Thursday, June 11, 2009
"President Obama's in the news, of course. He's put healthcare back in the news. Yup. President Obama says he wants to create a national healthcare plan that's both affordable and easy to use. Yup. Yeah, good. Yeah, and the insurance industry says they'll fight the plan with congressmen who are both affordable and easy to use." – Conan O’Brien
Right-wing terrorism: It’s been building. Obama’s nomination and subsequent election brought much over-heated rhetoric from the Right- variations on Obama destroying the country- and a surge in gun purchases. Then, when the Department of Homeland Security declassified a report (authored during the Bush Administration) that warned of the combination of a bad economy and an Afro-American president leading to “potential increases in right-wing extremism,” the DHS Report was attacked and Janet Napolitano meekly offered an apology to conservative critics who had claimed that the Report was a targeting of all conservatives. Then, an upsurge in plots, the twin assaults and deaths in a 10 day period. And, still, the comments come from the “Birthers”- that Obama lacks a U.S. birth certificate and the rest of the inflammatory, nutty, hateful accusations. A poisonous atmosphere, what many of us feared could result in Obama’s assassination.
The media: The usual “even-handed” attempts to address “extremists” of both Left and Right, few questioning why this Von Brunn killer had spent a mere 6 years in prison for his previous armed kidnapping / assault on the Federal Reserve.
Sheldon Whitehouse Sums up the Torture Past: Whitehouse has been impressive. One of only 6 who voted to fund the closing of Guantanamo, he’s not one to ‘pull punches.’
His floor speech addressed how the professional military interrogators secured information using proper techniques while the CIA contractors who used “much tougher” methods got zero out of their prisoners. [Still to be resolved: Who kept letting in those contractors who at key junctures interrupted the professional interrogations. Perhaps that will be revealed in pending investigations of the Executive Branch.]
There has been a campaign of falsehood about this whole sorry episode. It has disserved the American public.... Facing up to the questions of our use of torture is hard enough. It is worse when people are misled and don't know the whole truth and so can't form an informed opinion and instead quarrel over irrelevancies and false premises. Much debunking of falsehood remains to be done but cannot be done now because the accurate and complete information is classified...
It is intensely frustrating to have access to classified information that proves a lie and not be able to prove that lie. It does not serve America well for Senators to be in that position.
…I want my colleagues and the American public to know that measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2009_cr/s060909.html
Detainees: Reports are of moving toward resolution about Guantanamo inmates. First comes the decision to settle the innocent Uighurs outside the U.S.
The Obama administration has all but abandoned plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release to live in the United States, administration officials said yesterday, a decision that reflects bipartisan congressional opposition to admitting such prisoners but complicates efforts to convince European allies to accept them.
Four Uighur detainees, Chinese Muslims who were incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for more than seven years, arrived early yesterday in Bermuda, where they will become foreign guest workers. An administration official said the United States is engaged in negotiations with other countries, including Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific, to find places for the remaining 13 Uighurs held at Guantanamo.
The Uighurs, who were ordered released by a federal judge last year, never counted America as an enemy, according to the men's lawyers and human rights groups, giving the administration grounds to argue that they should live in the United States. Picked up in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2002, the Uighurs were later cleared of the "enemy combatant" label but remained in minimum-security confinement at Guantanamo. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/11/AR2009061101210_pf.html
And, almost 100 Yemenis may be sent to Saudi Arabia
Yemen may agree to allow a considerable portion of the nearly 100 Yemenis held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay to be transferred to Saudi Arabia, officials involved in the negotiations said. A deal could accelerate President Barack Obama's plan to close the detention facility at the U.S. military base in Cuba by January.
U.S. officials say the Yemenis, who make up nearly half of the roughly 240 detainees remaining at Guantanamo, are among the most difficult to resettle because of their numbers and, in some cases, alleged direct or familial ties to al Qaeda. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124463776195601951.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
Detainees Adjusting to Normal Life: Difficult An op-ed that addresses the ongoing psychological, occupational, familial problems the released detainees have encountered in nine different countries:
Last year, we interviewed 62 released Guantanamo detainees from nine countries in Europe, the Middle East and Southern Asia. We found that although many harbored negative feelings toward the U.S. government, most simply wanted to reintegrate into their families and communities. But they found it difficult to do so.
Nearly all suffered from what we call the "Guantanamo stigma," a presumption in their communities that they were dangerous men, even though the U.S. had never convicted them of a crime. Only six of the 62 had been able to find permanent jobs. Many had lost property, and their families had been driven into debt during their absence.
One released detainee, a highly educated businessman whose family had lived in Europe while he was in captivity, said his children found it complicated to explain why their father was in Guantanamo, so they simply told people he was in jail. "You can't express to a child that there is something in this world called 'detention without trial,' where the rule of law doesn't exist," he said, noting that children assume that "if you're in jail, you must be bad, because that's what society does to bad people."
Other former detainees reported that they were rejected by their families or were shunned and unable to find wives. The wife of a man from the Middle East left him while he was in Guantanamo and returned to live with her family. Now, he said, "I have a plastic bag that I carry with me all the time. I sleep every night in a different mosque."
A detainee from Europe, a shop owner before his detention, returned home to learn that his father had been murdered weeks before and that his estranged wife had taken their children to another part of the country. No one would hire him or lend him money to open a business. "I was living in hell in Guantanamo. And when I returned home, it was another hell," he said.
Yet another man, a highly educated Afghan professional and community leader who, while in Guantanamo, taught many of his countrymen to read and write, expressed frustration that his time in the camp indelibly marred his reputation and career. He returned home to find that his office had been ransacked and shuttered. He is demoralized and withdrawn, and he says he no longer feels able to take an active role in his community.
Two-thirds of the former detainees we interviewed reported psychological problems stemming from their confinement. Memories of being short-shackled in stress positions, subjected to extreme temperatures and exposed to violence by guards remained vivid for many. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-fletcher11-2009jun11,0,2525124,print.story
Economy: A spate of good news and upbeat talk as unemployment claims fell and retail sales rose by the most in four months.
But:
Bleak state budgets through Fiscal 2011
Even if the national recession ends this year as many predict, state budgets will likely be in the red for the next two years, with budget gaps topping $230 billion as tax collections of sales, personal and corporate income lag, two new reports show.
More than half the states reported that revenues from every major tax source, through April, were below last year’s collections, the National Conference of State Legislatures said in a report released June 3.
Some of the revenue drops are eye-popping. For April, which is the significant month for personal income tax collections, NCSL found that collections were more than 40 percent below the prior year’s level in Connecticut, Massachusetts and North Carolina, 43 percent in Michigan and 44 percent in Arizona.
“The fact that more than half the states reported breakdowns in all significant tax categories heightens alarm,” NCSL said. http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=404979
Arguably the worst off: California Will they require a bailout?
California officially has a drop-dead date now. State Controller John Chiang told Arnold Schwarzenegger last night that the state has 50 days before it hits a financial meltdown. So in that time, it either needs a bailout, massive budget cuts, or a brand new bubble (green tech, Internet, real estate, something like that).
The tax revenue numbers are not at all good for the green shoots crowd:
Reuters: Underscoring the severity of California's cash crisis, Controller John Chiang, who has previously warned the state's government risks running out of cash without a budget deal, said revenues in May fell by $1.14 billon, or 17.7 percent, from a year earlier.
Additionally, the revenues of the government of the most populous U.S. state fell short of estimates in Schwarzenegger's budget plan by $827 million, Chiang said.
Of all three outcomes, we'd say the federal bailout is the most likely, since surely a California collapse would kill any recovery. http://www.businessinsider.com/california-has-50-days-to-live-2009-6
The overall picture: Paul Krugman:
…is it just me, or has the economic news started to darken again? Up through about March, every report was worse than you expected, often worse than you could have imagined. Since then, most reports — although continuing to be bad in an absolute sense — have “surprised on the upside.” But my sense is that in the last few days we’ve been getting reports — Korean trade, Japanese orders, German exports — that are once again surprising on the downside.
This thing ain’t over yet. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/eats-green-shoots-and-leaves/
Wall Streeters Back in Business: Risk assumed by Obama and Us, as the major recipients of bailout money- and unwanted public scrutiny and salary restraints- overstate their fiscal health and pay back funds to free themselves of those burdens. William Grieder:
The best names in Wall Street banking have announced victory. Their crisis is over, back to business as usual. So why isn't the Obama White House celebrating this good news? Because this may not be a lasting peace for the president and his lieutenants. They are left standing in the mudhole of financial ruin, still surrounded by the failing economy and gradually losing their control over events. The leading bankers worked out a rare deal for themselves that essentially says to the government in Washington "heads we win, tails you lose."
If Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs turn out to be correct about the financial crisis, their institutions emerge unscathed and restored to their old dominance over the US economy. Minus a few old rivals who went bust.
If the bankers are wrong, Barack Obama will be the big loser--compelled to rescue them again with still more public money. The big dogs of banking know this, so does the president. That's why he didn't throw his hat in the air when ten of the largest banks were allowed to pay back the emergency aid they received from the feds, some $68 billion. The financiers could thus declare themselves free and clear of the heavy hand of government meddling. Another triumph of free-market capitalism. A brilliant success for Goldman Sachs socialism. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/greider2?rel=emailNation
Iranian Election: Ahmadinejad Shaky; fears about electoral cheating. Regardless of result, much talk about ‘democracy unleashed’ and the affect of Obama’s election/Cairo speech.
Iranians go to the polls tomorrow to elect a president after an acrimonious and volatile election campaign that has polarised the country and unleashed mass opposition to the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the absence of reliable independent opinion polls, experts predicted today that Mir Hossein Mousavi, the moderate "green" candidate, would probably beat the controversial incumbent so long as the result was not rigged.
Saeed Lalyaz, a respected political commentator, said he believed Mousavi now commanded the support of 55-60% across the country and warned of a possible crackdown on the opposition if Ahmadinejad were re-elected.
"I worry about the impact of any announcement that Ahmadinejad wins in the first round," said Lalyaz. "Whoever wins, these people on the streets will not go home easily. If Ahmadinejad is president for a second time I worry about another Tiananmen Square experience." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/11/iran-president-election-mahmoud-ahmadinejad
-R
