The Senate just passed an $789 billion stimulus package, but parts of it are already scaring hell out of web users.
The devil may or may not be in the details, as broadbandreports.com explains:
Consumer advocate group Public Knowledge issued an alert saying that Democrat Dianne Feinstein was trying to sneak copyright filters into the bill (it's not clear if she was successful).
Consumer advocate group Free Press issued a statement applauding the fact that grant money in both bills [the House and Senate versions] still requires carriers to hold fast to network openness.
Plans are moving apace to purposely set up a "toxic bank" full of poisonous assets to further bail out those banks that had greedily and recklessly accumulated them.
Call it Shitibank. And give it the naming rights to the new baseball stadium for the New York Mets, taking the moniker away from toxic Citibank.
No joke. As Ground Zero reminds us of 9/11, ShitiField would serve as a monument to the global financial meltdown caused by New Yorkers. ShitiField would remind us to burst any future Wall Street bubbles before they blow up in our faces.
And, once the toxic bank is up and running, we proles can move our non-existent pension money to it. But don't count on driving a new Nissan to the new bank: Even if you could afford to buy one, Nissan can't afford to keep its factories open to manufacture one.
What's really going to happen this week sounds just as far-fetched, but it's not: Many investors on Wall Street don't want the market to recover. They want it to hit bottom so they can start buying shares and companies again.
Bigwig Ray Dalio of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates tellsBarron's:
"Buying equities and taking on those risks in late 2009, or more likely 2010, will be a great move because equities will be much cheaper than now. It is going to be a buying opportunity of the century."
Meanwhile, corporate welfare is humming along, as government's sudden socialists are coming to the rescue of capitalism. Heartwarming, especially for the likes of Nissan, which, as the Wall Street Journalreports, plans to "seek government assistance from Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere."
And now the rescue plan for America calls for a combination of the toxic bank and encouragement by the government for hedge funds to profit from the grief by expanding their investments (instead of the government's clawing back ill-gained profits from hedge funds). And don't worry about Wall Street's top execs: All the scoldings by President Barack Obama won't stop them from making their big bucks. See? The free-market system does work.
At least we know that defense contractors will make it through the depression in good shape. Bibi Netanyahu is about to reclaim control of Israel, and that will signal that, as the BBC reports, "Israel is shifting to the right" and, as the Daily News says, "a harder line is coming with Israel's Arab neighbors."
Could the line get any harder, you ask?
While you're investing in weapons makers or just waiting to pour your money back into the market or snap up some ailing companies, click on these...
This week we'll see a knock-down, drag-out battle between Obama, Geithner and the Senate who want to keep the market from falling, and the market itself which wants to drop precipitously.
As Seth Meyers pointed out on Saturday Night Live, Kellogg Company's image is closer to that of bong-smoking Olympian Michael Phelps than the cereal maker likes to admit.
Kellogg's Keebler Elves, after all, "live together in a treehouse and do nothing all day but think of new things to put cheese on."
Wall Street helped produce the global financial and economic crisis. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a revised bailout plan for the banking system, policy makers hope Wall Street can be part of the solution.
Administration officials said the plan to be announced Tuesday was likely to depend in part on the willingness of private investors other than banks — like hedge funds, private equity funds and perhaps even insurance companies -- to buy the contaminating assets that wiped out the capital of many banks.
For many high school seniors who are applying to college in the midst of an economic meltdown, Cooper Union's commitment to full scholarships -- regardless of need -- has given the institution an almost mythic allure....
While many of the nation's elite colleges underwrite the education of poor students, Cooper is among a handful of private colleges that are tuition-free for everyone (it does not, however, pay for room and board, though financial aid is available for living expenses).
Another Bank Bailout: On Monday, Treasury Secretary Geithner is due to announce the next phase in a long series of government bailouts for banks. The leaks about the plan thus far have indicated a hybrid approach using elements of a "bad bank" and more government guarantees on bank assets. The price action of Bank of America and Citigroup does not inspire confidence in the market's reaction to previously announced government guarantees of toxic bank assets.
If the regulators hope to bring stability to the markets, they might want to consider leaving the rules unchanged for more than two weeks at a time.
A 21-year-old autistic man perished and his grandmother was left fighting for her life as flames engulfed their 17th-floor East Harlem apartment yesterday morning, police said.
The stimulus plan emerging in Washington could offer an unprecedented, multibillion-dollar boost in financial help for college students trying to pursue a degree while they ride out the recession.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, who is poised to be swept back into power Monday, declared Sunday he would not give up the strategic Golan Heights, signaling a harder line is coming with Israel's Arab neighbors.
Casino operator MGM Mirage says a tax break for forgiven debt is a good way for Congress to stimulate the U.S. economy; Granite Construction Inc. favors more money for roads and bridges; General Motors Corp. wants incentives for car buyers.
Critics are skeptical of gains cited by school officials at an Assembly hearing Friday on whether mayoral control of the school system should continue.
The Obama administration is considering turning to a new program run by the Fed that depends heavily on hedge funds to jump-start the financial system.
Mayor Bloomberg came to a Queens banquet hall Sunday like a man looking to woo a lover he once spurned, sweet-talking a roomful of Republicans to take him back. It didn't work.
The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom's top cleric saying that it's OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.
"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."...
Late last month, a Saudi judge refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.
The judge, Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib, rejected a petition from the girl's mother, whose lawyer said the marriage was arranged by her father to settle a debt with "a close friend." The judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.
More than 70 percent of firefighters who retired in the past five years did so on disabilities - hiking the cost of taxpayer-funded FDNY pensions to nearly $1 billion a year, a Post analysis shows. At the same time, a rise in final-year overtime racked up by firefighters - even those retiring on disabilities - has boosted pension costs...
A law firm with bankruptcy expertise, three capital-markets lawyers and an investment bank are advising the U.S. government on how to restructure General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, two people involved in the work said.
The present and impending disorder of the automobile companies is a reminder, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, of the desolation of the Great Depression. It is a reminder, too, of economic history, or of the rise and decline of industrial destinies.
The Great Depression of the 1930s created hardship and suffering among millions of Americans. It also created populist resentment of elites. Among the many signs of this anger was the astonishing popularity of Huey P. Long, governor of Louisiana and then U.S. senator, a figure so dominant in his own state that his enemies called him a dictator. But to the ordinary people of Louisiana -- and later to millions of ordinary people across the U.S. -- Mr. Long was a heroic figure, fighting for the "common man" and challenging the right of elites to monopolize power and wealth....
Every Sunday night, New York bankruptcy lawyer Marshall Huebner spends a 13-hour shift on call as an emergency medical technician. His day job involves work on another sort of rescue: The government's $152.5 billion bailout of American International Group Inc.
After six months of deliberating whether to buy a car, Mumbai real-estate agent Abraham Mathew took out a 300,000 rupee ($6,200) loan to buy a Suzuki Motor Corp. sedan. The clincher: a 20 percent drop in interest rates.
To try to counter the sickening economic news, remember another horror story that actually had a happy ending.
Sully Sullenberger knows what "sickening" feels like, although his voice in the above cockpit recording doesn't reveal it. Now, Sully is talking in detail about his astounding, life-saving jet landing on January 15 in the Hudson River, as the Postreports this morning:
First came the bird strike. Then everything went dead silent.
"It was the worst, sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling I've ever felt in my life," hero pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III told CBS's 60 Minutes, according to excerpts released yesterday.
"I knew immediately it was very bad," he said in the interview, set to air Sunday at 7 p.m.
When asked if he wondered how he could get the crippled plane down safely, Sullenberger said he was just stunned.
"My initial reaction was one of disbelief," he said.
And now for some bad news that only seems unbelievable...
A Pakistani court declared disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan free on Friday, ending five years of house arrest for the man at the center of the world's most serious proliferation scandal.
Khan, lionized by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in 2004, but was immediately pardoned by the government, although his movements were restricted to effective house arrest.
The massive $900 billion stimulus bill making its way through Congress would require the feds to purchase up to 100,000 uniforms for the Transportation Security Administration and other Department of Homeland Security workers — a provision critics say won't do anything to spark the economy.
The fall of Boaz Weinstein, once one of Wall Street's hottest traders, speaks volumes about why financial firms still are reeling from the shattered global markets.
Bill Moyerstalks with two Times reporters last September about Wall Street's meltdown.
Almost lost amid the usual knee-jerk preaching to the choir that is the 21st century Nation are a couple of excellent stories — one of them scolds Barack Obama for relying on such dubious characters as economist/erstwhile Harvard prexy Larry Summers, and the other roasts Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
In "Never Say You're Sorry,"Christopher Hayes points out the clay feats of Obama economic-world appointees Summers and Gary Gensler.
What's more, the defamation of Moyers escalated further. Following Foxman's fusillade, New York Times neocon William Kristol inserted in a regular column--yet another devoted as usual to the majesty of George W. Bush's leadership--an attack on Moyers for allegedly "lambast[ing] Israel for what he called its 'state terrorism,' its 'waging war on an entire population' in Gaza." Like Foxman, Kristol also implied that Moyers was guilty of racism.
Again, read the text of Moyers's remarks. Neither Kristol nor Foxman notes his stated belief that "every nation has the right to defend its people. Israel is no exception, all the more so because Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead," or his deep concern about the growth of "a radical stream of Islam [that] now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth."
Yet despite the fact that Bill Moyers is, well, Bill Moyers, the Times editors not only allowed Kristol to deliberately distort and decontextualize his remarks; they would not allow Moyers to defend himself in his own words in response. After the PBS journalist submitted a letter to the editor, he was told, "We will not print that 'William Kristol distorts or misrepresents,' and the editors will not budge." They insisted that the letter be changed for publication to read, "I take strong exception to William Kristol's characterization," and they truncated much else.
Hmmm...Kristol has exited the Times's op-ed page. He probably wanted to pursue other opportunities.
Hayes's lively piece on Obama's appointees even throws in a couple of apt sports metaphors. More importantly, Hayes dredges up some valuable history regarding both Gensler and Summers.
In doing so, he doesn't spare the Clinton Administration from its disastrous destruction of the Glass-Steagall Act, a strict banking law from the last Depression that, had it remained in place, would probably have prevented Wall Street from creating the current Depression.
Softly swayed by seemingly selfless actions, those charmed by the Clinton charisma do not recall that the Clintons helped to create the financial debacle the electorate now experiences. An audience content with celebrity, dazzled by a drama, and grateful for fiscal favors sees no reason to reflect upon what might have been had the Clintons not repealed the Glass-Steagall and Bank Holding Company Acts.
Good for the New York Times! Always trying to take a broad view (even when one doesn't exist, as Jack Shafer often points out), the paper weighs in on how the plight of Bernie Madoff's white-haired victims gives us valuable insights about the global meltdown with this morning's "Fossils of Largest Snake Give Hint of Hot Earth."
Good info that the "prehistoric snake" was "a giant relative of today's boa constrictors." The elderly Madoff wasn't the first, nor will he be the last, snake to swallow your money. Wall Street is really is a dangerous place, even for celebrities — see the latest list of Madoff's victims.
Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos's testimony yesterday on Capitol wasn't quite as colorful, but the bookish-yet-tigerish accountant was pretty damn intense, as I previously noted.
Among other fascinating details, Markopolos told the dazed House members that he planned to deliver to the SEC today a "mini-Madoff." The agency is sure to accept this silver platter with respect and care.
President Barack Obama, on the other hand, is showing me no respect with his $500,000 limit on CEO pay ( VIDEO). To get a bailout, I have to limit my pay? I don't think so.
New York's top banking firms went on a multimillion lobbying spree late last year -- just as the feds were crafting a $700 billion rescue plan for struggling banks.
The banks got an extraordinary return on their investment, as they got federal cash injections that were thousands of times larger than what they spent trying to influence Congress and the administration - which doled out the cash.
In a high-profile reversal of the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday the government is scrapping the leases of 77 parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah's redrock country.
When President Barack Obama launches his version of the faith-based initiative Thursday, he will expand the mission to include abortion reduction and outreach to the Muslim world. He will also try to avoid the thorniest constitutional issues that beset the program for years under his predecessor.
Mr. Obama's approach to the federal faith office reflects his search for common ground on contentious social issues, and his willingness to dial back some of his campaign positions.
A federal judge charged with slapping his wife hired a big shot defense attorney as he faces a misdemeanor charge that could land him in the clink.
James Peck, 63, the bankruptcy judge overseeing the breakup of Lehman Brothers, hired Barry Bohrer, a prominent criminal defense lawyer whose clients have included Sam Israel, the hedge fund swindler who went on the lam last summer after faking his own suicide to avoid a 20-year jail term.
Peck, who was briefly assigned to handle the Bernard Madoff bankruptcy until he recused himself in December, told cops when they came to his Park Ave. apartment Saturday afternoon that "I was defending myself."
He said his wife, Judith Peck, 64, was late in returning to the city from their home in the Hamptons and then they argued over a ladder that she had put in his closet.
"I was moving the ladder out. She slapped me in the face," he told cops. "I put the ladder down and slapped her back. We slapped each other back and forth."
...Other victims were identified as Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein, the estate of late singer John Denver, actor John Malkovich, former Mets second baseman Tim Teufel and even Madoff's lawyer Ira Sorkin. The 163-page list also includes hundreds of trust funds, charities, pension plans and unions, as well as entries for Madoff's grandchildren. [FULL LIST]
Two managers of the Massachusetts state pension fund have been fired for poor performances, including one who lost $12 million investing with accused Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff.
Chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon computed the Mets' 2009 payroll at $143 million when factors such as Freddy Garcia's probable salary with bonuses, the $1.6 million owed to the Diamondbacks for Scott Schoeneweis and $2.25 million owed to Willie Randolph are included. Wilpon handed Minaya that budget early in the offseason, before Wilpon learned his family had lost money in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Wilpon declared that the Mets had accomplished their winter objectives, mentioning the acquisitions of Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz and "addition by subtraction" with trades that shipped out players such as Aaron Heilman and Schoeneweis.
After only part of this morning's House hearing starring Harry Markopolos, there's little doubt that Bernie Madoff's true identity is Dr. Evil.
What else can one think when House members wondered aloud whether there are "mini-Madoffs" or "medium-size Madoffs" lurking in the Wall Street wastelands.
Markopolos answered in the affirmative and said he plans to "deliver a mini-Madoff to the SEC tomorrow," adding, "Hopefully they listen to me this time."
The House Financial Services Committee members agreed that this time the SEC will probably listen to Markopolos. There's no hint, however, of who Markopolos is talking about.
But speaking of Dr. Evil, Markopolos also pointed out (as I and some others have) that Wall Street's fraudsters couldn't pull off their schemes without Mayor Mike Bloomberg's proprietary sophisticated hardware/software machines.
There's no other way, many say, to conjure up the increasingly sophisticated financial instruments that ruined Wall Street and will no doubt ruin it again during the next bubble.
Bloomberg is supposedly the biggest philanthropist in America; he got the money from the sale of his machines on Wall Street.
Which leads to the question: How could Mayor Bloomberg not have known the various nefarious uses to which his machines could be put? Of course he knows.
Which leads to this: Wall Street's meltdown happened on his watch, and it was created by his pals — his customers — at the Street's big banks. So why didn't he stop it or at least see the signs of an impending disaster?
If not him, who? If not then, why not?
And now he wants another mayoral term to keep our streets supposedly safe when the only street he knows — Wall Street — has become the most dangerous stretch of pavement in the country?
Just wondering.
Markopolos didn't make that point, but he did say that the SEC operates at a tremendous disadvantage in trying to understand the complex schemes of the Street's white-shoed gangsters by not having nearly enough Bloomberg terminals. Give the SEC more Bloomberg terminals, he told the House panel, because the fraudsters and scamsters have them.
Wild-eyed Harry also has a beef with the press: He contended that a Wall Street Journal reporter (whom he didn't name) was very interested three years ago and was willing to fly to Boston to meet with Markopolos but that the reporter's editors were scared off by Madoff's power and reputation and nixed it. (For more on that, see Gary Weiss's post on Seeking Alpha.)
Treated with extreme deference, Markopolos is surely one of the most brash witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill in quite a while. And well-prepared — browse his lengthy (but entertaining) written testimony if you can't wait for the sound bites later today.
Of course, he can back it up, having warned a decade before Madoff confessed to his sons that Bernie was a fraudster.
At least, Markopolos can back it up for now. His hubris, his zealotry, his sense of certainty — they make you wonder whether Markopolos, like Madoff's scheme, is too good to be true.
Anyway, Markopolos's halo — or is it his intense eyes? — cast an eerie glow for now on the scene of perhaps capitalism's all-time worst disaster.
California Democrat Brad Sherman noted that Markopolos isn't just some "wild-eyed populist." Sherman was half-right. Markopolos is definitely wild-eyed — he has the look and tone of a zealot — but he's also the staunchest defender of capitalism one could imagine, and that includes Ayn Rand.
And imaginative, too. Markopolos raised the intriguing notion that retired Wall Street bigwigs, people with little or no hair, as he put it, should be hired by the SEC to replace the young whippersnappers who now infest the agency's lower ranks.
Markopolos reasons that veterans won't have to do it for the money, because they've already made theirs and that they would be foxes able to sniff out the rotten eggs in the henhouse.
This probably won't happen, unless these Wall Street veterans are suddenly imbued with that sense of civic responsibility that Barack Obama mentioned in his inaugural address.
Obama tells a surprisingly blunt Katie Couric, "I messed up."
Tom Daschle's quick exit from the health-care Cabinet job is just proof that he was a poor choice for the job.
If the guy can't get it together enough to wipe his nose clean after rubbing it against the rear of society schmuckettes like Catherine Reynolds, then he's not the person to tackle the extraordinarily tricky job of cleaning up the health-care mess.
He should just return to his destiny: playing off his former job in Congress to lobby his former Congress pals on behalf of rich clients. (See Muckety's quick read on Daschle's ties to Reynolds.)
Daschle wasn't a notable senator in the first place, despite his high post in the Democratic Party heirarchy. Teddy Kennedy or Paul Wellstone he wasn't.
Barack Obama did take responsibility for the Daschle embarrassment and did admit that he, the president, screwed up, but it was Daschle who screwed up his own nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
All he had to do was come clean to Obama or Obama's vetters, and this wouldn't have happened. Actually, he could have just paid his taxes in the first place. But hubris isn't exclusive to Wall Street bankers or pro athletes. Former senators often think that they, too, are above the law or the law's consequences.
Obama's screw-up came when he picked Daschle in the first place — unless Obama wanted a weak-sister guy like Daschle in there. All of this leaves murky the question of what exactly the Obama regime has in mind for health care.
The last time a Democratic administration came to power, Bill Clinton turned the health-care issue over to Hillary Clinton, who, true to her conservative roots, immediately reneged on her vow to supporters and advisers to consider a national health-care plan. Instead, she relied on the inherently corrupt health-care industry — not the doctors, but the insurers — and any hope of a cleaner, fairer, more inclusive national health-care plan that wouldn't be controlled by the middlemen (the insurers) was doomed. (Click here for my February 2005 rant about this; you'll have to scroll down a little ways to get to it.)
In any case, good-bye, Daschle. Don't let the revolving door hit you on your way into and out of government offices.
The rest of you, however, are welcome to stay right here and click on the following items...
President Obama will announce a crackdown on Wall Street fat cats on Wednesday, setting a $500,000 cap on executive compensation for companies getting taxpayer bailouts, a senior administration official said Tuesday night.
...One of President Barack Obama's closest political confidants and early mentors, Mr. Daschle had been tapped to spearhead the effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system. But concerns arising from Mr. Daschle's failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on time, coupled with tax problems involving two other cabinet nominees, threatened both the administration's health-care agenda and the credibility of Mr. Obama's pledge to raise the ethical standards of Washington.
Mr. Daschle's sudden withdrawal came two weeks to the day after Mr. Obama took office, and 24 hours after the president told reporters that he "absolutely" stood by his nominee. The abrupt move stands to potentially dent the reputation for steadiness and managerial prowess that the 47-year-old president had cultivated over a smoothly run campaign and a transition to power that boasted of a swift vetting and nomination of top aides.
Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening -- criminals and terrorism suspects.
Instead, newly available documents show, the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either.
President Barack Obama will announce today that he's imposing a cap of $500,000 on the compensation of top executives at companies that receive significant federal assistance in the future, responding to a public outcry over Wall Street excess.
Any additional compensation will be in restricted stock that won't vest until taxpayers have been paid back, according to an administration official, who requested anonymity. The rules will force greater transparency on the use of corporate jets, office renovations and holiday parties as well as golden parachutes offered to executives when they leave companies.
Senior U.S. commanders are finalizing plans to send tens of thousands of reinforcements to Afghanistan's main opium-producing region and its porous border with Pakistan, moves that will form the core of President Barack Obama's emerging Afghan war strategy....
Virtually none of the new troops heading to Afghanistan will go to Kabul or other major Afghan cities. By contrast, when the Bush administration dispatched 30,000 new troops to Iraq as part of the so-called surge, the bulk of the new forces went to Baghdad....
The deployments, part of a planned doubling of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, are almost certain to spark heavier casualties and push the war squarely onto the public agenda. "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be [more U.S. casualties]," Vice President Joe Biden said on CBS Sunday. "There will be an uptick."
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection say clean-coal technology is a fantasy.
Peabody Energy Corp., the biggest U.S. coal producer, says another prominent Democrat has pledged to make the technology a reality: President Barack Obama.
The Gore-Obama split illustrates a growing debate in the U.S. as the new president attempts to deliver on his promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the country 80 percent by 2050. Depending on who's speaking, coal is either the villain or part of the solution.
Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister selected after the Americans handed power back to Iraqis in June 2004, has made a comeback in the provincial elections, unofficial preliminary returns indicate, setting himself up as a potential rival to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Connecticut, the wealthiest U.S. state with per capita income of $54,117 in 2007, has profited from its proximity to Wall Street since rail lines from the city reached north to Fairfield County more than a century ago. According to Forbes magazine, the state's richest residents now are hedge fund managers including Steven Cohen and Paul Tudor Jones, who live and work in and around Greenwich. Cohen earned $900 million in 2007 while Jones made $300 million, according to Institutional Investor magazine's Alpha publication.
A one-man crime wave from Massachusetts road-tripped it to Columbia University every weekend for the past two months -- stealing wallets from gymnasium lockers and a dozen laptops, the Post has learned.
Fraud investigator Harry Markopolos blamed the Securities and Exchange Commission's "financial illiteracy" for failing to heed his warnings about money manager Bernard Madoff.
Mr. Markopolos had warned the SEC for nearly a decade that Mr. Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. Mr. Markopolos is set to testify before a House committee Wednesday, and 311 pages of his written testimony became public Tuesday evening.
As Chico Marxsaid, "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"
That's easy when it comes to Gaza. The Jewish state's brutal use of white phosphorus — alleged over the weekend by observers on the ground dispatched by NYC-based Human Rights Watch — is lighting up the landscape.
Relations between the Holy Land and the Holy See were tense Thursday night after a leading Vatican cardinal compared the besieged Gaza Strip to a concentration camp.
"Defenseless populations are always the ones who pay," Renato Cardinal Martino told the Italian daily Il Sussidiario. "Conditions in Gaza increasingly resemble a big concentration camp."
That drew a furious denunciation from Israeli officials, who said the comment was "based on Hamas propaganda."
Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind, the son of Holocaust survivors, called on the Pope to apologize to Israel.
Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, defended his comments.
"They can say what they want, but the situation in Gaza is horrible," he told the newspaper La Repubblica.
Confirming that is Human Rights Watch, whose observers belie Hikind's claim that the brutality in Gaza is propaganda.
In fact, it's even worse than the cardinal says, according to HRW.
You question the watchdog group's credibility? HRW broke several major stories of U.S. atrocities in Iraq — including the horrific tale of the American soldiers in Fallujah who proudly called themselves the "Murderous Maniacs" and admitted to kicking the shit out of Iraqis just for the fun of it. (See my September 2005 item "U.S. Soldiers Reveal New Torture Tales.")
Now, here's what HRW says about what's going on:
On January 9 and 10, 2009, Human Rights Watch researchers in Israel observed multiple air-bursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over what appeared to be the Gaza City/Jabaliya area.
Israel appeared to be using white phosphorus as an "obscurant" (a chemical used to hide military operations), a permissible use in principle under international humanitarian law (the laws of war). However, white phosphorus has a significant, incidental, incendiary effect that can severely burn people and set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on fire. The potential for harm to civilians is magnified by Gaza's high population density, among the highest in the world.
"White phosphorous can burn down houses and cause horrific burns when it touches the skin," said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.
If the Nazis had had white phosphorus — the 21st century version of napalm — they would have used it against the Jews.
Drivers rattled by the worst U.S. labor market since World War II are hanging on to old autos longer instead of buying new models, threatening to crimp sales again in 2009 after demand plummeted to a 16-year low.
Mayor Bloomberg's crackdown on motorists who abuse official parking placards has snared a slew of detectives and investigators who work for the city's prosecutors, the Post has learned...
Henry Paulson's bank bailouts, done under "great stress" during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, failed to win for U.S. taxpayers what Warren Buffett received for his shareholders by investing in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The Treasury secretary made 174 purchases of banks' preferred shares that include warrants to buy stock at a later date. While he invested $10 billion in Goldman Sachs in October, twice as much as Buffett did the month before, Paulson gained certificates worth one-fourth as much as the billionaire, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Goldman Sachs terms were repeated in most of the other bank bailouts.
Gov. Paterson joined an estimated 10,000 Israel supporters in Midtown yesterday to proclaim the Gaza offensive an act of self-defense. "We recognize the right of the state of Israel to...
Tel Aviv-based journalist Lisa Goldman takes the Israeli press to task over its coverage of the Gaza campaign. "For the most part, Gaza as a place inhabited by human beings has been ignored," she writes of Israeli media coverage.
Israeli leaders hinted Sunday the Gaza assault might soon wind down, even as thousands of fresh reservists joined the battle and infantry units pushed toward the crowded heart of Gaza City.
Hasidic singing sensation Lipa Schmeltzer was set to perform last March before a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Garden's WaMu Theater in New York. The concert, a charity fundraiser, was billed as "The Big Event."
Then, less than three weeks before the concert date, 33 ultra-Orthodox rabbis — including some of the community's most prominent figures — issued an edict banning attendance. The event, they warned, was likely to cause "ribaldry and lightheadedness."
Deferring to the rabbis, organizers promptly canceled the concert. The ban, however, roiled the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, world, sparking an unusual public outcry in a community known for its scrupulous obedience to rabbinic authority.
A children's book based on Herman Rosenblat's Holocaust love story, which was recently exposed as a hoax, was pulled from bookstores. The East Village Mamele explains the scandal to her daughter.
Caroline Kennedy would like to be a senator. I don't blame her. So would I!
Especially if Governor Paterson could just waft me into office, and I didn't have to, um, you know, campaign. I'll bet some parts of the job are really fun, and it's public service, which is so uplifting. You think I'm joking, but every argument that has been advanced for Kennedy is just as true for me. She's a mother, a writer, a person with no electoral experience or, so far as we know, longstanding interest in acquiring any--me too! She has more kids; I've written more books--I'd say it averages out.
From Fox News: "Hundreds and maybe thousands of investors in Madoff's funds have been withdrawing money from their accounts for many years. In many cases, those investors have withdrawn far more than their principal investment." And more:
"I had a call yesterday from a guy who said, 'I've taken out more money then I originally put in, but I still had $1 million left with Madoff. Should I file a $1 million claim?'" said Steven Caruso, a New York attorney specializing in securities and investment fraud.
Federal prosecutors bought more time to focus on their investigation of Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud scheme after they reached a deal with Mr. Madoff's lawyers to delay the deadline to bring an indictment in the criminal case against him.
Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan had faced a deadline Monday to convince a grand jury to indict the New York money manager on fraud charges or show at a public court hearing that there was "probable cause" to arrest him, but Mr. Madoff's lawyers agreed Friday to give the government until mid-February to do so.
Delaying any indictment gives prosecutors time to investigate Mr. Madoff and others without having to prepare for trial, or negotiate a deal in which he agrees to plead guilty to certain charges in exchange for a lower prison sentence, says Anthony Barkow, a former federal prosecutor.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil charges against a Pennsylvania man accused of running a $50 million Ponzi scheme since at least February 1995.
J. Ezra Merkin, former chairman of national lender GMAC, crashes to earth as the second biggest conduit for Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
The Times as Jimmy Cagney and the reader as Mae Clarke. It's about time.
A banner day for the New York Times.
Newspapers that don't go out for blood are worthless. The Times often should be itself flayed because it so often doesn't take full advantage of its tremendous resources and usually undeserved clout and instead exudes arrogance and condescension.
This morning, however, its reporters slapped on their fedoras and got the goods, and their editors snapped out of it, rolled up their Brooks Brothers sleeves, and laid it on us.
Like Jimmy Cagney shoving a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in The Public Enemy (1931), Ethan Bronner's "U.N. and Red Cross Add to Outcry on Gaza War" calls a war a war and shoves the details into your face during your breakfast before you have time to take your first sip of coffee:
International aid groups lashed out at Israel on Thursday over the war in Gaza, saying that access to civilians in need is poor, relief workers are being hurt and killed, and Israel is woefully neglecting its obligations to Palestinians who are trapped, some among rotting corpses in a nightmarish landscape of deprivation.
You can see that Bronner's piece doesn't fiddle around with the paper's usual stiff, officious lede followed by some boring, pseudo-analytical claptrap about how something affects decision-makers.
Bronner's second paragraph is the kind of thing you usually see as the lede of such a story:
The United Nations declared a suspension of its aid operations after one of its drivers was killed and two others were wounded despite driving United Nations-flagged vehicles and coordinating their movements with the Israeli military. The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for an investigation by Israel for a second time in a week after the more than 40 deaths near a United Nations school from Israeli tank fire on Tuesday.
The paper's still not up to speed on the fact that many Jews, both here and in Israel (particularly in Israel), are angrily opposed to the war on Gaza.
The peace movement among Jews gets prominent play in the vibrant Israeli press and in other outlets around the world. But not in the U.S. media.
Enough of the negative stuff about negative stuff: The Times does deserve another kudos or two or three: Another example of today's fired-up Times is a Paris dispatch from veteran Alan Cowell, "Gaza Children Found With Mothers' Corpses":
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had discovered "shocking" scenes -- including small children next to their mothers' corpses -- when its representatives gained access for the first time to parts of Gaza battered by Israeli shelling. It accused Israel of failing to meet obligations to care for the wounded in areas of combat.
Years ago, Cowell did a bang-up job writing such pieces day after day for the Times from apartheid-era South Africa. Now he's filing stuff about apartheid-era Israel.
Even the paper's editorial page this morning took off its kid gloves, dismissed its manservants and maids, and unleashed a sneer or two at its fellow Establishment members. Labeling the confirmation hearing for the new Secretary of Health and Human Services a "cuddly welcome for Mr. Daschle," the editorial board climbed down from the pedestal it has built for itself and started punching at the incoming Obama regime:
...The hearing before a Senate health committee was mostly a love-fest as senators from both parties expressed admiration for their former Senate colleague....
Unfortunately, the hearing did not tell us much at all about how the incoming Obama administration intends to pay for its emerging health care programs or how, for all of his smoothness at the hearing, Mr. Daschle will deal with the very real and very big differences his team has with Republicans on this and other vital issues.
Instead, the senators avoided asking such tough questions, and Mr. Daschle bent over backward to reassure Republicans that he would not try to ram anything too unpalatable down their throats....
A welcome dose of cynicism instead of the expected deadly dull civility and caution.
Yes, there are still some nits to pick in the Times, but this morning the paper emits a louder buzz than usual.
Tally-ho! Release the hounds! The paper usually acts more like C. Montgomery Burns hounding the beleaguered folk in Springfield. This morning, it's dogging a newspaper's proper targets.
While you're wiping the grapefruit off your face, click on these items, front-loaded this morning only with other Times pieces, most of which have surprisingly hard-hitting, newsy ledes...
The federal investigation that prompted Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico to withdraw his nomination as commerce secretary offers a rare glimpse into a long-simmering investigation of possible bid-rigging, tax evasion and other wrongdoing throughout the municipal bond business.
Three federal agencies and a loose consortium of state attorneys general have for several years been gathering evidence of what appears to be collusion among the banks and other companies that have helped state and local governments take approximately $400 billion worth of municipal notes and bonds to market each year.
As I noted yesterday, the Times has a particular problem calling a spade a spade in the Middle East. Witness one of its other war stories this morning, Steven Erlanger's "Rockets Fired From Lebanon Into Israel," which generally avoids the word "war" and features this lede:
Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.
Yeah, "conflict." Please. The pro-Israel New York Posthas no problem calling this a war.
Look, if people don't want to call what's going on in Gaza a "war," I'll settle for "blintzkrieg."
There was a time, oh about 40 years ago, when the Jews of Israel were an underdog state with a sense of humor (especially among their American Jewish supporters) melded into their fight for survival. See this Time story from 1967, in the midst of what became known as the Six-Day War, that rounded up jokes about that "conflict" under the headline "Blintzkrieg" (supply your own ba-dum-pum rim shots after each line):
"It's unfair," said a U.A.R.[United Arab Republic] spokesman. "They have 2,300,000 Jews on their side. And we have none." He denied, however, that Egypt had asked the Russians for their 2,500,000 Jews. Soon after the war's start, Nasser made a brief guest appearance on the popular Cairo TV show, Where's My Line? Reports from the second day of fighting indicated that the Egyptians had destroyed four Jeeps, a kosher mobile kitchen and 14 air-conditioned Cadillacs. The Israelis claimed 400 MIGs and 24 flying carpets. Ralph Nader launched a campaign to provide Arab tanks with back-up lights.
The unstoppable Israeli thrust through the Sinai Desert quickly became known as the blintzkrieg. It was led by the crack regiment known as the Bagel Lancers. When Israeli troops reached the Suez Canal, they grabbed the lox. At one point in the campaign, an Arab division spotted a lone Israeli sniper on a sand dune. The commander dispatched three men to get him. When they did not return, he sent a dozen. None of them came back. So he finally sent an entire company. Two hours later, one blood-splattered Egyptian soldier crawled back. "It was an ambush," he explained. "There were two of them."
The Six-Day War was a turning point. Forty years later, the laughter has died out. Israel acts less and less like an underdog and more and more like an overlord, thanks to its decades of harsh occupation policies, and as many commentators in Israel have noted with anguish, the decades of acting like occupiers have coarsened Israeli society.
The Jewish state's grim throttling of Palestinians these days is pretty much unleavened by humor. Insanely orthodox. Humanism is also kosher, but you wouldn't know it these days.
Anyway, I'm still willing to be assaulted by a blintzkrieg. Make mine raspberry...
Like so many Jewish writers of her generation, Hannah Arendt attempted in her work to shine the light of intellect on the extreme darkness she lived through...
This time, a picture was worth several dozen shoes. At least 150 pro-Palestinian New Yorkers rallied against Mayor Bloomberg for his recent trip to Israel and unfettered support of that country...
After admitting over $1B of value on its books was fictitious, Satyam (SAY) is dealing with the fallout, as are the accounting industry, investors and Indian markets. In frenzied premarket trading, Satyam shares lost 99.89% yesterday, plummeting from $9.35 to $0.01, and were halted before regular trading hours began.
U.S. computer maker Dell Inc. announced Thursday it will slash its Irish work force and shift its European manufacturing operations to Poland in a move certain to undermine Ireland's recession-hit economy.
Dell is Ireland's second-largest employer, its biggest exporter and in recent years has contributed about 5% to the national gross domestic product. Economists warn that each Dell job underpins another four to five jobs in Ireland.
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