BPR Quote of the Day: Iraq War & Oil

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’

—Alan Greenspan

in his memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,  2007.

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Bin Laden Death Suspicious?

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

There is an interesting syndicated column passing through the conspiracy blogs. “Fabricating Evidence Where There Is None,” by Paul Craig Roberts. In his column, Roberts expresses skepticism of the recent New Yorker article by Nicholas Schmidle (“planted…by unidentified sources”) detailing the capture of Osama bin Laden by Navy Seals. http://www.vdare.com/roberts/110804_creating_evidence.htm

Roberts goes on to describe a Pakistani TV interview with the next door neighbor to bin Laden’s compound. According to Roberts, an English translation of the interview tells us the neighbor, Mr. Bashir,  watched the entire operation from his roof. Mr. Bashir said that of the three helicopters he saw, only one landed. When the helicopter took off after the operation, it exploded, killing all aboard. This is the Pakistani interview (but with no translation):

I would be inclined to dismiss this story, were it not for the fact that the author Paul Craig Roberts was Secretary of Treasury in the Reagan administration and an associate editor for the Wall Street Journal, has written eight books, taught at Stanford and Georgetown, and was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.  More credentials than your average conspiracy promoter, and worth at least listening to, wouldn’t you think?

You can bet the American corporate media will be jumping all over this. Right?

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The Death of Capitalism?

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

Are we watching the death throes of Capitalism?

Communism collapsed in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. Capitalism was right there to scoop up what was left and move in.

Capitalism went on a rampage for many years before imploding in 2008,  and collapsing under the weight of an unregulated financial system. Without any viable alternatives, capitalism was able to survive only because the federal government bailed them out with trillions of taxpayer dollars. It was a huge corporate welfare giveaway that kept the financial system and our economy from total collapse.

The true cost of that government bailout, according to the reporting team of Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry at Bloomberg News, was more than just the reported $700 billion g from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). According to the Bloomberg journalists, at one point in 2009, “the U.S. had lent, spent or guaranteed as much as $12.8 trillion to rescue the economy.”

From the PBS Need to Know Series: The True Cost of the Bank Bailout:

Capitalism has struggled onward the last couple of years, but clearly is in disarray. The financial turmoil of late, the greed of multinational corporations, and the futile efforts of pro-business governments in the U.S. and abroad to stem the damage, point to troubling times ahead. The future of capitalism does not look promising, except for those who know how to exploit it.

 

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BPR Quote of the Day: Unions & Freedom

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

Somebody tell the Republican governors……

“These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland … They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”

Ronald Reagan  Labor Day campaign speech in 1980

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No We Can’t

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

President Obama and the American people lost badly today. The GOP, the Tea Party, and the ultra-rich scored a clear and decisive knock-out, one that bodes ominously for the future of this weakened nation.

The best opinions I’ve seen in the last day or two:

Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment tonight on why we need to bypass this corrupted system to effect change:

And Paul Krugman on why this debt deal is such a disaster:

Paul Krugman’s Op-ed yesterday in the NY Times

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BPR Quote of the Day: Wants to be Loved

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

“Amid the chilling anarchy, there’s not a single strong leader to be seen — not even a misguided one. All the leaders are followers. You have to wonder if President Obama at some level doesn’t want to lead. Maybe he just wants to be loved.”

Maureen Dowd  New York Times columnist

Tempest in a Tea Party

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Ransom Paid

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

This is what happened: The Republicans held the budget hostage, and Obama and Reid surrendered. They gave in to the demands of the Teabaggers and corporate shills that control the GOP. They paid the ransom.

We know what happens when you give in to hostage takers: You embolden them even more.  The hostage takers will be back for more ransom money and this scenario will be played out again.

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Obama MUST Be Challenged

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

Is it time to run a progressive candidate against Obama? I think it’s way past time. Without a challenger from the left, the president will continue hobnobbing with and pleasing his corporate donors, and trying to find common ground with antagonistic and nutjob Republicans in Congress.

If Obama suddenly noticed Democrats jumping ship and sending support and money to a progressive candidate, the president’s comfort zone would lift, forcing him to pay attention to the people whose numbers and enthusiasm propelled him to his 2008 victory.

Who could seriously challenge the president from the left? Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich are right there on the issues, but have been there, done that. It’s time for new and exciting blood. I’d love to see Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Russ Feingold, or even Van Jones take on the president and make him rethink his options.

Without serious competition from the left, you can be sure the progressive agenda will be swept under the rug by the corporate media. So a progressive run against Obama would serve two very useful purposes: (1) force the president to pay attention to his liberal base, and (2) expose the rest of the country to policies other than right-wing and center-right.

Imagine a presidential candidate advocating pulling our troops out of the Middle East,  major cuts to the military budget, Medicare for all Americans, and substantial tax hikes on the wealthy. I can assure you it won’t happen if our choices are Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney or the designated Republican teabagger.

Russ, Alan, Bernie, Van, are you listening? The sooner we start, the sooner President Obama and the American people will hear our message.

P.S. I just thought of one more name to add to the alternate candidate mix: Howard Dean. Although he had a presidential run as a Democrat in 2004, I’d love to see him run as an independent.

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Why Democrats Cannot Win

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

Four Things Everybody Should Have Figured Out by Now

  1.  Barack Obama is a well-intentioned and decent guy, but he is an ineffective and weak leader.
  2.  The president’s weaknesses wouldn’t be so bad if he had  strong back-up in Congress. But the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid has even less backbone.
  3.  President Obama is a centrist, not a liberal or a progressive. If there were such a thing left, he could be very comfortable as a moderate Republican.
  4. He is a terrible negotiator. He always gives Republicans the best of every deal.  Sometimes he is willing to give them more than they ask for. The best we can get out of the debt negotiations will have no tax revenues, but will certainly have massive cuts hurting the poor, elderly, disabled and working families.
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“Unsuspicious” Death

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Arlen Grossman

The day before Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch testified before the British Parliament about their part in a widespread phone hacking scandal, Sean Hoare was found dead.

It’s been eerily quiet of late when it comes to discussion of the suspicious connection between those two events, the Murdoch scandal and the death of one of their former employees.

We don’t know if there is a clear-cut link, of course.  Sean Hoare was a former reporter for two Murdoch-owned tabloid newpapers, the News of the World and The Sun, and among the first to expose the phone hacking scandal.

Hoare told the New York Times in 2010 that his editor at both papers, Andy Coulson, who went on to become communications director for British Prime Minister David Cameron, knew of the widespread hacking and encouraged it. Hoare told The BBC that  Coulson was “well aware” of the hacking and “to deny it is a lie.” Coulson subsequently had to leave his job in February due to allegations of his role in the scandal, a great embarrassment to Prime Minister Cameron, and was arrested earlier this month by London police on July 8 “in connection with allegations of corruption and phone hacking”.

Sean Hoare, 47, was found dead at his Hertfordshire home July 18, 2011. Police said “The death is currently being treated as unexplained but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.” A post mortem examination revealed that there was “no third party involvement in the death,” which seems an odd conclusion considering that it would be several weeks before authorities would have full toxicology results.

The week before his death Hoare told the New York Times how journalists at the News of the World used “pinging,” a police technology used to locate people using cell phone signals. According to Hoare, police were paid $500 by the newspaper each time they provided “pinging” information.

On July 17, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, the United Kingdom’s highest ranking police official,  was forced to step down for his connections with the hacking scandal. His assistant resigned the following day for the same reason.

Hoare had a history of drug and alcohol problems, which was the cause of his ouster from the News of the World by his former close friend and editor Andy Coulson. A few days before his death, Hoare explained to the Guardian why he chose to speak up. “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle.” He hoped his disclosures would help lead to the cleaning up of  journalism in general. “There’s more to come,” he told the Guardian.  “This is not going to go away.”

Sean Hoare did not live long enough to find out if his whistle-blowing helped make his profession better, and it can only be speculated that he died with information that could have made a difference in exposing the full depth and breadth of the scandal.

So there you have it: The Murdoch media empire, the British government, the London Metropolitan Police, all caught up in this scandal and all having reasons to want Sean Hoares out of the way, whether for retribution and/or because of what he knew.

So what could be suspicious about his death? I would think there would be more people trying to find out.

But it’s very quiet over there. Just like talk of Murdoch’s activities in this country. Very quiet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016132/Sean-Hoare-dead-No-involved-phone-hacking-whistleblowers-death.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare

http://www.currentnewsarticle.com/sean-hoare-former-journalist-show-business-news-of-the-world-found-dead/615/

http://articles.cnn.com/201107/19/world/uk.phone.hacking.hoare_1_hacking-scandal-hacking-allegations-sean-hoare?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016132/Sean-Hoare-dead-No-involved-phone-hacking-whistleblowers-death.html

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/whistle-blower-in-phone-hacking-case-reportedly-found-dead/

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