We care much more about college basketball than about reckless U.S. killings of innocent people

Glenn Greenwald:

I beamed with nationalistic pride when I learned of our country’s impressive evolution: our nation’s government is so practiced in “apologizing for carnage” that it’s becoming a perfected art. This pride become particularly bountiful when I heard NPR’s Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep yesterday talk to The Washington Post‘s Rajiv Chandrasekaran about the same topic and I learned how much worse the Afghans are by comparison (h/t dubo6254). First, Chandrasekaran observed that the level of anger in Afghanistan over their dead civilians isn’t nearly as intense and widespread as it is among Americans.
You'll rarely see Greenwald sounding more infuriated with American complacency:
Unlike in Afghanistan, where they really don’t seem to mind, almost every American city was engulfed this week by turmoil and disruption as infuriated Americans took to the streets to rail against the ongoing slaughter by their government of civilians in Afghanistan. Indeed, “people’s sense of revulsion at this act” in civilized, life-cherishing America is “far greater” than in Afghanistan: Americans are just up in arms about it, besides themselves with rage, just like they always are when their government yet again extinguishes the lives of innocent civilians. The unrest sweeping America this week over this incident is probably the most tumultuous since that dark week of frightening protests back in December, 2009, when violent anti-war marches broke out in American cities over Obama’s cluster bomb and Tomahawk missile attack in Yemen that killed dozens of women and children. Kevin Drum this week accurately recalled the levels of American rage over the ending of that innocent human life.
Based on conversations I've been hearing on the street, I sense that Americans care 100 times more about the NCAA basketball tournament than they do about the fact that, for the past 10 years, the U.S. has been slaughtering civilians in Afghanistan and blithely writing it up as collateral damage. Listen to what people are talking about in your own life and let me know if there is any way to conclude differently. Based on the shocking lack of engagement by the American media and the American public, I've created a new category at DI: Complacency. I'm afraid that I'm going to need to use it often.

Continue ReadingWe care much more about college basketball than about reckless U.S. killings of innocent people

Barack Obama emulates George W. Bush, again.

Glenn Greenwald has just published this infuriating story. It starts with a big lie: the U.S. and the government of Yemen have a good laugh that a U.S. drone attack on Yemeni soil, killing 14 women and 21 children was a successful attack against "insurgents" and "militants" that did not involve the U.S. When a reporter exposes the U.S. involvement, a fact that has been corroborated by a Wikileaks cable release, he ends up in prison on trumped up charges. When he's about to be pardoned, Barack Obama intervenes. The reporter, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, has spent the past two years in prison, where he has been beaten and held in solitary confinement. This is all part of a highly coordinated war on whistle-blowers by the Obama Administration, a fact duly ignored by most media outlets, who serve as stenographers for the American military-industrial complex and its Commander in Chief:

So it is beyond dispute that the moving force behind the ongoing imprisonment of this Yemeni journalist is President Obama. And the fact that Shaye is in prison, rather than able to report, is of particular significance (and value to the U.S.) in light of the still escalating American attacks in that country. Over the past 3 days alone, American air assaults have killed 64 people in Yemen, while American media outlets — without anyone on the scene — dutifully report that those killed are “suspected Al Qaeda insurgents” and “militants.”
Should anyone trust the United States' claims about whether any dead people were "terrorists"? Greenwald says no (and see here).
It’s incredibly instructive to compare what we know (thanks to Shaye) actually happened in this Yemen strike to how The New York Times twice “reported” on it. I quoted above from these two NYT articles, but it’s just amazing to read them: over and over, the NYT assures its readers that this strike was carried out by Yemen (with U.S. assistance), that it killed scores of critical Al Qaeda leaders and other “militants,” that the strike likely killed “the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri, who were believed to be at the meeting with Mr. Awlaki,” etc. How anyone, in light of this record of extreme inaccuracy, can trust the undocumented assertions of the U.S. Government or the American media over who is and is not a Terrorist or “militant” and who is killed by American drone strikes is simply mystifying.
There is much more to be considered in Greenwald's piece, all of it ignored by Obama apologists everywhere. And no, I'm not a Republican. I voted for Barack Obama, yet I find many of his actions disgraceful.

Continue ReadingBarack Obama emulates George W. Bush, again.

Matt Taibbi gives an update on the predatory activities of Bank of America

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is not shy when it comes to hitting back at Bank of America:

They're in deep trouble, but they won't die, because our current president, like the last one, apparently believes it's better to project a false image of financial soundness than to allow one of our oligarchic banks to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. Last year, the Federal Reserve allowed Bank of America to move a huge portfolio of dangerous bets into a side of the company that happens to be FDIC-insured, putting all of us on the hook for as much as $55 trillion in irresponsible gambles. Then, in February, the Justice Department's so-called foreclosure settlement, which will supposedly provide $26 billion in relief for ripped-off homeowners, actually rewarded the bank with a legal waiver that will allow it to escape untold billions in lawsuits. And this month the Fed will release the results of its annual stress test, in which the bank will once again be permitted to perpetuate its fiction of solvency by grossly overrating the mountains of toxic loans on its books. At this point, the rescue effort is so sweeping and elaborate that it goes far beyond simply gouging the tax dollars of millions of struggling families, many of whom have already been ripped off by the bank – it's making the government, and by extension all of us, full-blown accomplices to the fraud.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi gives an update on the predatory activities of Bank of America