Responding To The Taliban, The Next War? A Currency Conflict
September 29th, 2010 - by: danny
SAT: IN WASHINGTON COVERING THE ONE NATION MARCH
I am interviewed on RT on Media Coverage of Coup Attempt in Ecuador
Some news: Behind the Maliki “victory” in Iraq
Juan Cole: Iran Wins Iraqi Elections
LISTEN TO FRIDAY’S NEWS DISSECTOR RADIO SHOW ON THE PROGRESIVERADIONETWORK.COM
WATCH: FLORIDA REP. ALAN GRAYSON EXPLAINS THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS
COUP ALERT IN ECUADOR: President Reportedly Defies Military, Defeats Coup. For Now. Real News Reports:
RT: WATCH MY COMMENT ON NEW SURVEY SHOWING RISE IN DISSASTISFACTION WITH THE MEDIA
Responding to Facebook Friend Controversy
WHEN THE TALIBAN CALLS, SHOULD YOU TAKE IT?
How can we cover a war when we only cover one side? Shoud I Friend “The Enemy?”
By Danny Schechter
There is a saying I may be twisting in the retelling to the effect of what you do unto others will be done onto you. In Karmic terms, it boils down to what goes around cones around. These thoughts come to mind as I wrestle with a dilemma that seems to be worming its way out of the soil of a country at war overseas and with itself.
Earlier this week, I received a friend request on Facebook from one Abdullah Musafir. He wrote he was from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. His wall was filled with Islamic proverbs and reports on the killing of Western forces and battles with “cowardly terrorists,” i.e., NATO, Afghan soldiers and US Troops. There were reference to the destruction of “puppet” police vehicles and the use of IEDs.
Clearly it was Taliban propaganda, a side of the war we rarely get in any unfiltered form, as opposed to our propaganda that routinely comes our way on TV and in the press. Theirs is crude; ours is much slicker.
Yes, there are also some excellent and gutsy US correspondents there who try to tell the truth, and that truth seems to be we are not winning, which is a way of saying, without saying, that we are losing.
When reports from the battlefield appear in the print press, there is usually some background like reports that military units worry about hostility from the people they are ostensibly there to defend. (Over 80′s of Afghans surveyed BEFORE the ongoing Khandahar surge were against it!)
General Petraeus speaks of facing an “industrial strength insurgency.” He is reported to be welcoming reports that Taliban commanders want to talk with our Karzai regime. That is supposedly a good thing, maybe the only way out in Afghanistan. (Of course, we want them to talk only on our terms as in lay down your arms, pledge loyalty to Karzai’s corrupt government, and then, and only then, can we talk. This is, of course, a non-starter especially when you are on the defensive.)
Now Karzai has handpicked a 70 person “peace panel” stacked with anti-Taliban personalities. Independent Afghan analyst Maritine van Bijlert believes it will go nowhere, saying, “He is not interested in substantial talks.” That is no doubt why Washington is supporting this phony “initiative.”
At the same time, our corporate media just regurgitates the one-sided poop we have come to expect. You never hear from the other side or even international observers who are not gung-ho US backers. As Fairness And Accuracy (FAIR) points out, “The escalation of the war in Afghanistan is treated as something that cannot be debated (see the Sunday chat shows) or as the only thing that might save the women of that country (see Time magazine’s recent propagandistic cover).”
When these same stories appear on TV, they become classic “bang-bang” war coverage of US troops shooting at the enemy and fighting bravely, The assessments of their performance often lacks background and context. One Afghan province looks like another. Our atrocities are rarely reported.
The assumption seems to be that if get information from the enemy”, you become the enemy. Huh? Two Al Jazeera journalists were recently jailed for talking to the other side – but then released. This shows the information control focus that is part of their “Perception Management” strategy. It is not working with 60% of the American public now opposing the war.
Even as the Obama Administration expands the use of brutal drone attacks that so often kill civilians, over Pakistani objections, and Petraeus threatens to expand the war into Cambodia, oops, Pakistan, without Congressional approval, it’s déjàvu Vietnam-like morass all over again.
But does that mean that American journalists like myself shouldn’t talk with or write to or even “friend” someone on the other side? I recently asked this question on my FaceBook “wall” seeking advice from the people who have opted to “follow me.” (We all know this more a toy than a platform for real friends,)
I was amazed when my request for advice triggered 58 comments. Many were genuinely concerned about my safety. Some thought I was going there, Others worried that it could lead to an outrageous FBI raid, as are taking place in the Mid-West, or being put on the No Fly List. One suggested I would be in Gitmo by Christmas.
Apparently, guilt by association is alive and well. You can easily become an enemy if you have the wrong friends.
Many counseled that we have no real online privacy especially with the Obama Administration threatening to monitor, and, when think necessary, shut down the Internet. (Wasn’t Joe Lieberman the first to recommend the practice already followed in China and other countries?)
This paranoia and blow against freedom is being fed by what Political Scientist Michael Brenner calls a “phony war,” writing,
“Warnings are sounding about the growing menace to the U.S. homeland from “homegrown terrorism.” A recent Congressional Research Service purporting to quantify that increased risk has created a stir. All this angst needs to be placed in dispassionate perspective. America stills lives in an acutely anxious post-9/11 state…
“My personal judgment is that the war on terror, on balance, has had two dire effects: one, we are less safe as a consequence due to the great number of persons that our actions have recruited and motivated to support terrorist acts against the United States; and, two, we have seriously weakened our civil liberties.
“Moreover, the number of persons and institutions with vested interests in keeping the terrorism industry thriving ensures that these costs will mount over time.”
I keep thinking of a book written about Saddam’s Iraq called “Republic of Fear.” That title could be applied to a book about the USA today.
So what to do about Abdullah, the holy warrior in Afghanistan and a wannabe “friend?” Is even looking at his post the equivalent of viewing porn yet? If I friend him does that make me a Taliban supporter
I decided to write him to tell him that rather than become “friends,” he could send me his “news” via email and so, he will be in the company of so many others like Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, The Repugs, The Minutemen, The Birthers, The Birchers, The Israeli hardliners, the Mosque Marauders et.al. who just love to inundate/litter my in-box with their “urgent communiques” forcing me to waste time hitting delete.
He wrote back inviting me to visit their website, but warned that it is often hacked. I wonder who would have the means and the motive to do that?
Fascinating that this should occur as the new Facebook Movie opens nationwide.
I don’t have to see it. I am living it.
News Dissector Danny Schechter wrote When News Lies (2006) about media complicity and the war in Iraq. His film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) covered that coverage. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
FINANCIAL TIMES ON “THE SOCIAL NETWORK,” THE FACEBOOK MOVIE
OTHER PERSPECTIVES ON THE AFGHAN WAR
Here’s Abdullah’s view: Statement By The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
Reaction of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to the Remarks of General Petraeus.
LETTER FROM TERRY HOVER WHO WAS RECENTLY IN AFGHANISTAN:
…. a female companion and I traveled overland from
Europe through Afghanistan (treated as welcome guests despite, or maybe
because, of our non-conforming dress, never a hint of danger or even
disdain), on to a hotel in Peshawer.
When there, the proprietor came to our rooms and asked us to stay out of
sight as a large PPP (? – recall is hazy) demo was approaching and,
being westerners, seeing us might lead to an attack on the hotel. OK,
rather a change of atmosphere, but ….
A little later he returned and asked if we would be interested in
talking with a young Afghan who was returning home to Afghanistan and we
said yes, of course. He had been orphaned in a bandit raid and
semi-adopted by British consulate (?) workers and received a good
education in English schools. He indicated he felt out of place, and
was returning once he had reached legal adulthood.
In recounting how he and we ended up then and there, he mentioned that
the killing of his family obligated him to kill the bandits, and that
although doing so was not the reason he returned, it was love of his
home land (two words), that meant that whatever he did, he would be
alert to anything that might help him fulfill that duty, doing that
which any decent and non-depraved human would know to be right and just.
It was not anger or vengeance, it was just a matter of being a good,
decent, self-respecting human being.
You can fill in the arguments against, but he taught me way more than I
realized at the time. I won’t try to summarize, but the reason I am
writing this is to suggest that if you engage Abdullah Musafir directly,
talk with him person to person. Both might gain, and you might get and
be able to share a deeper understanding of Afghanistan and that
conflict. Of course, he just might want to send his version of the RW
email BS nonsense that circulates over here, but if he does that, ask
him to talk person to person. Both will learn. In my example I sure
learned way more than I gave.
Best wishes, thanks for all you are doing, and the fact that you are
seen on FSTV, LINK, AJE but only very rarely and quite briefly on
corporate media does not change the fact that your insights and analyses
are making a difference. Thank you.
Terry Hover
Robert Gates: ‘We’re Not Ever Leaving’ Afghanistan By Marcus Baram
In a shocking indication of a split between the White House and the Pentagon over the war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. military will never leave the war-torn country.
THE OTHER WAR WE ARE LIKELY TO LOSE
The economic war.
News in the FT: The US House of Representatives passed legislation that would punish China for undervaluing its currency and harming the competitiveness of US manufacturers and exporters, in a move that could heighten trade tensions between the two countries.”
China Reacts:
BEIJING Beijing warned Washington on Thursday that economic ties might be
damaged after American lawmakers escalated the conflict over China’s
currency controls, inching the two economic giants closer to a trade war.
The Commerce Ministry said a measure approved Wednesday by Congress to allow
Washington to penalize governments that manipulate exchange rates violated
free-trade rules. It gave no indication whether Beijing might retaliate,
though it has imposed antidumping duties in recent months on imports of U.S.
chicken, steel and nylon.
After years of friction, the bill is the first vote by American lawmakers
for measures to respond to complaints Beijing keeps its yuan also known as
the renminbi undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair price advantage
and costing U.S. jobs. Passage by a 348-79 margin in the House of
Representatives came ahead of November elections in which the economy and
9.6 percent unemployment are key voter concerns.
“This is a step toward a trade war,” said economist Dariusz Kowalczyk at
Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “It’s just one step, but it increases the
odds.”
So, as I feared, we may be on the threshold of a new war, a trade and currency war we cannot win.
Prodded by China bashing unions, and encouraged by some economists, they want a confrontation with China that may be a loose loose propsition even as it seems its all intended to boost US jobs:
Roger Oak makes the case against China”
“China’s currency is considered undervalued by 23%-40%. Economist Robert Scott estimates the United States will lose half a million jobs to China in 2010 alone. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute estimates China’s currency manipulation costs the United States 1.4 percentage points in GDP annually. Anyone reading this site knows in every trade report, China is by far the largest contributor to the U.S. trade deficit.”
But that is just one part of the story.
Brazil’s finance Minister Guido Mantega says “We’re in the midst of an international currency war, a general weakening of currency. This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness.”
Martin Wolf writes in the Financial Times about a potential catstrophe if this war erupts.
‘”John Connally, Nixon’s secretary of the Treasury, famously told the Europeans that the dollar “is our currency, but your problem”. The Chinese respond in kind. In the absence of currency adjustments, we are seeing a form of monetary warfare: in effect, the US is seeking to inflate China, and China to deflate the US. Both sides are convinced they are right; neither is succeeding; and the rest of the world suffers.
It is not hard to see China’s point of view: it is desperate to avoid what it views as the dire fate of Japan after the Plaza accord. With export competitiveness damaged by its soaring currency and pressured by the US to reduce its current account surplus, Japan chose not the needed structural reforms, but a huge monetary expansion, instead. The consequent bubble helped deliver the “lost decade” of the 1990s. Once a world-beater, Japan fell into the doldrums. For China, self-evidently, any such outcome would be a catastrophe. At the same time, it is difficult to envisage a robust configuration of the world economy without large net capital flows from the high-income countries to the rest. Yet it is also hard to imagine that happening, on a sustainable basis, if the world’s biggest and most successful emerging economy is also its largest net exporter of capital.”
Asia Times asks “Who is The Currency Manipulator?
“Economic and financial uncertainty stand at unprecedented levels. In this climate, it will be difficult to predict how far gold will rise, how far the dollar might fall, and how far and how fast competitive devaluations could intensify? Will other major powers accept a deep appreciation of their currencies relative to the dollar, with the implied loss of competitiveness in export markets at a time of economic fragility?
The Fed is promoting speculation and economic conflict. Speculators are overwhelmed with cheap money and abundant liquidity to reap speculative profits. Such an unstable environment could be hardly conducive to investment, renewed hiring and job creation, and thus lasting economic growth. Thus far, only uncertainty, unemployment, economic stagnation and the fear of future inflation have been the end results of Fed policy. The fear of inflation and uncertainty has fueled the flight to safety, to gold. Central banks as well as investors, who have experienced persistent losses in the real value of their financial assets from rapid depreciation of reserve currencies, have little option but to run to gold.”
Earlier the AT explained that the Western view is not the only one:
“Western triumphalism in 2008 took a tumble as the West’s most sophisticated financial innovators led the world economy off a cliff. Meanwhile, China’s ham-fisted socialists saved China and, to a certain extent, the rest of the world with an enormous stimulus program (US$586 billion in domestic spending plus significantly relaxed limits on bank lending) that, as a ratio of the gross domestic products (GDP), dwarfed America’s stimulus spending by a factor of more than five.”
Rather than go on here, may I urge you to check out the many sides of this debate.
MORE ON THE CRISIS
I am still continuing to share important articles on the on-going financial crisis:
I chatted with economist Max Wolff about this issue. He says China’s Currency has a tougher impact on poorer country than it has on ours. He thinks China bashing is more about findimg some one else to blame for our own decisions.
Scott Thrill, Alternett: Corporations Scam Housing Market
NEW HARVARD REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF SUB PRIIME (SUB-CRIME) LENDING’
“Financial engineering on the capital markets, for its part, resulted in large amounts of non-prime securities receiving AAA ratings that increased demand for risky non-prime loans and kept credit flowing to them,” said the report. “And failures to adequately price and rate risk, align incentives and monitor counterparty risk effectively also contributed.”
FRAUDULENT FORECLOSURES RUNNING AMOK
HAITI: UN Wire: Haiti Reconstruction Stalls
Less than 15% of the reconstruction aid promised to Haiti by international donors for 2010-2011 has materialized, effectively stalling efforts by Haitian and development officials to push forward with large-scale rebuilding efforts. The U.S. has provided $1.1 billion in immediate earthquake relief, but the $1.15 billion American officials promised for long-term reconstruction funding has been held up by bureaucracy and political wrangling.
IMAGINE: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN LENNON AT 70 (Vanity Fair)
I AIN’T MARCHING ANY MORE—Well, Maybe, this one last time
In Washington Saturday for the One Nation March For Jobs and Justice
And speaking of protests, Scott Schneider reports on one you may not have heard about:
“Yes.
American media conglomerates deliberately didn’t tell you, but it did happen:
10,000,000 workers participated in a general strike in Spain Sept. 29. It brought the country almost to a standstill, and would have ground it to a complete halt if the Unions had not complied with “minimal service agreements” worked out in advance with the govt.
No doubt a General Strike, even though mitigated and pre-announced, gives the USA and global predatory financial elite a shudder. An important first strategy is to neutralize reporting of the event – dilute, marginalize or ignore it out of existence.
Whether there will be follow-through from Spanish protesters that reverses govt. “austerity” programs or whether these actions are “safety valves” designed to let workers blow off steam, allowing them occasional catharsis while austerity measures are inevitably rammed down their throats, remains debatable.
It’s safe to say however that Spaniards, like their Greek and French counterparts clearly understand when the Power Elite is expropriating national wealth while impoverishing the general population, often by force.
Americans still do not get this. It remains doubtful they ever will.
See the whole Post / →
What Happened To Oliver Stone? Why Is “Money Never Sleeps” Asleep? Rahmbo’s Exit
September 26th, 2010 - by: danny
NEW WEBSITE ON ECONOMIC MELTDOWN—BOOKMARK THIS
JP kaneshida writes: “Love your work and am a fan. Just letting you know about our new site,
“EM08: Economic Meltdown 2008″ which is for *everyday people* to one-stop-shop on meltdown info. In addition, we also provide strategies we feel communities need to at least think about in terms of going forward in hese riskiest of time. A
ProPublica: Watchdog Faults FBI for `Factually Weak’ Basis for Investigating Activists
Chicago Tribune: Anti-war Activists Targeted by the FBI speak out
WHY NO PROSECUTIONS IN FINANCIAL CRISIS:
Finally, the issue is being discussed–albeit only legalistically.
NYT: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Tuesday entitled “Restoring Key Tools to Combat Fraud and Corruption After the Supreme Court’s Skilling Decision.” It will be interesting to see whether the absence of any high-profile criminal prosecutions from the financial crisis will be cited as a reason for Congress to amend the honest services law to reach corporate misconduct that does not involve some form of personal benefit to the defendant. In the Skilling case, the Supreme Court questioned whether a crime involving only a breach of fiduciary duty could pass muster.
DISSECTOR IN THE MEDIA
SIGHTINGS; On Sunday Night, a motorcade pulled up at the Joyce Dance Theater on 8th Avenue. The Barsheva Dance Company from Israel was there. It looked like an Israeli pol left the main car suddounded by a security platoon. But then I heard a crowd booing. I was later told John McCain was there too. Welcome to Chelsea John. (Stephen Colbert just referred to him as a Crimean War Veteran.) I was across the street in front of Pinkberry, all swirled out.
On Monday night, I was way downtown and was introduced to LEVI, Bristol Palin’s ex, the man who kinda took on the former Mayor of Wasila and wants to be one, soon to star in his own reality, or is that surreality, TV series. I do get around.
To book me on media outlets, write: dissector@mediachannel.org. I give good sound bytes.
From: Financial Times on The Rahmbo Record
White House set to change its tone
By Edward Luce in Washington
Some time in the next few days, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, looks almost certain to quit his job to pursue his dream of becoming mayor of Chicago.
Known as Rahmbo by friends and enemies alike and assigned the code name Black Hawk by the secret service, Mr Emanuel’s often capricious style of management has helped define Mr Obama’s rollercoaster ride in the White House during the past 20 months.
Mr Obama recently said Mr Emanuel would make an “excellent” mayor of Chicago. But if Democratic figures inside and outside the White House are to be believed, Mr Emanuel’s pugilistic approach may turn him into a scapegoat for much what has gone wrong, some of it fair, some not.
Mr Emanuel is the target of three types of criticism. First, he is said to be obsessed with the 24-hour news cycle, taking his eye off longer-term goals. “Rahm cannot keep his thoughts focused for more than 10 minutes,” said a former official. “If he spent as much time planning strategy as he does trying to win the news cycle then things might have gone differently.”
Second, detractors say that Mr Emanuel, who cut his teeth in the Clinton White House and formed the basis of the character Josh in the popular West Wing television series, misread the obstructionist mood of the Republican party on Capitol Hill. Time and again on the healthcare debate, cap-and-trade and the $787bn stimulus, Mr Emanuel led the White House negotiations with Republican legislators.
In almost every case Mr Emanuel recommended concessions to the Republicans that achieved no support when push came to vote. The one exception was over the 2009 stimulus bill, which pulled in three Republican votes in the Senate. The net result was to signal that the White House had few red lines.
“Rahm’s approach helped create the impression that the Obama White House had no principles – it was simply transactional,” says a close Democratic observer…..
Watch: Media Gem, Bob Marley interviewed on Five All Night, Live All Night, a show I launched for WCVB in Boston, 1980
A LACK OF FOCUS ON CRIME MARS OLIVER STONE’S NEW WALL STREET, A FILM HEAVY ON ATMOSPHERE, LIGHT ON ANGER
Why is “Money Never Sleeps” Asleep At The Switch?
By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time
The lead headline in the New York Times is “EXTENSIVE FRAUD APPEARS TO MAR AFGHAN ELECTION.” The line below, “A BLOW TO CREDIBILITY,” as if anyone who follows Afghanistan, a country known for blatant and notorious corruption was at all surprised by this latest “blow.”
Today’s “blow” followed an earlier “blow” a few weeks back with the disclosure of the crash of the Kabul Bank with $300 billion still unaccounted for.
In America, another fraud: CNN reported the next morning that the pathetic blonde beauty-celebrity Lindsay Lohan put up $300,000 to get out of jail. That’s the kind of story American media considers worthy of constant “Breaking News” attention.
When will we see the headlines like “EXTENSIVE FRAUD APPEARS TO MAR ECONOMIC RECOVERY” or “EXTENSIVE FRAUD LED TO FINANCIAL COLLAPSE?’
I ask this question, sort of knowing the answer, after two recent back-to-back film experiences.
On Thursday night, I spoke at a packed screening of my film PLUNDER THE CRIME OF OUR TIME that indicts financial crimes and corruption behind the financial crisis. The audience seemed overwhelmingly positive except for one Wall Streeter in the house who insisted that while there may have been “ethical lapses,” no crimes were committed, an expression of a conventional wisdom that most of the media has reinforced without investigating any evidence.
At a reception after the film in suburban Long Island’s Cinema Arts Center, several people told me that one impact the crisis has had on them is sleeplessness because of anxiety over whether will can pay their bills and avoid joblessness or foreclosure.
Ironically, film director Oliver Stone also had sleep on his mind. “Money Never Sleeps” is the subtitle of his remake of the movie Wall Street. To my surprise, the theater was not packed on opening night for a film distributed, ironically, by the money-mad mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corpse. You would think that the outspoken Stone, known for conspiracizing, would be slaying some dragons.
Think again.
After watching the movie, I realized why the right-wing Rupert Murdoch could be comfortable enough releasing the latest from the nominally left-wing Oliver Stone.
The movie built an “explainer” around a love story that in the end was as much as about child-parent conflicts and pretentious philosophizing as the collapse of Wall Street which is treated, ultimately, with a “we are all to blame” viewpoint, In many ways the movie celebrates the brash culture of greed and excess of our era while we watch the return of Michael Douglas’s portrayal of Gordon Gekko, known in earlier times for the slogan “Greed Is Good.”
Now, Stone sees greed everywhere, and there ain’t much we can do about it. A Wall Street insider writes on the Self-evident blog, “the film somehow lacks any relatable misery. The human costs of the larger crisis remain abstract. The traders that the film revolves around talk about the market crash as if they are spectators and not participants.” He concludes, “we produce some beautiful art, but do we ever butcher the facts.”
Gekko does offer some good lines but the movie is more about personal redemption than financial crime. He says, “The mother of all evils is speculation – leveraged debt.” He claims the economy is merely moving money around in circles and the business model itself is like a “cancer.”
True, but he’s more concerned with winning back his daughter’s love.
Personally, I saw many of the stories I report in my film turn up in his – with even the same lines, leading me to unprovable suspicions after having given my film personally to Stone with a request for his help months earlier.
I guess I was naïve. Then again, maybe great minds think alike. Smile. (I do know/respect one of his screenwriters, Stephen Schiff), Clearly, we work in different leagues, and maybe, on different sides.
In an interview on CNN, Stone seemed to argue that free speech is more of an issue than the insolvency of the banks. He became totally obsessed with the rumors that brought down Bear Stearns, an issue I explore in depth.
“What I found out,” he says, “what shocked me back in 2009, was that Goldman Sachs and those type of banks were really going long and short at the same time and were actually selling out on their clients. I thought that was shocking information to me, as well as the power of rumor, which, amazing. We show the power of that and how it can destroy a company.
…I’m not so sure that’s good for the system, although it’s more transparent. But it does lead to circles of viciousness and rumor and hype and a stock, as you know, drops. I mean, look at what happened a few months ago, right? The market just crashed. So what’s going to happen?
It does scare me, and I think it’s the nature of the modern world, I suppose.”
The website Ml-implode.com commented: “There you go, “rumor,” mentioned as a causative factor 4 or 5 times; insolvency/leverage? Zero. Those poor, poor Wall Street banks — they’re victims, you know.”
The movie dances on all sides of the issues actually featuring an on camera cameo by Stone, of course and, Grayon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, who I quote in the my film and book, The Crime of our Time, because he labeled the crisis “the greatest non-violent crime in history” Stone feigns to that view but ultimately rejects it.
Hedge Fund investor Jim Chanos who I also quote, and who has called for the prosecution of wrongdoers, was even an advisor. It seems like he was wanted for his insight more on the atmospherics of the scene, than his demand for more perp walks.
Wall Street 2 features a father-son subtext as the young banker played by Shia LaBeouff watches as his mentor at a firm made to resemble Bear Stearns or, is it, Lehman Brothers commits suicide after the company is brought down by rumors and dirty tricks. In the end he marries and has a son with Gekko’s daughter who, natch, runs a left-wing website.
Their kid is named Louie after The banker who died. Undisclosed is that Stone’s dad who worked on Wall Street was also a Lou. Clearly this movie was as much about the personal psychodrama of Stone’s life as many of his earlier films about the ghosts of Vietnam. His movies about Nixon and W also featured father-son conflicts. The banker who died by jumping into the subway, Frank Langella, recently played Nixon in the movie about David Frost’s interview.
More disturbing was the film’s failure to call for any action. It starts with Gekko getting out of jail and getting back in the industry. So jail, in the end means nothing.
Many Wall Streeters interviewed about the film seemed confused about its message and meandering plot points. Most (including myself) liked the luscious cinematography of New York that even profiled Bernie Madoff’s former office, and featured David Byrne’s great music. Said former banker Nomi Prins who is in Plunder, ” I liked it until halfway through, and then it was a hodge-podge bunch of events.”
The pro-free market Daily Bell wrote; “Always, Oliver Stone seems a propagandist and apologist….Would it be any news to him that the United States is over-extended from a monetary and military standpoint? Or that Fed money printing was the proximate cause of the economic crash. It should not be too hard to figure this out.”
Critic Roger Ebert liked the film but added, “I wish it had been angrier. I wish it had been outraged. Maybe Stone’s instincts are correct, and American audiences aren’t ready for that. They haven’t had enough of Greed.”
Was it those “instincts” that led to the pandering, or was it just the logic of the market or Murdoch’s neutering its critical edge with an insistence to “Just tell us an entertaining story if you want this to be big.” He was going to make the film before the crash – when it might have warned us – but waited to try to become the ultimate word.
In my experience, audiences are furious about what’s happened to them and the country. Late last week Paul Volker warned that the financial system is still broken. Others fear another crash is only just a matter of time. This reality is not evident on Oliver Stone’s radar screen.
After my screening, a man named Milton told me he is active in The Democratic Party but that the Deems will not really act against Wall Street. “They don’t have the guts,” he said. Can the same be said about Oliver Stone, who loves the Hugo Chavez’s of the worl d South Of The Border, but echoes CNBC here at home?
News Dissector Danny Schechter directed Plunder The Crime of Our Time. (plunderthecrimeofourtime.com)
Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
MORE ON THE FRAUDS THAT NEVER SLEEP
NakedCapitalism: Florida’s Kangaroo Foreclosure Courts: Judges Denying Due Process on Behalf of Banks
Florida is ground zero of the foreclosure crisis. In addition to being one of the epicenters of the housing meltdown, it has also become the jurisdiction where local lawyers have been the most effective overall in unearthing how servicers and foreclosure mills have engaged in widespread document fabrications and use of improper affidavits to foreclose.
This abuse of contracts and legal procedures matters because the courts are the last bastion of defense of the individual. Even libertarians, who keenly oppose government mission creep, give courts an elevated role as a protector of rights.
NEW YORK TIMES: Raters Ignored Proof of Unsafe Loans, Panel Is Told
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Agencies that assessed risk in mortgage pools dismissed evidence that many loans were dubious, according to testimony given to a panel.
OLIVER: THIS IS THE ANGER I AM TALKING ABOUT
MANDELMAN SKEWERS TIM GEITHNER
FU US taxpayers-Citigroup took $45b TARP, can’t give big bonuses, so giving stock
By paying the raises in company stock, not cash, Citi has decided to follow previously issued guidelines that limited salaries to $500,000 for the top 25 executives at financial institutions still receiving large amounts of federal help.
MI-IMPLODE.COM: NORWAY’S CENTRAL BANK SUES CITBANK
“This is what a real adversarial suit against the subprime maven banks should look like; not like a $75M wrist-slap fine typical of the SEC
“… the 221-page complaint goes much further than just the super senior CDO/liquidity put kerfuffle. In fact, it reads like a laundry list of complaints against the US bank – from “unrealistic” CDO models, to Repo 105, GAAP and SEC violations, etc.
“It also names Citi CEO Vikram Pandit and former CEO Chuck Prince, personally (along with some 20 other bank execs).”
LEVINE BREAKING NEWS: U.S. PROSECUTORS PROBE KARZAI’S BROTHER:
The Karzai family’s dealings may be catching up with them. The Wall Street Journal says that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have opened a corruption probe of Mahmoud Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid. Officials tell the Journal that they’re currently debating whether there’s enough evidence to bring charges of tax evasion, racketeering, or extortion against Mahmoud, a U.S. citizen who splits his time between the suburbs of Baltimore, Dubai, and Kabul. “How many people do you think they have on me? Four, five, 10, 20?” Mr. Karzai said when.
LETTER FROM ORGANIZATION OF WASHINGTON MUTUAL (WAMU) BANK VICTIMS
From the Forgotten Victims of Bank Fraud and Foreclosure Fraud:
Thank you for all you are doing to help educate Congress and the people about foreclosure fraud. Please come to our website and explore the facts and law about the criminal conspiracy to use homeowners signatures for Bank Fraud and Securities Fraud.
WAMU was the poster child for RICO Conspiracy. They were aided and abetted by “friends in high places.”
We need a media sponsor, NOT money, to get us out across the nation to find the 1000′s of defrauded WAMU homeowners. We have the truth after many years of investigation and research. WE are all volunteers and WAMU Homeowners who have first-hand knowledge of lending fraud and foreclosure fraud. We are the “experts” in this emerging field!
Please visit:
www.wamuloanfraud.com
Thank you on behalf of the National WAMU Homeowners Support Group.
Rob Harrington
And this just in from David Swanson:
Ahmadinejad Meets With U.S. Peace Activists
By Phil Wilayto, War Is A Crime .org
See the whole Post / →
Summers Is Going But What Is Coming? Has The Media Moved On?
September 22nd, 2010 - by: danny
THE NEW ENEMY: PENTAGON HUNTS FOR WIKILEAKS FOUNDER
See Below.
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NEW COMMENTARY
Summers Is Packing His Bags As The Recession is Pronounced Over While Big Media Gears Up For An Election And Buries Reports on Financial Crime
By Danny Schechter
Author of the Crime Of Our Time
As the November election approaches, the White House seems to be ending its Rip Van Winkle-like slumber and has begun crawling out of the bubble of its own making. Many fear it’s a bit late.
The shakeup of President Obama’s economic team is long overdue. As Larry Summers slithers back to Harvard to save his tenure and write his book, he is likely to be replaced by exactly the wrong kind of person – a business executive, appointed to try to appease the Repugs and the Right. (Summers was paid $586,996-a-year at Hahvard and picks up all kinds of consulting deals on the side from Wall Street.)
This maneuver won’t work of course because nothing Obama does will ever please them because they need him as their piñata, and a symbol of failure. He claims to see that but just can’t seem to get his appeasement gene in check, Notes the Naked Capitalism blog.
“As much as some will be pleased to see Larry gone (he was a leading advocate of bank-friendly policies), his replacement is certain not to represent a change in philosophy…. he has made the cardinal mistake of trying to please everyone and has succeeded in having no one happy with his policies.
Journalist Robert Scheer hopes “Summers will have time to reflect on the dismal arc of his split tenure in government service. Thanks to the banking debacle he did so much to initiate back in the Clinton years, the nation now has more people living in poverty, 43.6 million of them, than ever in our history. Americans have witnessed the disappearance of $11 trillion of their net worth, $1.5 trillion in the second quarter; the debt has risen alarmingly; unemployment is stuck at 9.6 percent; and trillions of dollars in toxic pools of housing stock are still held by the banks to be thrown into the housing market fire sale anytime home prices promise to edge upward. Behold what brilliance has wrought.”
Financial journalist Michael M. Thomas believes that Summers, like a gunslinger hired to clean up a town, did what he was hired to do arguing, “Summers is leaving because he made sure real reform was discussed – but not accomplished.”
“Larry Summers was tasked with making sure the kind of backlash that in 1933 unleashed Ferdinand Pecora on Wall Street didn’t happen in 2009. I think Larry Summers was tasked with marginalizing Paul Volcker, who could thus serve the new administration as moral window-dressing without actually causing trouble. I think it was understood from the outset that any meaningful economics program must involve taking Wall Street to the woodshed, and that this must not be allowed to happen.”
Bob Woodward’s book on Obama focuses on an internal war over policy for the Afghan war. That may be mild compared to the revelations to come on the debates over what to do about the economy. (Woodward offers one telling detail about Obama’s approach describing how he laid out his plan in the form of a financial terms sheet used on Wall Street.)
Now, to “balance” his appointment of Elizabeth Warren, the President has nominated Jack Lews to head the Office of Management and Budget. Bernie Sanders says he will not support him because “I found too many echoes of the failed policies of the past in his responses to my questions on trade policy, Social Security, deregulation of banks and other issues.”
Even as the rats jump ship. The National Bureau of Economic Research which took a year to admit that the country was in recession now says the Recession is over, a conclusion that is not widely shared especially because the structural, systemic and political problems that caused the crisis have not been remedied. The respected Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef says the US economy is ‘underdeveloping.” Others still fear a total collapse.
But now that recovery has been pronounced – even if there has been no job creation – the media has a good excuse to move off the subject, to assume the best, and avoid investigating how the crisis happened, who benefited and who lost and is still losing,
The issues I have been raising about the crimes of Wall Street have been brushed under the rug, even by filmmaker Oliver Stone from whom one might have expected a deeper critique in his new Wall Street Film, “Money Never Sleeps.”
The Village Voice who you would expect would welcome it says Stone lets the “bad Guys off the hook?’
“If barely prosecuted, the real players in our last crash face a long pop-culture pillorying. That is not, however, how Stone works; regarding power, his conclusions are best summed up by the hippie chick at the Lincoln Memorial in Nixon: “You can’t stop it, can you? Even if you wanted to. It’s not you. It’s the system.” Floating off on a faux-naïve happy ending this time, one takes the lesson that there are no villains – or that villains are all there are.”
So a generic indictment of “the system” substitutes for any exploration of the way that system actually worked, not just to make greed good but to hurt millions of people worldwide who lost jobs, homes and hope, plunging millions worldwide and here at home into deepening poverty.
I personally gave Stone a copy of my investigative film Plunder The Crime of our Time months ago, but he seems to have brushed it off focusing instead on a miasma of slick Hollywood production values. (Disclosure: I made a documentary, Beyond JFK for Oliver’s company and he was in it, That was back in 1992.)
I have been getting some visibility for my DVD and companion book The Crime of our Time but not in mainstream media. Earlier this week, at a book launch, A Tea Party activist showed up for my spiel and took me to task loudly for being dismissive of her movement. But after we talked, I was pleased that she became open to my concerns and even, get this praised me as “fair and balanced.” I was surprised. You can hear some of our exchanges and a storm of debate on Between The Lines radio that I was also broadcasting over during my talk.
Short of a major deepening of the crisis in the next few weeks, the election will soon constitute all the news all the time.
While voters are said to be angriest about the economy and Obama’s failures to stem the tide, the media will not devote much time or energy to educating the public about the deeper issues. Not when so many pundits and election insiders are fighting for face time on TV. Political blather and polls are back.
Unfortunately, one of the most important stories of our time is about to be buried again.
News Dissector Danny Schechter made Plunder The Crime Or Our Time and wrote the companion book The Crime of our Time. See Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
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PENTAGON IN MANHUNT MODE. MISSION: GET WIKILEAKS
Daily Beast: Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast’s Philip Shenon. The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website’s founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.
American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait. And given the contents of the cables, the feds have good reason to be concerned. As The Daily Beast reported June 8, Manning, while posted in Iraq, apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East, regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders, according to an American diplomat. In cryptic messages Assange sent this week via Twitter, Wikileaks said that it “looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S. has.”
Mark sends this Reuters report from Switzerland: Are UFO’s Back?
Ex-military men say unknown intruders have monitored and even tampered with American nuclear missiles
Group to call on U.S. Government to reveal the facts
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.
One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded.
Captain Salas notes, “The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it.” Col. Halt adds, “I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation.”
The group of witnesses and a leading researcher, who has brought them together for the first time, will discuss the national security implications of these and other alarmingly similar incidents and will urge the government to reveal all information about them. This is a public-awareness issue.
Declassified U.S. government documents, to be distributed at the event, now substantiate the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites extending back to 1948. The press conference will also address present-day concerns about the abuse of government secrecy as well as the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons.
Hmmmm.
See the whole Post / →
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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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