Tag: ek Politics

Boko Haram kidnaps wife of vice prime minister in Cameroon

Al Jazeera

July 27, 2014 11:29AM ET

Boko Haram fighters on Sunday kidnapped the wife of Cameroon’s vice prime minister in an attack that also killed three people, according to a government spokesman.

The Islamist fighters targeted the home of Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali in the town of Kolofata, in the Far North Region, according to Communications Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary. A local religious leader, or lamido, also was kidnapped in a separate attack on his home.

“I can confirm that the home of Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali in Kolofata came under a savage attack from Boko Haram militants,” Issa Tchiroma told Reuters.

“They unfortunately took away his wife. They also attacked the lamido’s residence and he was also kidnapped,” he said, adding that at least three people were killed in the attack.

The Real News Network

Baba Aye, a trade union educator and Deputy National Secretary of the Labour Party, is the National Convener of United Action for Democracy, the largest rights-based CSOs coalition in Nigeria. He has been very active over the past three decades in the various trenches of struggle for democratic rights and is the author of the book Era of Crises and Revolts: Perspectives for Workers and Youth (2012).

According to Human Rights Watch, in Nigeria, Boko Haram, the groups most people regard as a terrorist group, have killed in the last six months more than 2,053 civilians. Some people suggest that number has also been reached by the government of Goodluck Jonathan, who some say has killed as many people over the same period, but Human Rights Watch mentions only a few abuses in the same report.

How does all this come to be? Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa now, more than–bigger than South Africa. It’s the sixth-largest oil exporting country in the world. Why such chaos?

Now joining us to talk about the historical roots of all of this is Baba Aye. He’s a trade union educator, deputy national secretary of the Labour Party. He’s the national convener of United Action for Democracy, the largest rights-based organization coalition in Nigeria.

Transcript

Transcript

Transcript

Rumors Swirling That David Gregory Will Dumped From Meet The Press After Midterm Elections

By: Jason Easley, PoliticusUSA

Wednesday, July, 23rd, 2014, 4:55 pm

It has been reported by mainstream outlets like The Washington Post that David Gregory is on thin ice. The constant reports that NBC News is thinking about making a change on Meet The Press are becoming a where there’s smoke, there’s fire situation. The one fact in the NY Post report is that ratings have plummeted since Gregory took over for Tim Russert.

Judging from all of the media reports, it seems that NBC will only look in house if they get rid of David Gregory. This would be a huge mistake. A Chuck Todd or Morning Joe led Meet The Press won’t be any better than Gregory’s version of the show. I have long suggested that Rachel Maddow be given the job, but she is apparently viewed as too partisan (read: too liberal and too not a heterosexual white male) to anchor a Sunday morning show.

The problems at Meet The Press go beyond David Gregory. The show itself, much like the rest of Sunday morning political talk, is dominated by Republicans. The faces on the Sunday shows don’t match the changing face of the country. The Sunday shows tend to be dominated mostly by older white men while the country is getting younger, browner, and more female. The Sunday shows are out of step with leftward direction of the nation.

Meet The Press would be best served if NBC News dumped Gregory, and looked outside of the NBC family for his replacement. If they have to stay in house and refuse to hire Maddow, Chris Hayes, who ironically enough, is killing MSNBC’s primetime ratings would be an excellent host for Meet The Press. Hayes’s style has been a painful fit on cable news primetime, but he would make an excellent Sunday morning host. Hayes was excellent as the host of MSNBC’s Up, and he is capable of interviewing both Republicans and Democrats.

Ok, so there’s something wacky about the page in my browser (Seamonkey 2.26.1), but you can cut and paste it to get the whole piece, and don’t be put off by the obscurity of the source, I’ve seen it other places and this was the easiest to find.

So this is good news right?  Anybody would be better than Dancin’ Dave!

Hold on there.  Would Chris Todd really be an improvement?  Joe and Mika (the Beltway Bootlicker favorites)?

Even the Sainted Rachel has shown a noted ability to ignore in her own network the problems she cheerfully exopses in others.

But Chris, Chris Hayes, surely we can count on him!

‘Witch Hunt’: Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate

By Max Blumenthal, Alternet

July 22, 2014

Jebreal said that in her two years as an MSNBC contributor, she had protested the network’s slanted coverage repeatedly in private conversations with producers. “I told them we have a serious issue here,” she explained. “But everybody’s intimidated by this pressure and if it’s not direct then it becomes self-censorship.”

With her criticism of her employer’s editorial line, she has become the latest casualty of the pro-Israel pressure. “I have been told to my face that I wasn’t invited on to shows because I was Palestinian,” Jebreal remarked. “I didn’t believe it at the time. Now I believe it.”

An NBC producer speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed Jebreal’s account, describing to me a top-down intimidation campaign aimed at presenting an Israeli-centric view of the attack on the Gaza Strip. The NBC producer told me that MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC executives are micromanaging coverage of the crisis, closely monitoring contributors’ social media accounts and engaging in a “witch hunt” against anyone who strays from the official line.

“Loyalties are now being openly questioned,” the producer commented.

The suppression campaign culminated after Jebreal’s on-air protest during a July 21 segment on Ronan Farrow Daily.

“We are disgustingly biased on this issue. Look at how much airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others,” Jebreal complained to Farrow. “I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.”

When Farrow claimed that the network had featured other voices, Jebreal shot back, “Maybe for thirty seconds, and then you have twenty-five minutes for Bibi Netanyahu.”

Within hours, all of Jebreal’s future bookings were cancelled and the renewal of her contract was off the table. The following day, Jebreal tweeted: “My forthcoming TV appearances have been cancelled. Is there a connection to my expose and the cancellation?”

…

According to the NBC producer, MSNBC show teams were livid that they had been forced by management to cancel Jebreal as punishment for her act of dissent.

At the same time, social media erupted in protest of Jebreal’s cancellation, forcing the network into damage control mode. The role of clean-up man fell to Chris Hayes, the only MSNBC host with a reputation for attempting a balanced discussion of Israel-Palestine. On the July 22 episode of his show, All In, he brought Jebreal on to discuss her on-air protest.

In introducing Jebreal, Hayes took on the role of the industry and network defender: “Let me take you behind the curtain of cable news business for a moment,” Hayes told his viewers. “If you appear on a cable news network, you trash that network and one of its hosts by name, on any issue – Gaza, infrastructure spending, sports coverage, funny internet cat videos – the folks at the network will not take kindly to it.”

In fact, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has publicly attacked fellow MSNBC hosts and slammed the network for its support for the Democratic Party.

“I did not think that i was stepping in a hornet’s nest,” Jebreal told me. “I saw Joe Scarborough criticizing the network. I thought we were liberal enough to stand self criticism.”

Yet when she appeared across from Hayes, Jebreal encountered a defensive host shielding his employers from her criticism. “We’re actually doing a pretty good job” of covering the Israel-Palestine crisis, Hayes claimed to her. “I think our network, and I think the New York Times and the media all around, have been doing a much better job on this conflict.”

Jebreal appeared on screen as a “Palestinian journalist” – her title as a MSNBC contributor had been removed. When she insisted that American broadcast media had not provided adequate context about the 8-year-long Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip or the roots of Palestinian violence, Hayes protested that he had wanted to host Hamas officials alongside the Israeli government spokespeople he routinely featured but that it was practically impossible.

“Not all Palestinians are Hamas,” Jebreal vehemently replied.

“Airtime always strikes me as a bad metric,” Hayes responded. “I mean there are interviews and then there are interviews. I had [Israeli government spokesman] Mark Regev on this program for 16 minutes, alright? That’s a very long interview but there was a lot to talk to him about.”

The NBC producer remarked to me that the network’s public relations strategy had backfired. Hayes’ performance was poorly received on social media while Jebreal appeared as another maverick journalist outcasted by corporate media for delivering uncomfortable truths.

For her part, Jebreal told me she was disturbed by Hayes’ comments. “I admire that Chris [Hayes] wanted to have me on but it seems like he was condoning what happened to me,” she said. “He was saying, ‘What do you expect? We rally around our stars.’ Well, I rally around reality, if that still matters in media.”

Oh, You Thought Cable News Was About The Truth?

By Susie Madrak, Crooks & Liars

July 23, 2014 9:39 am

Say what? Was that Chris Hayes, the voice of moral reason, blowing off MSNBC’s treatment of Jebreal as no big deal, par for the course?

…

Well, see, this is one of the reasons why I don’t get my news from cable teevee. Because (and I’m not going to blame Chris Hayes for wanting to keep his job, he’s got a mortgage and a couple of kids) inevitably, the same people we see as reliable voices become Villagers. Maybe not as dyed-in-the-wool as Mrs. Greenspan or Dancin’ Dave, but if they want to pay the bills, there’s an electric fence they dare not cross.

This started in earnest when television news morphed from a public service to a profit center, and it ain’t going back anytime soon. Problem is, a lot of us still remember the public service days.

Exactly.  This is an institutional problem.  Television News is to Journalism as a Cesspit to a Mountain Spring.

MSNBC’s Sole Palestinian Voice Rula Jebreal Takes on Pro-Israeli Gov’t Bias at Network & in US Media

Democracy Now!

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

A week after public outrage helped force NBC’s reversal of a decision to pull veteran reporter Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza, the sole Palestinian contributor to sister network MSNBC has publicly criticized its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. “We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue,” Rula Jebreal said Monday on MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow Daily, citing a disproportionate amount of Palestinian voices and a preponderance of Israeli government officials and supporters. Jebreal joins us to discuss her decision to speak out against MSNBC and her broader criticism of the corporate media’s Israel-Palestine coverage. An author and political analyst who worked for many years as a broadcast journalist in Italy, Jebreal also shares her personal story as a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who is married to a Jewish man and has a Jewish sister.  (Transcript linked in article).

And who is this Ayman Mohyeldin of whom Rula Jebreal speaks?  Oh, he’s the NBC Gaza correspondent who filed the story about the Israeli Defense Forces bombing 4 Palestinian children playing soccer on the beach.  The one who got canned and then re-instated after enormous public outcry.  Not everyone is fooled by the propaganda you see.

Glenn Greenwald: Why Did NBC Pull Veteran Reporter After He Witnessed Israeli Killing of Gaza Kids?

Democracy Now!

Friday, July 18, 2014

NBC is facing questions over its decision to pull veteran news correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza just after he personally witnessed the Israeli military’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach. Mohyeldin was kicking a soccer ball around with the boys just minutes before they died. He is a longtime reporter in the region. In his coverage, he reports on the Gaza conflict in the context of the Israeli occupation, sparking criticism from some supporters of the Israeli offensive. Back in 2008 and 2009, when he worked for Al Jazeera, Mohyeldin and his colleague Sherine Tadros were the only foreign journalists on the ground in Gaza as Israel killed 1,400 people in what it called “Operation Cast Lead.” We speak to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who has revealed that the decision to pull Mohyeldin from Gaza and remove him from reporting on the situation came from NBC executive David Verdi. Greenwald also comments on the broader picture of the coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the U.S. media.  (Transcript linked in article).

NBC News Pulls Veteran Reporter from Gaza After Witnessing Israeli Attack on Children

By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

17 Jul 2014, 12:43 PM EDT

Yesterday, Mohyeldin witnessed and then reported on the brutal killing by Israeli gunboats of four young boys as they played soccer on a beach in Gaza City. He was instrumental, both in social media and on the air, in conveying to the world the visceral horror of the attack.

Mohyeldin recounted how, moments before their death, he was kicking a soccer ball with the four boys, who were between the ages of 9 and 11 and all from the same family. He posted numerous chilling details on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, including the victims’ names and ages, photographs he took of their anguished parents, and video of one of their mothers as she learned about the death of her young son. He interviewed one of the wounded boys at the hospital shortly before being operated on. He then appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, where he dramatically recounted what he saw.

…

Despite this powerful first-hand reporting – or perhaps because of it – Mohyeldin was nowhere to be seen on last night’s NBC Nightly News broadcast with Brian Williams. Instead, as Media Bistro’s Jordan Chariton noted, NBC curiously had Richard Engel – who was in Tel Aviv, and had just arrived there an hour or so earlier – “report” on the attack. Charlton wrote that “the decision to have Engel report the story for ‘Nightly’ instead of Mohyeldin angered some NBC News staffers.”

Indeed, numerous NBC employees, including some of the network’s highest-profile stars, were at first confused and then indignant over the use of Engel rather than Mohyeldin to report the story. But what they did not know, and what has not been reported until now, is that Mohyeldin was removed completely from reporting on Gaza by a top NBC executive, David Verdi, who ordered Mohyeldin to leave Gaza immediately.

Over the last two weeks, Mohyeldin’s reporting has been far more balanced and even-handed than the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage; his reports have provided context to the conflict that is missing from most American reports and he avoids adopting Israeli government talking points as truth. As a result, neocon and “pro-Israel” websites have repeatedly attacked him as a “Hamas spokesman” and spouting “pro-Hamas rants.”

Last week, as he passed over the border from Israel, he said while reporting that “you can understand why some human rights organizations call Gaza ‘the world’s largest outdoor prison,'”; he added: “One of the major complaints and frustrations among many people is that this is a form of collective punishment. You have 1.7 million people in this territory, now being bombarded, with really no way out.”

So two questions for you dear reader, are you still sure Chris Hayes is any improvement or is the problem behind the camera; and two, is it sexist not to show the same support for Rula Jebreal that we did for Ayman Mohyeldin.  What would Hillary think?

Why Am I Moving Left?

By THOMAS E. RICKS, Politico

July 23, 2014

In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward.

…

I wonder whether others of my generation are similarly pausing, poking up their heads from their workplaces and wondering just what happened to this country over the last 15 years, and what do to about it.

The things that are pushed me leftward began with the experience of closely watching our national security establishment for decades. But they don’t end there. They are, in roughly chronological order:

Disappointment in the American government over the last 10 years. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were the first big shocks. I thought that invading Afghanistan was the right response to the 9/11 attacks, but I never expected the U.S. military leadership would be so inept in fighting there and in Iraq, running the wars in ways that made more enemies than were stopped. I believe that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, not only launched on false premises but also strategically foolish in that ultimately it has increased Iran’s power in the Middle East.

Torture. I never expected my country to endorse torture. I know that torture has existed in all wars, but to my knowledge, its use, under the chilling term “enhanced interrogation,” was never official U.S. policy until this century.

…

How we fought. I never thought that an American government would employ mercenaries in a war.

…

Intelligence officials run amok. I think that American intelligence officials have shown a contempt for the way our democracy is supposed to work in turning a vast and unaccountable apparatus on the citizens it is supposed to be protecting.

…

Growing income inequality. I also have been dismayed by the transfer of massive amounts of wealth to the richest people in the country, a policy supported over the last 35 years by successive administrations of both parties. Apparently income redistribution downward is dangerously radical, but redistribution upward is just business as usual. The middle class used at least to get lip service from the rich-“backbone of the country” and such. Now it is often treated like a bunch of saps not aware enough to evade their taxes.

ILLUSION OF JUSTICE

Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions (.pdf)

Human Rights Watch, Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute

July 2014

Report: All But Four Of The High-Profile Domestic Terrorism Plots In The Last Decade Were Crafted From The Ground Up By The FBI

by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt

Wed, Jul 23rd 2014

Human Rights Watch has just published a report containing the facts needed to back up everyone’s suspicions (.pdf) that the FBI counterterrorism efforts are almost solely composed of breaking up “plots” of its own design. And the bigger and more high-profile the “bust” was, the better the chance that FBI agents laid the foundation, constructed the walls… basically did everything but allow the devised plot to reach its designed conclusion.

…

Of those four exceptions, two (Boston Bombing/LAX shooting) were successfully pulled off. Feeling safer with the g-men’s increased focus on preventing terrorist attacks?

Within the report is even more damning information that shows the FBI preyed on weak individuals in order to rack up “wins” in the War on Terror.

…

As much as the DHS and FBI have stated concerns about “radicalization” and domestic terrorism, those captured in FBI sting operations were strongly pushed in that direction by informants and undercover agents. The FBI created threats where none existed.

…

This sort of activity should have been treated as “own goals” by the agency and some of the more credulous press. Instead, these busts are touted as evidence of the agency’s superior skill and effort, something more closely related to extolling the prowess of someone who has just scored on an empty net.

The FBI took a man whose main hobbies were “watching cartoons” and “playing Pokemon,” a man who a forensic psychologist described (during the trial) as “highly susceptible to the suggestions of others” and fashioned him into a supposed terrorist. The planned subway bombing never happened, thanks to the FBI’s keenly-honed ability to capture terrorists it created. Arrested with the would-be subway bomber was his “co-conspirator,” a high school dropout with drug problems and clinically-diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia.

…

There’s nothing to celebrate about victories like these. The emphasis on creating plots just to shut them down diverts resources from actual threats — ones arising without huge amounts of FBI prompting. All this does is ensure the agency’s anti-terror funding remains intact — money that will be largely wasted on the FBI’s sting operation Ouroboros. And while the FBI plays with its terrorist dress-up dolls, the real threats will go undetected.

What we learned from liberals at Netroots Nation

By KATIE GLUECK, Politico

7/20/14 10:09 AM EDT

At a high-profile gathering of progressives this week, Hillary Clinton was tolerated, Barack Obama was pitied, and Elizabeth Warren was treated like a hero.

…

Candidates hoping to harness this crowd’s enthusiasm will need to embrace that pugnacious stance toward big business, not just talk about creating more opportunities for the middle class. Attendees here see Wall Street as a deeply damaging force in American politics and they want the kind of retribution Warren promises.

Netroots attendees hail from the most liberal corners of the Democratic Party. To them Clinton is simply too conservative on fiscal and foreign policy matters. They see the former New York senator as tight with Wall Street, and she doesn’t strike them as willing to fight for working people the way Warren does.

Yet interviews with several attendees suggest it’s not a lost cause for Clinton. If she distances herself from big business, highlights her support for labor – a point that came up several times here, given the big union representation at the conference – and demonstrates she cares about the struggles of ordinary Americans, she could go a long way with this group. What it really comes down to, activists say, is a shift in what Clinton emphasizes.

“She would have to have Elizabeth Warren’s message,” said Cindy Pettibone, an activist from the Washington, D.C., area. “Against big banks and corporations, for the little guy, restoring the middle class and unions.”

…

Even though grassroots activists acknowledge that Clinton is the most electable Democrat on the radar right now, they don’t want a Clinton coronation.

And if Warren doesn’t run, they are hoping another left-leaning candidate will challenge Clinton so that the party will have to engage in a full-throated debate about where it stands on economic issues. They also believe that regardless of whether other candidates are viable, a contested primary would push Clinton to the left.

Potential alternatives some cited include Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described socialist. There’s also Vice President Joe Biden, whose keynote speech Thursday was well-received. Though some activists said they don’t view Biden much to the left of Clinton, they love that he pushed (if only inadvertently) President Barack Obama to endorse gay marriage in 2012. And they perceive him as slightly less hawkish than the president.

…

The president has had a tumultuous relationship with the Netroots crowd.

They loved him during his nomination fight ahead of the 2008 election, but many of these activists have grown disillusioned at seeing the White House fail to produce much of the change they felt they’d been promised.

Dem base: Fine with Hillary Clinton, pining for Elizabeth Warren

By KATIE GLUECK, Politico

7/18/14 4:31 PM EDT

Netroots draws the most liberal elements of the Democratic base – but they are also among the most politically active, and Clinton will need to inspire enthusiasm among them should she run. And it’s not as if that sentiment is nonexistent: Several people said they see her as a trailblazer for women in politics. But many others also described the former secretary of state and first lady as too close to Wall Street, too conservative on national security issues and as an insufficiently fiery champion for the middle class.

…

“Does she connect with people? Can she articulate [their struggles]?” Wherley said. “Elizabeth Warren speaks regularly about that. Hillary Clinton does not. … Elizabeth Warren intends to lift up the middle class. I don’t know what Hillary’s vision is for doing that. Would she cross bankers? Payday lenders?”

…

Clinton is “fairly close to Wall Street, she’s less aggressive about standing up,” said Derek Cressman, who just lost a bid for California secretary of state. “On economic populism, Warren is stronger. Credible and stronger language, standing up to banks, standing up to Wall Street.”

The Elizabeth Warren Fantasy

By BILL SCHER, Politico

July 17, 2014

Her traveling road show powerfully demonstrates why. Warren blows past any Beltway skittishness over “class warfare.” In her recent appearances alongside Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes and West Virginia’s Natalie Tennant, she portrayed the options before voters as “a choice between billionaires and students” or between someone who will “stand up for Wall Street” or “stand up for the families.” She name-checked Citibank and Goldman Sachs as among the Wall Streeters who already have “plenty of folks in the United State Senate who are willing to work on their side,” suggesting they don’t need to hold on to eager recipients of financial industry campaign cash like Sen. Mitch McConnell or Rep. Shelley Capito. And she used her signature student loan bill that would pay for refinancing by closing tax loopholes, filibustered by Republicans but embraced by the two Appalachian Democrats, as a case study of whose side each candidate is on.

Warren’s Wall Street bashing has a good chance of boosting Tennant and Grimes because no matter what shade the state, people hate Wall Street. Already this year, Rep. Eric Cantor lost his job in part because Tea Party conservatives felt he was too close to big banks. After that Virginia primary, pollster Greenberg Quinlain Rosner conducted a national survey showing that 64 percent believe “the stock market is rigged for insiders” and 60 percent support “stricter regulation” on financial institutions, reflecting support that spans across the partisan spectrum.

…

Obama doesn’t neglect the populist critique of a system skewed toward the top one percent. But he stops short of embracing Warren’s us-versus-them framework. “Wall Street,” or its unpopular representatives, are never mentioned by name. Obama prefers the word “everybody,” as when he declared in Colorado, “we’re fighting for the idea that everybody gets opportunity” with robust investments in infrastructure, energy and education, along with a higher minimum wage and increased workplace flexibility. Clinton is singing from the same hymnal, reportedly using the line “we’re all in this mess together” when discussing her thinking on economic issues in recent speeches.

Right-wing obstruction could have been fought: An ineffective and gutless presidency’s legacy is failure

Thomas Frank, Salon

Sunday, Jul 20, 2014 07:00 AM EST

(A)ll presidential museums are exercises in getting their subject off the hook, and for Obama loyalists looking back at his years in office, the need for blame evasion will be acute. Why, the visitors to his library will wonder, did the president do so little about rising inequality, the subject on which he gave so many rousing speeches? Why did he do nothing, or next to nothing, about the crazy high price of a college education, the Great Good Thing that he has said, time and again, determines our personal as well as national success? Why didn’t he propose a proper healthcare program instead of the confusing jumble we got? Why not a proper stimulus package? Why didn’t he break up the banks? Or the agribusiness giants, for that matter?

Well, duh, his museum will answer: he couldn’t do any of those things because of the crazy right-wingers running wild in the land. He couldn’t reason with them-their brains don’t work like ours! He couldn’t defeat them at the polls-they’d gerrymandered so many states that they couldn’t be dislodged! What can a high-minded man of principle do when confronted with such a vast span of bigotry and close-mindedness? The answer toward which the Obama museum will steer the visitor is: Nothing.

In point of fact, there were plenty of things Obama’s Democrats could have done that might have put the right out of business once and for all-for example, by responding more aggressively to the Great Recession or by pounding relentlessly on the theme of middle-class economic distress. Acknowledging this possibility, however, has always been difficult for consensus-minded Democrats, and I suspect that in the official recounting of the Obama era, this troublesome possibility will disappear entirely. Instead, the terrifying Right-Wing Other will be cast in bronze at twice life-size, and made the excuse for the Administration’s every last failure of nerve, imagination and foresight. Demonizing the right will also allow the Obama legacy team to present his two electoral victories as ends in themselves, since they kept the White House out of the monster’s grasp-heroic triumphs that were truly worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. (Which will be dusted off and prominently displayed.)

But bipartisanship as an ideal must also be kept sacred, of course. And so, after visitors to the Obama Library have passed through the Gallery of Drones and the Big Data Command Center, they will be ushered into a maze-like exhibit designed to represent the president’s long, lonely, and ultimately fruitless search for consensus. The Labyrinth of the Grand Bargain, it might be called, and it will teach how the president bravely put the fundamental achievements of his party-Social Security and Medicare-on the bargaining table in exchange for higher taxes and a smaller deficit. This will be described not as a sellout of liberal principle but as a sacred quest for the Holy Grail of Washington: a bipartisan coming-together on “entitlement reform,” which every responsible D.C. professional knows to be the correct way forward.

…

What will the Obama library have to say about the people who recognized correctly that it was time for “Change” and who showed up at his routine campaign appearances in 2008 by the hundreds of thousands?

It will be a tricky problem. On the up side, those days before his first term began were undoubtedly Obama’s best ones. Mentioning them, however, will remind the visitor of the next stage in his true believers’ political evolution: Disillusionment. Not because their hero failed to win the Grand Bargain, but because he wanted to get it in the first place-because he seemed to believe that shoring up the D.C. consensus was the rightful object of all political idealism. The movement, in other words, won’t fit easily into the standard legacy narrative. Yet it can’t simply be deleted from the snapshot.

Perhaps there will be an architectural solution for this problem. For example, the Obama museum’s designers could make the exhibit on the movement into a kind of blind alley that physically reminds visitors of the basic doctrine of the Democratic Party’s leadership faction: that liberals have nowhere else to go.

My own preference would be to let that disillusionment run, to let it guide the entire design of the Obama museum. Disillusionment is, after all, a far more representative emotion of our times than Beltway satisfaction over the stability of some imaginary “center.” So why not memorialize it? My suggestion to the designers of the complex: That the Obama Presidential Library be designed as a kind of cenotaph, a mausoleum of hope.

Person Of Paradox

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

July 22, 2014

(O)n the issue of the economy, and the people who wrecked it and then sold off the pieces, and then, by and large, got away clean, there were some things the president could have done, and didn’t do, that lead me to believe that, on this issue, Frank is more right than he is wrong. For example, there was no reason to involve Bob Rubin in the transition team, much less to staff the Treasury Department with Rubin-esque clones. Hell, Tim Geithner didn’t have to be Treasury Secretary. There was nothing stopping the president in 2008 from appointing a tough assistant U.S. Attorney to be an assistant secretary of the Treasury tasked with vigorously investigating the causes of the economic meltdown, and whatever crimes were involved therein. The Republicans would have raised hell, but they were going to do that anyway. It’s hard to see a Democratic Congress defunding the Treasury Department, but I admit there’s no telling what mischief Max Baucus might have concocted. The president faced unprecedented opposition employing unprecedented tactics. However, “looking forward, not back” on many issues was a conscious governing strategy.

The Calm Before The Calm

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

7/17/2014 at 12:45 PM

The annual Netroots Nation gathering is an almost placid affair. For example, in contrast to the CPAC convention, at which every wingnut with delusions of grandeur showed up and at which enough red meat was thrown out to give the Potomac atherosclerosis, this hootenanny is remarkably uncontaminated by major politicians, and especially by those national politicians who allegedly aspire to a higher office than the one they presently hold. The only real marquee names are Senator Professor Warren, who speaks on Friday morning, and Vice President Joe Biden, who pops in this afternoon to inflame the masses as only he can. Hillary Clinton is too busy having a really bad book tour.

…

Nevertheless, having been to CPAC, it’s hard not to conclude that the two national parties continue to have conspicuously different attitudes toward their respective bases. At CPAC, every high-profile Republican showed up, whether or not they happened to have five votes in the hall. Chris Christie got hooted at by the denizens of the monkeyhouse, and nobody seemed to know quite what to do with Rand Paul and his devotees. But they showed up. Here, once again, it is fair to conclude that the national Democratic party — at least as represented by its high-profile national figures — can still be scared away from its base and its issues by a strong breeze. The people at Netroots are being held at arm’s length in a way that national Republicans never would dare hold CPAC. And with the triangulated, deadening specter of an inexorable Clinton Restoration looming over everything, and that includes everything here, it’s difficult to see that changing very much. I’m sure Senator Professor Warren will get a wild ovation tomorrow. How long and how profoundly that ovation echoes in our politics is still very much an open question.

Yeah, Markos.  Things are better than ever.  How’s that working out for your business model Bucky?

“Iraq Has Already Disintegrated”: ISIS Expands Stronghold as Leaks Expose US Doubts on Iraqi Forces

Democracy Now

July 16, 2014

Iraq remains on the verge of splintering into three separate states as Sunni militants expand their stronghold in the north and west of Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) declared itself a caliphate last month and now controls large parts of northern and western Iraq and much of eastern Syria. Recent advances by ISIS, including in the city of Tikrit, come amidst leaks revealing extensive Pentagon concerns over its effort to advise the Iraqi military. Iraqi politicians, meanwhile, are scrambling to form a power-sharing government in an effort to save Iraq from splintering into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish states. We are joined by two guests: Reporting live from Baghdad is Hannah Allam, foreign affairs correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, and joining us from London is Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent and author of the forthcoming book, “The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.”

U.S. Sees Risks in Assisting a Compromised Iraqi Force

By ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL R. GORDON, The New York Times

JULY 13, 2014

The report concludes that only about half of Iraq’s operational units are capable enough for American commandos to advise them if the White House decides to help roll back the advances made by Sunni militants in northern and western Iraq over the past month.

Adding to the administration’s dilemma is the assessment’s conclusion that Iraqi forces loyal to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki are now heavily dependent on Shiite militias – many of which were trained in Iran – as well as on advisers from Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force.

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The Pentagon’s decision this month to rush 200 troops, plus six Apache helicopter gunships and Shadow surveillance drones, to the Baghdad airport was prompted by a classified intelligence assessment that the sprawling complex, the main hub for sending and withdrawing American troops and diplomats, was vulnerable to attack by ISIS fighters, American officials have now disclosed.

“It’s a mess,” said one senior Obama administration official who has been briefed on the draft assessment and who, like two other American officials briefed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing review and the delicate nature of the assessment.

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One of the assessment’s conclusions was that Iraqi forces had the ability to defend Baghdad, but not necessary hold all of it, especially against a major attack. Already, the capital has been targeted by ISIS car bombs.

Transcript

Oil Train Blast Zone Website Lets You See Your Proximity to Bomb Trains

Justin Mikulka, DeSmogBlog

Thu, 2014-07-10 11:31

ForestEthics has launched a new Oil Train Blast Zone website that allows people to search their address and determine if they are within the estimated blast zones for the trains carrying highly flammable crude oil, known as “bomb trains.”

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Due to the explosive nature of the oil and the continued use of unsafe DOT-111 tanker cars, even in accidents only involving a few cars rupturing and burning, like the one in Lynchburg, Virginia, first responders have taken the approach of just letting the tank cars and oil burn itself out instead of trying to put the fire out.

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In Albany, NY, which has become one of the top destinations for oil trains filled with Bakken crude oil, an event was held at the Ezra Prentice apartments which are located directly along tracks that regularly have the oil tank cars parked on them or moving along them.

While the event was a vigil for the 47 people who died in Lac-Megantic (link added) a year ago, there was plenty of talk about the fact that these apartments and many others in Albany were located within the blast zone.

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This past week in Lac-Megantic, it was still very clear where the blast zone was from that accident a year ago.  While the train company has been purchased by the massive New York hedge fund Fortress Investment Group and the tracks have been rebuilt, downtown is still fenced off so that the work of continuing to remove the contaminated soil can continue.

The trains have returned but Lac-Megantic is a long way from being rebuilt.

Who Is the Unsung Hero of the $7 Billion Citigroup Settlement?

William K. Black, The Real News Network

7/15/14

This is the latest in the way of embarrassing settlements by the Department of Justice that they’re trying to bill as if they were holding Citicorp accountable. So it’s $7 billion. As you say, the $4 billion is a larger number than has previously gone to the United States, but it’s not the biggest settlement. The JPMorgan settlement is larger in overall terms. And it really doesn’t matter how much goes to the federal government versus state governments in these terms.

Let me give you two words that you’re not going to hear in the coverage of this, and those words are Richard Bowen. Richard Bowen was the whistleblower that made all of this possible, that gave this case on a platinum platter to the Department of Justice. And today the attorney general of the United States, Eric Holder, has given a press conference in which he has never mentioned Richard Bowen’s name and has never used it as an opportunity to praise him and to ask other people to come forward and blow the whistle so that we can prevent these kind of crimes.

In addition you’ll note that there are no criminal charges in this case against the individuals or against Citicorp. And as a result of all of this, all of the individuals who became wealthy through what the Department of Justice describes as an egregious fraud that was followed by a coverup–in other words, multiple felonies–have not been charged at this point, and, frankly, there’s no indication that they’re about to be charged as well. So the people that committed the frauds get to keep all of the bonuses that were created as a result of those frauds, and it’s another disgraceful moment in the chapter of the Department of Justice.

Citigroup Is Said to Be Close to Settling Inquiry Into Mortgage Securities

By MICHAEL CORKERY and BEN PROTESS, Yhe New York Yimes

July 8, 2014 9:07 pm

At one point in the talks, the government demanded that Citigroup pay $10 billion. While the settlement will fall short of that demand, the bank will still pay more than once expected.

The two sides are still working out some details. Citi is expected to pay roughly $4 billion in cash, according to a person briefed on the matter. The remainder of the $7 billion would include so-called soft dollar penalties, including mortgage modifications and other forms of relief to homeowners, and possibly payments to state attorneys general involved in the case.

The total amount will almost certainly exceed the $2 billion that some Wall Street analysts initially estimated that Citigroup would be liable to pay, though more recent estimates have put the number closer to $6 billion.

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Citigroup was not nearly as big a player in this business as JPMorgan Chase, which agreed to a $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department last year.

Lawyers for the big banks say privately that federal prosecutors appear to have scrapped the model used in that case and are demanding penalties that are far more punitive than what JPMorgan paid.

The Citigroup deal raises the stakes for Bank of America, which is expected to be the next large bank to settle its mortgage case with the Justice Department. Talks between the bank and federal prosecutors have largely gone dormant in recent weeks as the Justice Department focused on resolving its case with Citigroup, people briefed on the matter said.

Citigroup Settles Mortgage Inquiry for $7 Billion

By MICHAEL CORKERY

July 14, 2014 8:29 p.m.

The unusual arrangement, which was outlined in the deal on Monday, underscores how difficult it remains for Citigroup to shed its rocky past and how federal prosecutors are getting creative in holding the nation’s big banks accountable for losses that crippled the global financial system in 2008.

Like other settlements the federal government has signed with Wall Street, Citigroup’s deal also requires the bank to modify mortgages of struggling homeowners. But Citigroup’s mortgage business has shrunk appreciably since the financial crisis, and the bank doesn’t service enough troubled mortgages to satisfy the monetary settlement terms for homeowner relief. So the bank agreed to finance affordable rental housing in unspecified “high cost of living areas.”

Wall Street watchdog groups and housing advocates said the terms of the $7 billion settlement highlight how the federal government has fallen short in its effort to hold banks accountable, noting that neither Citigroup nor any of its executives have been criminally charged for the bank’s mortgage problems.

In announcing the deal on Monday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the hard-fought settlement did not absolve the bank or its employees from facing criminal charges. “The bank’s misconduct was egregious,” he said. “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, Citigroup was able to expand its market share and increase profits.”

The Justice Department said Citigroup routinely ignored warnings that a significant portion of the mortgages it was packaging and selling to investors in 2006 and 2007 had underwriting defects. In one internal email cited by prosecutors, a Citigroup trader wrote “went thru Diligence Reports and think that we should start praying … I would not be surprised if half of these loans went down.” But the bank securitized the loans anyway.

The Justice Department said it was this type of evidence that enabled prosecutors to extract a $4 billion cash penalty from Citigroup – the largest payment of its kind. That money will go into the United States Treasury’s general fund and is not earmarked for any particular use.

The deal also includes $2.5 billion in so-called soft dollars designated for the financing of rental housing, mortgage modifications, down payment assistance and donations to legal aid groups, among other measures intended to provide relief to consumers.

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In a boon for Citigroup, the deal with the Justice Department forgoes any potential cases against the bank related to collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.s, which were often tied to mortgages. While Citi was a relatively small player in the mortgage securities market, it was a leader on Wall Street in C.D.O.s.

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But for many borrowers who have already gone through foreclosures, the settlement comes too late, consumer advocates say.

“Seven billion sounds like a lot. But compared to the number of families that lost their homes, it is not very much at all,” said Isaac Simon Hodes, a community organizer with Lynn United for Change, a group that advocates on behalf of Boston-area residents facing foreclosure.

Citigroup Pays Just $7 Billion For Causing Financial Crisis

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Monday July 14, 2014 7:22 am

Attorney General Eric Holder, once a Wall Street lawyer who represented clients involved in mortgage fraud that led to the 2008 crisis, said “The bank’s misconduct was egregious,” while promoting the inconsequential settlement.

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The Justice Department declined an earlier offer from Citigroup noting it had emails and other evidence that, according to AG Holder, showed “[W]idespread defects among the increasingly risky loans they were securitizing, the bank and its employees concealed these defects.” Kind of sounds like criminal fraud doesn’t it?

Citigroup itself was formed under dishonest circumstances through the merger of Citibank and Travelers Group when Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan approved the merger despite it being illegal at the time. Congress, who had taken millions of dollars from owners and investors in Citigroup, then approved the merger. One of those lobbying for the merger to be retroactively legalized was Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who would go on to serve as chairman of Citigroup and make over $100 million.

Citigroup has been bailed out at least four times by the federal government and continues to be implicated in illegality regarding money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels as well as other crimes in the foreign exchange market. The former CEO of Citigroup and architect of the merger in the 90s, Sandy Weill, has said the merger no longer makes sense and Citigroup should be broken up.