at-Largely

And now for the Communist delegation...

So we have fascism back in office with the election of Silvio Berlusconi to Prime Minister (for a third time) and just to even out the tyrant playing field, Russian President, soon to be Prime Minister, has also agreed to be the United Russia party chairman at the same time:

"Surprising no one, President Vladimir Putin accepted an offer Tuesday to lead the dominant political party in Russia once he leaves office next month and takes the post of prime minister, potentially setting the stage for years of power-sharing with President-elect Dimitri Medvedev, his hand-picked successor to the Kremlin.

At a party congress that played like a disconcerting mélange of U.S. national political convention, Soviet-era Communist Party Congress and corporate pep rally, Putin agreed to be the chairman of United Russia, a party that has been regarded as an arm of the Kremlin since it was created in 2001.

Until Medvedev takes office May 7, Putin said it would be inappropriate for him to be officially affiliated with a particular party. Once he is prime minister, he said, he sees no such problem, calling a dual party and government role "a perfectly civilized, natural and traditional practice for democratic states."

Between Berlusconi and his friend Putin, Europe is facing some hard-line extremists in the upcoming years. Remember the good old days when it was easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys? The Soviet regime was bad. The fascist regime was bad. The United States was good. Things are no longer this simple and American is no longer shining the torch of democracy from across the ocean.

Of violent sex crimes covered up by your tax dollars...

This story is incredibly difficult to read. We all know that sex crimes and violent murders increase in a war zone. Normal people asked to kill on a daily basis as their duty are affected in the most terrible way and for the rest of their lives. That is why a strict military code, domestic and international law are all required to keep otherwise sane and non-criminal people from going over the edge. Recruiting standards also usually hope to help identify some of the more vulnerable (mental illness, criminal background, etc.) before any conflict begins. Add to all of this aggressive training and discipline and together, these factors usually help (not avoid) our military personnel from collectively (although not individually) becoming a criminal enterprise of the deranged.

Under the Bush-Cheney doctrine of corporate greed and fuck-the-troops mentality  - not to mention the unprecedented lack of training and supervision, lax recruiting standards and suspension of legal controls - and the use of contractors who are under no law apparently, and we have in fact a corporate-military gang of violent offenders. Instead of addressing the problem they have created, however, the Bush-Cheney administration and their corporate no-bid contracting buddies have pressured the victims of these violent crimes into silence and government resources to cover-up these crimes. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our American victims of our other American victims as well as criminals who are themselves being guided by a criminally corrupt group of corporations and a criminally corrupt government. Here is a story of this America from the excellent investigative reporting of Karen Houppert:

"That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Smith says."

Washington Not Ready to Add Nicaragua to the Axis of Evil

From my friend, the excellent Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly's National Security Editor:

"When Daniel Ortega unexpectedly led his left-wing party back into power in Nicaragua in early 2007, he faced a dark future — literally.

The lights were going out all over the country. Its ancient power systems leaked so much electricity that even its one creaky oil refinery, privatized by his pro-American predecessors, couldn’t make up for shortages.

Blackouts were shutting off power for as much as 12 hours a days in many towns and cities. Food spoiled. Ice melted. Children read by candlelight.

The dire situation had helped bring down Ortega’s rivals, and now it could quickly undo him and his Sandinista party.  But Ortega had an ace: Venezuela’s garrulous anti-American leader, Hugo Chavez.

They struck a deal — and what a deal it was.Chavez would supply cheap oil on easier terms than a subprime mortgage.  Not only that, the deal was made between Chavez’s state oil company and shadowy entity set up by Sandinista party officials — not, in other words, the Nicaraguan government, according to knowledgeable sources.

Ever since, the commercial entity, known by its Spanish acronym, ALBANISA, has in turn been selling cheap oil to party officials who hold the mayorships in scores of Nicaraguan towns and villages. Not only that, a chunk of the proceeds are then recycled back to party officials for local economic and social projects.   

Ortega and the Sandinistas have benefitted, big time — and so have Nicaraguans. The blackouts have ended. Fertilizer, also produced by the Venezuelan oil, is plentiful.

Yes, the cost of energy to Nicaraguan consumers has risen 18 percent, according to independent figures and Latin American news media, but that’s only half the rate of the rest of the region.

So Nicaraguans have done well by Ortega and Chavez, the Mussolini-like orator whose grandiose vision of leading a regional economic and political alliance against the United States gained a significant new piece."

Bush to terrorism victims: go Cheney yourselves, again...

My god this horror does not end, but at least the Bush administration finally admits fully where its collective loyalties are (emphasis mine):

"WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is asking Congress to exempt Libya from a law allowing terrorism victims to seize the U.S. assets of state sponsors of the attacks.

The law was part of a defense policy bill that President Bush signed in January.

The bill's passage had been held up over Bush's objections to the provision letting victims of state-sponsored terrorism sue responsible foreign governments and collect judgments by seizing their assets in the United States. Bush was concerned the provision would be applied to Iraq, so Democrats gave ground by giving the president permission to waive it for that country. He did so immediately upon signing the legislation.

Now, the administration has asked lawmakers to quickly grant Bush waiver authority for Libya.

Gordon Johndroe, Bush's national security spokesman, said the seizing of assets provision in the law could discourage nations like Libya that have renounced the export of terrorism from now helping the United States to fight terrorism. There is potential for billions of dollars in investment by U.S. companies in Libya's oil sector, as well as in other areas, meaning Libyan assets increasingly could wind up on American soil."

So victims of state-sponsored terrorism threaten corporate profits by their silly demands for justice? Right, that about covers it. We did not go after the Saudis, who sponsored the attacks on this nation, because it would be bad for the oil industry. That is treason, is it not? We did not go after Pakistan, because it would be bad for the weapons industry (and likely the war on drugs industry). That is treason, is it not? When corporate profits are more important than national security, then we can safely declare that fascism is on the march. Onwards lied-to soldiers, the corporate war of terror beckons.

GWOT Chronicles: Strategy Schmategy

Posted by Jeff Huber

"Isn't it odd that after a terrorist attack that relied on $2 box-cutters, we are redoubling our pursuit of fantastical weaponry?" — Robert Scheer

Someday we Americans will look back on our Global War on Terror and ask ourselves what the hell we thought we were doing. Here’s one of our latest shenanigans.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're using nuclear submarines to assassinate terrorists these days. That’s not the most efficient way to assassinate terrorists, but it’s the most expensive, so it has that going for it.

Even assassinating terrorists with B-2 stealth bombers wouldn’t be as expensive as doing it with nuclear submarines. B-2s cost a ridiculous amount of money, all right, but not as much as the subs. The subs carry a lot more people and take a lot longer to get where they’re going, so the people in them have to eat and sleep and so forth. The two pilots in a B-2 eat box lunches and can go to the bathroom without getting up from their seats. And then there are those expensive nuclear reactors, which nuclear submarines have and B-2s don’t.

And as ridiculous as the cost of an F-22 air-to-air stealth fighter is, it’s less ridiculous than the cost of a B-2 stealth bomber, and there are other drawbacks to using an F-22 to assassinate terrorists as well.

Bear Stearns Gets Fed Bail-Out

Posted By Cernig

Fester certainly called it earlier this morning when he wrote: "we could have a situation where a really nasty private sector debt crisis transforms itself into a really nasty public-private debt crisis".

He means like this:

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Friday agreed to provide emergency financing to Bear Stearns (BSC.N) after the investment bank said its cash position had deteriorated sharply, sending its shares into freefall.

Stock of the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank dropped as much as 50 percent in morning trading after the news, the latest in the Fed's efforts to soothe financial markets in response to a widening credit crisis spurred by rising mortgage defaults.

"Our liquidity position in the last 24 hours had significantly deteriorated. We took this important step to restore confidence in us in the marketplace, strengthen our liquidity and allow us to continue normal operations," said Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz, in a statement.

...Bear Stearns has more exposure to the U.S. bond markets than its competitors, and has a large mortgage-backed securities business. It was among the first to disclose the impact of the subprime mortgage market meltdown when two of its leveraged hedge funds collapsed last summer, losing $1.6 billion.

"With the market's reaction, I'd say stick a fork in them, they're done," said James Ellman, portfolio manager at Seacliff Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. "The company clearly has to choose from a set of unpalatable choices: sell a large amount of equity, sell the company outright or sell assets and try to hold on and hope for the best."

..."The situation is very much that Bear Stearns was very close to the edge and it was much worse than we all thought," said Michael Klawitter, currency strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort, Frankfurt.

"It raises severe concerns over other banks. (Bear Stearns) wasn't a small bank, it was the second largest underwriter of mortgages last year. For the situation to deteriorate in that way is not good news and it will add further to jitters," he added.

Now I'm not an economist, I don't even play one on the internet, but it seems to me that Bear Stearns has just been helped to a hefty chunk of corporate welfare on the taxpayer's dollar (that's you) as reward for a whole slew of bad investments. Bad investments that were, according to Nobel winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, encouraged by the Bush administration in a vain attempt to keep the U.S. economy afloat on deficit spending while three trillion bucks was poured into the Iraqi sandpit. Where's the "credit card act" for these people?

And since the Federal piggy-bank (that's you again) is empty, the only place the Fed can get the money for bail-outs like this is overseas (more deficit) - which Fester points out will only come with strings attached. I've written before that George Bush has the soul of an assett-stripper. This is the endgame, after all the good bits have been sold out from under the shareholders and employees (guess what, you again) to Dubya's own backers and just before the remaining shell of what was USA Inc. is declared non-viable and sold to some foreign buyer.