1. An ex-CNN reporter is now the President of El Salvador, defeating the party behind the death squads of the 80s and 90s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauricio_Funes
2. ““Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism”
(In Democracy Inc., political theorist Sheldon S. Wolin successfully transcends the Left/Right paradigm and challenges his readers to do the same, pointing out the malevolent influence that corporate America inflicts on the U.S. political system, and by extension, the political systems of the world. Whether Democrats or Republicans are elected, important foreign and domestic policy decisions seem redundant. (e.g. Despite the new President, Afghanistan remains a battleground and the ‘War on Terror’ seems entrenched. Despite a Democratic majority, Health Care reform seems a distant dream for economically over-burdened civilians.) Does the U.S. elite run the country, or do the people? Is there any hope for the present system? How do we go about changing the system for the better? Wolin provides context, research, and sorely needed scholarship on these complex issues that cannot simply be solved by voting for a different body in a business suit, or by desperately scapegoating one faction or another. The best political book I am likely to read this year, I recommend it enthusiastically to all users or visitors to 911blogger.com, this book is a small education unto itself. I was glad to find the following review… -rep.)
Wolin uses the term inverted totalitarianism to describe our descent into despotism. “Inverted” totalitarianism does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader, as “classical” kinds of totalitarianism do. The power centers of inverted totalitarianism are corporate and usually anonymous. It does not openly discredit democracy. It pays homage to the democratic ideal, patriotism, and the Constitution while quietly subverting democratic institutions.
…
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19610
3. “City “Slap” At 9/11 Uniformed Heroes
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19609
4. “Can The Beloved Messiah Extinguish The Fires Of Discontent?
http://www.911blogger.com/node/18412
5. “The State of Missouri Information Analysis Center recently issued a no-longer-secret report on domestic terrorism.
- Bumper stickers for third-party candidates like Ron Paul
- Talk of “New World Order” conspiracy theories
- Opposition to the Federal Reserve and support of the gold standard
- Opposition to US Army takeover of Homeland Security
- Opposition to the North American Union
- Opposition to universal military service
- Tax resistance
- Possession of subversive literature: “pictures, cartoons, bumper stickers that contain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this material will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforcement, and ‘New World Order’ in a derogatory manner.”
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/03/15/if-you-are-reading-this-you-may-already-be-a-terrorist/
6. What? Killing one million private cirtizens?
“ Cheney: US achieved much of what it wanted in Iraq“
As for the idea that the Israel lobbies have been weakened by the affair, that does not follow. They have been operating in the open for decades. They torpedoed George Ball for secretary of state way back in the Carter administration, and everyone knew it then and knows it now. AIPAC set up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy explicitly to offset the then perceived even-handedness toward Israel of Brookings, and WINEP directors went on to hold highly influential and even decisive positions in the Clinton and W. Bush administrations. WINEP head Dennis Ross has a position in the Obama administration related to Iran policy, even though the WINEP web page hosted articles urging the bombing of Iran. These appointments are not made despite the WINEP connection, but because of it.
The strength of these lobbies comes from their passionate commitment to their cause, from excellent organizing skills, and from their ability to unify around it across religious and ideological boundaries, and above all from ability to leverage support serially on issues from likely allies. Thus, the leadership can arrange for millions of protest emails to be sent by evangelical Christians as well as by Jewish congregations. The New Republic takes the same side as Commentary. They succeed even though their most passionate projects are not supported, and are even opposed, by probably a majority of the American Jewish community. I doubt much hangs on money per se; real lobbying is often a relatively inexpensive affair. But behind-the-scenes concurrence of big players like the military-industrial complex on the desirability for a war is crucial if you are a lobby trying to get up a war for other reasons. They are very good at getting their way, and can think and plan carefully a good decade out, and have virtually no effective opposition, which is the real secret of their strength. Did Obama get even 5,000 emails complaining that he did not stand by Freeman? And that would be a tiny number compared to what Freeman’s opponents can muster.
Since it is obvious that the Israel lobbies are working toward a war on Iran, and since I believe that a US or Israeli war on Iran would have extremely damaging effects on the US and on Israel, I am very worried about these lobbies’ efficacy and proven track record in accomplishing their goals.
Gen. Jones should seek someone as level-headed on these issues as Freeman who has not expressed himself so publicly.“
Until you replace them with people who saw this crisis coming and who have ideas about how to actually reform the failed system instead of trying to prop it up, things will just get worse.“
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/mr-president-instead-of-getting-choked.html
9. Bad move to accept Madoff’s guilty plea:
“So, if you ask me, the judge acted badly in accepting Madoff’s guilty plea. He allowed Madoff to lie to his face and not to answer questions that cried out for answers. As well, by eliminating the possibility of a trial in which so much would come out, he potentially cloaked much or most of the facts in the non transparency for which the U.S. government and all its branches have been infamous since at least 1964, if not before. Now what we shall learn — and, maybe more importantly, what is kept from us — is totally within the discretion of the government, rather than almost inevitably being exposed at a trial due to the exigencies of trial. Bad. All very bad — unless one takes the position that what this country needs, and what Madoff’s victims need, is more secrecy, not less.“
http://webmail.aol.com/41921/aol/en-us/Suite.aspx
10. The sanctity of AIG’s contracts:
“Apparently, the supreme sanctity of employment contracts applies only to some types of employees but not others. Either way, the Obama administration’s claim that nothing could be done about the AIG bonuses because AIG has solid, sacred contractual commitments to pay them is, for so many reasons, absurd on its face.
Fed chief Ben Bernanke’s new funding facility is a real doozy. In fact, if the Term Asset-Backed Loan Facility or TALF, which is set to launch on Thursday, doesn’t convince the American people that it’s time to take a wrecking ball to the Central Bank and start over, than nothing will. Bernanke and his co-conspirator at Treasury, Timothy Geithner, are planning to revive the shadow banking system by dumping $2 trillion into the same over-leveraged, derivatives-based garbage that blew up the financial system in the first place. All the blabbering about a “good bank-bad bank” remedy appears to have been a diversion. This is how Bloomberg sums it up:
“Geithner’s program has three main elements: Injecting fresh government capital into some of the country’s biggest financial institutions; establishing a public-private partnership to handle as much as $1 trillion of banks’ bad assets; and starting a credit facility with the Federal Reserve of as much as $1 trillion to promote lending to consumers and businesses.
The Treasury hopes to unfreeze credit markets by providing new incentives to banks and investors to resume trading in mortgage securities and other troubled assets. U.S. regulators are conducting a new series of examinations to make sure banks have enough capital to accept losses when selling these assets, while also planning to provide government financing to the investors who might buy them.” (Bloomberg News)
That’s right; $1 trillion for Bernanke’s TALF and another trillion for Geithner’s so called “Public-Private Partnership”. That’s $2 trillion down a derivatives sinkhole just to preserve the illusion that the banks are still solvent. Bernanke has decided to shrug off the advice of nearly every reputable economist in the country, most of whom are pushing for a government takeover of the failing banks (nationalization), just to toss his shifty banking buddies a lifeline. It doesn’t seem to bother him that the public till has already been looted and that his action will leave the next generation of Americans bobbing in a pool of red ink.
…
But there’s even more to this swindle than that–much more. According to the Wall Street Journal:
“Wall Street dealers, including J P Morgan Chase & Co. and Barclays PLC’s Barclays Capital, have created vehicles to participate in the TALF that would allow investors in the program to circumvent many of the restrictions laid out by the Fed. The vehicles resemble collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, and use some of the financial engineering that was partially responsible for the collapse of the credit markets. The Fed, eager to get what it hopes will be a $1 trillion program up and running, has blessed the vehicles because they open the TALF up to a much larger group of investors.” (TALF is reworked after investors balk, Liz Rappaport, Wall Street Journal)
Great. More CDOs. Just what we need. “
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22224.htm
12. “
Leftist Victory in El Salvador Closes an Historic CycleWith Funes’ election, history has come full cycle. Both El Salvador and neighboring Nicaragua will now be governed by two former guerrilla fronts against which the Reagan administration spared no efforts in trying to defeat during the entire course of the 1980′s. We will now coexist with those we once branded as the greatest of threats to our national security. Those we branded as “international terrorists” now democratically govern much of Central America.
Funes, once a commentator for CNN’s Spanish-language service, comes to power representing the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a Marxist guerrilla group-turned-political -party, an organization that the U.S. government once described in terms now reserved for Al Qaeda and Hizbollah.
From the late 1970′s until a negotiated peace settlement in 1992, the FMLN fought a bloody civil war against a series of U.S.-backed right-wing regimes. Those Salvadoran regimes engaged in horrific massacres and deployed savage death squads, taking a massive human toll. While the FMLN also perpetrated atrocities, all independent analysts agree that the overwhelming majority of the 75,000 who were killed in the war in El Salvador were victims of government-sponsored violence.
…
The Salvadoran FMLN, meanwhile, which has acted as a parliamentary opposition party since the 1992 Salvadoran peace accords, now comes to power ending twenty years of uninterrupted rule by the country’s ultra-conservative ARENA party – a political organization born directly from the death squads of the 1980′s and, yes, a close ally of the U.S.
All of this raises the question of why so many lives were spent and so many billions in U.S. dollars were burned in an attempt to expunge these leftist forces twenty years ago? Wouldn’t it have been possible in 1989 to find some sort of accommodation with these radical forces and not postpone the inevitable for twenty years?
In the case of Nicaragua, the year-old reborn and duly elected Sandinista administration–while far from a model of democratic ethics– hardly poses any threat to U.S. interests. Though President Ortega, saddled with governing one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, still clothes his actions in revolutionary rhetoric, he has headed up what many think is essentially a conservative regime which recently outlawed all abortion (a move that could warm the deceased Ronald Reagan’s heart). Ortega campaigned successfully for the presidency last year by quoting from scripture and has not flinched from pacting with the most conservative of political elements.
In the case of El Salvador, President-elect Funes has pledged to maintain close and cordial relations with the U.S. And while the FMLN–like the Sandinistas – clings to some of its Cold War revolutionary rhetoric, no one expects any radical moves by the incoming government. Fighting widespread poverty aggravated by the global slump and a chilling crime wave, the FMLN will have its hands full just keeping the government on keel. President-elect Funes holds distinctly moderate views and in an American context would be little more than a liberal Democrat. In any case, the FMLN can point to its recent governance of several Salvadoran cities (including until recently the capital of San Salvador) as its democratic bona fides.
The resurrection of the FMLN and the FSLN at this time in history raises a troubling irony regarding U.S. foreign policy. Yesterday we were told they were our greatest enemies. Today, now in power, they hardly garner any U.S. press coverage, let alone much attention from Washington. Likewise, the right-wing forces we bankrolled with blood and treasure and who we were told were a bulwark of Western Civilization, utterly failed in solving the basic existential questions that bedeviled their respective countries. Twenty years from now, we have to ask, what will Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria look like? Might we find ourselves peacefully co-existing with the same undefeated forces who today we proclaim our mortal enemies? Might we be better off using our soft power, our economic and diplomatic clout to force negotiation and moderation with those we perceive as irrational and radical enemies? Or do we only reach that conclusion after the dissipation of prolonged, bloody and ultimately unsuccessful armed intervention and war?”
