The Osterley Times

Monday, January 25, 2010

Obama Says He Will Fight.

Obama sounds like he's going to fight for his healthcare reforms:

But what I also know is, is that health care is part of the drag on our economy. It's part of the eroding security that middle-class families feel.
So here's the good news: We've gotten pretty far down the road. But I've got to admit, we had a little bit of a buzz saw this week. (Laughter.)

Now, I also know that part of the reason is, is that this process was so long and so drawn out -- this is just what happens in Congress. I mean, it's just an ugly process. You're running headlong into special interests, and armies of lobbyists, and partisan politics that's aimed at exploiting fears instead of getting things done. And then you've got ads that are scaring the bejesus out of everybody. (Laughter.) And the longer it take, the uglier it looks.

So I understand why people would say, boy, this is -- I'm not so sure about this -- even though they know that what they got isn't working. And I understand why, after the Massachusetts election, people in Washington were all in a tizzy, trying to figure out what this means for health reform, Republicans and Democrats; what does it mean for Obama? Is he weakened? Is he -- oh, how's he going to survive this? (Laughter.) That's what they do. (Laughter.)

But I want you -- I want you to understand, this is not about me. (Applause.) This is not about me. This is about you. This is not about me; this is about you. I didn't take this up to boost my poll numbers. You know the way to boost your poll numbers is not do anything. (Laughter.) That's how you do it. You don't offend anybody.
[...]
So if I was trying to take the path of least resistance, I would have done something a lot easier. But I'm trying to solve the problems that folks here in Ohio and across this country face every day. And I'm not going to walk away just because it's hard. We are going to keep on working to get this done -- with Democrats, I hope with Republicans -- anybody who's willing to step up. Because I'm not going to watch more people get crushed by costs or denied care they need by insurance company bureaucrats. I'm not going to have insurance companies click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket because once again there's no control on what they do.

So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you.

I don't know why, but I take great comfort out of that. Despite losing his majority, he has not backed down. The Democrats have been trying to do this for the best part of sixty years and have got closer than they have ever got to pulling this off.

Now is the time to redouble their efforts, not to give in.

I didn't take this on to score political points. I know there are some folks who think if Obama loses, we win. But you know what? I think that I win when you win. (Applause.) That's how I think about it.

Fight the buggers....

Click here for full article.

US commander signals peace talks with Taliban.

I think this is long overdue:

Nato's top commander in Afghanistan has said increased troop levels could bring a negotiated peace with the Taliban. US Gen Stanley McChrystal told the UK's Financial Times newspaper that there had been "enough fighting". He said a political solution in all conflicts was "inevitable". His remarks came as the top UN envoy in Kabul said it was time to talk to the militants.

Bush and Blair invaded Afghanistan in order to deal a blow to al Qaeda. When it became obvious that bin Laden was not going to be easy to capture they suddenly morphed the Taliban and al Qaeda into the same thing, so that success against the Taliban appeared to be success in the war on terror.

This was always a sleight of hand. And it appears as if McChrystal is saying enough is enough.

The Taliban wanted to create the perception that Afghanistan was on fire, and that President Karzai and his Western allies could not cope, Gen McChrystal said.

However, if the new US-led strategy was successful, the militants "could look desperate" in a year's time, he said.

"I think they will look like an entity that will be struggling for its own legitimacy... I think they will be on the defensive militarily, not wiped out."

On the issue of reconciliation, Gen McChrystal said: "I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome."

Asked if he thought senior Taliban could have a role in a future Afghan government, he said: "I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.

"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," Gen McChrystal added.

If they have not been defeated militarily after nearly nine years, then it's safe to assume it's time to try a new approach.

Click here for full article.

Bill’s Late Father Irving Kristol: ‘My Poor Son Has Got It Wrong Again’

I honestly can't think of any commentator who has been more consistently wrong than Bill Kristol.

Here are Kristol's own words:

We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam's regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people's pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.

The verdicts, as we all know, have come in; and Kristol was wrong in every aspect of what he preached. But he has paid no price for getting things as wrong as he did, he has lost no credibility as an "expert"; indeed, he still talks as if the Iraq war was good policy.

Steven Walt explains how this phenomenon works:

“They are effectively insulated from failure,” says Stephen Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, one of the neocons’ most frequent antagonists. “Even if you’ve totally screwed up in office and things you’ve advocated in print have failed, there are no real consequences, either professionally or politically. You go back to AEI and Weekly Standard and continue to agitate or appear on talk shows as if nothing has gone wrong at all.”

Even his own father and friends of Kristol's admit that he screws things up:

“He would rather take an interesting wrong position than a dull correct one,” says a longtime neocon who did not want to be named because the two are friendly. Several people who know Kristol describe his Palin boosterism—his very public campaign to persuade John McCain to put her on the Republican ticket—as a schoolboy-like infatuation, sparked when a Weekly Standard cruise docked in Juneau. [...] “Bill’s a very close friend of mine, but he does an awful lot of things just to get publicity,” says one prominent Republican who also did not want to be named for fear of offending Kristol.

[...]

Even his father had his qualms. “My poor son has got it wrong again,” he sometimes lamented to an old family friend.

Indeed, even the insane Ralph Peters thinks that Kristol and his ilk are "men for whom too much came too easily in life, so it was all too easy for them to view our troops as mere tools to implement their visions."

But, Kristol continues preaching, and Fox News continues to act as if this man still has credibility, despite the fact that he has been consistently wrong more than any other commentator I can think of.

Those Hoping Blair Will Be Nailed Will Be Deeply Disappointed.

The press over here are getting very excited about Blair's appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry, thinking that he is, at last, going to get what he deserves.

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will come under pressure this week to summon Tony Blair's close political friends after it hears explosive evidence from his government's senior legal advisers that the invasion was unlawful.

Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, Sir Michael Wood, chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst, his deputy, all believed an invasion was illegal without a new UN resolution, the inquiry will hear. Goldsmith changed his mind after meeting Lady (Sally) Morgan and Lord Falconer, two of Blair's closest political advisers, on 13 March 2003, four days before he approved a parliamentary answer giving the green light to war.

Anyone who thinks that Blair is going be nailed on Friday has not been paying enough attention over the years to who Tony Blair is.

He is a lawyer. And he has ensured, since the first hint of the invasion, that his ass has been covered.

It was very notable in the build up to the war that, whilst George Bush spoke of regime change, Blair was extremely careful never to use that phrase. That was because, despite his own views on whether or not regime change was a good or bad thing, Blair knew that regime change was illegal under international law; so he set about achieving it without ever articulating his true purpose.

Likewise, he was very careful to get people like Goldsmith to give him the advice he wanted to hear, whether they believed it was true or not. He will now claim that he was only acting on the advice which he was given.

This was the same reason that Blair was extremely careful, when talking of Saddam's supposed weaponry, to always insert the words "I believe" into his sentences on the subject. He was very careful never to assert that what he was stating was factual, he always made sure that he had covered himself by insisting - all be it terribly subtly - that he was actually stating his personal opinion.

The man is a snake, and I fully expect that he will slither off the hook this Friday, no matter how many times the Chilcot Inquiry corners him.

Blair got Goldsmith to change his legal opinion, which is why it is Goldsmith who will be skewered here rather than Blair.

It is known that Goldsmith met Morgan and Falconer on 13 March. It is understood that no minutes were taken. It is known that Lord Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was demanding "unequivocal" advice that an invasion would be lawful.

After contacting Downing Street, Goldsmith's office told Boyce that an invasion would indeed be "unequivocably" lawful. Goldsmith thus accepted that No 10 could decide Iraq was in breach of its obligations, even though he had told Blair on 7 March that such a decision was up to the UN security council. Though no new evidence emerged that Iraq was still producing WMD, Goldsmith nevertheless told MPs and the cabinet that war was lawful, in a brief parliamentary answer released on 17 March, the eve of the Commons vote.

Blair will now rely on the fact that he was only following Goldsmith's advice. An example of the way Blair was careful to keep on the right side of the law has already been given to the inquiry.

Goldsmith had also warned Blair on 7 March that "regime change cannot be the objective of military action". The Chilcot inquiry has heard evidence that Blair backed regime change after meeting George Bush in Texas, in April 2002, though in public he and his ministers insisted disarmament was the objective.

"From September [2002] onwards, every statement that comes from the prime minister and any other minister of the government is entirely about disarmament ... disarmament, disarmament, disarmament," Lord Turnbull, cabinet secretary at the time, told the inquiry.

He has since made it clear that he would have supported invasion with or without the argument of WMD, but that was a rare blip, something which he will, no doubt, cover with obfuscation before the Inquiry on Friday.

People getting themselves terribly excited that Blair is about to be cornered are ignoring all the work that he did prior to the invasion. Blair will slither off the hook before the Inquiry, because he has laid the groundwork for that escape long in advance.

Click here for full article.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Israel Dismisses Bin Laden Tape as "Absurd Excuse".

George Bush blamed the attack on the fact that, "they hate our freedoms" without bothering to explain why no attack had been made on, say, Scandinavia.

Now Bin Laden has been more explicit.

The speaker on the tape says that the message is from "Osama to Obama".

Directly addressing Americans, it also says: "It is unfair you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly... Our attacks will continue as long as you support Israel."

It says: "America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine."

There have been many people, including Tony Blair, who have emphasised the link between international terrorism and the ongoing situation in the Middle East.

But I see today that the Israelis dismiss this link out of hand as "absurd".

Reacting to the latest audio tape, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Andy David told Associated Press news agency: "This is nothing new; he has said this before. Terrorists always look for absurd excuses for their despicable deeds."

The notion that Muslim terrorists could be angered by Israel's treatment of other Muslims is dismissed as "absurd". So we are now being asked to believe that bin Laden, having turned himself into the most wanted man in the world, will lie about his motivation.

Because we don't want ordinary Americans making a link between terrorism and what's taking place in the Occupied Territories. Quite why more Americans haven't joined these dots before now simply astounds me.

Click here for full article.

President Blasts Supreme Court Over Citizens United Decision.

Obama uses his weekly radio address to talk about the Supreme Court ruling:

"This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet message. "It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way -- or to punish those who don't."

"This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money into our democracy," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet message. "It gives the special interest lobbyists new leverage to spend millions on advertising to persuade elected officials to vote their way -- or to punish those who don't."

And he has vowed that their will be a response. He intends to link up with some Republicans, and McCain seems the most obvious choice, to fight it.

We don't need to give any more voice to the powerful interests that already drown out the voices of everyday Americans.
And we don't intend to. When this ruling came down, I instructed my administration to get to work immediately with Members of Congress willing to fight for the American people to develop a forceful, bipartisan response to this decision. We have begun that work, and it will be a priority for us until we repair the damage that has been done.

This decision from Roberts and his cohorts reveals just how extremist and reactionary the four conservative judges actually are.

The Bush legacy was the first thing I thought of when I read of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, because it showed how a right wing Court would not only pose a threat on hot-button issues like abortion and civil rights, but would actually be a danger to our long-cherished basic democratic principles.
President Obama said of the decision that he could not "think of anything more devastating to the public interest." In the often-hyperbolized world of political statements, it's easy to dismiss his concern as exaggerated. I assure you it is not. In short, in my opinion, there is no internal threat to traditional American principles of democracy greater than Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, as revealed in this decision, and it is time for Americans to wake up and see what these four extremists, far out of step with the average citizen, are doing to our country.
[...]
But here is the dirty little secret the GOP doesn't want you to know: The four extreme right wing Supreme Court justices are as activist as any judges can get, seeking to use their seats on the Court as a way to undo decades (sometimes more) of precedent in the service of enacting conservative policies. More precisely, the Roberts Court consistently chooses the side of those with power over those without it.

Bush's two terms in office continue to do damage long after he has bolted thanks to the people he chose for the Supreme Court.

O'Reilly: America is "moving to the right".

O'Reilly here gloats over the demise of Air America, whilst stating that it's demise proves that America is "moving to the right".

So, he is admitting that Fox News is on the right of the political spectrum, whilst simultaneously claiming that it is "fair and balanced".

There's a contradiction there.

Here are just some of the ways that Fox displayed their bias during the Massachusetts election:

Fox News didn't simply cheer from the sidelines of this contest. Indeed, the network actively aided Brown's campaign. Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to the election, and during each appearance, Brown directed viewers to his website to find out "how to help with donating and volunteering." Fox News political analyst Dick Morris took it upon himself to urge viewers to "go to DickMorris.com ... to help elect Brown," because if "we win this fight, then there will never be another victory for Obama." When asked at a rally about "ethical questions" raised by Fox News' advocacy for Brown, chief political correspondent Carl Cameron fled, saying he didn't have time to answer. But he did have the time to autograph "Brown for Senate" campaign materials and pose for pictures with Brown's volunteers, as Think Progress documented.

Fox News also did Brown the favor of repeatedly misrepresenting remarks Coakley made to portray her as incompetent. America's News HQ anchor Gregg Jarrett stated on January 17, "Martha Coakley is out of step when she says things like terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan, or in the debate saying, quote, 'We need to get taxes up.' " Interpreting Coakley's remarks in this way requires a willing suspension of basic verbal reasoning skills; and that was Fox's "straight news" programming. On Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy actually claimed that Coakley "suggested the Taliban [are] gone from Afghanistan," and Michael Scheuer declared that Coakley "doesn't seem to mind" that "we are losing there." For his part, Glenn Beck accused Coakley of "religious bigotry" for saying that those who would "deny emergency contraception to a woman who came in who had been raped" probably "shouldn't work in the emergency room."

In case boosting Brown while attacking Coakley wasn't a sufficient strategy, Fox News baselessly fomented fears that Democrats would "cheat" to steal the election. Warning Fox News viewers not to become complacent before Election Day, Beck stated, "[Y]ou can imagine how ugly this thing will get if -- oh God help us all -- if it's too close to call." Beck displayed the ACORN logo and added, "[T]hey have friends in low places." Invoking the Florida recount, Beck asserted that Democrats "were so incompetent they didn't even know how to cheat. But don't worry -- they've gotten good at it now."

Fox even told viewers that they could strengthen their 401(k)s by electing Brown. Echoing CNBC's Jim Cramer, Fox Nation declared that "Brown Win Could Cause Huge Stock Rally." On Election Day, Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson introduced Fox business contributor Stuart Varney by stating, "Well, you may want to make a call to Massachusetts and get some people out to the polls. Well, that's because our next guest, and a friend, says that your portfolio could look much better if Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy's vacant Senate seat." As Varney spoke, Fox & Friends displayed an on-screen text reading: "What can Brown do for you? A boost in your 401K may be in the cards." And over on Fox Business, Charles Payne asserted that a Brown win "fertilizes the soil for an incredible longer-term stock market rally."

But after closing up 115 points on January 19 before election results were in, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 122 points the day after Brown's victory and another 213 points the next day. Baffled by this turn of events, Beck said on his radio show, "I'm not sure why it's coming down" since "it made total sense to me" that the market would "go through the roof" if Brown won.

Fair and balanced?

Iraq war was illegal, top lawyer will tell Chilcot inquiry.

The Chilcot Inquiry will be told, just days before Blair is due to appear before them, that the Foreign Office believed that the Iraq war was illegal.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.

A senior legal figure close to the discussions at the time told the Observer: "The advice that was given consistently in the Foreign Office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that Foreign Office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out.".

We already know, from the resignation of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, that the Attorney General was of the opinion that the Iraq war would be illegal without a second resolution until days before the conflict began.

The Attorney General has never adequately explained what brought about his abrupt change of mind. There are many of us who think that he was simply responding to pressure from Blair when he made his total U-turn on the subject.

His U-turn was certainly enough to make someone like Wilmshurst resign rather than pretend that she thought what they were engaging in was legal.

Now we will have Woods, the Foreign Office's most senior lawyer, make clear that he too was of the opinion that the war was illegal without a second UN resolution.

"People shouldn't be focusing on Elizabeth so much as the others who will be giving evidence on Tuesday – in particular, Sir Michael Wood," a source said last night. "He advised clearly that the war was unlawful.

"Elizabeth was one in a team – she wasn't a voice in the wilderness. They worked closely together and spoke about this a lot. The invasion ran counter to international law."

It staggers me that this is still under discussion. We all KNOW that the Iraq war was illegal. The law couldn't be any clearer. There was nothing in UN resolution 1441 which allowed the US and the UK to invade. And yet, because Bush and Blair pretended that there was, we all have to kid on that this matter is somehow still unresolved.

The law, it would appear, is murky only when Prime Ministers and Presidents break it.

Whitehall sources have revealed that Goldsmith and Wood had worked closely on the issue of the legality of war. But in the days before invasion, Goldsmith abruptly changed his position, declaring that it would in fact be legal. "There was agreement. [Goldsmith] then went to talk to the Americans, the US State Department. And the Americans were very clear what they wanted and what they thought, and that is what changed his mind," said an FO source.

Unfortunately for Goldsmith (and the US State Department) most of us can read.

And anyone who can read knows that 1441 did not give permission for invasion. It was for that very reason that the Americans and the Brits spent weeks trying to get a second resolution. It was only when it became obvious that they were not going to get it that Goldsmith changed his mind and declared that it was not necessary anyway.

But the sheer amount of effort they put into getting a second resolution undermined the argument they eventually came to rely upon.

Blair will argue that he was only following advice he was given from the Foreign Office. But Woods testimony will undermine that argument and suggest that pressure was put on the Attorney General to change his mind and give Blair the answer he wanted to hear.

UPDATE:

Isn't this a wet dream for conspiracy theorists?

Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into the death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly, has ordered that medical records in the case be kept secret for 70 years, it was learnt last night.

Now, why on Earth would he feel the need to do that?

Click here for full article.

Miracle survivor found as Haiti rescue teams ordered to stand down.

I don't know why I am even writing about this. I have nothing to say about it other than it is simply miraculous.

A man was dramatically rescued tonight after spending 11 days under the rubble of a hotel in Port-au-Prince, hours after the Haitian government declared search and rescue operations over.

The survival of 22-year-old Wismond Exantus Jean-Pierre was hailed as "more than a miracle" by international emergency teams who had been at the point of leaving Port-au-Prince.

"I was hungry," Jean-Pierre said from his hospital bed. "But every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive." He survived initially by diving under a desk when the rubble started to fall. Trapped in such a small space, he had lie on his back and survived by drinking cola, beer and cookies.

"I would eat anything I found," he said. "After the quake I didn't know when it was day and when it was night."

Rescue workers were called back from the airport to help after Jean-Pierre's brother, Jean Elie, heard tapping from the ruins of the Hotel Napoli Inn where he had been searching daily for him, after dreaming that he was alive. "Today is the first time we communicated with him," Jean Elie said. "He asked for us to save him. God has been keeping him alive." Jean-Pierre turned to his brother by his bedside and told him: "When you are in a hole, I will try to reach out to you, too."

There have been so many stories like this out of Haiti; people rescued days after all should have died.

To survive eleven days under the rubble really is remarkable.

Click here for full article.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Special Comment: Pandora's Box.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I spoke of this the other day. Now Olbermann gives his take on this.

UPDATE:

It now transpires that even current and former executives fear what this will unleash:

Today, in response to the Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision, “dozens of current and former corporate executives” from corporations including Delta, Ben & Jerry’s, and Crate & Barrel sent a letter to Congress asking it to immediately pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which would publicly finance all congressional campaigns out of a special fund created by a fee levied on TV broadcasters:

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, the Seagram’s liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men’s Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will only get worse after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling. [...]

“Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors,” the business executives’ letter says. “And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court’s decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase.”

They've been condemned. Now they must be understood.

This case was simply appalling:

A judge sentenced two young brothers who beat and tortured another pair of boys to indefinite detention today, as the head of child protection services in their home town apologised for the way staff had failed the public in the case.

The brothers, now 11 and 12, carried out "appalling and terrible" assaults on their younger victims after leading them from a playground to waste land in Edlington, South Yorkshire, in April last year, Mr Justice Keith told Sheffield crown court.

The cruelty the two youngsters carried out on another two children left one feeling staggered. Staggered that children could visit such wanton cruelty on other children.

They led the victims, then nine and 11, to waste ground and subjected them to a 90-minute ordeal during which they were robbed, beaten, stamped on, struck with bricks and other objects, choked and burned. They also endured a series of humiliations, many of them sexual. The older boy almost died from his injuries.

And yet, the children who carried out these evil acts were only 11 and 12. I thought the judge was especially lenient in sentencing them to a minimum of five years in prison, although I note that their sentences are indefinite, meaning that their release will be based on the danger that they are deemed to represent to the public.

One obviously finds it very easy and natural to condemn the violent actions of these two, but the real challenge now is what to do with them.

As with Robert Thompson and Jon Venables - the two young boys who brutally murdered James Bulger - the challenge now is how to rehabilitate them.

The Independent today has a very interesting article on how one goes about that difficult process.

So that is not where mental health experts start when they get such children into custody. "Psychiatry and psychotherapy do not produce a magic bullet inside secure units," says the criminologist Tim Bateman of the University of Bedford, who is also youth crime policy officer for the crime reduction charity Nacro. "It's first of all about providing a structured and nurturing environment to compensate for the normal childhood they never had."

Dr Vizard, who also worked with the young Bulger killers – Robert Thompson and Jon Venables – agrees. "One of the main therapeutic agents is the stability of the place," she says. "These children are taken away from disrupted backgrounds, with no boundaries, and dangerous adults, and are put somewhere where they are safe, fed and housed and told No by people who understand how to set limits. It's tough love. It's a great skill, creating an experience that approximates to a proper family life."

One professional who did that at Red Bank secure children's unit on Merseyside, where Jon Venables was detained, was Pam Hibbert. "Children whose lives have been lives in chaos feel profoundly unsafe," she says. "Their offence is often a mask for their own vulnerability; if you get in first, they think, you won't get hurt."

So first you make them feel safe. "You give them someone they feel is interested in them," she says. "For some it's their first proper relationship with an adults and that milieu is as important as any therapy. And they can shift from being kids who are difficult to handle to kids who on the whole respond very quickly."

As far as I am aware the murderers of Jamie Bulger have been reintegrated into society and are living normal lives (with secret identities) in, I think, Australia.

Our prison system is, supposedly, based on rehabilitation. Often that fact is ignored and the emphasis is placed on punishment. But the transformation of both Thompson and Venables should give us faith in the power of detention, when properly administered, to bring about meaningful change.

The biggest single factor, outside normalising the young offender's relationships with the unit's staff and their fellow inmates, is education.

"It is the tool which opens up a young person's confidence in themselves and awakens them to the possibility that they can achieve something while they are detained," says Roy Walker, who ran Sutton Place, the secure unit in Hull, until it was closed, like many others, to cut costs. He is the outgoing chair of the units' umbrella group, the Secure Accommodation Network.

Inside the secure units, high-quality education is provided continuously apart from a fortnight over Christmas and New Year. It is not easy work. "These kids often begin with a very negative attitude saying they can't do schoolwork and won't try," says Tim Bateman. But the staff remain relentlessly positive. "Our students have a lot of catching up to do, particularly on literacy and numeracy," Roy Walker says.

Professionals and researchers have no doubt of the value of this work. "These children often begin to respond very quickly to education," says Professor Boswell. From being the barely literate underdog in a family of seven brothers, where his older siblings picked on him brutally, Robert Thompson passed five GCSEs and several A-levels and developed a strong interest in design and fashion. Jon Venables passed seven GCSEs and did A-levels too – a level of attainment that neither could have achieved before their arrest.

One of the youngsters who carried out this awful crime is reported to be so emotionally detached as to be almost psychopathic. Perhaps it's too late to bring about any change in him.

But we must try. Despite the horrendous crimes they have committed, they are themselves children.

And the transformation carried out on Venables and Thompson show us that miracles like this can occur.

Click here for full article.

Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds.

What we have done to these people is simply staggering:

More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.

Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.

The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country.

It's not simply the number of people we have killed or displaced, it's the weapons we are using; the uranium depleted weapons which we are dropping, knowing exactly the effects it will have on the health of the local civilian population.

"If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it," she told the Guardian. "First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra.

"The soil has ended up in people's lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health."

It is no surprise that there has been a massive rise in birth defects in Fallujah, indeed, it is the inevitable consequence of what we have been doing there.

"We are aware of the reports, but we must be cautious in reaching conclusions about causes," Othman said. "The general health of the city is not good. There is no sewerage system there and there is a lot of stagnant household waste, creating sickness that is directly affecting genetics. We do know, however, that a lot of depleted uranium was used there.

"We have been regulating and monitoring this and we have been urgently trying to assemble a database. We have had co-operation from the United Nations environment programme and have given our reports in Geneva. We have studied 500 sites for chemicals and depleted uranium. Until now we have found 42 places that have been declared as [high risk] both from uranium and toxins."

Iraq has now become an environmental disaster. It's not only the people we have killed or displaced with our bombs, it's the environmental legacy we are leaving them. It's simply criminal.

And yet, no-one will be jailed for this. After all, we were "liberating" them.

Click here for full article.

Friday, January 22, 2010

A Supreme Victory for Special Interests.

So now, according to a stunning decision by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative court henchmen, corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals do.

The dissent was read by John Paul Stevens. And he points out that a case regarding the movie Hillary, has been expanded by these right wing justices to essentially push their own right wing political agenda:

He said the majority's "glittering generality" that corporate speech, like individual speech, is protected under the First Amendment was a "conceit" that is "not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the court's disposition of this case."

He wrote of his conservative colleagues' "agenda" and said they had transformed a simple case about whether a conservative group's movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton violated McCain-Feingold into a constitutional quandary. "Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."

Obama has spoken out forcefully against what he sees as "a green light to a new stampede of special interest money" whilst Republicans cheered this ruling, which gives some indication of just how political this decision is.

"It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans," the president said in a statement.

John Dean gives his opinion:

Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the court’s opinion), have gone out of their way to further obliterate serious efforts to reform out-of-control campaign spending—spending that conspicuously distorts democracy in favor of those who can buy political influence. This ruling is of the same judical activism ilk that produced Bush v. Gore, not to mention the ensuing eight years of a disastrous Bush/Cheney presidency from which the nation has yet to recover.

It is striking that the Bush administration, which often spoke of the danger of people creating laws from the bench, actually put in place the people who have gone on to do that very thing.

Slate comment here on what we have just witnessed, as they describe an exhausted Stevens reading his dissent:

But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of the real people" who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to confuse metaphor with reality." Today that metaphor won a very real victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real corporations are feeling very, very good.

Corporations, as Stevens rightly pointed out, "are not human beings" and "corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires." And yet this court has now ruled that their corporate spending is the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech.

As if my voice and that of a corporation as large as Coca Cola can possibly be both as loud.

It's possibly the most astonishing act of judicial activism in American history. And it's come from the people appointed to the bench by a government which always decried this very thing.

UPDATE:

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Here's Rachel Maddow on what we have just witnessed. As she points out, Obama has had great difficulty selling his healthcare plan because there has been so much disinformation put out regarding death panels and other nonsense.

This ruling will now allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts, possibly billions, to influence the political process.

UPDATE II:

Another thing which strikes me here is that, much as O'Reilly and Beck like to harp on about the "radical left", in the US there really is no such thing as far as I can see. The Democrats are always obsessed with governing from the centre, as Obama's attitude to the healthcare debate amply demonstrates.

In US politics, it appears to me, that the real radicals are almost always on the right of the political spectrum. This is yet another example which bears that theory out.

Joan Walsh: This is Garbage That Obama Bowed to his Left on the Health Care Bill.

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Joan Walsh does very well here in tackling the nonsensical Republican argument that Obama has been bending over backwards to please the left.

WALSH: You know, I`m not sure it is but I do want to say I`ve spent the last week, Chris, saying, Martha Coakley ran a bad campaign, but we really do have to look at what this means for Democrats. And I think that`s the first and foremost thing that it means is that President Obama has simply not led.

He let the Republicans run this health care agenda. People want to blame Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? He turned it over to the Senate`s Finance Committee, he gave Republicans their marching orders, he gave them rope to hang him and that`s what they did. That`s why we`re still talking about this a year after his inauguration.

MATTHEWS: So he`s been ineffective?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: He`s been an effective progressive?

WALSH: Oh, please, don`t set me off today, Chris. I know you`re feisty. I`m really feisty. That`s the one thing I will be here to say.

This is garbage that he bowed to his left. This is a corporate bill with corporate giveaways that the left is pissed about. That`s the problem with it. And I`ll finish Howard Dean`s sentence. One more thing. Howard Dean was trying to say -- I don`t agree with him on everything. Martha Coakley lost the progressives because nobody cares that she`s for the public option. That is dead and gone because the President didn`t fight for it.

So the idea that he went too far to this left is simply, factually wrong.

The Republicans are attempting, as they always do, to prove that the election result in Massachusetts somehow validates their opinion on healthcare and that the country is as right wing as they are on this subject. To that end they are fashioning the argument that Obama has angered voters by leaning too far to the left.

Opinion polls do not back that theory up. And, anyone following this will realise that, far from bending over to please the left, Obama bent over backwards to accommodate Leiberman and the Blue Dogs.

So this Republican argument is, as Walsh argues here, simply factually wrong.

Obama talks tough on day Goldman reveals bonus pot.

Obama has finally turned his attention to the banking industry, which is continuing to pay itself mammoth bonuses for gambling with other people's money, whilst remaining stingy about who it will lend to in the current climate.

"My resolve to reform the system is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices at some of the very firms fighting reform," he said, "and when I see record profits at some of the very firms claiming that they cannot lend more to small business, cannot keep credit card rates low, and cannot refund taxpayers for the bailout. It is exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary."

There is no-one I can think of, apart from the bankers themselves, who would not applaud some kind of intervention to scale back the behaviour of these buggers.

The President's intervention came on the day Goldman Sachs reported its financial results for last year. The figures showed a doubling in revenues and profits that beat the previous record set on the eve of the crash in 2007. The White House press conference announcing the new clampdown began while investors and analysts were still listening in to a results presentation by Goldman managers. "We planned ours first," said the chief financial officer, David Viniar, when analysts grumbled about the clash.

Goldman's 32,500 employees were paid an average of $498,000 (£307,000) in 2009 – up from $317,000 (£195,500) during last year's financial panic but down from $661,490 (£408,100) in 2007. The company says that, while most bankers' pay takes the form of a year-end bonus paid in January, the total includes salary and benefits such as health insurance. The average is skewed by the huge bonuses paid to top earners, which can run into millions of dollars.

In the first nine years of the decade, Goldman distributed 47 per cent of net revenues to staff and looked on course to pay record bonuses this month. But it slashed the 2009 ratio to 36 per cent. Instead of paying more money into the bonus pool in the last three months of the year, it took out $500m (£308m) for Goldman Sachs Gives, an in-house charity that funds community development and education programmes.

On Wall Street, where the proportion of net revenues paid as compensation is closely watched, the change was being greeted as a daring experiment. Mr Viniar was peppered with questions about whether Goldman workers might flee to other firms where they may get a bigger cut.

"We have tried to strike a balance between the needs of the public with the needs of our people, and we think we have struck it well," he added. "We hope not to see high [staff] turnover."

And this is always the threat. That the staff will walk if they are not paid obscene bonuses. The "wealth creators" - as they flatter to call themselves - might run off and create massive debts for someone else.

Obama is finally signalling that the party might be over:

Mr Obama - who said he was "ready for a fight" with banks - plans to limit the size of banks and impose restrictions on risky trading.

"Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by banks that are too big to fail," Mr Obama said.
"While the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the exact same rules that led to its near collapse," Mr Obama said.

His proposals may mean that some of the biggest US banks have to be broken up.

They also include a ban on retail banks using their own money in investments - known as proprietary trading. Instead, banks would be limited to investing their customers' funds.

The fall in share prices at some of the banks appears to signal that they too realise that things are going to change.

The truth is that a lot of these companies are paying their staff huge bonuses, despite taking public funds in order to keep functioning. And, as always, they claim that they need to do this to stop their workers from walking away.

And their workers, they would have us believe, are continuing with this threat even at a time when they have almost brought down the entire world's financial system through their greed and recklessness.

Their behaviour since the crash shows that they have learned nothing from recent events. They seem wilfully oblivious to public anger at the debt they have saddled us with.

Obama should be ruthless with them.

UPDATE:

Here Obama talks of banks and financial institutions which took part in "this binge of irresponsibility".

Click here for full article.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Breitbart "want[s] there to be an impeachment" of Obama.

This is simply moronic.

GREG GUTFIELD (host): Pelosi claimed that she won -- or we won last night. Was she right?

BREITBART: Yes, she was. She was right. There's no doubt about it. Having lost New Jersey, which is the most comically Democrat state in the history of humankind, that's a huge victory for you, Nancy Pelosi. I will -- can I go back to the cats?

GUTFIELD: Yes, you can. I know -- I can tell you don't care about the actual elections. You care about the cats.

BREITBART: What do I care? What do I care? You know what I -- where I stand on -- I want there to be an impeachment, and I want Andy Levy to go after me at the halftime report for my wanting Obama impeached.

I notice that he doesn't give us the grounds where he imagines Obama has committed "high crimes and misdemeanour's", but Republicans really don't let themselves be bothered by such trifles.

And, once again, we see the people who applauded Bush "exporting democracy" to Iraq, show us what they really think of the democratic process when it throws up a result which they don't like.

Obama, no matter what nutters like Breitbart state, was elected with a much larger share of the popular vote than Bush ever was. And yet, Breitbart casually floats the notion that he should be impeached.

These people are almost comical.

DEMOCRATS LEARNING WRONG LESSON FROM MASSACHUSETTS?

It would appear that the Democrats might be on the verge of learning the wrong lesson from their loss in Massachusetts. Here's what the most recent poll found:

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT "DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH"

by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home

(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

57% of Brown voters say Obama "not delivering enough" on change he promised
49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

We are going to hear a lot of nonsense from the right, that this vote was against universal healthcare, but the polls simply don't back that up.

QUESTION: Would you favor or oppose the national government offering everyone the choice of a government administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?
	FAVOR	OPPOSE	NOT SURE
ALL	82%	14%	4%
MEN	79%	18%	3%
WOMEN	85%	10%	5%
DEMOCRATS	89%	7%	4%
REPUBLICANS	68%	24%	8%
INDEPENDENTS	83%	13%	4%

Prepare for the Republicans to do what thy always do at times like this, and argue that their views have been vindicated, when the truth is that most Americans favour a plan for universal healthcare.

And the American mainstream media will, as always, suck up on these conservative talking points:

Liberals can win elections, but they still have trouble winning the narrative. There are dozens of plausible explanations for this, but the noise machine still seems like the biggest one to me. There's simply no liberal counterpart to Drudge and Fox and Rush: a conservative commentariat that concedes nothing, pounds home its points like a jackhammer, repeats its themes relentlessly, and has the ear of the Washington mainstream press in a way that liberal commentators don't. Dionne calls their approach the "audacity of audacity," and the press seems to take it as evidence of sincerity in a way that they don't with liberal arguments.

What the public actually say when polled will be deemed less important than the spin the Republicans choose to put on this.

Click here for source.