Detainees At Home and Abroad

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Detainees at Home and Abroad

Many folks here in the US have an image of a typical terrorist as brown skinned and of the Muslim persuasion. Don’t ask about denominations — Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi … Terrorists often have beards and wear Arab headdress, too. Certainly, a man wearing a headdress and sporting a full beard, would arouse suspicion. Sikhs fit the profile and ipso facto are suspect, even though they are neither Arab nor Muslim. I recently met a Sikh who lives in the US and asked him if other Americans cast a wary eye upon him. He was born in the province of Punjab where Sikhs distribute free food to the hungry at gurdwaras. They feel a calling to work for the good of the community. No, they’re not communists.

The top beard in Al Qaeda, defamed be his name, is from the Wahhabi sect of Islam. Wahhabism is not even a denomination, but a fundamentalist sect. They are from Saudi Arabia and wish to rid their land of foreign infidels (the US military). Afghanistan, whose major natural resource is the opium poppy, is a thousand miles away from Saudi Arabia. So, what are we doing in Afghanistan? Yes, Al Qaeda used to rent space there, but that was years ago and since then they found it more comfortable in Pakistan instead of the cold caves of Tora Bora. They also liked the weather better in Yemen, Somalia, New Jersey, and Florida. Back in 2001, a dark year when the Bush-Cheney (B-C) administration took power and when three buildings of the WTC were brought down, members of Al Qaeda were traveling freely around the US taking flying lessons in Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

So, the US Army and Marines invaded Afghanistan and detained likely terrorists — Semite and South Asian Muslims. Rewards (bounties) were offered. Many Afghans took advantage of the stimulus program and turned in members of adversary tribes or personal rivals. The Americans, not fluent in Pashto or Dari, had to rely on the honesty of the informants. With terrorists in hand, we were obliged to use coercive techniques — waterboarding, walling, strong music, and canine visitations — to locate others. When roadside bombs are ticking we could not await a variance from the quaint Geneva Conventions. The International Red Cross, as fussy as ever, would be best kept in the dark.

We have been in Afghanistan for only eight years, but we must have been successful. Today, there are fewer than 100 low level Al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan. The Taliban, are just Afghans, not international terrorists.

Dealing with terrorists from Arabia in Afghanistan was good practice for constraining terrorists here at home. Pittsburgh was the first opportunity to test out strategies, techniques, and equipment. The G-20 nations were meeting to shuffle currency, cook the books, and conclude that world wide economic recovery had begun. Protesters were surely going to try to disrupt the meeting: environmentalists, pacifists, Iraq Veterans Against the War, The United Steel Workers, The Raging Grannies, Poets On The Loose, and opponents of free trade — terrorists and anarchists all. Extreme measures would be in order.

So, 4,000 police, assorted State Troopers, FBI Agents, DEA Officers, Secret Service Agents, and a couple of private security services, were assembled. A $19.5 million budget was allocated for the two day event — security officers would outnumber the demonstrators. A few battalions of police in full riot gear were arranged in phalanxes, a la Alexander the Great. They wore helmets with wrap-around Plexiglas face masks. Some wore body armor and carried wrist mounted weapons worthy of a Star Wars costume. Overhead, helicopters swooped. On the ground, armored personnel carriers, mounted police, motorcycle columns, and police dog units insured redundancy (confusion). When marchers with banners refused to disperse, officers (public servants?) fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and ear piercing sound cannons. Over 170 demonstrators were pre-emptively arrested — the worst of the worst — including medics, journalists, and passersby. They were held in detention until the financiers went home. Pittsburgh was an invaluable example of winning the hearts and minds of the people.

Let that be a lesson for demonstrators and insurgents alike. In the US there will be zero tolerance for dissidents. The Afghans better beware.

Great Expectations

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Great Expectations

The Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen was set up so the rich & developed nations of the North could pay lip service, and only a few dollars, to stop the drastic changes in the Earth’s weather, waters, and lands, changes that are already threatening all life on the planet. Well, maybe insects are not yet threatened.

First, President Obama went to Oslo, Norway to give a nice speech as he accepted the Nobel Peace Price. He spoke of the need for peace, but back home he ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Did he hope to receive accolades for creating 30,0000 more jobs?

Soon afterward he went to Copenhagen. There, he had to talk about climate change. He made a nice speech, calling for everyone to put aside their differences and come to agreement, but he forgot to say anything about the US signing the Kyoto Accords. Worse, according to a leaked “Danish text” the US has now graciously accepted a 17% reduction in CO2 emissions from (in very small print) 2005 levels. From 2005? All the European signatories to Kyoto had pledged 30% reductions below 1990 levels. US reductions of 17% below 2005 levels works out to about 4% below 1990. Barack The Devious.

The impending environmental disaster, unless we change our profligate fossil fuel ways, is only one of the major issues where Obama has not walked the talk. Let’s see where else he has failed our expectations.

During the campaign up to election day of 2008, the Obama campaign ran against special (corporate) interests and promised accountability on the part of all government agencies. After he took the oath of office he gave orders to prohibit waterboarding because it was torture. Even Attorney General Eric Holder said so loud & clear. We expected the inquisitors at Guantanamo, Bagram, and other “Black Sites” established in the last decade would be held to account — right up the chain of command. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Department of Justice. AG Holder, in an end run around the Geneva Accords and the US Army Field Manual, noted that in the B-C Office of Legal Counsel, attorney John Yoo, wrote a memo defining torture as causing severe body harm and the pain of organ failure or impending death. It was legal cover for CIA interrogators to OK waterboarding and walling if the prisoner was merely bruised up or had nightmares that he was drowning. Holder said he wouldn’t prosecute such Agency people if they didn’t go beyond the memo definition of torture. After all, they were just following orders to “soften up” the detainees. As to John Yoo, Esq, he would not be prosecuted because the memo was just his opinion and he, himself, didn’t violate the quaint Geneva Conventions. Holder speaks of the Yoo memo as a “mistake,” not a crime.

Legal issues abound in the expectations of an Obama presidency. We were led to expect respect for the principles of law from a man who taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago and whose oath of office included allegiance to the Constitution. But, he has spoken nary a word about Habeas corpus. Nor was there a mention of the First Amendment when the G20 money bags nations recently met in Pittsburgh where the police were unduly repressive, using pepper spray, rubber bullets, intense sound projectors, and preemptory arrest. Obama has been silent, too, in failing to stand up for the First Amendment by pardoning Lynne Stewart. The legendary attorney had been convicted of aiding terrorism for speaking to Reuters on behalf of her client the blind Egyptian cleric. Beyond the Constitution, Obama failed to support Hammurabi’s great law code from the First Dynasty of Babylon. You know, the one chiseled in stone in the second millennium BCE..

While we’re speaking of laws and the Law, the Gramm Leach Bliley act needs to be repealed and Glass Steagall reinstated to limit different financial functions to separate banks so no “bank holding company” becomes too big to fail. A couple more matters of law: Libraries and bookstores must be exempted from the Patriot Act. The First Amendment can’t be abrogated by a mere law passed by Congress two centuries later — it’s the First Amendment. Similarly, the patenting of the building blocks of life, itself, is disallowed by the very rules of the US Patent Office — you can’t patent something that is not novel and original. Mother Nature was there first, even before the Jurassic era. If companies such as Monsanto insist on playing Rube Goldberg with the genes of our foodstuff, at least let them be required to say so on the label.

Finally — after skipping past health care, cap & trade gaming, off shore account sneakery, and the conflation of national security and national embarrassment — we come to a national identity of military might to set the world right. Obama has never spoken of a Department of Peace to balance the Department of War (all right, Department of Defense) or a National Peace College to pair with the War College. The Peace College would offer degrees in statesmanship and diplomacy and teach courses in conflict resolution, conciliation, and kindness. Barack may say he never promised such rose gardens — maybe we should look to First Lady Michelle for institutions promoting peace. She might even convince her husband to recognize the International Court of Justice. He could become Barack The Just.

Conspiracy In The Halls Of Finance?

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Conspiracy In The Halls Of Finance?

The players in the alleged conspiracy are convinced that the intricacies of high finance are far too complicated for the common citizen to understand, and so they ask our full faith and credit. “Just trust us,” they say. The White House Chief Financial Advisor, Lawrence Summers and the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner tell us the recession is ending. The stock market confirms the good news by flying above 10,000 on the Dow. Goldman Sachs reports a quarterly profit of $3.44 billion. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, repeats the mantra at the Brookings Institution. The recession is scheduled to end this year, he says, and the actions of The Fed will “maintain the confidence of the financial markets.” President Obama says, “Me, too.”

Yet, average people, both working and unemployed, know the economy is not recovering. Unemployment rates, kept artificially low by statistical trickery, are officially at 10%. The real rate — including those who have given up looking for work, others who have started their own small business, and many who survive on part time work without benefits — are twice the official rate, serious enough to convert a free marketeer into a Marxist. The true state of the economy was obvious even to the New York Times. The paper saw fit to print an article in the financial section just before Thanksgiving, entitled “What if a Recovery Is All in Your Head?”

The White House would have none of the pessimism as told by their own unemployment numbers and forecasts of bank failures. In a silver lining frame of mind, the various spokes-folks say that unemployment may still be at 10% but the runaway acceleration rate has stopped, a sure sign that recovery is just around the corner. Yessir and ma’m.

We don’t know who is calling the signals, or if it’s a grand conspiracy. When Hank Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush-Cheney administration, he went to Congress and pleaded for $700 billion to save the banks. Brokerage houses, insurance companies, savings banks, and automobile financial divisions are all banks nowadays. He needed the funds immediately and with no strings attached. That way the banks with toxic assets would not have to account for the money he would give them. To this day they won’t say what they did with the billions. Nor would Treasury say how much was given to whom. It must be hard to keep track of so much money. When Paulson was caught making incessant phone calls to Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, some assumed the Secretary was holding the investment bank to account. But no, he said he said he was just keeping up with market developments. Not staying informed would have been irresponsible. Of course, he could have read the Wall Street Journal.

Another reality check came in from the FDIC. While Treasury was dispensing TARP (troubled assets relief program) billions to the too-big-to-be-allowed-to-fail investment banks, 94 smaller banks were in the red and had to be taken over by FDIC. As of now, FDIC is almost broke. Sheila Bair, chair of the federal agency, admits that she has only $10.4 billion in reserves for the depositors of the entire nation, and she expects that with 416 banks on her problem list, failures will “continue at a pretty good clip next year.”

If the recession is still with us, we are left with the question of who caused it, who will bring us back to a stable economy, and how it will be done. Money thrown at the investment banks seems to be ending up in the bonuses of the executives of said banks. Should we blame the Wall Street fraternity — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan et al? Or The Fed, starting with Alan Greenspan and continuing with Ben Bernanke in its money printing policies? Or the Secretaries of the Treasury from Robert Rubin under Clinton, to Henry Paulson under Bush & Cheney, and now Timothy Geithner under Obama with the advice and consent of Lawrence Summers? Or all of the above in an establishment conspiracy?

A hint of the answer to who runs the money works comes from the answer to “Who is the most arrogant and least sensitive to public opinion?” Even Alan Greenspan, at the height of his power as Chairman of The Fed, was enigmatic enough to be misinterpreted as honorable. Not so Lloyd Blankfein. First, he accepts $10 billion in TARP funds. Then after American International Group (AIG) gets $180 billion from TARP, Lloyd claims $12.9 billion of it for credit default swaps he held from the too-big-to-fail giant. Next, Goldman Sachs reports record quarterly profits and, without taking a breath, that it has set aside $16.7 billion in bonuses for its deserving executives. Blankfein’s premonition of public discontent (outrage?) leads to his offering of $500 million to 10,000 small businesses. Hooray for Lloyd in his penurious philanthropy. He actually believes he is worth all the money he is earning as CEO. He is, in his own words, “doing God’s work.”

More evidence for a conspiracy comes from the treatment of the big three automakers. First, Congress grills them, then reluctantly offers $25 billion if they submit plans for changing their ways. GM and Chrysler are given an initial installment of $9.4 billion and $4 billion. A couple of months later a second fix of $16.6 and $5 billion goes to the two carmakers, but the White House asks for the head of GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner. No such demand was made for Chrysler — it was owned by Cerberus Capital Management and could qualify as part of the finance industry.

In contrast to the treatment of the auto industry, the administration acted as obsequiants to the Money Trust of Wall Street. Lawrence Summers appeared on one of the Sunday morning news shows to say the government could not cancel Wall Street bonuses because a contract is a contract. Summers was nowhere to be heard when it came to rescinding some of the labor contracts with GM and Chrysler as part of their government-required restructuring.

The question is like a yo-yo: are the economic fun & games a conspiracy, or do Wall Street and the White House merely have an understanding that the Big Banks will set the rules? We’ll find out when and if financial reform becomes as urgent as health care reform. We the people may not understand credit default swaps, strangle options, and butterfly spreads, but we do know that buying stocks and bonds long term (more than six months) is investment. We know that trading options and derivatives several times a day is gambling. We will be watching if the Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999 is repealed and the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 is reinstated. Glass Steagall kept different banking functions — personal savings accounts, business accounts, and stock market investments — in separate institutions. Gramm Leach Bliley canceled such oppressive restrictions and opened the free-for-all doors to imaginative Wall Street. We’ll also be watching if derivatives are regulated and if a sales tax is extracted on every securitized derivative trade. The tax could be even less that the usual 6% sales on furniture, clothing, and other consumer goods. There is a market of somewhere between $44 and 75 billion in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps, and other such creations. Their total notational value is $596 trillion, too big a number outside of astronomy. We will watch to see if derivatives are regulated at all, as they now are not. The same pertains to hedge funds and private equity funds. Could we hope that all derivatives of more than a couple of steps removed from original stocks and bonds will be forbidden?

Better than just watching, we’ll write, call, and email Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank to shepherd these reforms through the Congress. They must ask Tim Geithner to explain all the complexity of the financial markets. Any absurdities that cannot be understood should be outlawed. We don’t need any more Bernie Madoffs. He went only a step beyond outrageous.