US-Backed Palestinian Security Forces ‘A Prescription for Civil War’

Published on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by Al-Jazeera-English

by Jon Elmer in Bethlehem

Abu Abdullah has never been charged with a crime, but he has been arrested by Palestinian security forces so many times in the past two years that he has lost count.

Allegations of misconduct have been made against Palestinian security services. (GALLO/GETTY)

He has been arrested at work, in the market, on the street, and, more than once, during violent raids by masked men who burst into his home and seized him in front of his family. 

Deep in the heart of the Deheishe refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem, Abu Abdullah describes in detail the beatings he has endured in custody, the numerous cold, sleepless nights in cramped and filthy cells, the prolonged periods bound in painful stress positions, and the long hours of aggressive questioning.

“The interrogations always begin the same way,” Abu Abdullah explains. “They demand to know who I voted for in the last election.”

Abu Abdullah is not alone. Since Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s caretaker government took power in Ramallah in June 2007, stories like Abu Abdullah’s have become commonplace in the West Bank.

The arrests are part of a wider plan being executed by Palestinian security forces – trained and funded by American and European backers – to crush opposition and consolidate the Fatah-led government’s grip on power in the West Bank.

An international effort

The government of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is bolstered by thousands of newly trained police and security forces whose stated aim is to eliminate Islamist groups that may pose a threat to its power – namely Hamas and their supporters.

Under the auspices of Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator, these security forces receive hands-on training from Canadian, British and Turkish military personnel at a desert training centre in Jordan.

The programme has been carefully coordinated with Israeli security officials.

Since 2007 the Jordan International Police Training Center has trained and deployed five Palestinian National Security Force battalions in the West Bank.

By the end of Dayton’s appointment in 2011, the $261mn project will see 10 new security battalions, one for each of the nine West Bank governorates and one unit in reserve.

Their aim is clear. Speaking before a House of Representatives subcommittee in 2007, Dayton described the project as “truly important to advance our national interests, deliver security to Palestinians, and preserve and protect the interests of the state of Israel”.

Others are even more explicit about what the force is for. When Nahum Barnea, a senior Israeli defence correspondent, sat in on a top-level coordinating meeting between Palestinian and Israeli commanders in 2008, he says he was stunned by what he heard.

“Hamas is the enemy, and we have decided to wage an all-out war,” Barnea quoted Majid Faraj, then the head of Palestinian military intelligence, as telling the Israeli commanders. “We are taking care of every Hamas institution in accordance with your instructions.”

After the takeover

When he arrived in the last days of 2005, Dayton’s assignment was to create a Palestinian security force ostensibly tasked with confronting the Palestinian resistance. The project began in Gaza.Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman at the time, explained Dayton’s role as “the real down in the weeds, blocking and tackling work of helping to build up the security forces”.

But within weeks of his arrival, things began to fall apart. Hamas’ decisive January 2006 election victory ushered in a crippling international blockade on the Palestinians in Gaza. Soon after, the security forces of Hamas and Fatah began fighting in the streets, culminating in Hamas’ June 2007 takeover of the enclave.

Dayton’s initial aims lay in tatters, and while Fayyad became prime minister in a ‘caretaker’ government in Ramallah, a new security strategy was formulated.

As a grim status-quo established itself in Gaza, Dayton’s new mission became clear. The job of the security coordinator was now “to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank,” according to Michael Eisenstadt, Dayton’s former plans officer.

A coordinated attack on Hamas’ civilian apparatus was launched immediately after the takeover in Gaza in June 2007. Major-General Gadi Shamni, the head of the Israeli army’s central command, led an initiative to target the base of Hamas’ support in the West Bank. The plan, dubbed the Dawa Strategy, involved pin-pointing Hamas’ extensive social welfare apparatus, the lynchpin of their popularity amongst many Palestinians.

Dr Omar Abdel Razeq, a former finance minister in the short-lived Hamas government, explains the effect this had. “When we talk about the infrastructure we are talking about the societies and the cooperatives and the institutions that were to help the poor,” he says. “They finished [off] the infrastructure of Hamas.”

Israeli Brigadier-General Michael Herzog, the chief of staff to Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, summed up the Israeli view of the project. “[Dayton's] doing a great job,” he said. “We’re very happy with what he’s doing.”

Torture allegations

The Dawa Strategy has seen more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed by Palestinian Authority (PA) forces. The arrests – though concentrated on Hamas and its suspected allies – have touched a broad swathe of Palestinian society, and all political factions.

They have targeted social workers, students, teachers, journalists. There have been regular raids on mosques, university campus’ and charities, and repeated allegations of torture carried out by US and European-funded security officers, including several deaths in custody.

In October, Abbas issued a decree against the most violent forms of torture used by his forces and replaced the interior minister, General Abdel Razak al-Yahya, a long-time US and Israeli partner, with Said Abu Ali.

While noting an improvement since the decree, human rights workers say the changes are not enough. “There is still no due process, still no legal justifications for many of the arrests and civilians are still being brought before military courts,” says Salah Moussa, an Independent Commission for Human Rights attorney.

Major-General Adnan Damiri, a spokesperson for the Palestinian security forces, acknowledged wrongdoing but attributed the acts to individuals and not to a policy.

“Sometimes there are officers or soldiers who have made mistakes in this way, with torture,” Damiri said. “But now we are punishing them.”

Damiri cited 42 cases of torture in the past three months that resulted in various forms of reprimand, including loss of rank. Six soldiers were dismissed for their acts.

But on the streets, the mood is darkening as the foreign-backed security services tighten their grip on the West Bank.

Naje Odeh, a leftist community leader in Deheishe who operates a thriving youth centre in the camp, characterised the security apparatus as akin to the US-allied regimes in Jordan and Egypt. “If you speak out, you are arrested,” he explains. “This behaviour will destroy our society.”

Odeh says the security forces carrying out the raids know that what they are doing is wrong. “Why are they masked?” he asks rhetorically. “Because we know these people. We know their families. They are ashamed of what they are doing.”

Some fear that the behaviour of the US and EU-trained security forces will spark potentially deadly confrontation.

“If they attack your mosques, your classrooms, your societies, you can be patient, but for how long?” a senior Islamist leader in the West Bank asks.

Abdel Razeq, the former Hamas finance minister, is more explicit in his predictions.

He says: “If the security forces insist on defending the Israelis, this is a prescription for civil war.”

© 2010 Al-Jazeera-English

Obama, The War President

Published on Monday, February 8, 2010 by The Albany Times-Union (New York)

by Helen Thomas

President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It’s called war.The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.

Where’s the change we can believe in?

Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither of which was ever fully explained or justified. Obama has merely picked up the sword that Bush left behind in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the struggle against terrorism, one might say, “Who cares?”

One group that cares consists of Americans who follow the rules and think we should honor all the treaties we have promoted and signed over the years.

The President gave short shrift to foreign policy in his State of the Union address, mentioning neither the lives lost nor the cost of the global hostilities that the U.S. has involved itself in. He also didn’t mention U.S. policies in the Middle East, though those are the root cause of many of our problems.

While U.S. special envoy George Mitchell has a hopeful outlook for the resumption of the stalemated talks between the Israelis and Palestinians after a year of trying, Obama seems to have temporarily thrown in the towel.

Obama said he was keeping his promise to leave Iraq by the end of August.

Meanwhile, frequent suicide bombings continue in that beleaguered country.

Afghanistan is a different story. U.S. forces there are involved in manhunts of al-Qaida and Taliban leaders. But the cost in civilian life is heavy when drones are used and whole families have been wiped out to get one suspected leader.

The U.S. seems to have convinced the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan that it’s their war too. The Washington Post said the loss of Hakimullah Mehsud has dealt a fatal blow to his followers.

The U.S. military web has spread to Yemen, where American intelligence teams have joined Yemeni troops in planning missions against al-Qaida elements. Scores have been killed there.

Then there’s the ramped-up U.S. saber-rattling toward Iran.

In his speech, Obama warned Iran of “consequences” if it didn’t play ball and co-operate on nuclear inspections. It’s unclear whether those consequences are of the financial variety or of a pre-emptive military strike by the U.S. or Israel.

All this comes at a time when the U.S. has bolstered its naval presence in the Persian Gulf and the neo-conservatives are calling for “regime change” in Iran.

But neo-con Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, sees the possibility of peaceful regime change in Iran. Organic regime change could change the Iranian equation, Kagan concludes in a Washington Post article.

Iran, reacting to Western pressure or from fear of an attack, recently offered to send its uranium abroad for enrichment for industrial use.

There are new tensions in other parts of the world. China is upset with the U.S. $6 billion-plus arms sale to its nemesis, Taiwan. China’s also irked at Google for its belated push-back against Chinese hacking into Google’s G-mail accounts.

So while the President’s Democratic base of support mutters about his abandonment of health reform and immigration reform, Obama can take solace in support from the Republican Party whenever he flexes U.S. military muscle.

And so this president takes his place among other U.S. chief executives who have sought the glory of leading the nation in military conflict. He has attained the desired status of “War President.”

© 2010 Albany Times-Union

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.  Among other books she is the author of Front Row at The White House: My Life and Times. 

Justice Thomas’ Reasoning — Dangerous for Democracy

Published on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by The Huffington Post

by Frances Moore Lappé

The normally closed Supreme Court opened a crack last week, as Clarence Thomas defended the 5-4 decision clearing away limits on corporate spending to influence elections.

“If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group,” he said, “you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association.” And “if all of you formed a partnership,” it would be the same.

Then he asks rhetorically, “But what if you put yourself in corporate form?” He implies the answer would not change. “It’s wrong,” he argues, to make any distinction. The “ultimate precedent is the Constitution.”

But, Justice Thomas, democracy itself depends on our making distinctions about who can influence political decisions, as the Court has done for many decades. (What about the 1933 Hatch Act curtailing political activity by government employees?)

And the most critical distinctions?

If I speak out as a citizen, or join with others and decide “to speak, just as a group,” I am choosing to further democratic decision making by adding my voice. Democracy’s foundation is the belief that citizens are able to deliberate and choose what is best for society as a whole. And indeed Americans often vote with this goal foremost–voting what they think is right, not necessarily in their narrow self-interest.

But if I form a corporation, or own shares in one, my purpose is utterly different. Partly, I seek to shield myself against personal financial liability and to enjoy other legal advantages for financial gain. These very different purposes and protections are among the reasons a corporation is not a citizen, nor is it a group of citizens; and why it cannot vote or sit on a jury, for example.

How can democracy permit an entity that cannot itself vote to have the power to sway voters and power over what a candidate might dare to say without risking a billion-dollar backlash?

You argue the Constitution is the “ultimate precedent.” But the Constitution doesn’t mention corporations, at the time they didn’t exist as independent entities. Within a few decades many founders, including Thomas Jefferson began to see how corporate power could subvert democracy. “I hope [that] we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations,” Jefferson said, “which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and [to] bid defiance to the laws of our country.” It seems inconceivable that founders would approve the corporate influence in elections that you have just approved.

You suggest that the Supreme Court majority is expanding freedom and core democratic values.

No.

The Court’s decision threatens my freedom to know that my purchases and investments don’t fund a corporation’s political speech to defeat my values. But this is the least of my freedoms lost.

The decision undermines my choice to be part of a democracy in which each of us can be heard, a voice not overwhelmed by entities whose resources rival those of whole nations, and whose interests lie not in a healthy democracy but in enhancing their markets. The Court’s decision also helps to deprive me of the freedom to choose among a range of political candidates far wider than those favored by our society’s vast concentrations of wealth. In a word, it deprives me of the very essence of democracy itself–effective voice and choice.

Citizens stunned by this assault on democracy are devising a range of response. Listening to them, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA), for example, is pursuing legislation to require broad consent by shareholders before a corporation can engage in political spending

Many Americans feel powerless in the face of such loss. We are not. One immediate step we can take right now step is to ensure passage of the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act–S.752, H.R.1826. It establishes a workable system of small donations combined with voluntary public financing for congressional races. It builds on an approach that’s already proven itself in three states. (Watch this inspiring example of its impact.) The Fair Elections approach has not been blocked by the Supreme Court. While it can’t avert all the threats embodied in the Count’s decision, it enables a candidate to run for office without becoming beholden to corporate money.

That is huge.

So let’s not allow the Justices’ dangerous logic to undermine democratic decision making America needs now more than ever. We can commit to choosing elected leaders who grasp what we’ve lost and would seat justices eager to reclaim the long precedent shielding us from this travesty. Right now, we can press our representatives to support the Fair Elections Now Act. We can back the excellent work, for example, of Change Congress Now, YouStreet, and Publiccampaign.org.

Copyright © 2010 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of Diet for a Small Planet. Visit www.smallplanet.org

Washington’s Greatest Afghan War Danger: Self-Deception

Published on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 by TomDispatch.com

by Tom Engelhardt

Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands.  Unmanned Aerial Vehicles — that is, pilot-less drones — shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in:  a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan “militants” have died.  The numbers are often remarkably precise.  Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from.  In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead.  They, too, tend to be precise. 

Don’t let that precision fool you.  Here’s the reality:  There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate.  Let’s just consider the CIA side of things.  Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness.  As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception.  There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value.  They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report — and the ongoing “success” of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest. 

Then, there’s history.  In the present drone wars, as in the CIA’s bloody Phoenix Program in the Vietnam era, the Agency’s operatives, working in distinctly alien terrain, must rely on local sources (or possibly official Pakistani ones) for targeting intelligence.  In Vietnam in the 1960s, the Agency’s Phoenix Program — reportedly responsible for the assassination of 20,000 Vietnamese — became, according to historian Marilyn Young, “an extortionist’s paradise, with payoffs as available for denunciation as for protection.”  Once again, the CIA is reportedly passing out bags of money and anyone on the ground with a grudge, or the desire to eliminate an enemy, or simply the desire to make some of that money can undoubtedly feed information into the system, watch the drones do their damnedest, and then report back that more “terrorists” are dead.  Just assume that at least some of those “militants” dying in Pakistan, and possibly many of them, aren’t who the CIA hopes they are.

Think of it as a foolproof situation, with an emphasis on the “fool.”  And then keep in mind that, in December, the CIA’s local brain trust, undoubtedly the same people who were leaking precise news of “successes” in Pakistan, mistook a jihadist double agent from Jordan for an agent of theirs, gathered at an Agency base in Khost, Afghanistan, and let him wipe them out with a suicide bomb.  Seven CIA operatives died, including the base chief. This should give us a grim clue as to the accuracy of the CIA’s insights into what’s happening on the ground in Pakistan, or into the real effects of their 24/7 robotic assassination program. 

But there’s a deeper, more dangerous level of deception in Washington’s widening war in the region: self-deception.  The CIA drone program, which the Agency’s Director Leon Panetta has called “the only game in town” when it comes to dismantling al-Qaeda, is just symptomatic of such self-deception.  While the CIA and the U.S. military have been expending enormous effort studying the Afghan and Pakistani situations and consulting experts, and while the White House has conducted an extensive series of seminars-cum-policy-debates on both countries, you can count on one thing: none of them have spent significant time studying or thinking about us. 

As a result, the seeming cleanliness and effectiveness of the drone-war solution undoubtedly only reinforces a sense in Washington that the world’s last great military power can still control this war — that it can organize, order, prod, wheedle, and bribe both the Afghans and Pakistanis into doing what’s best, and if that doesn’t work, simply continue raining down the missiles and bombs.  Beware Washington’s deep-seated belief that it controls events; that it is, however precariously, in the saddle; that, as Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal recently put it, there is a “corner” to “turn” out there, even if we haven’t quite turned it yet. 

In fact, Washington is not in the saddle and that corner, if there, if turned, will have its own unpleasant surprises.  Washington is, in this sense, as oblivious as those CIA operatives were as they waited for “their” Jordanian agent to give them supposedly vital information on the al-Qaeda leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas.  Like their drones, the Americans in charge of this war are desperately far from the ground, and they don’t even seem to know it.  It’s time for Washington to examine not what we know about them, but what we don’t know about ourselves.  Copyright 2010 Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.

Donors Reward Dems Who Pushed Public Option

Published on Friday, February 5, 2010 by Huffington Post

by Ryan Grim

Liberal bloggers have quietly raised nearly $90,000 in the past few days to reward three freshman House Democrats for organizing an effort to put the public health insurance option back into the Senate health care debate.

The three representatives — Chellie Pingree (Maine), Jared Polis (Colo.) and Alan Grayson (Fla.) — have so far received more than $20,000 each, with the rest going to Howard Dean’s Democracy for America group and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which organized the campaign and set up this website.

“It was easy to raise money for [the three members] because they did exactly what voters consistently say they want Democrats to do,” said PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor. “They fought for bigger change instead of smaller change, and by fighting for the public option they showed they were willing to directly challenge corporate power on behalf of everyday people.”

Grayson delivered a petition with tens of thousands of names to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) calling on him to re-insert the public option if he planned to make changes to the Senate bill using the majority-rule process known as budget reconciliation.

Pingree and Polis, meanwhile, circulated a letter calling on Reid to do the same. Some Democrats privately worried at the time that the letter would garner fewer than the 65 signatures that an earlier demand letter had pulled in and indicate fading support.

Instead, 117 members signed the letter, thanks in part to thousands of calls generated by PCCC, DFA and Credo Action to Democratic offices, urging them to sign. The action is an example of the kind of inside-outside coordination that progressives in Congress rarely engage in.

Still, it likely won’t be enough to sway the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on a conference call with bloggers this week. Instead, she said, the Senate is most likely going to conform to the deal that was struck between the White House, the Senate and the House before the Senate Democratic caucus lost its 60th vote.

“They have to do what they have to do to get whatever they need to move the process along,” Pelosi said. “I totally respect the process that they are going forward with and I also respect my members’ enthusiasm for initiatives that we felt strongly about in the House bill. I don’t know that that enthusiasm was shared across the board in all three elements of the negotiation.”

The enthusiasm for the freshman effort does show, at least, that there is a reward — beyond public support – for Democrats who push policies favored by the progressive base.

“The $60,000 we raised in 24 hours for these Healthcare Heroes is an example of how the Democratic base rewards bold leadership and those willing to fight for a public option,” said DFA’s political director Charles Chamberlain. “It’s time for Washington insiders to wake up to the fact that following Joe Lieberman’s lead will depress the Democratic base in 2010 and result in big losses, while following the lead of these Healthcare Heroes will fire up Obama voters who still want real change.” © 2010 Huffington Post

Obama Administration Knew Foreclosure Program Wasn’t Working Right, Did Nothing

Published on Thursday, February 4, 2010 by Huffington Post

by Shahien Nasiripour

Even as the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure-prevention program has foundered, Treasury Department officials have known that a key driver in keeping people in their homes in the long run is reducing mortgage principal, senior Treasury advisor Seth Wheeler told the Huffington Post. Wheeler is one of the architects of the administration’s housing plan.

But rather than pressure the mortgage companies to start reducing the amount mortgage-holders owe, the administration simply sat back and hoped servicers would do it on their own.

“When the administration came into office last year, from the get-go, it has certainly been aware of the link between negative equity and challenges in housing,” said Wheeler. “As the administration initially designed the modification program last year, it was aware of negative equity, was aware that some servicers were doing principal reductions.”

But the administration “specifically had designed the program to allow principal reductions without taking a position of where principal reductions would be most advantageous,” he said.

So for the past year, the administration had a policy of “rather than us endorsing a uniform approach to principal reductions, let’s give flexibility to servicers and hope that they do it on their own in the right circumstances,” Wheeler said.

Now that the program has been universally panned, the administration is working on ways to be more assertive on that point, he said.

In the meantime, mortgage delinquency rates and foreclosures have continued to rise. The number of homeowners “underwater” — those owing more on their mortgage than the home is worth — now stands at roughly 11 million, about a quarter of all mortgage holders, according to real estate research firm First American CoreLogic. It’s expected to increase.

“Negative equity is the single most important driver of defaults,” Laurie S. Goodman, senior managing director at Amherst Securities and a top mortgage bond analyst, said Tuesday during a panel discussion at the American Securitization Forum’s annual conference.

Wheeler, who was on the panel, listened for an hour as mortgage experts lambasted the administration’s foreclosure-prevention efforts, saying it’s been inadequate; will ultimately be ineffective in its current form; and doesn’t address the underlying causes driving foreclosures. In short, as it’s currently constructed, it’s destined to fail.

“Clearly negative equity creates — especially for borrowers that have a financial hardship and have a high LTV [loan-to-value ratio], a very high LTV — a complicating factor, and it certainly makes it more challenging to make a modification work for borrowers,” Wheeler told HuffPost.

In an interview, Wheeler said the administration is trying “to understand how to encourage more principal reductions.”

Less than 10 percent of permanent modifications under the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program have involved principle reductions.

“I won’t take a position on whether there’s been too much or too little, but we are studying if it is being used as effectively as it should be,” Wheeler said. “There could be better outcomes.” Referencing those mortgages that have been sliced and diced and sold to investors, Wheeler said the administration “is encouraging more principal reductions in instances where we find that it would maximize recovery to investors.”

Simply reducing interest rates for five years, which the Obama administration’s program does for homeowners who transition out of three-month trial periods, is “a purely temporary modification [that] ultimately doesn’t solve the problem,” said Micah Green, a partner at Patton Boggs LLP, a Washington law firm that represents a mortgage-investor group of asset managers who hold more than $100 billion in residential mortgage-backed securities.

Without principal reductions, “there is a growing realization within the administration and on Capitol Hill that it’s very difficult to bottom out the housing market,” Green said.

“The interests of investors are totally aligned with those of homeowners,” he added. “Investors are willing to put money on the table and frankly take their losses, which they already have.”

Wheeler acknowledged that, from an economic perspective, principal cuts are the way to go.

“Certainly on both second [lien mortgages] and first [lien mortgages], principal reductions can actually reduce total losses from an economic perspective [and] from a finance perspective,” he said.

The administration is also under pressure because losses on AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities are growing.

These securities were designed so that different classes of investors got different rates of return depending on the risk they were willing to take. Those who agreed to take on the first losses, for example, got higher rates of return.

But increasingly over the past few months, the amount owed to investors has begun to eclipse the value of the mortgage principal in the securities, said Alan M. White, a professor at Valparaiso University School of Law and an expert on mortgage-backed securities and housing issues. Those at the bottom rung — the ones who agreed to take first losses — had already taken their lumps as homeowners fell behind on payments or defaulted. Now it’s investors at the top of the food chain who are recording losses.

White said that is creating a growing sense of urgency among investors to do something now to keep homeowners in their homes so they can keep making their monthly payments, which go to investors.

Despite the fact that many experts — including some in the administration — agree that principal cuts are the best way to resolve the foreclosure crisis, there are impediments.

Wheeler said issues of fairness are complicating efforts. So is moral hazard, a theory that posits that when people enjoy the fruits of their actions without having to suffer any of the consequences they do it more. It’s something Treasury officials have repeated on conference calls with reporters when discussing the administration’s foreclosure-prevention efforts.

“Not just in a general sense,” Wheeler said. Specifically, he pointed out, “there are many analysts on Wall Street who say do not reduce principal because anything you do to encourage borrowers to behave differently, so as to obtain a certain outcome, that could actually encourage more delinquencies.”

But that’s not the real problem, said one mortgage expert. It’s politics.

“They’ve been preoccupied with this whole moral hazard idea. The administration has been obsessed with it,” White said. “It’s more of a political hazard issue.”

White argues that the administration is scared of the political fallout if some homeowners are seen as being bailed out by the government while their neighbors struggle. After hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were used to bail out banks and the financial system — a tab that could reach into the trillions — moral hazard should no longer be a concern, White says.

Asked if the housing situation has deteriorated to a point where moral hazard should no longer be an issue, Goodman of Amherst Securities said: “I think so.”

White points out there are ways to ensure only the most deserving homeowners catch a break. On that point, Wheeler agreed.

As White put it: “They’re going to lose the ability to be in denial very soon.”

© 2010 Huffington Post

Bring Back Van Jones! Blindsiding Clean Energy With Dirty Coal

Published on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

by Jeff Biggers

I miss Van Jones. A lot of us miss President Obama’s former green jobs visionary.

That includes coal miners, and residents on Coal River Mountain.

If President Obama’s brilliant green jobs administrator hadn’t been hounded out of office in a bizarre witch hunt last fall, we would be engaged in an exciting discussion about pursuing a just transition to a clean energy economy at ground zero in our nation’s energy policy and climate debate–the coalfields.

While clean energy jobs are a hot topic in the President’s vision–and State of the Union–Van Jones was one of a few administrators in Washington, DC, who also envisioned a fair share of green jobs for the Big Coal-strangled coalfields in Appalachia, the Midwest and the West, not just the rest of the country.

Last week, the President spoke about the need for a transition in West Virginia’s coalfields–by calling for more coal and the new bridge to nowhere in the guise of carbon capture and storage. He declared:

“For example, nobody’s been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. In testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.”

And then the President offered:

“What I want to do is with West Virginia to figure out how we can seize that future. But to do that, that means there’s going to have to be some transition. We can’t operate the coal industry in the United States as if we’re still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the 1950s. We’ve got to be thinking, what does that industry look like in the next hundred years?”

Next hundred years? Even West Virginia Congressman and Big Coal peddler Nick Rahall has openly discussed the issue of Appalachia facing a “peak coal” crisis within 20 years.

In the President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the entire state of Kentucky, for example, only received $4.7 million in green job funds and initiatives–while billions of dollars continue to be poured into the Big Coal black hole to cover external health care and environmental costs, including defaulted black lung payments.

A study released by the National Academy of Scientists in October found that the “hidden costs” of coal amount to more than $62 billion in “external damages” to our health and lives. According to a West Virginia University report this year, the coal industry “costs the Appalachian region five times more in early deaths than it provides in economic benefits.” A recent Mountain Association of Community Economic Development study concluded that coal is responsible for $528 million in state revenues and $643 million in state expenditures in Kentucky alone.

While Kentucky ranks 46-47th in per capita income, coal mining hubs like Clay, Harlan and Martin County rank as some of the poorest counties in the nation.

Thanks to mountaintop removal mining and greater mechanization, employment in these coalfield areas has dropped by nearly 50 percent in the last generation.

A year ago at the Powershift clean energy conference in Washington, DC, Jones declared: “This movement also has to include the coal miners.” He added. “We could have clean coal, and we could have unicorns pull our cars for us.”

While our President continues to carry Jones’ clean energy banner, he still glibly clings to “clean coal” slogans, a motto introduced by Chicago coal pusher Francis Peabody in the 1890s, and used over the past century whenever the coal industry faces an image problem and seeks to derail any diversification in our coalfield economies.

In 2008, Jones noted:

“I think it’s important that we be respectful of all the contributions that have been made by all workers. Even our coal workers are heros in a way… in that they’ve been asked to sacrifice their lungs, their health, their communities. We’re now asking our coal miners to blow up their grandmother’s mountains! Awful… Mountain top removal and strip-mining… Those coal miners don’t set the energy policy in this country but they have to make the sacrifices to carry it out. I think that sometimes we aren’t respectful enough, that we’re not as encouraging and honoring of the people who have gotten America to this point.”

Van Jones understood, like the majority of coalfield residents not on the payroll of a coal company, that mountaintop removal mining–and strip mining, in general–have blindsided any progress for sustainable economic development and clean energy jobs in Appalachia, and other coal mining regions.

Just ask residents fending off mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley today.

As blasting continues daily at the Bee Tree Branch area of the massive 6,600-acre mountaintop removal mine on historic Coal River Mountain today, our nation’s most exciting clean energy initiative and green jobs breakthrough for the coalfields is being destroyed. Coal River Mountain is being blown to bits, and with it, any sustainable economic future for the area. Unlike the limited 14-year supply of coal on the site, the Coal River Wind project would have provided long-term energy for 70,000-150,000 households, an estimated 200 jobs and $1.7 million in annual county taxes.

Says Eric Mathis of the JOBS project in Mingo County, West Virginia:

“Sustainable economic development not only needs to start in the coalfields but has to start in the coalfields if only for the fact that America has a long standing commitment to operating within the boundaries of democracy. Boundaries which seek to limit the monopolization of markets and more importantly peoples choice. For this reason America owes coalfield residents a choice to decide their own fate. Sustainable economic development provides a viable choice that shatters the 150 year legacy of a monopolized workforce. As our great county transitions to a carbon neutral economy we owe coalfield residents our greatest and sincere respect for building our country and bringing us through two world wars. For this reason, the JOBS project intends to show respect to these communities by providing a choice for what type of development they want to see.”

Van Jones would be standing at Coal River Mountain today, as part of Clean Energy Week. He would have made sure that the coalfields–in Appalachia, the heartland and the West–were included in the clean energy future.

Jeff Biggers is the author of The United States of Appalachia, and more recently, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (The Nation/Basic Books).

Don’t Call It a ‘Defense’

Published on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Don’t Call It a ‘Defense’ Budget

by Norman Solomon

This isn’t “defense.”

The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day.

Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.

“Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors,” the New York Times reports this morning (February 2).

It isn’t defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for healthcare, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit . . .

“When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer,” Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. “We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don’t even get good oleo. These are facts of life.”

At least Lyndon Johnson had a “war on poverty.” For a while anyway, till his war on Vietnam destroyed it.

Since then, waving the white flag at widespread poverty — usually by leaving it unmentioned — has been a political fact of life in Washington.

Oratory can be nice, but budget numbers tell us where an administration is headed. In 2010, this one is marching up a steep military escalator, under the banner of “defense.”

Legitimate defense would cost a mere fraction of this budget.

By autumn, the Pentagon is scheduled to have a total of 100,000 uniformed U.S. troops — and a comparable number of private contract employees — in Afghanistan, where the main beneficiaries are the recruiters for Afghan insurgent forces and the profiteers growing even richer under the wing of Karzai-government corruption.

After three decades of frequent carnage and extreme poverty in Afghanistan, a new influx of lethal violence is arriving via the Defense Department. That’s the cosmetically named agency in charge of sending U.S. soldiers to endure and inflict unspeakable horrors.

New waves of veterans will return home to struggle with grievous physical and emotional injuries. Without a fundamental change in the nation’s direction, they’ll be trying to resume their lives in a society ravaged by budget priorities that treat huge military spending as sacrosanct.

“At $744 billion, the military budget — including military programs outside the Pentagon, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons management — is a budget of add-ons rather than choices,” says Miriam Pemberton at the Institute for Policy Studies. “And it makes the imbalance between spending on military vs. non-military security tools worse.”

Of course the corporate profits for military contractors are humongous.

The executive director of the National Priorities Project, Jo Comerford, offers this context: “The Obama administration has handed us the largest Pentagon budget since World War II, not including the $160 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The word “defense” is inherently self-justifying. But it begs the question: Just what is being defended?

For the United States, an epitaph on the horizon says: “We had to destroy our country in order to defend it.”

As new sequences of political horrors unfold, maybe it’s a bit too easy for writers and readers of the progressive blogosphere to remain within the politics of online denunciation. Cogent analysis and articulated outrage are necessary but insufficient. The unmet challenge is to organize widely, consistently and effectively — against the warfare state — on behalf of humanistic priorities.

In the process, let’s be clear. This is not a defense budget. This is a death budget.

Norman Solomon is national co-chair of the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com

What I Have Learned Doing Civil Disobedience for Single Payer

Published on Monday, February 1, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

by Carol Paris

“People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave.”  –Howard Zinn   

Well, that quote pretty well sums up “what to do.”  But my biggest challenge is “how.”  Specifically, how do I neutralize some pretty powerful fear? 

I was scared Friday when I joined Margaret Flowers to attempt to deliver a message to the President.  My thoughts raced.  We’re talking secret service.   

“How do I get myself into these things?” 

“This is crazy.” 

“This is pointless.” 

“I can’t even make sensible statements; I know what I want to say but I’m so nervous.” 

“Other people are so much more knowledgeable and speak so much more eloquently.”

“But I am doing it!” 

We stood in front of the Harbor Hotel in Baltimore clutching a banner that read “Letting you know.  Medicare for all” and Margaret’s letter for the President written in response to his appeal for solutions to health reform.  The hotel manager, police and secret service surrounded us and asked us to move. 

If you watch the video, you’ll see that there was a point, a moment, which felt suspended in time, when Margaret looked at me and I looked at her and we both knew “we ain’t goin’ across the street.” 

The feeling associated with that awareness was not fear, or anger, or self-righteous indignation.  It was a feeling of quiet liberation.  The things I was saying to myself, thoughts powerful enough to imprison me in a jailhouse of fear, had been neutralized.  In their place was a calm determination to trust my intuition.   

My gut told me “so be it.  You’re doing the best you can.  This is a no-brainer.  Gotta do it.  Margaret and I have been needing some quiet time to catch-up; might as well be in a police station.” 

My gut has a great sense of humor. 

Fear overcomes me when I listen to my head; calm enfolds me when I listen to my gut. 

So, for what it is worth, here are few tips for “doing cd for Single Payer”: 

1. Ignore your head.  That means, all those familiar thoughts that leave you feeling fearful and bad.

1. Listen to your gut.  You know it’s your gut talking if you start feeling calmness, clarity, and quiet determination.

1. We need people engaging in “gut-driven” cd to right all kinds of wrongs.  Be authentic; for many of us, the gut issue is Medicare For All.  If yours is the environment, then do cd for that. 

1. Don’t try this alone.  Take a friend. Or several.

1. Do the best you can.  Speak from your heart.  Once you’re in handcuffs, the worst is over.  The “authorities” aren’t your enemy; most will treat you respectfully and the ones who don’t are just having a bad day.  Don’t take it personally.

1. I like to take a “token” with me, tucked in my pocket with my driver’s license. For me, it’s a picture of my grandchildren and the holy card from my father’s funeral.  It reminds me that he would be proud of me and that I’m doing this for the people who inspire me–my family and my patients.

1.  If you have the choice of doing cd in the winter or the summer, definitely choose summer!  Wear layers either way because it’s cold in jail.

Remember that we all have talents to contribute.  Without Bill Hughes taking the video, our action wouldn’t have been as fruitful.  Without Kevin Zeese, we’d have worried about our families and “legal stuff.”  Without Mark Almberg, we wouldn’t have a press release.  Without researchers like David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, we wouldn’t have compelling data to support us.  We draw support from each other. 

As Margaret Mead said:  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”     

Dr. Carol Paris is one of the “Baucus 8″ and a psychiatrist in Leonardtown, Maryland.

‘Peace Prize’ President Submits Largest War Budget Ever

Published on Monday, February 1, 2010 by Reuters

Obama Seeks Record $708 Billion in Defense Budget

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress to approve a record $708 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2011, including a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon’s base budget and $159 billion to fund U.S. military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The White House budget request also included $33 billion in additional funding for fiscal 2010 to pay for increasing military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and drawing down U.S. forces in Iraq. That comes on top of $129.6 billion already provided for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30. 

The Pentagon’s base budget request of $549 billion is up $18 billion from $531 billion in fiscal 2010, and will pay for continued reforms of defense acquisitions, development of a ballistic missile defense system and care of wounded soldiers.

The budget also calls for cancellation of several major weapons programs, including Boeing Co’s C-17 transport plane, saving $2.5 billion, and a second engine for the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jet, saving $465 million in fiscal 2011 and more than $1 billion longer-term. The White House tried to kill both programs last year, but lawmakers revived them during the budget process.

The second engine is being developed by General Electric Co and Britain’s Rolls-Royce as an alternate to the main engine built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp.

The proposed budget also kills plans for development of a new Navy cruiser, scraps plans to replace the Navy’s EP-3 intelligence aircraft and halts work on a missile early-warning satellite, opting instead to upgrade the Space Based Infrared System satellite already being developed by Lockheed.

The budget proposal also calls for a delay in replacing two new Navy command and control shops until after 2015, a move the White House said would save $3.8 billion across the Pentagon’s five-year defense plan. The Navy had planned to buy one command ship in 2012, and a second one in 2014.

Procurement of a new amphibious vehicle being built by General Dynamics Corp for the Marine Corps would be delayed by one year, saving $50 million in fiscal 2011 and cutting risk by allowing more time for testing.

The Pentagon also said it would further reduce its use of high-risk contracts in areas that related to time, material and labor hours by 17 percent through the end of 2011.

The budget underscored the administration’s commitment to a “robust defense against emerging missile threats,” saying it would pay for use of increasingly capable sea- and land-based missile interceptors and a range of sensors in Europe.

The Pentagon’s budget continues to fund new weapons already under development, including the F-35 fighter, a new ballistic missile submarine, a new family of ground vehicles and the P-8 surveillance aircraft built by Boeing.

It will also pay for more unmanned planes, helicopters, electronic warfare capabilities and cybersecurity measures.

Overall, the budget includes $112.8 billion for weapons procurement, up from $104.8 billion in fiscal 2010, and $76 billion for research and development, down from $80 billion.

Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn

© 2010 Reuters