28
Mar
Now The Senate Votes Against Bush On The War
SENATE BACKS HOUSE VOTE ON WAR
THE PAIN OF THE SUBPRIME SCANDAL
WATCHING PBS FRONTLINE WATCH THE NEWS
The Senate has now spoken according to CNN. Brace for more back talk and hostility from the warriors at the White House. CNN reported last night:
Defying President Bush, the Democratic-led Senate turned back a Republican attempt to remove a call for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq from a $124 billion war-spending bill, Tuesday.
Though the 50-48 vote is far short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, Democrats said the measure was a sign of growing support for bringing the four-year-old war to an end
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: WHY HICKS PLED GUILTY
Yesterday, I carried a report on the guilty plea filed by the Australian David Hicks who was jailed in Gitmo for years. What I failed to do was to report why he pled guilty because that little fact was missing in most of the US media accounts I saw. So was the fact that the Judge would not allow his two civilian lawyers to represent him.
Hmmm, whats going on. Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald filled in some of the blanks:
David Hicks pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge only to escape five years of “hell” at Guantanamo Bay, his father says.
The Adelaide-born man could be back in Australia by the end of the year after his shock decision to plead guilty to providing material support for terrorism.
Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since late 2001, was the first inmate at the US military prison in Cuba to plead guilty to a terrorism charge.
His father Terry and sister Stephanie met with Hicks for a total of three hours before the start of today’s military commission hearing, which heard the guilty plea.
Terry Hicks said his son’s admission was his only way out of the prison.
“He wants out,” Mr Hicks told ABC Radio.“It’s the only way it looks like he’s going to get out. No one’s going to help him, the Australian government couldn’t care, they don’t care.
“I believe they just want David to plead guilty regardless.
“It’s a way to get home, and that’s what he’s told us. He just wants to get home.
“He’s had five years of absolute hell and I think anyone in that position, if they were offered anything, they would possibly take it.”Mr Hicks lashed out at the Australian government, accusing Prime Minister John Howard of doing too little, too late to speed up the long judicial process his son had faced.
“All he kept doing was trying to speed up a process which was running its natural course anyway,” Mr Hicks said.“I think he could have been more forceful while David didn’t have any charges against him, to do something positive, and, I mean, to get him back to Australia and face a court system in Australia - not leave him to the dogs like he has and to be abused and mistreated for five years.”
US prosecutors had been seeking a 20-year sentence for Hicks, but say his surprise guilty plea will reduce the punishment they seek A prisoner transfer deal with the US means Hicks could serve out any sentence in an Australian jail.
Now that’s very different from the impression many media outlets conveyed—and I unfortunately fell for.
IRAQ: BEHIND THE SECTARIAN WAR
FAIR: Dahr Jamail on Free Speech TV “SouceCode” Gives Iraq Update with Exclusive Video from Baghdad
In this 10 minute piece, Dahr Jamail gives an Iraq update with exclusive video from Iraq. He describes some of the origins of the “sectarianism” that the US corporate media is so apt to point to when discussing the violence in Iraq, and shows how the US has been involved in fueling the sectarian tensions.
View the Streaming Flash file (30 megs)
MAIL & GUARDIAN: WHAT CHINA AND RUSSIA WANT FOR IRAN
The stand-off over Iran’s nuclear ambitions should be resolved exclusively through peaceful means, Russian and Chinese leaders said in a resolution signed in Moscow on Monday.
“Russia and China stress that the Iranian nuclear problem should be solved exclusively though peaceful means and negotiations,” Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a joint declaration signed during Hu’s visit to the Russian capital.
BRAD BLOG: Election Contest Decided by 3 Votes, Judge Refuses to Order Hand Count of Touch-Screen ‘Paper Records’
‘
Why would you have a paper record if you don’t count it?,’ Asks ‘Losing’ Candidate
Orange County, CA Court Decision to ‘Set Precedent’ According to Both Sets of Attorneys…The Los Angeles Times underscores everything that is wrong with relying on “paper trails” from Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting systems: Nobody ever counts them. Even in incredibly close contested elections as overseen by a court of law…
BUBBLES BURSTING
NY TIMES TODAY: BEYOND FORECLOSURES: RUINED CREDIT AND HOPES
Max Wolf writes on globalmacroscope.com about the economics of the Sub-Prime Crisis in the US Housing market:
The sub-prime mortgage market is in a state of flux. Risk reduction and sharing financial products are being stress tested and the results are unclear. Recent announcements by HSBC, New Century and others rattled volatility complacent investors. Rapid downward re-pricing has occurred and global contagion has emerged. A few weeks out, some smiles are evident as indexes have whip-sawed and jaw-boning has reassured. Others seem to see catastrophe on the horizon. We are in neither camp.
There are hundreds of billions in sub prime housing loans in the US market, estimates are around $1.5 trillion in total. Slowing house price appreciation calls into question repayment on some of these loans. The greater risks and lessons are symbolic. The sub-prime boom and the risks from a rapid deterioration in the market are much bigger than sub-prime. Questionable loans and the mis-allocating credit models that generated them are everywhere.
Trillions in managed speculative wealth seeks returns greater than traditional low risk assets offer. Global deregulation and consolidation of banks and financial intermediaries creates a world of opportunity. New risk and asset securitization innovations enable products to arise to meet the ravenous hunger that fuels a global credit boom. Risk re-distribution and re-pricing derivatives proliferate to “off-set” and safe-guard the rising exposure required. We may be on the brink of testing our new portfolio and solvency safety equipment.
Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns base cases call for sub prime national defaults of $200-$250billion over the next 2 years. This would translate into 1-2 million residential unit defaults. The next 22 months will see nearly a trillion dollars in adjustable rate mortgages resetting with $650 billion in sub prime….
The incident that has highlighted the problem of an over-mighty financial interest is the sub-prime mortgage scandal. One way of looking at what has happened over the past five years is that the innovative American financial services industry found a way of providing loans so that those on relatively low incomes could become part of a property-owningdemocracy.
The other way of looking at it is that a bunch of snake-oil salesmen, hucksters and crooks fleeced millions of vulnerable Americans in an attempt to (a) keep the housing bubble going; (b) make themselves fat commissions; (c) create new financial instruments that could be used as speculative plays on Wall Street; and (d) pick up property on the cheap when loans were foreclosed.
Wall Street’s influence was much diminished in the wake of the slump; there was less conspicuous consumption, a much diminished influence for the financial interest, curbs on capital, a more even division of the spoils. Now, the moneychangers are back, bigger and badder than ever.
