March 16, 2009 archive

Mar 16 2009

Docudharma Times Monday March 16

I’m Not Sure We

Can Fathom The

Horrors Wrought By

The Bush Administration  




Monday’s Headlines:

Greatest threat to Obama spending plan? Moderate Dems

Palestinian attack suspected after two Israeli policemen shot dead

Iraqis ‘more upbeat about future’

Madagascar president offers ballot in power deadlock

EU peacekeeping mission ends amid growing fears over Darfur

Bernard Buffet: Return of the ‘poser’

Spain set to tear down its last statue of General Franco

Pakistan Leader Backs Down and Reinstates Top Judge

Q+A – What’s at stake in Indonesia’s elections?

‘The fiesta of the people’

Red Cross Described ‘Torture’ at CIA Jails

Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law

By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, March 16, 2009; Page A01

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration’s treatment of al-Qaeda captives “constituted torture,” a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA “black site” prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Claims of British collusion in torture spread to Egypt

• Briton claims UK colluded in his torture in Egypt

• Detainee says he was hooded and beaten over five days

Ian Cobain

The Guardian, Monday 16 March 2009

Allegations of British collusion in torture have widened to Egypt, where a young British man says he suffered appalling mistreatment during a week of illegal detention while being interrogated on the basis of information that he says can only have come from the UK.

The development comes after the Conservative leader, David Cameron, said there needed to be a full inquiry, not just to discover whether crimes had been committed by British officials but to establish whether the government’s “moral authority” has been maintained.

Azhar Khan, a 26-year-old who has seen a number of friends jailed for terrorist offences, says Egyptian intelligence officers who detained him when he flew into the country last July forced him to stand on the same spot for five days, with little rest, while beating him and subjecting him to electric shocks. Throughout this time, he says, he was asked detailed questions about his friends and associates in the UK.

 

USA

In Iraq withdrawal, equipment poses a key logistical challenge

U.S. commanders are deciding what to take, and what to leave behind. Some of the materiel will go to replenish military warehouses in the Persian Gulf region, and some to Afghanistan.

By Julian E. Barnes

March 16, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The American withdrawal from Iraq marks the beginning of one of the largest relocations of military hardware and manpower in recent years. But much of the equipment will not be returning to the United States.

Instead, some will remain with the Iraqi security forces and some will be shipped to Afghanistan. But as important, millions of tons of armor and weaponry will be used to restock huge U.S.-run warehouses across the Middle East — in case it is needed in the future.

The plans follow a pattern set by the military for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and again for the troop buildup in 2007, when the Defense Department drew on equipment stored around the Persian Gulf region, including in massive facilities in Kuwait and Qatar.

Equipment removed from Iraq will be sent to those warehouses, officials said, to ensure that the military is able to respond to a variety of contingencies, including possible Iranian aggression or renewed violence in Iraq.

Mar 16 2009

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Dream Catcher #4

Living Wings

Wings spread

designs of life

unfolding

between the filaments

as the tapestry

is woven

out of sparkling threads

against the background

of the void

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–March 15, 2009

Mar 16 2009

Gone Like Midnight

Sirens ring, shots ring out,

A stranger cries, he screams out loud.

He’s scared.  He has reason to be.  This economy was Dead on Arrival when Obama took office, and no matter how many tubes he sticks into it, it’s going to stay dead.  We need a new economy, a new economy based on worker’s rights, on economic justice, we need an economy that rewards the middle class for its contributions, an economy that cannot be exploited by Wall Street criminals and corporate magnates who don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves.  

And the same black line that was drawn on you,

Was drawn on me

That black line of consequences is getting blacker, it’s getting longer, it’s tightening around the necks of unemployed Americans like a noose.  More job losses, more home foreclosures, more evictions.  The consequences of Wall Street greed, the consequences of corporate media deceit, the consequences of Beltway arrogance and conceit, the arrogance and conceit of America’s political ruling class, America’s corporate masters, America’s war industry tycoons and oil barons and criminal bankers.   That black line of consequences has drawn me in, it’s drawn you in, it’s drawn everyone in . . .

Mar 16 2009

Monday Morning Business Update

And Late Breaking Open Thread

First Some Old Business

From Yahoo News

AIG Bonuses

1 Insurance giant AIG to pay $165 million in bonuses

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

Sun Mar 15, 7:55 am E

WASHINGTON – American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars.

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.

The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

Mar 16 2009

Obamanomics

Dear Barack,

American International Group has sold insurance policies without the assets to cover their claims and as a result THEY ARE BANKRUPT!

The policies they issued are WORTH NOTHING AND WILL NEVER BE PAID!

The people who hold them HAVE LOST THEIR MONEY!

Moreover the people who sold those policies ARE CRIMINALS!  They committed INSURANCE FRAUD and should be ARRESTED AND SENT TO PRISON!

If instead your policy and that of your administration is to give them BILLIONS IN BONUSES the American people will justifiably curse your name forever as the quisling who SOLD THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY!

Clearly Geithner and Summers are UTTERLY INCAPABLE of making any progress at all in resolving our financial crisis because they have no ability to control these institutions or gain their cooperation even with the TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN BRIBES THEY HAVE ALREADY PAID THESE EXTORTIONISTS!

They must be fired and replaced as must the failed leadership and incompetent managers in all the institutions in which THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HOLDS A CONTROLLING INTEREST WHO DO NOT COOPERATE WITH THEIR SHAREHOLDERS!  Meaning us, the American people, though our elected Representatives including you sir

It’s a little thing called corporate democracy, sir.  One of the foundations of our capitalist system.

I am calling my Congresspeople tomorrow, sir, including Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Banking Committee, and telling them that if they expect my vote in 2010 THEY WILL INVESTIGATE IMMEDIATELY AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION UNDER THE LAW!

And you sir, if you don’t replace Geithner and Summers and change their disastrous policies that benefit only their criminal cronies, you sir will replace your predecessor as THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER, because your failure will be just as great as James Buchanan’s.

Sincerely,

ek hornbeck

Mar 16 2009

Late Night Karaoke

Hello

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