Larry Kudlow apologizes for expressing relief that the human toll in Japan will be worse than the economic one
March 14, 2011 No CommentLarry Kudlow, the great business shill for CNBC, voiced an opinion that really is indicative of how conservatives think about the value of humans and corporations, and how they should be respectively treated. Vanity Fair: In these tough economic times, isn’t it nice to know that calamitous natural disasters needn’t have an adverse affect on your investment portfolio? After the 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan failed to induce a market nosedive, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow expressed his relief in terms that seemed to appall even his fellow cheerleaders for capitalism: “The human toll here,” he declared, “looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.” To Kudlow, nothing matters more than stock market prices. Many people attacked him for this callous view towards human life, but I was not surprised by his statement. I don’t believe it was really a flub. I’ve watched Kudlow for a long time and his love for free market capitalism far outweighs his love for the well being of the American worker and how they support their families. He later realized he sounded like a ghoul and went into damage-control mode. He apologized : I did not mean to say human toll in Japan less important than economic toll. Talking about markets. I flubbed the line. Sincere apology. I have to say, however, that from what I’m seeing on the financial news, his first instinct was indicative of the reaction of most economic observers. But they are now issuing perfunctory disclaimers before they bemoan the loss of possible new nuclear plants etc. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t flub some statements if I had a day job on the air — I probably would — but watching TV Stock Market Barkers over the last six years I haven’t seen much that would make me believe the intent of Kudlow’s original statement isn’t the way he really feels. And let’s remember the great piece Jon Stewart did on the horrors of the CNBC team that got much of the business reporting dead wrong leading up to the financial collapse, led by Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer. Jon Stewart Eviscerates CNBC and Rick Santelli Santelli apparently cancelled on him at the behest of his bosses. You remember his Howard Beale rant? Santelli: President Obama, are you listening? Stewart: Yeah man, Wall Street is mad as hell! And they’re not going to take it anymore. Unless by it, you mean two trillion dollars of their own bail out money. That they will take. Now Mr. Santelli was invited to come on this show and accepted the invitation and then on Friday canceled, or I guess the phrase would be bailed out. Jon Stewart creams Jim Cramer on the Daily Show Cramer whines about criticism from Stewart: He has a stock show so he can’t be honest Jon Stewart to Jim Cramer: ‘F**k you!’ Are CNBC and Jim Cramer gaming the market with their shows? Do we need a Network Fairness Doctrine? Tucker Carlson should go back to the bowtie Pot, Meet Kettle: Tucker Carlson accuses Jon Stewart Of Being A Partisan Hack Larry Kudlow blames Congress and low income families for housing crisis: ‘Guilty Liberal Consciences’ Forced Banks To Make Bad Loans
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Psychedelia? Paul Simon? Her recently revealed record collection contains a few surprises After John Peel died, fans were excited to learn about a special longbox in which he kept the heart of his record collection – an eclectic set of 7in singles with a beloved tune for any conceivable occasion. Revealed at the weekend, the Queen Mum’s record collection – around 100 albums she kept at the Castle of Mey , her Highlands retreat – gives royal watchers a similar opportunity to reconstruct a life through music. How much can it really tell us, though? It’s easy to focus on the surprise inclusions – Paul Simon’s Graceland, for instance, the collection’s one concession to post-1940s pop music. But as anyone who has ever bought presents for grannies will realise, their record collections have a habit of picking up oddities along the way. For all we know the presence of Graceland implies nothing more than Edward or Andrew making a last-minute birthday visit to the John Menzies shop in Inverness. Despite that, a couple of entries really are puzzling. Moddan’s Bower by Mirk may be rooted in traditional Scottish folk but it’s also a highly prized psychedelic rarity, getting a glowing review on a site called Lysergia. And how to explain Keith Jarrett’s exploration of jazz and contemporary classical music, Arbour Zena? Abandoned by a passing European bicycle monarch in the late-70s, perhaps? The bulk of the records are easier to understand. There is a lot of Scottish music – traditional singers such as Jean Redpath, collections of folk tunes and reels. The extent of it suggests that the Queen Mother’s affection for this was genuine: more care seems to have gone into selecting the folk component of the collection than the cursory section given over to English classical music. These are social records – things to put on when guests are over, as they very often were. Record collections before the rock era were often an extension of performed or parlour music, not necessarily a well-sculpted expression of individual taste. But one part of the collection does seem more personal – records by variety singers, music hall performers and jazz orchestras from the inter-war years. Alongside bandleaders Glenn Miller and Paul Whiteman are mostly forgotten names – comedienne Beatrice Lillie, pianist Charlie Kunz. This is the music she grew up with, and kept with her till she died – the music that shows the Queen Mother not as hostess, or royal, but as pop fan. What the Queen Mum listened to – and what she should have She owned: Edith Piaf – La Vie En Rose. Iconic chanteuse, a fixture of every postwar gramophone collection. She should have owned: Grace Jones – Island Life. Includes a radical revision of La Vie En Rose. Jones may not have had Piaf’s pipes but her imperious demeanour would have struck a royal chord. She owned: Wilf Carter – Christmas In Canada. The Godfather of Canadian C&W, Carter enjoyed a long career but was best known for his yodelling numbers. She should have owned: Jimmie Rodgers – Blue Yodel. Country music’s greatest yodeller, Rogers recorded no less than 11 lonesome Blue Yodel songs before dying of TB in 1933. She owned: Despers Steel Orchestra. Venerable steelband from Trinidad known for their imaginative orchestrations of classical pieces. She should have owned: Prince Buster – FABulous Greatest Hits. A reputed love of ska is sadly underrepresented in the collection. And he’s a fellow royal! Queen Mother Monarchy Tom Ewing guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media The father of man suspected of planting a bomb at a Spokane, Washington Martin Luther King Day parade believes that there is no way his son could have committed the crime. After a raid on his home, Kevin Harpham was arrested last Wednesday on charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and of possessing an improvised explosive device (IED) that was not registered to him. Cecil Harpham, Kevin’s father, told KXLY that his son was taking care of him at his home near Kettle Falls on the day the bomb was planted. Cecil suffered a stroke in November and requires daily assistance. “I know he didn’t go plant it because he was with me,” he said. “He helped me dress, he cooked my meals, he did my chores, he brought my firewood in and he just lived right here with me.” Cecil speculated that even though Kevin couldn’t have planted the bomb, he could have helped make it. “Maybe he might of helped them build a bomb, he might have, might have helped them build a bomb,” he told KXLY’s Sally Showman. Cecil recalled that Kevin had once bought a book about bomb making. “He said I bought the book and I read it and is so disappointed because there was no directions to build a bomb,” Cecil recalled. Cecil explained that his son identifies himself as a racist but doesn’t know how to hate. “Picture that if you had a son and he said I hate Negroes, but you go with him somewhere and he meets, he goes to a cashier to pay for his gas and you see him being very polite to this Negro and courteous and you stand back and you say jeepers, for a hater, he don’t know how to hate,” Cecil said. The older Harpham also sought to downplay the bomb by dismissing it as a prank. “This bomb really wasn’t a bomb, it didn’t go off, they couldn’t even blow it up with explosives besides it, if anything it was a really cruel joke,” he said. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups, noted Wednesday that “Harpham was a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance in late 2004.” The FBI said early this year that the attempted bombing may have been racially motivated .
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Officials warn cooling pumps failing at third unit at plant in north-east of country, leaving fuel rods exposed The nuclear crisis in Japan’s stricken north-east escalated as officials admitted a third nuclear reactor could be in partial meltdown and warned the situation was “even worse” than in the other two stricken units. It followed a second dramatic hydrogen explosion at the plant. The announcement came as the official death toll from the worst earthquake and tsunami in Japan’s recorded history reached almost 1,900, with tens of thousands still unaccounted for. Millions of survivors struggled through another day with dwindling supplies of food and fuel, amid aftershocks, blazes and tsunami alerts. News of the blast at the Fukushima No 1 power plant, which blew the walls off another reactor unit, alarmed many. But experts were more concerned by the repeated exposure of fuel rods after cooling pumps failed in a third reactor, causing possible meltdown. “Although we cannot directly check it, it’s highly likely happening,” Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman, told reporters. As Tokyo struggled to handle the spiralling crisis it asked both the United Nations nuclear watchdog for expert help and the US nuclear regulatory commission for equipment. Officials also began to distribute potassium iodide, which can help inhibit the uptake of radioactive iodide by the thyroid, to evacuation centres. They have already evacuated hundreds of thousands of residents within a 12-mile radius of the facility. But Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, stressed that it was “unlikely that the accident would develop” like Chernobyl, and said the reactor vessels remained intact. Officials in Japan had earlier suggested one might have been breached. Several countries announced they would screen Japanese produce for radiation as a precaution. US officials said military personnel taking part in rescue efforts registered low levels of radioactive contamination after flying by helicopter back to their ships off the Japanese coast. They were cleared after a scrub-down but the ships moved position as a precaution. But the desperate shortage of supplies was a more immediate concern for the millions facing a fourth night in near-freezing temperatures. The Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that many emergency shelters were running out of food and fuel, leaving weakened survivors cold and hungry. “People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming,” Hajime Sato, a government official in Iwate, told Associated Press. He said the prefecture was receiving just a tenth of the food and supplies it needed. “We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It’s just overwhelming,” he said. With aftershocks of up to magnitude 6.1 continuing, survivors fled to high ground in the morning as sirens blared and broadcasters announced a tsunami alert. It later proved to be a false alarm. But Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake and tsunami have already left around 1,000 bodies on shores of the Oshika Peninsula and another 1,000 bodies in Minamisanriku, according to officials and police in Miyagi province. Around 9,500 people remain uncontactable in the latter town. The Kyodo news agency also said police and firefighters were still trying to recover 200 to 300 bodies in Sendai. In Iwate prefecture, around 8,000 inhabitants are missing from one small town, Otsuchi. Thousands were also missing in Soma, a city of 38,000 people, according to officials. On Monday, David Cameron told MPs there were “severe concerns” about the safety of several British nationals in Japan, but no confirmed fatalities. In a statement to the Commons, the prime minister said the devastation in Japan was of “truly colossal proportions”. The country’s ailing economy, overtaken by China as the world’s second largest last year, is also struggling with the impact of the disaster. The central bank injected 15tr yen(£113bn) into money markets to stabilise the situation. But the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average slid 6.2%. Several manufacturers and retailers suspended or reduced operations due to damage to the infrastructure in the north-east or to help reduce demand for electricity in the area around Tokyo. Most of the predicted blackouts to preserve power did not prove necessary, but some areas in the capital had electricity cut for a few hours. AP reported that the outspoken governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, had described the disaster as a “punishment from heaven” because the Japanese had become greedy. Japan earthquake and tsunami Natural disasters and extreme weather Japan Nuclear power Justin McCurry Tania Branigan Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell and Fmr. Union Boss Agree, Labor Movement On the Rise
March 14, 2011 No Comment
On Monday's Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, fill-in host Norah O'Donnell touted “court challenges and recall efforts now that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has signed a bill into law restricting collective bargaining rights.” Turning to former SEIU President Andy Stern, she proclaimed: “100,000 protesters took to the [Wisconsin] capital this weekend….That's a huge rally.” Stern argued: “…that is enormous and I think it just makes the point this is not over….People are very angry and this has become quite a symbolic moment.” O'Donnell then lamented: “And yet, the Governor was able to sign this bill into law.” She later added: “You think actually there's been a backlash that has mobilized all the pro-union forces, as a result, all across the country.” Stern responded: “I think it's an American moment where people say, 'We understand we have to share in the pain when things are bad but we don't think we have to lose our rights, lose our unions, and have large corporations and some of the members of the Republican party act in such a destructful [destructive] manner.'” O'Donnell then bizarrely brought the potential of an NFL players strike into the conversation. Stern equated the situation with that of Wisconsin and ranted: “It seems like CEOs and people always do well and workers are always asked to pay a price. I don't think America likes that anymore and the football situation is so clearly about that.” Agreeing with Stern, O'Donnell claimed that an NFL strike would cause Americans to become more pro-union: “A lot of people like the NFL, a lot of people like to watch football. And if they start hearing they're not going to have their football come the fall they're going to ask why and I can tell you probably most people are going to end up siding with the players over the owners.” Referring to the multi-millionaire pro-football players, Stern asserted: “I think people feel like these players work hard. They only have two or three years of real experience to earn a lot of money, then they, a lot of times, get injured. They deserve something better than this.” Here is a full transcript of the March 14 segment: 1:46PM ET NORAH O'DONNELL: Pro-union supporters are refocusing on court challenges and recall efforts now that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has signed a bill into law restricting collective bargaining rights. An estimated 100,000 protesters took to the capital this weekend. Andy Stern is the former president of the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union. Andy, good to see you. 100,000 protesters. That's a huge rally. [ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Fight for Labor Rights; Pro-Union Supporters Building Recall Efforts] ANDY STERN: Yeah, I mean, that is enormous and I think it just makes the point this is not over. It was not like we signed a law and everyone's going to move on. People are very angry and this has become quite a symbolic moment. O'DONNELL: And yet, the Governor was able to sign this bill into law. STERN: Yeah, I think clearly it did not end as perfectly as the unions wanted but I think the point is not ending. We have a recall now going on of senators. We have an opportunity in the 2012 election to be able to make Wisconsin a state that does represent workers rights. And I think, you know, most importantly around the country people are beginning to say, 'What was the purpose of all of this? This wasn't good government, this was a political payback.' O'DONNELL: You think actually there's been a backlash that has mobilized all the pro-union forces, as a result, all across the country. STERN: I don't think it's just the pro-union forces, those 100,000 people, there were farmers yesterday in their tractors and pickup trucks. I mean, I think it's an American moment where people say, 'We understand we have to share in the pain when things are bad but we don't think we have to lose our rights, lose our unions, and have large corporations and some of the members of the Republican party act in such a destructful manner.' O'DONNELL: Of course, on Friday, we saw the NFL move forward and shut out the players. This is really significant. STERN: Oh I think it's huge, and it just makes the point. Here we have Wisconsin, where I think people said, 'Okay, when things are going bad, workers have a responsibility, like everyone else, to share in the pain.' Here we have the NFL, 'It's doing phenomenally well, but we're not supposed to share in the gain. We're again supposed to share in the pain.' And it seems like CEOs and people always do well and workers are always asked to pay a price. I don't think America likes that anymore and the football situation is so clearly about that. O'DONNELL: I actually think the NFL situation can have farther reaching complications, because so many people watch football. Not everybody knows Wisconsin or knows what's going on in Wisconsin, they may not be part of a union. But a lot of people like the NFL, a lot of people like to watch football. And if they start hearing they're not going to have their football come the fall they're going to ask why and I can tell you probably most people are going to end up siding with the players over the owners. STERN: Yeah, I think so too. And you know, when you think about how much taxpayers have contributed to the stadiums all over the country – and it's not just how much people pay for the advertising and watch it – I think people feel like these players work hard. They only have two or three years of real experience to earn a lot of money, then they, a lot of times, get injured. They deserve something better than this. O'DONNELL: But you do fully acknowledge, like in Wisconsin, that private sector unions – excuse me, public sector unions – and public employees are going to have to pay more when it comes to health care and pension and everything else? STERN: Yeah. And I think we're seeing that. I think people understand that when things are bad everyone has to share. The question is when things are good, like the Football Players Association, what's that about? O'DONNELL: Andy Stern, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. STERN: Thanks.
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The derelict building that may have served as Charles Dickens’s workhouse in his famous novel has been given listed status It was, wrote the 25-year-old Charles Dickens with heavy irony and no little fury, “a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes, a brick and mortar Elysium”. And now the building that may have served as his model for the workhouse where Oliver Twist asked for more is to be preserved from demolition. The derelict Georgian building in Cleveland Street, London, which in Dickens’s day was known as the Strand Union workhouse, has been given listed status by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The decision, on the advice of English Heritage, came on the grounds of its literary and historic associations rather than architectural merit, to prevent its being demolished and replaced by an apartment block. The workhouse – one of three such buildings surviving in London, but the only one still in operation in the 1830s when Dickens was writing his novel – has been identified as his possible model. The author lived 100 yards away on the same street as a teenager. As he wrote Oliver Twist a few years later, Dickens was living less than a mile away in Doughty Street, although in the original 1837 serialisation of Oliver Twist, the workhouse was placed in a town called Mudfog, 75 miles north of the capital. Dr Paul Schlicke, editor of the Dickens Companion, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “I think it is inconceivable that it was not that workhouse because Dickens lived so close to it. He would have been seeing it, hearing it, seeing paupers coming in and beadles walking by. It would have been the workhouse he knew best.” Built in 1775 as the workhouse for the parish of St Paul’s church in Covent Garden, by the mid-1830s the building had been taken over under the New Poor Law legislation – the real target for Dickens’s anger – to serve a number of poor central London parishes. Conditions there were notably harsh and it became a target for later Victorian reformers such as Louisa Twining and Joseph Rogers. The lintel over the entrance bore the message: “Avoid idleness and intemperance.” From the 1920s, it served as the outpatients’ department of the Middlesex Hospital. The department’s decision means that the application to redevelop the site is unlikely to be allowed, though English Heritage said that so long as the facade remained it might be possible to redevelop the interior as apartments. Heritage Charles Dickens Stephen Bates guardian.co.uk
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Emails obtained by someone claiming to be former bank employee appear to show improper sub-prime lending practices The hacker group Anonymous has released a cache of emails obtained from someone said to be a former Bank of America employee. The group alleges that the emails, dating from November 2010, detail improper lending practices at the bank, an allegation the bank denies. The leak comes as consumer groups have accused major US lenders of foreclosing on many homes without having proper documentation in place. The emails detail correspondence between employees of Balboa Insurance, a Bank of America insurance unit, in which they appear to be discussing the removal of details from documents in loan files. The bank acquired Balboa when it bought Countrywide Financial in 2008. Countrywide was the US’s largest seller of sub-prime home loans. Last month Bank of America announced plans to sell Balboa. The emails detail one loan related to GMAC, one of the largest mortgage lenders in the US. “The following GMAC DTN’s need to have the images removed from Tracksource/Rembrandt,” an operations team manager at Balboa wrote. DTN refers to document tracking number, and Tracksource/Rembrandt is an insurance tracking system. In reply, the Balboa employee wrote: “I have spoken to my developer and she stated that we cannot remove the DTNs from Rembrandt, but she can remove the loan numbers, so the documents will not show as matched to those loans.” According to the emails, approval was given to remove the loan numbers from the documents. Anonymous also released correspondence between the group and the former employee in which the ex-worker described the bank as a “cult” and said the company was now intent on destroying his career. “I’m well known throughout Bank of America. They saw to that when they showed everyone my picture and labelled me as a terrorist,” the former employee said in one email. A representative of Anonymous told Reuters that the documents related to the issue of whether Bank of America has improperly foreclosed on homes. The bank was not immediately available for comment but a spokesman told Reuters that the documents had been stolen by a former Balboa employee, and were not tied to foreclosures. “We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue,” the spokesman said. Anonymous has close ties to WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange said last November that he planned a major leak about a bank, leading to speculation that Bank of America was the target. Last month Bank of America agreed to sell Balboa to QBE of Australia for $700m and liabilities of $1.2bn. Bank of America US housing and sub-prime crisis Banking US economy Anonymous Hacking Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Man remanded in bail by Glasgow court on suspicion of involvement in the December attack in Sweden A nursing student arrested in Glasgow has been charged with terrorism fundraising offences in connection with a suicide bomb attack in Stockholm. Ezedden Khalid Ahmed Al Khaledi, 30, appeared in private at Glasgow sheriff court and was remanded in custody after being arrested last Tuesday on suspicion of involvement with the failed car bombing in the Swedish capital in December. Khaledi, who had been taking a nursing course at North Glasgow college, was also charged with five identity and fraud-related offences under immigration and banking legislation. He was arrested last Tuesday after a dawn raid by Strathclyde police on his 19th-floor flat in Whiteinch, Glasgow, after a joint investigation with Bedfordshire police, the Metropolitan police and Swedish authorities. Two other addresses in the city were searched but there were no other arrests. After nearly a week in custody at a high-security police station in Govan, he arrived in court under armed guard. He made no plea or declaration and is expected to reappear in court next week after his bail application was refused. Khaledi is believed to be the first person arrested and charged in connection with the attack in a shopping area of central Stockholm on 12 December , when a car bomb caught fire but failed to detonate. An Iraqi-born Swedish national, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, was found dead when his bomb belt apparently exploded accidentally, injuring two passers-by. Al-Abdaly had been a student at the University of Luton, now the University of Bedfordshire, before graduating with a BSc in sports therapy in 2004. He had been living in Luton with his wife and children. Khaledi has been charged under sections 15, 16 and 17 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which relate to the use of money or property for terrorist purposes and fundraising. He is accused of opening accounts for terrorism purposes with Lloyds TSB, the Post Office, Halifax Bank of Scotland and Santander. He is alleged to have entered “into an arrangement” to provide cash for terrorism between January 2003 and December 2010. Khaledi was also charged with allegedly supplying false information about his identity to stay in the UK and claim benefits illegally and with fraudulently opening bank accounts with a false identity with Lloyds TSB and the Post Office. Global terrorism Sweden Europe Scotland Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
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Man remanded in bail by Glasgow court on suspicion of involvement in the December attack in Sweden A nursing student arrested in Glasgow has been charged with terrorism fundraising offences in connection with a suicide bomb attack in Stockholm. Ezedden Khalid Ahmed Al Khaledi, 30, appeared in private at Glasgow sheriff court and was remanded in custody after being arrested last Tuesday on suspicion of involvement with the failed car bombing in the Swedish capital in December. Khaledi, who had been taking a nursing course at North Glasgow college, was also charged with five identity and fraud-related offences under immigration and banking legislation. He was arrested last Tuesday after a dawn raid by Strathclyde police on his 19th-floor flat in Whiteinch, Glasgow, after a joint investigation with Bedfordshire police, the Metropolitan police and Swedish authorities. Two other addresses in the city were searched but there were no other arrests. After nearly a week in custody at a high-security police station in Govan, he arrived in court under armed guard. He made no plea or declaration and is expected to reappear in court next week after his bail application was refused. Khaledi is believed to be the first person arrested and charged in connection with the attack in a shopping area of central Stockholm on 12 December , when a car bomb caught fire but failed to detonate. An Iraqi-born Swedish national, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, was found dead when his bomb belt apparently exploded accidentally, injuring two passers-by. Al-Abdaly had been a student at the University of Luton, now the University of Bedfordshire, before graduating with a BSc in sports therapy in 2004. He had been living in Luton with his wife and children. Khaledi has been charged under sections 15, 16 and 17 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which relate to the use of money or property for terrorist purposes and fundraising. He is accused of opening accounts for terrorism purposes with Lloyds TSB, the Post Office, Halifax Bank of Scotland and Santander. He is alleged to have entered “into an arrangement” to provide cash for terrorism between January 2003 and December 2010. Khaledi was also charged with allegedly supplying false information about his identity to stay in the UK and claim benefits illegally and with fraudulently opening bank accounts with a false identity with Lloyds TSB and the Post Office. Global terrorism Sweden Europe Scotland Severin Carrell guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Via Ed Henry at CNN : WASHINGTON (CNN) – P.J. Crowley abruptly resigned Sunday as State Department spokesman over controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case. Sources close to the matter said the resignation, first reported by CNN, came under pressure from the White House, where officials were furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning, the Army private who is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, under suspicion that he leaked highly classified State Department cables to the website Wikileaks. Speaking to a small group at MIT last week, Crowley was asked about allegations that Manning is being tortured and kicked up a firestorm by answering that what is being done to Manning by Defense Department officials “is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” Crowley did add that “nonetheless, Bradley Manning is in the right place” because of his alleged crimes, according to a blog post by BBC reporter Philippa Thomas , who was present at Crowley’s talk. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com gives his acerbic take on the situation. Greenwald has been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy on torture and rendition, a policy he regards as duplicitous and hypocritical. Sadly, the Manning affair only reinforces that notion. On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid,” forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports , Crowley has “abruptly resigned” under “pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case.” In other words, he was forced to “resign” — i.e., fired. So, in Barack Obama’s administration, it’s perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing “suicide watch” restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out against that abuse is a firing offense. Good to know. As Matt Yglesias just put it: “Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning.” And as David Frum added: “Crowley firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base, Dem pols despise it.” John Amato: When PJ made his remarks I mistakenly thought the administration wanted to get the overkill treatment Manning has been receiving by the military out there as they obviously try to break him so they can link Assange directly to the leaked documents, which can be used so Assange can be prosecuted in America without the President having to use his bully pulpit against the military. Obviously that wasn’t the case. .
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