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The idea of a crime narrative to explain the financial crisis is something which is slowly coming into media view. It's been sort of denied. It's been ridiculed. It's been—until a number of things began to happen. First, the FBI found that there had been an epidemic of mortgage fraud in America, that the subprime loans were actually being sold fraudulently and in a criminal way, and there have been a lot of people arrested and convicted of that and of related bank frauds.
Senator Kaufman recently went on the floor of the Senate and talked about fraud as being at the very foundation of the financial crisis, the first senator to say so. The Justice Department has asked for criminal complaint or investigation in its early stages against Goldman Sachs after the SEC filed, you know, a civil complaint against Goldman Sachs. And so there's been an upswing of interest in, you know, the alleged criminality or lack of criminality of the key Wall Street players. Were they doing all of this intentionally or not? My argument in my film is they were doing it intentionally, but it wasn't just the finance industry. It was finance in, basically, complicity with real estate and insurance, the fire economy, as it's known. And together, these different players in these industries worked together to defraud the American people and to lose trillions of dollars that have vanished as a result of the financial crisis.
PERU POVERTY DRIVES ILLEGAL MINING
As the international price of gold continues to soar, thousands of people in Peru have moved to gold mining areas in the hope of striking it rich. Along with the unregulated digging comes a trail of deforestation and chemical contamination that is damaging one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. In addition to the negative environmental impact, there are also many social problems in the boom towns that have emerged. Al Jazeera's Craig Mauro reports.
INSIDE IRAQ - IRAQ'S POLITICAL DEADLOCK
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5417
Within the last six months, two lawmakers from the al-Iraqiya List, the largest parliamentary bloc in Iraq, were assassinated by unknown gunmen. Several other members of the bloc narrowly escaped attempts on their lives. This week we look at the growing political assassinations in the country.
Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks
Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops
• Covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'
• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato
How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.
• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.
• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.
Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians." The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.
Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers.
Tens of thousands of alleged Afghan war documents go online
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/25/wikileaks.afghanistan/index.html#fbid=SPgU1JA3rJF
Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating. WikiLeaks plans to post the documents, most of which are classified, on its website.
Britain's Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and SPIEGEL have all vetted the material and compared the data with independent reports. All three media sources have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanistan -- from the perspective of the soldiers who are fighting it.
The reports, from troops engaged in the ongoing combat, were tersely summarized and quickly dispatched. For the most part, they originate from sergeants -- but some have been penned by the occasional lieutenant at a command post or ranking analysts with the military intelligence service.
The documents' release comes at a time when calls for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan are growing -- even in America. Last week, representatives from more than 70 nations and organizations met in Kabul for the Afghanistan conference. They assured President Hamid Karzai that his country would be in a position by 2014 to guarantee security using its own soldiers and police.
A Gloomy Picture
But such shows of optimism seem cynical in light of the descriptions of the situation in Afghanistan provided in the classified documents. Nearly nine years after the start of the war, they paint a gloomy picture. They portray Afghan security forces as the hapless victims of Taliban attacks. They also offer a conflicting impression of the deployment of drones, noting that America's miracle weapons are also entirely vulnerable.
And they show that the war in northern Afghanistan, where German troops are stationed, is becoming increasingly perilous. The number of warnings about possible Taliban attacks in the region -- fuelled by support from Pakistan -- has increased dramatically in the past year.
The documents offer a window into the war in the Hindu Kush -- one which promises to change the way we think about the ongoing violence in Afghanistan. They will also be indispensible for anyone seeking to inform themselves about the war in the future.
SPIEGEL ONLINE has summarized a selection of the most important findings in the data.
Intelligence Agents Drowning in Data The Shortcomings of US Intelligence Services
Wikileaks and Realities of Afghanistan WarWikileaks (http://wikileaks.org) (if overloaded, http://wardiary.wikileaks.org) -- on Sunday released more than 90,000 internal records of U.S. military actions in Afghanistan from over the past six years. The group's founder Julian Assange spoke earlier today at the Frontline Club in London. Video is available at: (http://frontlineclub.com) .Information based on portions of the Wikileaks data was published simultaneously by The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/warlogs) the British Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/warlogs) and Der Spiegel (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html) .Reuters reports today: "At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday." http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66P35Y20100726RICK ROWLEY, richard@bignoisefilms.org, http://www.bignoisefilms.comRowley, independent journalist with Big Noise Films, just returned from a six-week trip to Afghanistan where he was embedded with a U.S. Marine division in Marjah. He was on Democracy Now this morning, which reports: "The [leaked] documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency." Also on the program was Daniel Ellsberg, who compared Wikileaks favorably to his leaking the Pentagon Papers, secret documents that showed a pattern of lying by the government about the Vietnam War. See video and transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/26/the_new_pentagon_papers_wikileaks_releases ANAND GOPOL, [in Kabul, Afghanistan] anandgopal80@gmail.com, http://anandgopal.comGopal has reported from Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal. His dispatches can be read at AnandGopal.com. He is currently working on a book about the Afghan war. In January, he wrote a detailed article on night raids and secret detention centers in Afghanistan: (http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/anandgopal) .RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern@gmail.comMcGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early Sixties and then a CIA analyst for the next 27 years. He said today: "Congress is reportedly slated to vote for an additional $33.5 billion for war in Afghanistan this week. For Congress to proceed and vote for that money without digesting the information just released by Wikileaks would be ostrich-like. The documentation that the Pakistani intelligence services is working in cross-purposes with the U.S. offensive against the Taliban virtually assures defeat." McGovern is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, works with Tell the Word (the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington) and regularly writes for Consortium News, where he has an article today, "Afghan War Leaks Expose Costly Folly." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/072610a.htmlJOSH STIEBER, [in D.C] desertcamel87@yahoo.com, http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.comStieber is a former soldier in the Bravo Company documented in the video "Collateral Murder" (http://www.collateralmurder.com) released earlier this year by Wikileaks. The video shows U.S. soldiers killing civilians including a Reuters photographer and then shooting at people in a van attempting to rescue the wounded. Stieber co-wrote "An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People." http://www.lettertoiraq.com
Kucinich, Ron Paul: Get US troops out of Pakistan
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0723/kucinich-paul-troops-pakistan
Two US lawmakers -- a Republican and a Democrat -- proposed a bill this week demanding the withdrawal of all US troops in Pakistan, where they are conducting covert operations against militants.
"We have known that US forces have been operating in secret inside the territories of Pakistan without congressional approval," Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich said Friday, pointing to reports the United States was stepping up its presence there.
He said the House of Representatives was expected to take up the resolution next week. The measure was introduced late Thursday.
Kucinich said the covert operations were a "violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution introduced after the Vietnam War that only allows the president to send US armed forces into military operations abroad if Congress approves the decision or if the United States is under a serious threat or attack."
"It is our constitutional responsibility as members of Congress to act," Kucinich added.
China’s Money and Migrants Pour Into Tibet
Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.
There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the N.A.A.C.P. and the news media were all soiled by this episode. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans, who believe in fundamental fairness for all, grapple with the poisonous residue left behind by the many powerful people of all stripes who served as accessories to a high-tech lynching.
The Web Means the End of Forgetting
With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact.
It’s often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.
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