud, which Mr. Frank noted is a union shop.
Ms. Pelosi said at the reception on Saturday that it was appropriate that a landmark same-sex wedding take place around the Fourth of July. “It’s about expanding freedom,” she said. “This opportunity was a long time coming.”
We extend our best wishes and congratulations to Barney and Jim. Mazel Tov
In some other positive news for the LGBT community, the Episcopal Church has moved closer to allowing transgender men and women to be ordained as ministers:
INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) – The U.S. Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops on Saturday approved a proposal that, if it survives a final vote, would give transgender men and women the right to become ministers in the church.
The House of Bishops voted at the church’s General Convention to include “gender identity and expression” in its “non-discrimination canons,” meaning sexual orientation, including that of people who have undergone sex-change operations, cannot be used to exclude candidates to ministry. [..]
The Episcopal Church, which has about 2 million members mostly in the United States, now allows gay men and lesbians to join the ordained ministry.
The resolutions on gender would allow transgender individuals access to enter the Episcopal lay or ordained ministries, and extend the overall non-discrimination policy to church members.
The resolutions must now be approved by the church’s House of Deputies.
Great news, indeed!
Jul 08 2012
Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition
“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
The Sunday Talking Heads:
Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris at 8 AM ET will be: Bill McKibben (@billmckibben), author of “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet” and founder of 350.org, a global grassroots environmental movement to solve the climate crisis; Eric Klinenberg (@EricKlinenberg), professor of sociology at New York University and author of “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago“; Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, authors of “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.” Mann is senior fellow for governance studies and the W. Averell Harriman Chair at the Brookings Institution. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute; Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh), MSNBC political analyst and Salon’s editor-at-large; Esther Armah (@estherarmah), playwright and author, host of “Wake Up Call” on WBAI-FM; and Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal editorial board senior economics writer, and the former president of the Club for Growth.
The Melissa Harris-Perry Show: Guest list was not announced at this time.
This Week with George Stephanopolis:”Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran hosts “This Week” Sunday, as Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal face off in a “This Week” debate on the economy and the 2012 election.
The roundtable debates all the week’s politics, with ABC News’ George Will; Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, author of the new book “Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent;” PBS’ “Washington Week” moderator and managing editor Gwen Ifill; former Counselor to the Treasury Secretary and Obama administration Lead Auto Adviser Steven Rattner; and Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guest are Assistant Majority Leader Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the RNC; Historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin, Sports Illustrated‘s Frank Deford, MLB TV’s Harold Reynolds and ESPN’s Jayson Stark.
The political roundtable guests are CBS News political correspondent Jan Crawford, Chief White House Correspondent Norah O’Donnell and Political Director John Dickerson.
The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Joe Klein, TIME Columnist: S. E. Cupp, NY Daily News Columnist; Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent; and Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor.
Meet the Press with David Gregory: Meet the Press will not air Sunday, July 8 due to NBC Sports coverage of the Tour de France. Instead, join ek hornbeck and I for the Live Blog of Le Tour Stage 8 here at The Stars Hollow Gazette
State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowleys guest this Sunday are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-SC); Obama Campaign Senior Adviser Robert Gibbs; former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Mark Zandi, Chief Economist for Moody’s Analytics; and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.
Jul 07 2012
Health and Fitness News
Welcome to the Stars Hollow 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.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Aioli is the quintessential Provençal condiment, a very pungent garlic mayonnaise that in its home country contains more garlic than the version below – which is already pretty garlicky. It’s easy enough to make, and wonderful with all sorts of vegetables, like greens, steamed artichokes and asparagus. All it requires of the eater is a taste for raw garlic.
The quintessential Provençal condiment.
A variation that is generally served with bouillabaisse and other fish soups.
Steamed Cod With Favas and Aioli
This dish was inspired by leftovers, but its appeal makes it a candidate for a dinner party.
This parade of simply cooked fish and vegetables keeps the spotlight on the rich garlicky mayonnaise.
Warm Chickpea and Green Bean Salad With Aioli
Flavorful liquid left from cooking the beans is used to thin out the aioli, making a pungent dressing for this salad.
Aioli Pan Bagnat or Stuffed Pita
A garlicky niçoise salad on a bun or in a pita makes for a filling but light meal.
Jul 07 2012
Punting the Pundits
“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
Joe Nocera: Libor’s Dirty Laundry
Here in the early stages of the Libor scandal – and, yes, this thing is far from over – there are two big surprises.
The first is that the bankers, traders, executives and others involved would so openly and, in some cases, gleefully collude to manipulate this key interest rate for their own benefit. With all the seedy bank behavior that has been exposed since the financial crisis, it’s stunning that there’s still dirty laundry left to be aired. We’ve had predatory subprime lending, fraudulent ratings, excessive risk-taking and even clients being taken advantage of in order to unload toxic mortgages. [..]
Which brings me to the second big surprise. Britain and America have reacted to the Libor scandal in completely different ways. Britain is in an utter frenzy over it, with wall-to-wall coverage, and the most respectable, pro-business publications expressing outrage. Yes, Barclays is a British bank, and the first word in Libor is “London.” But still: The Economist ran a headline about the scandal that read, in its entirety, “Banksters.”
Yet, on these shores, the reaction has been mainly a shrug. Perhaps we’re suffering from bank-scandal fatigue, having lived through Bank of America’s various travails, and the Goldman Sachs revelations, and, most recently, the big JPMorgan Chase trading loss. Or maybe Libor is just hard to gets one’s head around.
New York Times Editorial: The Square Off Over Jobs
There’s no solace in the employment report for June, released Friday. The economy added a paltry 80,000 jobs last month, leaving no doubt that the economy is slowing. In the past three months, the economy averaged 75,000 new jobs a month, compared with 226,000 in the prior three months. The jobless rate in June held steady at 8.2 percent, which is down from the recession peak of 10 percent in October 2009 but still very high.
Who is to blame?
How can it be fixed? [..]
The question then is why the recovery under Mr. Obama has not been stronger. Part of the answer lies beyond the control of any American politician, including the euro zone crisis and, more recently, the slowdown in China. But part is the result of obstructionist Republican politics, including the fiasco in 2011 over raising the debt ceiling, which dented confidence in Congress’s ability to steer the economy.
Recently my friend and colleague Bill Scher challenged progressive critics of President Obama’s conciliatory approach toward corporations with a New York Times op-ed entitled “How Liberals Win.” Far from being “business as usual,” Bill writes, “the Supreme Court’s upholding of Mr. Obama’s health care law reminds us that the president’s approach has achieved significant results.” [..]
Sorry, Bill. I’m with those who have concluded that the Obama White House has failed, both pragmatically and politically, on a number of key progressive issues. In my view, believing otherwise requires an almost ahistorical view of liberalism. We can’t preemptively limit the definition of “liberal victory” to whatever corporate interests will allow.
Wherever the truth lies, the road ahead is clear: We can’t allow the radical right to take power this year. But we need to fight for results, not politicians, by building a mobilized and truly independent citizens’ movement.
Mark Weisbrot: Federal Government Can Restore Full Employment. If Only it Wanted to Do So
Three years after our worst recession since the Great Depression officially ended, the U.S. economy is still very weak. The people most hurt by this weakness are the unemployed and the poor, and of course the two problems are related. We have about 23 million people who are unemployed, involuntarily working part-time, or have given up looking for work — nearly 15 percent of the labor force. And poverty has reached 15.1 percent of the population; amazingly, a level that it was at in the mid-1960s.
The first priority of the U.S. government should therefore be restoring full employment. This is a relatively easy thing to do. As Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman aptly put it: “It’s like having a dead battery in a car, and while there may be a lot wrong with the car, you can get the car going remarkably easily, if you’re willing to accept that’s what the problem really is.”
Most economists are well aware what the problem really is, since it is so simple and basic. The economy lost about $1.3 trillion in private annual spending when the real estate bubble burst in 2007, and much of that has not recovered. State and local governments continue to tighten their budgets and lay off workers. If the federal government had simply funded these governments’ shortfalls, we would have another two million jobs today.
Ruslan Pukhov: Why Russia Is Backing Syria
MANY in the West believe that Russia’s support for Syria stems from Moscow’s desire to profit from selling arms to Bashar al-Assad’s government and maintain its naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. But these speculations are superficial and misguided. The real reason that Russia is resisting strong international action against the Assad regime is that it fears the spread of Islamic radicalism and the erosion of its superpower status in a world where Western nations are increasingly undertaking unilateral military interventions. [..]
To people in Moscow, Mr. Assad appears not so much as “a bad dictator” but as a secular leader struggling with an uprising of Islamist barbarians. The active support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey’s Islamist government for rebels in Syria only heightens suspicions in Russia about the Islamist nature of the current opposition in Syria and rebels throughout the Middle East.
Finally, Russians are angry about the West’s propensity for unilateral interventionism – not to mention the blatantly broad interpretation of the resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council and the direct violations of those resolutions in Libya.
Jul 07 2012
Drone “Pilots” Practice on Us.
A report in the New York Times by Mark Mazzetti, a national-security correspondent, revealed that the US trains drone “pilots” at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in air conditioned trailers, sitting in comfortable chairs while they practice targeting on civilian cars passing the base.
The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.
Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year – a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.
“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.
Good practice for the real thing right here at home.
Drone strike kills 19 ahead of US-Pakistan meeting in Tokyo
Air strike is first since Pakistan reopened Nato supply route to Afghanistan and comes just before crucial diplomatic meeting
The death toll from a US drone strike in Pakistan rose to 19 on Saturday, increasing tensions ahead of a meeting between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and her Islamabad counterpart.
Pakistani authorities increased the estimate from an initially reported 12 suspected militants who were killed in the attack in the Dattakhel region in North Waziristan on Friday. [..]
But the use of drones is highly controversial, with a large chunk of the Pakistani public – as well as human rights activists around the world – resenting their use due to the high number of non-military casualties.
Figures from the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism show that CIA drones stuck Pakistan 75 times in 2011, causing up to 655 fatalities.
The majority of those killed were alleged militants, but as many as 126 civilians also have lost their lives, the bureau’s figures suggest.
And just who makes the determination that these people are militants? Based on what “intelligence”? According to the Obama administration any male in the vicinity of an alleged militant is a militant as well. How convenient.
Meanwhile their killers, pilots sit comfortable, get to go safely home to their families and the US saves money because it’s all done right here in the US.
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