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Time for some news, that I believe you can use.
• I’m going to agree with Michael Moore here. The fact that the US cannot admit that they authorized a kill mission on bin Laden, and subsequently had to invent all these movie-treatment scenarios about human shields and firefights to cover for that, suggests that they do feel a certain vulnerability about the legality of the mission. Either that or the perspective of the Muslim world over shooting an unarmed man. They ought to just admit the rules of engagement were such that bin Laden wasn’t going to walk out of the compound alive.
• The wife of bin Laden, now in Pakistani custody, says she was in the safe house for five years. The house was in a military cantonment. There were no bodyguards present. For the world’s most wanted man. It’s just not credible that Pakistan didn’t know about this, and people know it at the highest levels.
• Now we can have a grand discussion about whether they should release the burial video.
• George Bush whiffed on his commando attempt to get bin Laden. Turns out he never showed up at the meeting where they expected him (because he was in a safe house in Pakistan for five years).
• We’re learning about a special off-the-books radar-evading helicopter used in the mission.
• When you have to deny that Greece will exit the Eurozone, well, let’s just say where there’s smoke there’s fire. Honestly that’s the only hope for Greece. Yves has more.
• Boehner is preparing his colleagues for disappointment on the debt limit issue. Sounds like Wall Street is starting to get to him. At the same time, Republicans are vowing “no retreat” from their plan to end Medicare. Please don’t retreat! Let this issue kill you some more with voters.
• Good interview by Joan Walsh with Richard Trumka, talking about labor’s independence from the Democratic Party. Seeing is believing on this one.
• Systemic risk council can’t decide who to label a systemic risk. Facepalm.
• There’s a disconnect between the surface rhetoric of a strong dollar policy and the action of trying to get China to devalue its currency, which would necessarily make the dollar weaker (but would help the economy).
• I don’t think I’d call this Wall Street Journal Wikileaks knockoff idea “Wikileaks” as much as “Wikiarrest,” as in “an easy way to arrest whistleblowers when we turn over your name to the authorities as per our terms of use.”
• Hillary Clinton highlighted higher food prices today. She needs to stress commodity speculation.
• Gordon Adams explains that military spending can be reduced in a snap, by simply ending unnecessary wars.
• The Liberal Democrats in Britain have suffered mightily for their coalition with the Conservatives. They lost hundreds of seats in local elections in a backlash against austerity, and their main policy idea, alternative voting (aka instant runoff voting) got pummeled in a referendum.
• John Yoo says that the US killed bin Laden because they were afraid to bring him to Guantanamo and admit Bush-era counter-terror and interrogation policies were right. John Yoo is a war criminal who isn’t worth responding to.
• We can laugh about Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery (I think it’s a Harry Potter tie-in), but it looks like there’s a serious power struggle going on here that could lead to Ahmadinejad’s resignation.
• I love that Lloyd Blankfein had to announce that he wasn’t resigning.
• Are the deportations of same-sex couples ending?
• Alassane Ouattara finally took the oath of office in Ivory Coast.
• Michael Bloomberg lays out $400 million in budget cuts for New York City and the firing of 4,000 teachers. Winning the future!
• Almost nothing has been done to prevent another flash crash.
• Turns out the Maine twins Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins don’t like each other that much. Hey, the feeling’s mutual!
• Yay, Carl Lewis is back on the New Jersey ballot! He should draw up legislation to stop him from singing the national anthem.
• Ohioans angrily called a hotel they thought was flying its flag at half-mast in honor of Osama bin Laden. Turns out the flagpole was broken.
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The first time I saw it, I thought that Wall Street Journal “wikileaks” look-alike idea was another great spoof from The Onion.
This should yield some fascinating information. it will no doubt be very frustrating to read this stuff, though, since there’s so little that can be done now to right so many terrible wrongs.
[UK] Colonial secret papers to be made public
A collection of sensitive documents from Britain’s colonial past are to be made public through the National Archives for the first time.
LINK.
shocking.
“Systemic risk” should be a sliding scale based on assets. Why make it more complicated than it has to be?
have you read “heart of darkness” by Joseph Conrad?
brilliant, very disturbing descriptions of the barbarity of the colonialists in Africa. vast fortunes were made through slavery.
Bet you a shilling that the most interesting papers relating to British Mandate Palestine, Rhodesia, and Hong Kong will not make it into the release.
Huge portraits of both Snowe and Collins, with nary a peep about Snowe’s vast wealth, how she came by it, and how large it is. I guess that kind of personal comfort and ease just goes without saying when profiling US Senators now?
Yes I have, and thanks for reminding all of us of that book. Very powerful. Vast fortunes made through vast atrocities, as this example illustrates.
I’m not the betting kind, bmull, but even if I were I wouldn’t take you up on that one.
Isn’t that European power Belgium? Isn’t the river the Congo? Isn’t Kurtz Belgian? Slavery was outlawed in the British Empire before the US Civil War. The book is supposedly based on events in the early 20th century. Conrad died in 1924.
Fla. Senate approves repeal of religious aid ban
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=tallahassee&sParam=36416439.story
FL currently has more separation of church from state than the US constitution. Repubs can fix that for you.
I believe the amendment needed only 60% of each chamber to make it to the ballot in November of 2012. Repubs have 2/3 majorities in each chamber. If approved by 60% of voters in 11/12, the amendment makes it to the FL constitution.
I like Michael Moore and agree with him on almost everything except his horror that bin Laden was executed. I’m having a hard time understanding the hullabaloo about killing bin Laden. Correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt the people who were killed in the twin towers were armed and they were not given a warning. They were executed. Why is there so much talk about executing bin Laden. He was a killer criminal. I’m not rejoicing in his death but I am rejoicing in what I consider justice.
Hmmm. The book was published in 1902. So the events would be late 19th century.
Five Biggest Recipients Of Corporate Tax Breaks Spent $8 Million In 2010 Elections (UPDATED)
They made $77.16B in profits, paid $0 in 2009 taxes, received $3.7B in federal tax benefits.
LINK.
I’m not going to lose any sleep over what happened to bin Laden, but it is a good opportunity to reflect: Bush and Rumsfeld killed vastly more civilians than bin Laden did, and as Robert Draper of GQ documented, they considered Iraq a holy war. When do the SEALs descend on Crawfordsville?
Our laws provide a procedure for dealing even with “killer criminals” e.g., Timothy McVeigh.
“Correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt the people who were killed in the twin towers were armed and they were not given a warning.”
I am glad the US subscribes to the principles and standards of terrorists.
New indictment in ex-Lebanon PM Rafik Hariri’s probe
The prosecutor of the UN-backed tribunal has filed a new indictment in the investigation of the 2005 killing of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
LINK.
system needs some minor adjustments doesn’t it?
I’d say it has nothing to do with bin Laden. It has to do with admitting a program of executive assassination, which as we saw just yesterday doesn’t end with bin Laden. American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was just targeted via drone. You can agree with its use in the case of bin Laden, but clearly the Administration doesn’t, or is at least worried about the public connecting the dots. I believe the UN resolutions probably make it legal in bin Laden’s case, but Awlaki and others are much more iffy.
Ya think?
And now the pendulum swings.
Egypt to use ‘iron hand’ for security LINK.
Whaaaaaaat? From The Nation’s blog:
Obama Administration Plans Corporate Tax Cut in Year of Record Profits LINK.