William K. Black - Bill Black's Handy Guide to Bankster Fraud, From 'Small Fraudulent Fry' to 'Septic Tank Scum'

By William K. Black, Benzinga

Posted on December 20, 2011, Printed on December 21, 2011
http://www.benzinga.com/

Sixty Minutes' December 11, 2011  interview of President Obama included a claim by Obama that, unfortunately, did not lead the interviewer to ask the obvious, essential follow-up questions.

“I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal.”

Obama did not explain what Wall Street behavior he found least ethical or what unethical Wall Street actions he believed was not illegal. It would have done the world (and Obama) a great service had he been asked these questions. He would not have given a coherent answer because his thinking on these issues has never been coherent. If he had to explain his position he, and the public, would recognize it was indefensible. I offer the following scale of unethical banker behavior related to fraudulent mortgages and mortgage paper (principally collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)) that is illegal and deserved punishment. I write to prompt the rigorous analytical discussion that is essential to expose and end Obama and Bush’s “Presidential Amnesty for Contributors” (PAC) doctrine. The financial industry is the leading campaign contributor to both parties and those contributions come overwhelmingly from the wealthiest officers – the one-tenth of one percent that thrives by being parasites on the 99 percent.

I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:

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You Tube Video - Cat Soothing Crying Baby to Sleep

Our cat Stewie helps put our new baby Connar to sleep... cutest bit is right at the end!

Robert Lederman - Audio Recording and Report from Washington Square Park Speakout on Artists’ Rights

by Robert Lederman
artistpres@gmail.com

On 12/19/2011 Community Board #2 held a public speakout
about the recent blitz of summonses issued to artists, performers and
musicians in Washington Square Park under the new Park rules for
artists. See the link right below for the full audio (a minute or two
in the beginning is hard to make out, the rest is very clear):
http://youtu.be/dWe623Sax9A

It was standing room only.

The crowd consisted primarily of residents who live right around or
near the park (many of whom have been there for most of their lives)
plus a sizeable number of artists and musicians who regularly work in
the park. Also present were elected officials, representatives of
elected officials and advocates for both parks and for free speech.

Manhattan Park Commissioner William Castro testified in support of the
park rules on behalf of the City.

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GMW - Indian farm suicides - key facts and figures

Thanks to Aruna Rodrigues for the following information based on the research of P Sainath, the renowned Indian writer on the country's rural poor.

The National Crime Records Bureau's all-India figure for farm suicides 1995-2010 is 256,913.

First 8 years 1995-2002: 121,157 farm suicides

Second 8 years 2003-10: 135,756 farm suicides

Pawar, Agriculture Minister's home state of Maharashtra [where Bt cotton has had a huge uptake] has by far the worst record in the country with 50,481 farm suicides between 1995-2010. That is, 1995-2002: 20,066 and for 2003-10 [the period in which Bt cotton has been cultivated]: 30,415

Main points:

*The last 8 years were significantly worse with an annual average of 1832 farm suicides, higher than the first 8 years.

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Henry Giroux - Why Faculty Should Join Occupy Movement Protesters on College Campuses

Monday 19 December 2011

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/why-faculty-should-join-occupy-movement-protesters-college-campuses/1324328832

In both the United States and  many other countries, students are protesting against rising tuition fees, the increasing financial burdens they are forced to assume, and the primacy of market models in shaping higher education while emphasizing private benefits to individuals and the economy. Many students view these policies and for-profit industries as part of an assault on not just the public character of the university but also as an attack on civic society and their future. 

For many young people in the Occupy movement, higher education has defaulted on its promise to provide them with both a quality education and the prospects of a dignified future. They resent the growing instrumentalization and accompanying hostility to critical and oppositional ideas within the university. They have watched over the years as the university is losing ground as a place to think, dissent, and develop a culture of questioning, dialogue, and civic enlightenment. They are rethinking what should be the role of the university in a world caught in a nightmarish blend of war, massive economic inequities and ecological destruction.

What role should the university play at a time when politics is being emptied out of any connection to a civic literacy, informed judgment, and critical dialogue, further deepening a culture of illiteracy, cruelty, hypermasculinity and disposability? Young people are not only engaging in a great refusal; they are also arguing for the social benefits and public value of higher education while deeply resenting the fact that, as conservative politicians defund higher education and cut public spending, they do so in order to be able to support tax breaks for corporations and the rich and to ensure ample funds for sustaining and expanding the warfare state.

The Occupy protesters view the assault on the programs that emerged out of the New Deal and the Great Society as being undermined as society increasingly returns to a Second Gilded Age, in which youth have to bear the burden of an attack on the welfare state, social provisions, and a huge wealth and income inequality gap. Young people recognize that they have become disposable, and that higher education, which always embodied the ideal, though in damaging terms, of a better life, has now become annexed to the military-academic-industrial complex. 

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Rodrigue Tremblay - The "Official End" of the Bush-Cheney Disaster in Iraq?

By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research, December 20, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28289

"Just think of what happened after 9/11. Immediately before there was any assessment there was glee in the [Bush-Cheney] administration because now we can invade Iraq." Ron Paul, U.S. Congressman (R-Tex.) and 2012 Republican presidential candidate

“After the war [against Iraq] has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.” Sen. Robert Byrd, (D-W.Va), March 19, 2003

“Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end... Through this period of transition, we will carry out further redeployments. And under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.” President Barack Obama, Friday, February 27, 2009

The Obama administration officially put an end to the Iraq war  on Thursday December 15, 2011, close to nine years after the March 20, 2003 military invasion of Iraq, dubbed “shock-and-awe.”

I had not intend to comment on the end of this most unnecessary war, but since I wrote a book to explain how it all came about, I feel that I must say something.

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Brian Becker - Colonial Iraq: The Reality behind "the End of the Iraq War"

U.S. retains thousands of troops

By Brian Becker

December 19, 2011

pslweb.org

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28283

“Our war there will be over. All of our troops will be out of Iraq,” President Barack Obama said in his Dec. 17 weekly radio address.

But while combat troops are leaving, for now at least, the U.S. government is creating a staff of 16,000 for its newly constructed embassy in the heart of Baghdad. Although Iraq has only 28 million people, the new U.S. embassy is the largest in the world. It is a massive compound that is one and a half square miles-—an enormous complex of 22 buildings and the size of 94 football fields. Half of the 16,000-person staff will consist of a private military army made up of mercenaries under the control of the State Department. The State Department budget for the embassy is estimated at $25-30 billion over the next five years.

In addition, the Pentagon retains a vast network of bases, sea and air power surrounding Iraq. Washington’s intention clearly is to dominate Iraq for many years to come in a colonial-type relationship. Iraq possesses the second largest oil reserves in the world.

Obama's speech was the latest in a series of appearances seeking to bolster the president’s re-election prospects by associating himself with “the end of the war in Iraq.”

The dishonesty of this presentation would be considered breathtaking except for the fact that his deception fits exactly into the pattern of lies and deceit practiced by all other Democrats and Republicans who have served as the CEO of the U.S. imperialist state.

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Global Research - 50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Global Research, December 18, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28268

Even though most Americans have become very frustrated with this economy, the reality is that the vast majority of them still have no idea just how bad our economic decline has been or how much trouble we are going to be in if we don't make dramatic changes immediately.  If we do not educate the American people about how deathly ill the U.S. economy has become, then they will just keep falling for the same old lies that our politicians keep telling them.  Just "tweaking" things here and there is not going to fix this economy.  We truly do need a fundamental change in direction.  America is consuming far more wealth than it is producing and our debt is absolutely exploding.  If we stay on this current path, an economic collapse is inevitable.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers from 2011 that I have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

At this time of the year, a lot of families get together, and in most homes the conversation usually gets around to politics at some point.  Hopefully many of you will use the list below as a tool to help you share the reality of the U.S. economic crisis with your family and friends.  If we all work together, hopefully we can get millions of people to wake up and realize that "business as usual" will result in a national economic apocalypse.

The following are 50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe....

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Alex Pareene - Five of the Biggest Hacks in American Media

By Alex Pareene, Salon

Posted on December 19, 2011, Printed on December 20, 2011
http://www.salon.com/

The Salon Hack List is a list of our least favorite political commentators, newspaper columnists, political news show hosts, and constant cable news presences, ranked roughly (but only roughly) in order of awfulness and then described rudely. Criteria for inclusion included being wrong about literally everything, shameless sycophancy, appearing on “Morning Joe” and being “Morning Joe.”

Last year, our countdown was based on each hack’s entire career. We’re still looking at their whole bodies of work, but we’re focusing on the hackiest thing each entrant did in this rapidly ending year.

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Adele Stan - How Ron Paul Could Win Iowa Caucuses -- and Screw Up Everything

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet

Posted on December 19, 2011, Printed on December 20, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153511/how_ron_paul_could_win_iowa_caucuses_--_and_screw_up_everything

In the week before Christmas, the elfin creatures of the world are said to be very, very busy, hammering out toys for all the good girls and boys. At least one, however, is busy plotting his revenge -- revenge on the media, whose smarty-pants talkers regard him as a curiosity; on the Republican Party, whose establishment has long dismissed him as a crank; on the president of the United States, who, as an African American, has the audacity to lead a nation in which he shouldn't even have the right to sit at a lunch counter.

This industrious fellow, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is planning to win the Iowa caucuses, the January 3 opening round of the GOP presidential primary season, just as the nation settles into its post-holiday doldrums. And from the way it looks now, he'll probably do just that.

Follow the Bursting Bubble

Barely over a week ago, conventional wisdom-peddlers were shifting their bets from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Ga., as polls showed the bombastic bomb-thrower surging. But bubbles have a tendency to burst, as Gingrich himself surely knows, having collected $1.6 million for his historical advice to bubble king Freddie Mac, the federally sponsored mortgage giant whose executives were charged with fraud last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission for their role in creating the spectacular bursting orb that brought down the global economy. Since his peak polling in Iowa last week at 27 percent, according to Public Policy Polling (some polls had him as high as 33 percent), Gingrich lost 13 points, leading PPP analysts to describe his campaign, with its current 14 percent share and high unfavorability ratings, as “imploding.” (Just as we predictedduring the Newt bubble's peak.)

Taking Gingrich's first-place slot is Ron Paul, with 23 percent of likely caucus-goers saying they'll cast their vote for a man who once struggled to get debate moderators to give him questions.

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