Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Yes, We Have to Get Deeply Involved in the Syrian Civil War

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One of the putative “good guys” in Syria has been caught on tape eating a dead soldier’s heart:

A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.

The main Syrian opposition coalition said he would be put on trial.

The video, which cannot be independently authenticated, seems to show him cutting out the heart.


“I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” the man says, referring to President Bashar al-Assad as he stands over the soldier’s corpse.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Abu Sakkar is the leader of a group called the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, an offshoot of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Al-Farouq Brigades. He insults Alawites, the minority offshoot of Shia Islam to which Mr Assad belongs.

“The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime,” Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, told the BBC. “This one particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.

Seriously, does anyone now think that it’s a good idea to choose sides in this clusterf%$#?

Well,. anyone without a history of insanity, or members of the Senate with the last name of McCain, anyway? (But I repeat myself)

Cowardice From Almost Everyone in Washington, DC

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John Judis was one of the few people among the punmditocracy who opposed the Iraq war.

On the 10th anniversary of the war he reveals that dozens of people in the military and defense establishment opposed it too, but were afraid to say so:

In the six months before the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the six weeks after the invasion (culminating in George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech), I often compared my situation in Washington to that of Jeannette Rankin, the Montana congresswoman and pacifist who voted against entry into both World War I and II.  Not that I would have voted against declaring war in 1941; the comparison was to her isolation, not with her isolationism.

There were, of course, people who opposed invading Iraq—Illinois State Senator Barack Obama among them—but within political Washington, it was difficult to find like-minded foes. When The New Republic’s editor-in-chief and editor proclaimed the need for a “muscular” foreign policy, I was usually the only vocal dissenter, and the only people who agreed with me were the women on staff: Michelle Cottle, Laura Obolensky and Sarah Wildman. Both of the major national dailies—The Washington Post and The New York Times (featuring Judith Miller’s reporting)—were beating the drums for war. Except for Jessica Mathews at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington’s thinktank honchos were also lined up behind the war.

………

I found fellow dissenters to the war in two curious places: the CIA and the military intelligentsia. That fall, I got an invitation to participate in a seminar at the Central Intelligence Agency on what the world would be like in fifteen or twenty years. I went out of curiosity—I don’t like this kind of speculation—but as it turned out, much of the discussion was about the pending invasion of Iraq. Except for me and the chairman, who was a thinktank person, the participants were professors of international relations. And almost all of them were opposed to invading Iraq.

In early 2003, I was invited to another CIA event: the annual conference on foreign policy in Wilmington. At that conference, one of the agency officials pulled me aside and explained that the purpose of the seminar was actually to try to convince the White House not to invade Iraq. They didn’t think they could do that directly, but hoped to convey their reservations by issuing a study based on our seminar. He said I had been invited because of my columns in The American Prospect, which was where, at the time, I made known my views opposing an invasion. When Spencer Ackerman and I later did an article on the CIA’s role in justifying the invasion, we discovered that there was a kind of pro-invasion “B Team” that CIA Director George Tenet encouraged, but what I discovered from my brief experience at the CIA was that most of the analysts were opposed to an invasion. (After Spencer’s and my article appeared, I received no more invitations for seminars or conferences.)

I had a similar experience when I talked to Jon Sumida, a historian at the University of Maryland, who specializes in naval history and frequently lectures at the military’s colleges. Sumida told me that most of the military people he talked to—and he had wide contacts—were opposed to an invasion. I confirmed what Sumida told me a year or so later when I was invited to give a talk on the Iraq war at a conference on U.S. foreign policy at Maryland. A professor from the Naval War College was to comment on my presentation. I feared a stinging rebuttal to my argument that the United States had erred in invading Iraq, but to my astonishment, the professor rebuked me for not being tough enough on the Bush administration.

John Judis was right about the war, of course, and so were the people that he talked to.

The difference is that Judis got a whole sh%$ sandwich for telling the truth, and they did not.

On a matter like this, this makes them cowardly punks, and if someone were to call them traitors, I would not object.

H/t Brad Delong.

What Took You So Long?

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The guy in charge of Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee in Florida has quit and joined the Democratic party, saying that the bigotry is too much to bear:

Friend,

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Studies geared towards making – human beings – viewed as less because of their immigrant status to outright unacceptable claims, are at the center of the immigration debate. Without going too deep on everything surrounding immigration today, the more resounding example this past week was reported by several media outlets.

A researcher included as part of a past dissertation his theory that “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ.” The researcher reinforces these views by saying “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

I will repeat my question, “What took you so long?”

H/t C&L.

Not Enough Bullets………

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It turns out that there is a scam going on at Disney World, wealthy mothers are hiring handicapped people to masquerade as family members to allow their kids to cut in line:

They are 1 percenters who are 100 percent despicable.

Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

I wonder if moral turpitude is a reason to call in child protective services, because these kids are going to grow up to completely f%$#ed up sociopaths if they stay with those parents.

So Not a Surprise

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CNN’s Jake Tapper has discovered that the emails leaked to the press on Benghazi were altered to make the State Department (Hillary Clinton) look worse:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.

 The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.

 ………

 Whoever provided those accounts seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his e-mail on the State Department’s concerns.

 The context of the e-mail chain is important.

 Different officials from different agencies were going through iterations of talking points for Congress.

As the inestimable Marcy Wheeler notes, this has David Petreaus’ finger prints all over it:

It has taken three days for the bleating press corps in DC to wade through the roll-out of Benghazi talking point emails and realize that the tension behind the emails — as has been clear from just days after the attack — is that Benghazi was really a CIA, not a State, Mission, and therefore CIA bears responsibility for many of the security lapses. So State, in making changes to the emails, was making sure it didn’t get all the blame for CIA’s failures.

 ………

 They might have also said, “since February, people tied to CIA’s mission have twice been harassed by militia members, suggesting our OpSec was so bad they knew we were in Benghazi.”

 ………
They might also have said that the “trusted” militia, February 17 Brigade, trained by David Petraeus’ CIA, whose career legacy is based on false claims of successfully training locals, appears to have allowed the attack to happen (and, critically, delayed CIA guards from heading to the State mission to help).

 Note that Congressman Frank Wolf is just now showing some interest in why CIA’s vetting of the militia central to the mission’s defense was so bad. Maybe if CIA had included that detail in their self-serving initial talking points, Congress would have turned to this issue more quickly, particularly since we’re currently training more potentially suspect militias in Syria.

 In other words, the story CIA — which had f%$#ed up in big ways — wanted to tell was that it had warned State and State had done nothing in response (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is precisely the story Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz are trying to tell). The truthful story would have been (in part) that CIA had botched the militia scene in Benghazi, and that had gotten the Ambassador killed.

 ………

 David Petraeus, who tried and failed to get his preferred spin of the attack in Benghazi accepted by the Obama Administration, who subsequently got fired, purportedly for f%$#ing and possibly sharing classified information with his mistress, went to Dick Cheney’s propagandist to try to get his preferred spin adopted after the fact.

This is a classic example of why we should not give too much power and influence to our intelligence agencies: When they are the master, rather than the servant, their primary mission is covering up their own f%$#-ups, not providing good intelligence.

The Cat Has a Name!

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Remember when I asked for help naming our new kitten?

Well, it turns out that I did not need to.

Yesterday, I discovered his name.

We were packing to go to an SCA (medieval recreation) event, and the kitten was sitting on our comfy chair.

My daughter Natalie put down a quiver of arrows on the chair, and the kitten promptly began chew on the leather case.

I scowled at the cat, and barked the following instruction to my Daughter:

Natalie, get the arrows away from DESTRUCTO!

There was a brief stunned paused from the assembled family, and then we all looked at each other, and we realized that we had named the cat.

There was much rejoicing.

Matt Taibbi Gets Owned by Thomas Friedman

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We live in a strange world.

There are very few things that I depend on, but brilliantly crafted takedowns of Thomas “The Mustache of Stupidith” Friedman by Matt Taibbi is one of them.

Recently, he held a reader to, “Come Up With the Ultimate Thomas Friedman Porn Title, ” and notwithstanding some fine entries by his readers, Thomas Friedman won the contest with his recent column, “This Ain’t Yogurt.”

I can only conclude the Friedman was aware of Taibbi’s effort, and he took appropriate action:

The winner, of course, is Thomas Friedman himself, whose very next column after this contest was announced was entitled, “This Ain’t Yogurt.”

“Jesus F%$#ing Christ,” noted a friend, impressed. “This Ain‘t Yogurt is more obscene than anything a mere commentator could think of.”

“He took your contest,” noted another “friend” of mine, “and shoved it right up your poop-chamber.”

“Friedman’s revenge,” chirped a reader.

“Tom Friedman – human masterpiece machine,” commented a fourth. “Matt Taibbi, Suck On This. Grab some bench, rook.”

(%$# mine)

Tom Friedman, just this once, I take my hat off to you.

What a Repulsive Exercise in Truth Telling

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In the UK, an adviser for the (Conservative Party, what a surprise) Prime Minister has said that the recession is a good thing because it pushes wages of ordinary people down:

The prime minister’s adviser on enterprise has told the cabinet that the economic downturn is an excellent time for new businesses to boost profits and grow because labour is cheap, the Observer can reveal.

 Lord Young, a cabinet minister under the late Baroness Thatcher, who is the only aide with his own office in Downing Street, told ministers that the low wage levels in a recession made larger financial returns easier to achieve. His comments are contained in a report to be published this week, on which the cabinet was briefed last Tuesday.

 Young, who has already been forced to resign from his position once before for downplaying the impact of the recession on people, writes: “The rise in the number of businesses in recent years shows that a recession can be an excellent time to start a business.

 “Competitors who fall by the wayside enable well-run firms to expand and increase market share. Factors of production such as premises and labour can be cheaper and higher quality, meaning that return on investment can be greater.”

A Downing Street spokesman said Young was merely stating a “factual point and nothing else”. But the comments were described as “appalling and ill-timed” by union leaders, with job-market figures due out next week expected to show that the initial resilience of employment has faded while wages are being severely tightened.

If they said this in public, they would never serve in public office in ever again.

It’s nice though that someone was willing to leak this to the press.

He’s already been let go once by David Cameron for saying that ordinary folks “never had it so good” during the recession because of low rates, but they let him back in.

My guess is that this troll will be back again.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Pisgah Community Bank, Ashville, NC
  2. Sunrise Bank,Valdosta, GA

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Lynrocten Federal Credit Union, Lynchburg, VA

Full NCUA list

Something odd is going on.  In the past 3 weeks, the number of banks failures have more than doubled. 

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

I Was Not Expecting This

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After she quickly signed onto the mortgage deal, I had pretty much written off California AG Kamala Harris as doing anything useful in consumer protection.

I may have been premature in my judgement:

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is on a roll. There’s been a fair bit of media coverage about abusive debt collection practices, particularly in credit cards, but at least until Harris filed a suit on Thursday against bank miscreant JP Morgan (hat tip Deontos), surprisingly little action.

 Because the amounts are usually much smaller than in mortgages, banks have incentives to play fast and loose if they think they can wring some extra blood out of the turnip of an overextended consumer. But the result often goes well beyond just improperly submitting information to the court. JP Morgan and other banks have been accused of trying to collect on debt where they have the amounts wrong, where the debt was discharged in bankruptcy, or where the consumer was never notified an action was underway. And when the debt is sold to debt collectors, the same problems with inaccuracy of information, invalidity of the debt, and abuse of the legal system multiply.

………

Harris mentions over 100,000 dubious lawsuits filed between January 2008 and April 2011 and contends that the illegal conduct extends from “pre-lawsuit correspondence” to the validation and papering up of debt sold to third parties.

 The interesting bit is how the suit is framed. The defendants are the JP Morgan holding company plus two business units, as well as an unnamed “DOES 1 through 100, inclusive” where the AG intends to obtain their names and capacities. This raises the specter that she intends not only to sue other firms (such as the law firms that were Chase’s arms and legs) but individuals at Chase and its agents. And this is where it gets fun (click to enlarge):

Each defendant for each violation. We have 100,000+ violations at Chase, with at least three entities involved, each a separate defendant. And if she can get the individuals who were supervising the robosigning operations (better yet, the C level execs ultimately responsible) and the complicit law firms, she might bankrupt some well placed people. This could be extremely entertaining.

Well, it could be entertaining for a few months, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Still, this is more than I expected from Harris when she rushed to sign onto the mortgage sellout.

Obamacare Seems to be Working in Oregon

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In Oregon, they have up exchanges that allow people to easily compare standard insurance policies, and as a result, premiums are falling:

This is what competition looks like: One health insurer wants to charge $169 a month next year to cover a 40-year-old Portland-area non-smoker. Another wants $422 a month for the same standard plan.

The new health insurance marketplace envisioned by federal health reforms doesn’t formally kick in until fall. But it already is taking shape – and consumers for the first time can compare, premium by premium, identical plans by different insurers.

Soon they’ll be able to compare benefit-by-benefit as well.

On Thursday, a comparison of proposed 2014 health premiums became public online, causing two insurers to request do-overs to lower their rates even before the state determines whether they’re justified.

The unusual development was sparked by a comparison that used to be impossible because plan benefits varied so widely. But under the federal reforms that take effect Jan. 1, health insurance is mandated and every insurer must offer certain standard plans.

Good, but somehow, I do not think that it’s going to last.

Expect to see an orgy of mergers and acquisitions, and inventive ways to collude to follow.

H/t John Aravosis.

Pakistani Court Makes Ruling Our Court Should Make

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Beginning to think that we are the bad guys

It has ruled that US drone strikes are ‘War Crimes,’ and ‘Absolutely Illegal’:

A high court in Pakistan has found that United States drone strikes carried out in Pakistan by the CIA are war crimes, which are “absolutely illegal” and a “blatant violation” of Pakistan’s state sovereignty.

 The decision comes in a lawsuit filed by the Foundation for Fundamental Rights (FFR), a legal charity in Islamabad, which sued the Pakistan government for failing to protect its own citizens from US drone strikes. The suit was filed in May 2012 on behalf of victims of a drone attack that occurred in North Waziristan and killed more than fifty people.

Of course, it won’t effect the actions of our government.

Laws are for the little countries, don’t you know, so we don’t care.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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It’s a start

Fox News Host Megyn Kelly noted that people on her show were tilting too much toward Republicans:

Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.

Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.

Will wonders never cease.

This Is Corrupt

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It may not be enough for a review of his tenure, but the fact that, “Senior associate dean for executive programs and a professor in the practice of management at the Yale School of Management,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is calling criticism of JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon a witch hunt without revealing that he was a paid consultant for JP Morgan. (See his Yale bio here, I was pointed to it by a commenter on his OP/ED.)

I wonder what the extend of his pecuniary interest is here.

Even if it’s a small fee, it would certainly help with his consulting sideline to shill for a CEO. Look at the list on his bio. It’s more than 30 big-name clients.

Maybe this is why he calls shareholder objections to Dimon’s performance a “lynch mob.”

My guess is that he is angling to get a gig at HP, because he also gushed about, “Meg Whitman to continue executing a brilliant turnaround strategy.”  (Gag me with a spoon)

When someone suggests that business management schools can manage their own ethics education, have them explain to you why, given the repeated undisclosed conflicts of interest in the field (and in economics departments as well), that we can trust them to get this right.