Congress will soon vote on whether to spend another $33 billion of our money to escalate a war in Afghanistan that makes us less safe, violates the basic rule of law, kills innocent people, puts our children in debt, empowers the oil industry, and protects the heroin industry. The only decent, legal, or humane thing a member of Congress could do would be to publicly and privately whip his/her colleagues to vote No and defeat the bill. No caucus is engaged in that effort. As far as I know, Congressman Dennis Kucinich is the only one making any gestures in that direction. But a block of congress members is working to propose an amendment to the bill that will allow them to support it while (1) appearing to oppose wars, and (2) making the bill even worse. And even Kucinich supports this counterproductive campaign, as do many peace activists.

[snip]

I’ll let this stand for itself. Read it, please.

Press release above the fold, and Letter To Iraq after the fold.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 15th, 2010

Contact:
Laura Taylor: 202-510-3711
[email protected]

VETERANS OF “WIKILEAKS” INCIDENT ANNOUNCE “LETTER OF RECONCILIATION” TO IRAQIS INJURED IN ATTACK

Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open-letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack,  in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees.

Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber deployed to Baghdad with Bravo Company 2-16 in 2007. Ethan was on the ground at the scene of the shooting, and is seen on the video rushing one of the injured children to a U.S. Vehicle; “When I saw those kids, all I could picture was my kids back home”. Ethan applied for mental health support following this incident and was denied by his commanding officer.

Josh Stieber was not at the scene of the shooting but says similar incidents happened throughout his 14-month tour; “The acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war.” Josh states that these casualties demonstrate the impact of U.S. military policy on both the civilians and the soldiers on the ground.

McClatchy News’ Greg Gordon talks with Paul Jay of The Real News Network with his analysis of the SEC civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs and Goldman VP Fabrice Tourre:

SEC’s Goldman charges could be just the beginning

So far in the first two segments of this six part interview we’ve heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving ‘engine’ of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income, finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person.

In this third segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to explain why and how the global economic system depends on the US as importer of last resort but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the ‘American Dream’ through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Part 2 is here.

Yesterday in the first segment of this interview we heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talking with Paul Jay of The Real News Network about the fact that the global economy has lost the American consumer as the engine for the whole system.

Here in segment 2 D’Arista continues her conversation with Jay, talking about private capital looking for investment safety by abandoning the US Dollar to other things they think will better hold real value such as precious metals, oil, etc. and more about the history of how we got into the economic situation we are in today.

And about who benefits…

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Jane D’Arista is a research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she also co-founded an Economists’ Committee for Financial Reform called SAFER, i.e. stable, accountable, efficient & fair reform.

She is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, “A nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy”.

Jane served as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office. Representing Americans for Financial Reform, she has given Congressional testimony at financial services hearings. She has lectured at the Boston University School of Law, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Utah and the New School University and writes and lectures internationally.

Her publications include The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy : 1915-1935, a two-volume history of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation.

Here Jane talks with Paul Jay of the Real News in the first segment of a six part interview, and says now that the US dollar as the reserve currency of all international transactions…