Hail, Hail Mikael Blomkvist: Investigate Like Him, Ideas For Stopping The Spill
May 26th, 2010 - by: danny
Carville’s Oil Outburst To Obama — Day 37:
“These people are crying, they’re begging for something down here, and it just looks like he’s not involved in this.”
His voice rising, Carville cried out, “Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving! We’re about to die down here!”
Later, Carville said the administration needs “to launch a criminal investigation — the Attorney General needs to investigate criminal negligence on the part of BP and what went on at MMS (the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling). There’s a thousand things that he could do. He just needs to get down here and start doing something, people are dying.” [More here →]
GOOD NEWS: LORI BERENSON TO GO FREE IN PERU AFTER 18 YEARS
The parents of the American political activist who insisted she was falsely convicted of supporting a terrorist movement write: “On May 25, 2010 a Peruvian judge, after carefully studying Lori’s application for what in Peru is termed “conditional liberty” (parole), determined that Lori has earned her freedom. Lori and her son Salvador will be leaving prison in a few days and moving to an apartment in Lima.
Parole requires individuals to live within the city in which they were incarcerated (Lima, in Lori’s case) – we do not know if there are exceptions for foreigners or whether Lori will be permitted to travel to the US while on parole. Parole in Peru is based on good behavior, work and study. In September 2009 Lori officially filed her application under a Peruvian law which established eligibility after serving 75% of her 20-sentence, less time off for work and study…”
WHAT TO DO ABOUT BP?
SOME REPUGS TURN ON FOX NEWS
MILITARY ESCALATION UNDERWAY
Today’s a big day in Bookland. The National Book Expo is packing them in at the Javits Center
Here in New York, the press is going gaga (not Lady Gaga, just gaga) over the publication of the third novel in the Millennium series by Swedish writer and journalist Steig Larsson, whose third book, already a hit worldwide “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” comes out in the US.
It’s billed like a Harry Potter coming out party for adults. There was a profile of him and the freinds and family members fighting over his legacy in Sunday’s NY Times magazine, and articles galore today. I actually read the book months ago in its English edition. A friend in Denmark turned me on to the series, and I already saw one film based on the work. Other movies are in the works and out in Europe. 4 Million copies of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo have sold in the USA. Not too shabby.
The book is being hyped as an unusual crime story featuring an investigative reporter who befriends a quirky and tattooed computer hacker. It’s filled with plots and subplots and is hailed as great storytelling, which it is.
What attracted me to the book is not what is driving the hype about the oh-so-cool twists and turns.
The author, who died somewhat mysteriously in 2004, is focused on an issue that should be familiar to readers of my blog and other work: financial crimes– even if most people don’t always know how their lives have been shortchanged by an economic collapse induced by crime. That’s the issue that motivates the trilogy’s fictional hero, Mikael Blomkvist.
The financial crisis that has swept the world may have started on Wall Street but has brought down governments and shredded economic security worldwide. It led to the loss of millions of jobs, homes and hope as foreclosures grow, credit tightens, and communities are devastated. One estimate of the damage: $197 trillion
This is why I identified with Blomkvists’s fictional mission because, in some ways it mirrors my own, and captures my own frustrations in a media world for which “the C-word” —standing for financial crime – seems to be an anathema.
Larsson describe Blomkvist’s “contempt for his fellow financial journalists based on something that in his opinion was a plain as morality. The equation was simple, a bank director who blows millions on foolhardy speculators should not keep his job. A managing director who plays shell company company games should do time,…the job of the financial journalist is to expose those who created interest crisis and speculated away the savings of small investors, to scrutinize company boards with the same merciless zeal with which political reporters pursue the littlest steps out of line of Ministers and members of Parliament.”
Sound familiar? It’s the turf I explore in my film Plunder. Just had a call from a MoveOn organizer in Florida who is doing a screening in early June in Boca Raton. If this subject interests or outrages you, help me get the word out and schedule screenings where you live. Write to me at: dissector@mediachannel.org.
Now on to the nooz
WP: White House officials say President Obama will travel to Louisiana Friday to assess the efforts to stop the oil leak there. It will be his second trip to the region since the leak began.
TheEconomicPopulist.org: Much Ado About Oil Submitted by Robert Oak
We’re in horror. We’re helpless, dependent upon continual press releases and attempts while real solutions to stop the leak are dismissed.
The next attempt is a top kill, which is to push drilling mud and cement into the leak hole. This latest attempt is high risk and could make the leaks worse. Realize this is 5,000 feet deep in the water, with corresponding water pressure in addition to a massive gushing oil plume. The damaged blowout preventer is 5 stories high. Blasting fluids with high pressure, twice as dense as the surrounding water, has the potential to create another hole if the blowout preventer has weakness in the metal or other interactions. Ugh, my sympathies to the engineers. This has never been tried in water. [More here →]
TheEconomicPopulist.org: The White House, Big Oil, and the “American Power Act” Submitted by Michael Collins
This analysis looks behind the scenes at how the ban on offshore drilling was lifted and what that had to do with the ultimate prize for big oil, the American Power Act. It focuses on the current administration. That in no way implies that the problem originated in January 2009. The out sized and destructive influence of the oil monopoly has been with us for since the 1870′s. [More here →]
BrilliantAtBreakfast: How Does an American Power Act?
“And if the BP rig disaster doesn’t show the endless compliance and forever put to rest the illusion that Congress and the administration will ever enact real reform and regulation over these world-eating corporations, nothing ever will. And the tragedy is that it doesn’t even matter which party is in power. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss and they both smell like sweet light crude.” [More here →]
OpenSecrets.org: BP Enjoys Lobbying Strength, Close Ties to Lawmakers as Federal Investigation Looms
BP CRIMES?
A document obtained by The Daily Beast shows that BP, in a previous fatal disaster, increased worker risk to save money. Are there parallels with the Gulf explosion?
This is a story about the Three Little Pigs. A lot of dead oil workers. And British Petroleum.
From the minute the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded, BP has hewed to a party line: it did everything it could to prevent the April 20 accident that killed 11 men and has been spewing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico ever since. Some critics have questioned the veracity of that position.
Now The Daily Beast has obtained a document that goes to the heart of BP procedures, demonstrating that before the company’s previous major disaster – at a moment when the oil giant could choose between cost-savings and absolute safety – it selected cost-savings. And BP chose to illustrate that choice, without irony, by invoking the classic Three Little Pigs fairy tale.
EXCLUSIVE: This internal BP document shows how the company took deadly risks to save money by opting to build cheaper facilities for workers. The company estimated the value of a worker’s life at $10 million.
TalkingPointsMemo.com: Obama And GOP Senators Clash At Private Meeting
Senate Republicans used a lot of words to describe their meeting with President Obama today: “audacity,” “nerve,” “frayed,” “testy” … you get the picture. Obama and the GOP Senate caucus, meeting together for the first time in a year, discussed bipartisanship as well as some of the more pressing issues of the day. According to the AP, the “eruption” began when the President promised to meet the GOP halfway on a number of issues.
“I told him I thought there was a degree of audacity in him even showing up today after what happened with financial regulation,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) told the AP. “I asked him how he was able to reconcile that duplicity, coming in today to see us.” [More here →]
President Obama will request $500 million in extra money for security at the U.S. border and will deploy an additional 1,200 National Guard troops, according to an administration official. The decision comes as the White House is seeking Republican support for broad immigration reform this year.
CommonDreams.org: Liberated from Libertarianism: Rand Paul Runs and Hides from… Rand Paul by David Michael Green
Maybe we can finally have a serious discussion in this country about the lunacies of libertarianism. I doubt it. This is, after all, America. I doubt we’d know an intelligent political discourse if it whacked us upside the haid. But now we have Rand Paul, son of Ron, marching toward the United States Senate, with a mission to “take back our government”. Oh boy. [More here →]
A GOP REP. TURNS ON FOX NEWS AS IT FLAMES RIGHT
GOP Rep. Slams Fox News: ‘I Don’t Know What They’re Doing At Fox News, But They Should Stop Smoking It’ h/t Michael Chambers, Las Vegas
This morning, Fox and Friends characterized Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) Create Jobs & Save Benefits Act as a “$165 billion bailout” of union pensions. “It has been decades since you’ve seen an administration so prone to the influence of unions as this one is. I’m not going to say this is owned by the unions, but their influence on this administration is simply enormous,” Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney claimed of the legislation, which is actually designed to partition “specific types of union pensions that are deemed to be insolvent.” Later in the day, the network went after House Republicans for co-sponsoring similar legislation in the House. On America Live with Megyn Kelly, the network showed a chart of the nine Republicans supporting the measure and questioned their sanity.
This didn’t go over well with Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH), a co-sponsor of the House measure, who took to the floor this afternoon to criticize Fox for its coverage. “I think as a Republican, I’m supposed to love Fox News and hate MSNBC,” he began. “Now, I’m going to tell you, I do hate MSNBC, but something just happened on Fox News that compelled me to come to the floor”:
LATOURETTE: They’ve run this diagram and it really is a, I think, blaspheming my good friend Pat Tiberi from Ohio and indicating that there are nine Republicans supporting a bill that will bail out unions. Well, that’s nonsense and I don’t know who the pin head and weenie is at Fox News that decided to put that story together. But the true facts of this piece of legislation are as follows. This bill will save the taxpayers by saying to those corporations that have union pension plans, if you find yourselves in a bind, rather than thrusting that upon the taxpayer, it spreads out over five years the ability to bring those pension plans up to speed. That’s good government, it’s a good bill. It’s a good Tiberi bill and I don’t know what they’re doing at Fox News, but they should stop smoking it and get back to reporting the facts.
LaTourette may soon regret his remarks. Last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) criticized Fox News for pushing misinformation about health care reform, but later walked back his comments after being confronted by host Neil Cavuto.
JOBS? GOOD LUCK
American Priorities: Jobs Bill Vote Delayed As Leaders Hunt For Votes
Vote on $200B jobs and tax changes bill delayed as House leaders try to lock down support. CQ: “…with revenue estimates still in flux and negotiations continuing with the Senate, House leaders are planning to wait until Wednesday … Concerns from deficit-wary moderates about the bill’s cost – particularly the price tag on a provision that would prevent a significant cut in doctors’ reimbursement rates under Medicare – remains a key sticking point.”
Jobless aid extension doesn’t cover those unemployed for more than 99 weeks. HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney: ” In some states, laid-off workers can receive checks for 99 weeks — and that’s all they’re going to get. This bill isn’t for the ’99ers’ and there’s no proposal on deck to give them additional weeks of benefits.”
$23B in state aid to prevent mass teacher layoffs is in “jeopardy,” reports Politico: “…there are signs that the price is too high, and the measure is meeting such resistance among Senate Democrats that [Sen. Tom] Harkin may back down for the moment to expedite action on the underlying [war spending] bill.”
REAL NEWS: FORMER BANK REGULATOR BILL BLACK ON FINANCIAL REFORM AND FRAUD
Who He Is: William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, teaches White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law & Economics. A former financial regulator, he held several senior regulatory positions during the S&L debacle. Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One (2005) which focuses on the role of “control fraud” in financial crises. Black developed the concept of “control fraud” – frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a “weapon.” Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined.
FROM THE NEW BOOK: THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS: The Great Depression of the 21st Century, by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall
“The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.
With the worldwide deterioration of living standards and plummeting consumer spending, the entire structure of international commodity trade is potentially in jeopardy. The payments system of money transactions is in disarray. Following the collapse of employment, the payment of wages is disrupted, which in turn triggers a downfall in expenditures on necessary consumer goods and services. This dramatic plunge in purchasing power backfires on the productive system, resulting in a string of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies. Exacerbated by the freeze on credit, the decline in consumer demand contributes to the demobilization of human and material resources.”
Bloomberg Business Week: KILLING THE BILL?
House Democrats Target Senator Lincoln’s Swaps-Desk Proposal
May 25 (Bloomberg) — A group of U.S. House Democrats is strategizing to strip the most contentious derivatives language from legislation to overhaul the financial-regulatory system.
Representative Michael McMahon, a New York Democrat who played a role in shaping the House derivatives language passed last year, said he will work to remove a provision in the Senate legislation that would force commercial banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to move their swaps- trading operations to subsidiaries.
“My position is that it should come out now,” McMahon, one of the lead derivatives negotiators for the self-described “moderate, pro-growth” New Democrat Coalition, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “The House bill is based on principles on how to reduce risk and make the system more transparent, it’s not based on wiping out the system or destroying the system and that’s what the provision does.”
Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democrats shepherding the legislation through Congress, said last week they expect to have a final financial regulation bill signed into law before the U.S. July 4 holiday.
To do that they must resolve differences between the two bills without alienating enough lawmakers to threaten final approval. Among the major differences to be resolved is the plan for tightening regulation of derivatives, financial instruments based on the value of another security or benchmarks such as stock options. Bets by banks and other financial companies on derivatives accelerated the global credit crisis in 2008.
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank is against diluting this and other tough provisions:
Robert Reich writes: “The most important thing to know about the 1,500 page financial reform bill passed by the Senate last week – now on he way to being reconciled with the House bill – is that it’s regulatory. It does nothing to change the structure of Wall Street.”
New York Magazine: “Obama Is From Mars, Wall Street Is From Venus: Pschoanalyzing the Relationship Between Obama and Wall Street”
Great quote: ‘Obama Has A “man crush” on Tim Geithner’
FT: Berlin poised to extend short selling ban
The German government is planning to ban the naked short selling of all German stocks listed on the country’s exchanges in a sweeping enlargement of last week’s contentious bar on the naked short selling of some securities.
Your Thoughts On These Issues:
Alan McDonald comments: “Danny, there will be no reform —- dictates the EMPIRE.”
Ken Weinberg, writes from Thousand Oaks CA:
“There can never be true justice in this country until white collar crimes are treated with the same severity as street crimes. Why is it that someone who holds up a convenience store is sentenced to years in prison while someone in the corporate world who destroys millions of lives never sees the inside of a courtroom?
Society’s ills can never be treated as long as criminals like the CEOs of British Petroleum and Goldman Sachs and Massey Energy and Countrywide are allowed to continue their dirty work without fear of punishment. The only thing that will stop these predators is a real revolution — million-man marches on Washington and on Wall Street, and a whole bunch of high profile perp walks.”
WP, Walter Pincus: Weapons of Mass Deception Have Not Gone Away.
Pentagon tries to steer media coverage on Iraq
The Pentagon may be sharply reducing its combat forces in Iraq, but the military plans to step up efforts to influence media coverage in that country — as well as here at home.
NOT SO COOL RUNNINGS
CNN: Assault on suspected drug lord’s compound in Jamaica kills 27, wounds 31, police say.
WSJ: NORTH KOREA TO CUT TIES WITH SOUTH
North Korea said it will cut off all ties to South Korea, going well beyond the penalties that Seoul imposed on it a day earlier for its apparent role in the sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.
IPS: Kim Jong-Il: Right-Wing Mole?
Kim Jong Il must work for the American Enterprise Institute. Or maybe it’s the Heritage Foundation. The North Korean dictator doesn’t talk much about his non-resident fellowship at a right-wing U.S. think tank. It might not go over well with the Politburo in Pyongyang.
But actions speak louder than words.
North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean ship that went down in March in the Yellow Sea near the maritime border between the two countries, is just what the right-wing doctors have ordered. Japan was looking a little squishy on the Okinawa base issue. China needed some reminders about just how rogue its erstwhile ally really is. And South Korea’s conservative President Lee Myung Bak wanted confirmation that his containment approach to the north was justified.
Right on cue, Kim Jong Il torpedoed a South Korean ship, killing 46 sailors. The incident plays so much into the hands of North Korea’s adversaries that some analysts have looked for other culprits, including friendly fire from either South Korea or the United States. While such speculation is interesting, it seems rather farfetched. In this age of WikiLeaks, it’s hard to imagine a successful cover-up of such friendly fire. And the evidence implicating other actors is circumstantial, to say the least.
Mark Manzetti, ICH, ‘US to Send Secret Military Teams to Iran‘
U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Actions in Mideast
Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.
Roger Cohen, ICH: U.S. Moves Goalposts On Iran And Changes Uranium Details
I believed Obama was ready to think anew on Iran. It seems not. Presidents must lead on major foreign policy initiatives, not be bullied by domestic political considerations, in this case incandescent Iran ire on the Hill in an election year.
Andy Borowitz: WHAT TO DO NOW ABOUT THE OIL SPILL
Experts Propose Plugging Oil Leak with BP Executives, Submerging Execs Could Be ‘Win-Win’
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — At a conference of oil leak experts in Washington today, attendees proposed plugging the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic spill.
“We’ve tried containment domes, rubber tires, and even golf balls,” said William Cathermeyer of the National Oil Leakage Institute, a leading consultancy in the field of oil leaks. “Now it’s time to shove some BP executives down there and hope for the best.”
Submerging the oil company executives thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface could be a “win-win” situation, Mr. Cathermeyer said.
“Best-case scenario, they plug the leak,” he said. “And at the very least, they’ll shut the fuck up.”
YOUR LETTERS
Anne Haggerty writes:
Hi Danny-
I’m very sad and disappointed to see you go. Your efforts have been honorable and I have appreciated your writing, intellect, and insight. I’m ashamed that more people did not find your cause worthy and your opinions of value as I have found them to be especially necessary in view of our “media”.
I have been trying to figure out where the complacency comes from, and I honestly don’t know. Maybe the population has become too big for activism, just too many people feeling disconnected from one another for any of them to get together. I do know the country is in real trouble from many standpoints, but this goes missed, and when the country’s serious troubles are pointed out, no one seems to acknowledge them. Sometimes I feel like I am alone in my concerns as I am sure you must from time to time.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I greatly appreciated what you did and what you tried to do. Keep doing it! Don’t let them get you down. People are listening.
Best Wishes, Anne Haggerty — Chicago, IL
MEMORABILIA?
Thanks To DXM for offering practical suggestions. Any takers out there?
“first you need to find a reliable librarian who will take good care in archiving your “memorabilia” and teaching materials. Allen Ginsberg’s papers from 1944 to 1991 are archived at Columbia.
you’ve heard of the Colombia School of Broadcasting, never mind, and Columbia University’s radio instruction at the Columbia School of Journalism and the Roone Arledge broadcast studios…
There, might be a starting point, at least of an idea of where to start even though Columbia University is as establishment as it gits – all the more reason you and the librarian have a case to make as to why your influence in the (teaching) process is needed IF the price and perks are right.
Great News From my Old friend, Media Activist Jerry Starr::
At this time, I feel great – in active remission from the October 2008 diagnosis of stage 4 cancer of lungs, ribs, brain, and spine with maybe a year to live. I dropped from 180 pounds to 140. Now I’m feeling good at 160 – walking 1-2 miles every other day, sitting at computer again, eating & drinking my fill, etc.
I just came across the Giraffe Project release (I’ve been friends with Ann Medlock since 1970) and see you are as timely and trenchant as always. (DS: I have not seen that release.)
High five my friend. Keep up the great work.”
NEWS NOT REALLY IN THE NEWS FROM HARPERs.ORG
Thirteen million viewers tuned in to watch the series finale of “Lost,” in which Kate chose Jack. Witnesses saw an unidentified man run off the edge of the Grand Canyon, and the opening of a Moscow metro station named for Fyodor Dostoevsky was delayed when people complained that the platform’s mosaics (which include a man striking a woman with an axe and a man holding a gun to his own head) were too depressing. San Francisco courtrooms were flooded with two inches of raw sewage after inmates flushed a bedsheet and two orange jumpsuits down the courthouse toilets, a 35-year-old mother died of massive blood loss after doctors failed to notice the broken-off handle of a toilet brush lodged in her buttocks, and a gang of teenagers forcibly tattooed a 14-year-old New Hampshire boy’s buttocks with the words “Poop Dick.”
Scientists in Germany announced that a 30,000-year-old siltstone phallus, the world’s oldest sex toy, was also used to start fires. Austrian traffic authorities revealed that they had hired a full-time team of druids to drain “negative energy” from accident-prone areas, and British police debuted a five-gear pedal-powered patrol car with a roll bar, siren, flashing blue light, and a top speed of 20 mph, to be used to combat “antisocial behavior.” “It makes me look cooler,” said policeman Keith Waller.”
That’s the dissectable news for now. I will be blogging tomorrow and Friday and then assessing what I do and where I go next. Happily, Globalvision is laboring on.
Your help, ideas, and support are still welcome.
OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS:
Globalvision is going virtual. We are closing our offices at 575 8th Avenue at the end of this month. Our new postal address will be: P.O. Box 677, New York, NY 10035. Our company started operating in a shared space in Soho in l987, then opened what was described as a “loft-hovel” in Little Italy, then moved to classier digs near Union Square. From there, it was up to a real HQ in the heart of Times Square, and then, after our building was gentrified into posh condos, to this outpost in the noisy belly of the Garment District. Soon, in our latest incarnation, we will receive mail in Harlem and then go covert, perhaps to one of those secret locations Dick Cheney boasted about.
Yes, we have, for decades, been globalvisioning downtown, uptown and midtown—all around the town (and world) really. Now, we enter the “post office” and postoffice phase in a new zip code.
Follow me on Twitter (Dissectorevents) and Facebook. We also have a PLUNDER movie page on Facebook and a new Globalvision.org website. This blog will continue for this merry month of May. And then? Write: dissector@mediachannel.org
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About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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