Chasing Madoff Again, Other Views on Libya, White House Protests, “Honoring” MLK

August 29th, 2011 - by: danny

To paraphrase Marat Sade, the hurricane came and the hurricane went and unrest and anxiety turned back into discontent.

New York City survived. Yes, there was lots of property damage up and down the East Coast, especially in New Jersey and in suburban communities. There were massive evacuations, untold damage still to be assessed and over 20 dead. Clearly, it was a devastating storm but far less, happily, than many media accounts wanted us to believe.

Questions are being raised about why zoning authorities allow continuing construction in coastal areas prone to severe weather.

Will there be any investigation into probable links between severe weather and climate change? IHT reports: ‘On a longer time scale, I think — but not all of my colleagues agree — that the evidence for a connection between Atlantic hurricanes and global climate change is fairly compelling,’’ said Kerry Emanuel, an expert on the issue at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This not what the media focused on. Speaking of media, did you see this? Ugh!

The president says, “Its Not Over Yet.” Is it ever? Condolences to all families who lost loved ones.

Trauma in Tripoli

Another city in another part of the world may not be surviving very well.

The Mail & Guardian reports from South Africa : Tripoli runs out of food and fuel

“Fighters pushed increasingly leaderless regime gunmen to the outskirts of Tripoli on Saturday, as shortages of fuel and water paralyzed the city.”

Also, later News: “Libyan rebel forces were converging on Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte on Monday, hoping to deliver the coup de grace of their revolution.”

History, as we know, is written by victors, and in the case of Libya, the coverage has not exactly been balanced. Far from it, Truth was the first casualty there as it is in every war. A popular uprising was aided and abetted by nearly six months of bombing and external military intervention.

Remember when it was suggested, it would be over in a weekend? That was 7459 NATO air strikes ago. (Remember, too, the US was not exactly a hands-off player. It is a big financial backer and orchestrator of NATO.)

Other views on Libya not in media because they are in part about the media::

Charles Glass, London Review of Books, It’s Not Over Yet

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who visited Tripoli writes:

“…the true peace people in this country have revealed themselves by their willingness to step forward and be counted against this war in the very midst of the worst deceit and demonization ever. NATO war crimes are being excused, discounted, or covered up by those who posed as supporters of justice and peace. It is never OK to bomb people. And it is never OK to ask the peace-loving people of this country to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare and education and housing–and I could go on and on–so that war profiteers can fatten their ill-gotten coffers.??

I agree with Stephen Lendman and others who have written that the war propaganda against Libya reached heights higher than that for the war against the Iraqi people.

The deceit continues to this day from the most respected “news” outlets. Now, we know them as what they really are, too.??Here are a few items that I had to wake up early to get to you before I board the plane for my next destination: it seems that the “Mighty Wurlitzer” could use a tune up because it has even ratcheted up a notch in its noise factor with this war. Watch the BBC descent from journalism to the absolute lowest depths with this.

Glenn Ford of Black Agenda Radio writes:

“The story is not over – not by a long shot – but the saga of the Libyan resistance to the superpower might of the United States and its degenerate European neo-colonial allies will surely occupy a very special place in history.

For five months, beginning March 19, the armed forces of a small country of six million people dared to defy the most advanced weapons systems on the planet, on terrain with virtually no cover, against an enemy capable of killing whatever could be seen from the sky or electronically sensed. Night and day, the eyes of the Euro-American war machine looked down from space on the Libyan soldiers’ positions, with the aim of incinerating them. And yet, the Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic under siege by German, Italian and homegrown fascists, in the late 1930s.”

Dennis Kucinich, NATO should be tried for War Crimes.

Gadaffi Should Be Tried, at a minimum, for Bad Taste: He apparently had a crush On Condi Rice (Slate) He, too, as been accused of ordering brutality against civilians and diverting the country’s resources into his own accounts.

CHASING MADOFF

I went to see the new documentary, Chasing Madoff , at a theater closest to Bernie’s old neighborhood on New York’s Upper East side last Friday (BH—Before the Hurricane) because I though there might be quite a few “interested parties” in attendance.

I wasn’t disappointed. There were “victims” and plaintiffs there. Unfortunately the film explained very little new about how Bernie carried out his Ponzi scheme and got away with it. In fact, it wasn’t about Madoff at all, but Harry Markopolos, the Boston based financial accountant and analyst who waged a ten year campaign to get the SEC to crack down on the crooked “financier.”

Even though the doc paints him as a hero, he says clearly that he isn’t, in part because he considered his efforts to unmask him a failure. He worked for years with two of his close colleagues at A New England Hedge Fund and a supportive investigative journalist from Forbes who “exposed” Bernie back in 2001 but without any impact,

The rest of the media did not pick up the story, and when pressed, some responded by saying there was no “new news peg.”

Harry’s personal story is hyped up a bit because he believed Madoff and friends would kill him if they could because so much money was involved. He comes off as a bit of a psyscopath, more than a bit paranoid, or “realistic”, depending on your point of view, and gets a gun license, learns to shoot, and even vows to Kill Madoff first if he does send his dogs after him.

He comes across as a man on a mission, obsessed and outraged by the lack of response by the SEC. He is more than driven. An interview with his mother confirms this zealotry is not just a political with him but a personality trait.

We also learn that his crusade was not always unself-interested, His company had assigned him to compete with Madoff but the product he came up with was legal but risky and, in the end, had no market,

Many in the industry had suspicions about Madoff but would still rather work him believing that their money was safer in his hands. Harry was a frustrated wannabe competitor at first, but then, as rejections by the press and the market mavens continued, he became more and more determined to bring Madoff down.

The story is way over hyped up with fancy editing, motion graphics and special effects, overdone in an attempt to add drama. What I learned is there probably more of a market for a film that pits a good guy against a bad guy than a more detailed investigation of the kind I offer in Plunder The Crime of Our Time. I also cover Madoff and use some similar material although I was surprised they missed the audio of Bernie’s courtroom confession. (You can hear it the song Plunder, written by Polarity 1.)

But, then, there was an unexpected surprise. Instead of the filmmaker, Harry himself showed up to do the Q & A. After watching him on the screen for over an hour, here he was in person—bouncing around taking questions and giving short but punchy sound bites that offered more info on financial crimes including tantalizing claims of major new investigations underway at the SEC.

l. asked him if Madoff’s recent interview for a book written by a Times reporter was credible in which he claimed that other banks were complicit with him. He claimed later that Madoff shouldn’t be believed but in this case he confirmed that he was right and that many big banks were in business with him, in Europe and the US, including JP Morgan Chase.

In the doc, they show the logos and exteriors of a number of banks but the film doesn’t explain why, He said he believes the banks are “too big to prosecute.”

He claimed that one reason that Bernie turned himself in was because he feared retaliation from “the Russians and Colombians”—presumably gangsters—who he cheated. He calculated that he would be safer in a prison cell. He was also protecting others from various feeder firms and his own operation who were part of the came.

He seemed to have opinions on everything but when I asked him about links to Israel—where the local press confirmed there were many participants his scheme, he said he knew nothing about it

He suggested that the Madoff family was involved because they invested little and took a lot.

He believes that the SEC has been reformed and indicated they have some major investigations under way.He also said that he is working on a number of big cases but didn’t reveal what they were.

In earlier public statements, he revealed a major pension fund fraud. USA Today reported his saying, “State Street and Bank of New York each stole billions of dollars from pension funds around the country, three-tenths of one percent off every transaction,” he said.

Pension funds are often major players in international investments and need foreign currency to complete those overseas transactions. Banks typically supply those currency services as part of a package of services for the pension funds’ business.”

When asked what we can do about all this corruption, he urged the audience to voted independent because he believes both major parties are corrupt to the core.

I saw the film with June Golden who comments:

“The only other thing that struck me was everyone–in the film and then in the audience–kept trying to call him a hero. He kept demurring. Correctly. He is an Honest Man. He was also a frustrated competitor, a competent accountant, a good Catholic school boy, and a good soldier. Unfortunately, he was a little too dull for mainstream media to buy his story.

He was correct to be scared and courageous to be dogged. But, as he rightly asserts, he did not prevail. Truth did, well, some truth somewhat, nudged along by the collapse of the stock market. That’s the only reason Madoff got exposed finally.

So what did this all show us. We need more honest men, greater vigilance of financial “managers”, better accounting practices, and lots of luck. We need to follow the money–earlier. We need more crusading journalists/newspapers/news dissectors willing to investigate and keep yelling until someone finally pays attention. We need to watch our asses and everybody else’s. We need to stop waiting for the lawyers.

Watching the film painstakingly tell Harry’s story you can’t help but suspect that the next would-be Madoff scumbag might just be lurking right outside the theater, hoping to get away with the one thing most of his co-conspirators did: huge crimes and no punishments. That made this experience really unsettling.”

NYT today: Banks Squeezing Consumers, Facing Problems

As Fortunes Dim, Banks Confront a Leaner Future

As government lifelines fade and a second recession seems increasingly possible, banks are finding their growth constrained, even as they add new costs for consumers.

ZNET, Media Benjamin, Commemoration for Dr. King An Embarrassment

The ceremonies for the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC were kicked off on August 24 at an event billed as Honoring Global Leaders for Peace. But some of those honored are a far cry from King’s beloved community of the poor and oppressed. The tribute to peacemakers, organized by the MLK National Memorial Foundation, was mostly a night applauding warmakers, corporate profiteers and co-opted musicians.

The night started out with great promise when MC Andrea Mitchell mentioned Dr. King’s brilliant anti-war speech Beyond Vietnam as a key to understanding the real Dr. King. And sure, there were a few wonderful moments—a song by Stevie Wonder, a speech about nonviolence by the South African Ambassador and a quick appearance by Jesse Jackson in which he managed to spit out a call to “study war no more.”

But most of the evening’s speakers and guests of honor had little to do with peacemaking. One of the dignitaries thanked at the start of the program was Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, representing a country that uses $3 billion a year in precious U.S. tax dollars to commit war crimes against Palestinians.

Must read: Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America from The Center for American Progress

Amy Goodman, Truthdig, D.C. Protests That Make Big Oil Quake

The White House was rocked Tuesday, not only by a 5.9-magnitude earthquake, but by the protests mounting outside its gates. More than 2,100 people say they’ll risk arrest there during the next two weeks. They oppose the Keystone XL pipeline project, designed to carry heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

A “keystone” in architecture is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the arch together; without it, the structure collapses. By putting their bodies on the line–as more than 200 have already at the time of this writing–these practitioners of the proud tradition of civil disobedience hope to collapse not only the pipeline, but the fossil-fuel dependence that is accelerating disruptive global climate change.

Bill McKibben was among those already arrested. He is an environmentalist and author who founded the group 350.org, named after the estimated safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of 350 ppm (parts per million-the planet is currently at 390 ppm). In a call to action to join the protest, McKibben, along with others including journalist Naomi Klein, actor Danny Glover and NASA scientist James Hansen, wrote the Keystone pipeline is “a 1,500-mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet.”

The movement to oppose Keystone XL ranges from activists and scientists to indigenous peoples of the threatened Canadian plains and boreal forests, where the tar sands are located, to rural farmers and ranchers in the ecologically fragile Sand Hills region of Nebraska, to students and physicians.

Asked why the White House protests are taking place while President Obama is away on a family vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, McKibben replied: “We’ll be here when he gets back too. We’re staying for two weeks, every day. This is the first real civil disobedience of this scale in the environmental movement in ages.”

RIP, Stetson Kennedy, 94

The LA Times wrote about this writer who I was honored to meet and infiltrated the KKK: Kennedy wrote that he gained entrance to the Klan by posing as an encyclopedia salesman and using the name of an uncle who was a Klan member. The book was rereleased in 1990 as “The Klan Unmasked.”

“Exposing their folklore — all their secret handshakes, passwords and how silly they were, dressing up in white sheets” was one of the strongest blows delivered to the Klan, Peggy Bulger, director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, told the Associated Press in 2007.

Letters:

Da’ud C Mohammed writes”

Did you hear the one about the dumb ass surfer who died?

I wanted to comment on your Libya discussion last Friday. Libya is a
neocon-PNAC and Israeli-Military Industrial Complex (defense
contractor) operation; i.e., GHWB-CIA (same) as usual, as inherited
from the same clowns that brought us Iran 1952, and Iraq 2003. The
latter: Operation Iraqi Liberation, or “oil” backfired – giving it
all back to the Iranians who turned out to be Fascist-types the likes
of Nazi Germany circa 1933. Not necessarily dangerous to the region
or to the rest of the world, Russia will see to that, but a menace to
ordinary Iranian people. There was an article this ayem about Iranian
lesbians. No picnic. So, what’s knew? The GHWB-CIA has co-opted NATO,
speaking of dangerous to the region and the rest of the world. Libya.
Syria. The Iranian people have about as much chance of stopping the
Iranian (substitute “Islamic”) Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) as the
rest of the world has of stopping the empire as defined by Tom
Engelhardt’s Chal Johnson at tomdispatch.com.

Of course, from my new way of looking at it, if we can topple the
Wall Street banks, we can cut off the funding to Israeli-Military
Industrial Complex (defense contractor) operations, and “empire” too?
Probably not. At least we have a better understanding now of who
we’re up-against and what’s up-against us.

OK. gotta go now, to watch Anderson Cooper standing out in your NY
rain…

Evan writes:

This is the first time I’ve ever sent a letter in support of an argument ever. Your (or invariably whichever assistant reads this) article was fantastic in al-Jazeera. I’ve worked in government and the media and recently started a game where I read a headline from The Onion or CNN and ask my neighbor which outlet wrote the headline (success rate is about 50-50). Either way, keep on keeping on!”

Ben McCall writes:

Enjoyed the article on Media Choice.

The worst of Democracy is it must make the clearly obvious mistake.

The best of Democracy is it will fix the error after it has been made.

Thus the Republican agenda will ride us into a deep Depression with intellect and reason sitting on the sidelines. The best that can happen in 2012 is to have a Republican President along with Republican majorities in both houses. When the economy craters, the Republicans will be relegated to a very minor party, and sanity will begin to fix the problem.

But other issues will likely compound the pending downslide that a simple change in political wisdom cannot readily address: First, climate change, already in effect but denied strongly on the Right, will devastate large swaths of immediate agricultural production, sending millions into starvation existence worldwide.

Second, and even more critical, best estimates for worldwide oil reserves suggests 40 years max, and then we are out of oil. However, it won’t take 40 years for the price of oil to escalate to the point where economic activity is critically hindered as supply diminishes and demand increases, and the cost of extraction skyrockets – unless anyone thinks that squeezing oil from shale will be the same cost per barrel as a good old fashioned gusher.

Where an oligarchy wins (China) and a democracy loses (U.S.A) is in the political inability to foresee the coming disaster, and do something about it. We are confined to short term economics based entirely on the four-year election cycle.”

So I am back from what was to be a media fast, surviving first an earthquake and then a hurricane. As a result it was hard to observe it fully.

Your comments to: dissector@mediachannel.org

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