Views from the Left Coast

Uh oh -- lost Bush administration e-mails are recovered

2009-12-15T06:31:00.001-08:00

News that millions of missing e-mail messages from the archives of the Bush administration have been recovered must have caused a lot of former officials' stomachs to drop in the nation's capital. Two nonprofit groups that had sued to recover the messages in 2007 announced Monday that 94 days of e-mail traffic between 2003 and 2005 would be reconstituted, according to Cable News Network (CNN). The e-mails, considered government property, are expected to reveal information on the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the 2003 disclosure of the identity of an undercover CIA agent married to former U.S. ambassador who was a critic of the Iraq war. The e-mails were requested by Congressional committees investigating the firings, which some alleged were politically motivated, but the Bush administration said they were missing. The groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive filed suit contending the Bush administration violated federal laws that require presidential records to be preserved. A federal investigation into the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame led to the conviction of a top administration official on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, but his sentence was commuted by former U.S. President George W. Bush. The question of whether former Vice President Dick Cheney was involved was never answered, but the answer could be in the missing e-mails. Of course, this being the federal government, it could be years before all of the messages are made public because of a disagreement over whether the release is required under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act or the Presidential Records Act, which allows records to be kept secret for up to 10 years after an administration leaves office.

Why are banks so desperate to get out of TARP?

2009-12-14T10:29:00.001-08:00

Talk about ingratitude! News that two of the country's largest banks have agreed to raise billions of dollars from investors to pay back bailout loans from U.S. taxpayers seems preposterous on its face and even worse after a little thought. Citigroup has reached a deal with federal regulators to repay $20 billion, after the government sells its $25 billion stake in company stock, according to Cable News Network (CNN), and the government has agreed to a $25 billion repayment in full from Wells Fargo Bank, according to the Reuters international news service. The two banks are the largest still in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, set up by the United States to prop up the ailing U.S. financial system in 2008, and are trying to get out of the stricter regulation required of institutions that accepted taxpayer financing. The announcement coincides with meetings between U.S. President Barack Obama and bank CEOs in Washington, D.C., to discuss the future of the financial system. While it's certainly a good sign that banks are able to repay their government loans, releasing them from regulatory obligations seems counterproductive. Citigroup, for example, is expected to report a $1.1 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2009. Maybe regulators can explain how a bank losing money can afford to pay a $20 billion bill? Wells Fargo was in much better shape than Citigroup when the financial system tanked, needed less borrowing and agreed to fewer restrictions, Reuters said. Wells Fargo plans to raise most of the money by selling additional stock, Reuters said. The Citigroup deal is more complicated, and involves the issuance of billions of shares of Citigroup common stock, now selling around $3 a share, and the sale of new securities. That's great if the instruments sell, and if the bank can afford the additional burdens. But Citigroup is losing money. What it looks like is that these institutions are desperate to get out of government-imposed restrictions on how much they can pay their top executives. Isn't that the same kind of bad management and poor accounting that got these companies into trouble in the first place?

Arroyo government settles mass tribal kidnapping in Philippines

2009-12-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

Officials of the Arroyo administration in Manila must be relieved that a tense standoff with dozens of hostages in lawless Mindanao has been resolved safely, even at the cost of a bit of integrity. Authorities in Prosperidad convinced a group of tribal gunmen to release their 42 remaining hostages and surrender Sunday by promising not to charge them for the kidnapping and by allowing criminal charges already pending against them to be tried in tribal courts. "At last the crisis is over," provincial vice-governor Santiago Cane told the Reuters international news service. "The guns, bullets and grenades of these men are with me now." The gunmen had originally taken 71 hostages in Agusan del Sur province after a gunbattle with a rival tribal group but released 29, including 18 children, before the final negotiations. The southern island of Mindanao has been a rebel hotbed for decades, with Islamic and communist militia jockeying for power with private armies controlled by wealthy families and the authorities in Manilla. Reuters said studies by the Asia Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2007 found more than 5,000 people had been killed and tens of thousands displaced in clan feuds in the southern Philippines. The kidnapping came just three weeks after the massacre of 57 people in nearby Maguindanao province raised questions about the administration of Gloria Arroyo months before next year's presidential election.

Concerns over cybercrime bring United States back to Internet talks

2009-12-12T17:20:00.003-08:00

News from Geneva that the United States has agreed to discuss Internet security with Russia and the United Nations raises hopes of a new treaty between the world powers to demilitarize cyberspace. The very existence of the talks represents a huge shift in U.S. policy since a new president took office in January, since the previous government in Washington had refused to discuss the subject with Russia for years, according to the New York Times. The negotiations also are further evidence of friendlier relations between Moscow and Washington since Barack Obama became president of the United States in January, as they are proceeding in tandem with talks expected to lead to a new round of cuts in the two countries' nuclear weapons arsenals. Talks with UN disarmament negotiators are expected to resume in January along with informal discussions at an Internet security conference in Germany. The renewed efforts apparently mean the Obama administration is taking the issue of computer security seriously despite differences with the Russians on enforcement issues, the Times said. Some experts say the two superpowers are trying to avoid an Internet arms race in which countries develop increasingly powerful cyberweapons to disrupt computer systems that control weapons and security in other nations, which is why UN arms control negotiators are becoming part of the talks. The United States had previously considered the negotiations as a purely economic matter. But last month, high-ranking Russian security officials met in Washington with representatives of the National Security Council and the U.S. departments of state, defense and homeland security, the Times said, setting up the January dates for serious negotiations.

Latest Blackwater revelation tries the nation's soul

2009-12-10T16:11:00.001-08:00

Just in case anyone had any doubt about the seriousness of the Bush administration decision to use private contractors instead of soldiers to conduct the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the latest revelations might very well convince them. According to the New York Times, employees of Blackwater Worldwide -- the Reston, Vir., private security company hired by the Pentagon to protect diplomats in Iraq -- took part in covert CIA raids and assassinations, and might have had a role in the agency's controversial and morally suspect rendition program. Officials at Blackwater, which renamed itself Xe Services following the fatal shooting of 17 unarmed civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, have consistently denied involvement in covert CIA activities. But those denials are under attack in the U.S. Congress and in a U.S. court, where investigations are revealing a disturbing pattern of involvement far beyond what the military or the company have admitted to. Citing interviews with unnamed current and former Blackwater employees and military officials, the Times said security contractors appear to have participated in CIA-authorized raids in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006 and might have played roles in flying detainees to secret prisons operated by the CIA in other countries. The fact that information is still so scarce should give pause. While some clandestine operations can be expected, particularly in times of war, it is generally understood that these affairs are being carried out by highly trained military operatives, not outside contractors whose training and abilities are unknown and, as such, highly suspect. Do residents of the United States want military operations conducted by companies largely made up of foreign nationals with no allegiance to their country nor commitment to its values? Do the residents of the United States want military operations conducted outside the protection of U.S. law and the control of U.S. officials? Residents may have to make that decision soon, because the House Intelligence Committee is presently investigating Blackwater's role in the C.I.A. assassination program revealed this year and promptly eliminated by new agency director Leon Panetta, and a grand jury in North Carolina is investigating allegations of illegal conduct by Blackwater in Iraq, the Times said. Among the facts still to be discovered is whether CIA, military or White House officials approved the participation of outside contractors in these covert activities.

The government is really on trial in Padilla case

2009-12-07T15:04:00.005-08:00

Word from San Francisco that the Obama administration is pressing for the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by an infamous terror suspect should come as no surprise to anyone. As everyone has seen in the past 12 months, last year's historic change at the top of the U.S. government did not mean that everything would be completely different from that point on. The government is involved in so many things, it is not possible -- nor desirable -- for all of them to change immediately. When it comes to lawsuits already in process, like the one filed by the family of Jose Padilla against University of California Professor John Yoo, the government cannot reverse positions without considerable legal maneuvering. Anyway, even if the government wanted to change course, it could, and maybe should, simply rely on the legal process to force that change. Even given that, it is not always clear what the government's best interest is. Take the Padilla case. You remember Padilla, right? He is the U.S. citizen accused of plotting with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb in the United States in 2002. Padilla was declared an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and isolated in a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina for more than three years. His and, his family's lawsuit alleges, was subjected to the kind of corporal mistreatment that Yoo, then a U.S. Justice Department lawyer, contended was not torture in a now infamous memorandum in 2002, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. According to allegations in the lawsuit, Yoo was subjected to sleep and sensory deprivation, kept for long periods of time in total darkness and blinding light, and threatened with the deaths of himself and his family if he didn't talk to U.S. interrogators. This is the kind of mistreatment the United States and scores of other nations agreed to eliminate in treaties signed after World War II. But Yoo's 2002 memo theorized how the Bush administration could possibly justify mistreatment of detainees while maintaining that the United States adhered to international treaties pledging that it would not engage in such conduct. The Padilla family lawsuit sought token damages against Yoo, contending that he had personally authorized the mistreatment, the Chronicle said. But the United States -- then the Bush administration, now the Obama administration -- contends that there is no legal right to sue lawyers who give advice to the president on issues of national security. That is not an insignificant point, and is probably correct. It will be interesting to see if the federal courts can resolve the question without deeply limiting access to the court system that citizens authorize and pay for. Yet the legal machinations are obscuring what is the fundamental issue here -- the United States mistreated detainees in violation of its own laws and its international obligations. The Obama administration is fighting the claim because that's what lawyers do when sued -- fight until and unless an honorable settlement becomes clear. And what about Padilla himself? The government withdrew the dirty bomb charges and put him on trial for an unrelated conspiracy, for which he was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison, even though he likely has gone insane while incarcerated -- if he wasn't insane already. So, whether Padilla's family can sue or not, all the legal arguments in the world cannot change that the U.S. government's reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks went beyond the bounds of civilized conduct. The people have already spoken and replaced the Bush administration -- it's time for the legal system to stop obfuscating and start putting the responsible officials on trial.

Big surprise -- Citigroup and banking regulators disagree on bailout repayment

2009-12-07T15:04:00.003-08:00

From Washington comes word that it could be months before U.S. government banking regulators allow banking giant Citigroup to repay billions of dollars it took from taxpayers in three separate capital bailouts last year and in 2009. Citigroup wants to escape from the tight regulatory regime imposed on it after the bank accepted taxpayer money to stay afloat during the height of the economic downturn, but the multifaceted rescue has made repayment an unusually complex process, according to the Reuters international news service. While rival Bank of America's proposed path out of the Troubled Asset Relief Program involves the raising of some $20 billion to repay the government, Citigroup must figure out how to let the government sell 7.7 billion shares of stock it owns -- nearly a third of outstanding shares -- and how much to pay for the U.S. guarantee of $182 billion worth of bank securities. The government never purchased Bank of America stock and never signed an agreement to protect its assets, Reuters said. In light of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair's statement that the government would have to "be very careful" in allowing banks to buy their way out of TARP, and the array of agencies that would have to sign off on Citigroup's exit, the timeframe is most likely months, rather than weeks, Reuters said. Knowing all this, and understanding how much taxpayers have paid and will paying in the future to keep Citigroup around -- since the bailout funds were borrowed money -- it doesn't make sense for the financial institution to argue with regulators who are the only reason the bank is still around.

Leftist Morales expected to win again in Bolivia

2009-12-06T11:11:00.001-08:00

The aftershocks of the eight-year term of former U.S. President George W. Bush are still reverberating in South America, where Bolivia's leftist president, Evo Morales, is expected to win a second term in office and his Movement Toward Socialism party to win control of Congress. Morales, a self-proclaimed admirer of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and an ally of Venezuela's anti-U.S. leader Hugo Chavez, is wildly popular among the 60 percent of Bolivians who live in poverty but has attracted the ire of the country's business elite. Morales is the first Andean Indian to be elected the country's president, and his re-election probably will lead to more government control over the economy, according to the Reuters international news service. The former coca leaf farmer and llama herder has already nationalized the country's energy and mining industries, and used the income to give cash payments to schoolchildren, new mothers and the elderly, Reuters said. Morales, known for fiery speeches in which he rails against capitalism and calls the United States "the empire," also was successful in changing Bolivia's constitution to allow him to run for a second term, as have other South American leaders. Morales faced two more-conservative challengers, Manfred Reyes Villa, a former governor, and Samuel Doria Medina, who made a fortune in the cement business. Reyes Villa, the stronger challenger, contended during the campaign that Morales was bent on accumulating more and more power, Reuters said. "What's in play in this election is democracy," he said. Bolivia's economy is expected to grow nearly 3 percent in 2009 despite the global economic downturn, the continent's most robust growth rate, Reuters said.

Return to sanity means renewed focus on stem cells

2009-12-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

U.S. residents got another reminder today of the major change in leadership they voted for last November when the National Institutes of Health announced approval of 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for federally funded research, and said 96 more were under review. The NIH announcement was highly anticipated by researchers all over the United States, who were barred by former U.S. President George W. Bush from using federal money for research on all but the embryonic stem cell lines available in 2001 because of moral concerns, according to the New York Times. New U.S. President Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to relax the ban in the interests of science and health, since stem cell research holds the promise of curing some of humanity's most-intractable maladies. Obama did so in March, two months after he took office. Concern over gathering stem cells has relaxed since the 2007 discovery that even adult cells could be reprogrammed to the embryonic stage, the Times said. Researchers applauded today's NIH announcement, because it helped to relieve them of the burden of separating their research into two parts -- research acceptable to the government, and eligible for public grants, and research that could only be paid for with private funding. “You can imagine what it meant not to be able to carry a pipette from one room to another,” Ali H. Brivanlou, a researcher at Rockefeller University in New York, told the Times. “They even had to repaint the walls to ensure no contamination by federal funds.” Brivanlou derived two of the 13 newly approved stem cell lines using private funding. The others were prepared by Dr. George Daley of Children’s Hospital Boston, the Times said. Daley told the newspaper that private funding was hard to get and getting harder, and that he was looking forward to being able to use federal grants to fund his research. Since that date, biomedical researchers supported by the N.I.H. have had to raise private money to derive the cells, which are obtained from the fertilized embryos left over from in vitro fertility clinics. NIH director Francis Collins said he thought most researchers would be happy with the decision, even though they still were barred from deriving stem cells themselves. Collins also said induced embryonic cells were not exactly the same as those derived from fertilized human embryos, so researchers still needed to use both kinds.

Pragmatic former revolutionary wins Uruguay presidency

2009-11-29T19:52:00.001-08:00

Word comes from Uruguay that a former guerrilla leader turned politician has been elected president of the South American country after pledging to continue the leftist economic policies of his predecessor. Jose Mujica, 74, a Socialist senator who served 15 years in prison for his role in founding the radical Tupamaro insurgency that fought for years to install a Cuba-inspired Marxist government, was leading by 10 percentage points in Sunday night's runoff with 80 percent of the vote counted, according to the New York Times. Tens of thousands of turned out on the banks of the Rio de la Plata in Montevideo, the capital, to celebrate the election of Mujica, the candidate of the ruling Broad Front party. Current president Tabare Vazquez, whose socialist and market reforms helped lower Uruguay's unemployment rate while boosting economic investment, had enjoyed a more than 60 percent approval rating but was ineligible to run again, since Uruguay's constitution only permits a single term. “Tomorrow the commitment to our homeland continues,” Mujica said today in a speech, as Vázquez stood nearby. “Thank you, Tabaré, for the continuation of this government.” Mujica, who had caused a stir in the region by criticizing Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, promised Sunday to "fight hard to have a good relationship with Argentina," the Times said. Mujica defeated National Party candidate Luis Lacalle, Uruguay's president from 1990 to 1995. Lacalle, who favored privatization of government-owned industries, also lost re-election bids in 1999 and 2004. He conceded the election in his own Sunday night address. The Broad Front coalition includes the Communist and Christian Democratic parties.

Doubts about Iran's intentions increase after IAEA censure

2009-11-29T10:03:00.000-08:00

So, what is Iran thinking now? Today's announcement that the Islamic republic plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants to add to its known facilities at Natanz and Qom can only be seen as a rebuke, even if a petulant one, to Friday's censure by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But why? Does Iran think it is impervious to international economic sanctions, or to military action if it starts developing nuclear weapons? Is it? The UN's nuclear monitoring agency voted 35-0 to condemn Iran for secretly building an underground enrichment facility near Qom, including votes from usual Tehran supporters Russia and China, according to the Reuters international news service. The existence of the plant, which apparently had been suspected by Western countries' spy agencies for some time, was revealed by Iran in September and discussed publicly for the first time in October by U.S. President Barack Obama at a conference in Geneva. The revelation added renewed urgency to Western nations' effort to prevent Iran, the world's fifth-largest oil exporting nation by volume, to develop nuclear weaponry, because the enrichment plant is not suitable for civilian nuclear power, Tehran's stated intention. Iran has backed away from an agreement with Western nations to surrender its uranium stockpiles in exchange for a guaranteed supply of low-level enriched uranium to power a medical research reactor, adding to Western suspicions. "We have a friendly approach toward the world but at the same time we won't let anyone harm even one iota of the Iranian nation's rights," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said Sunday, Reuters said. Ahmedinejad maintains Iran has a right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. But Ahmedinejad does not discuss why a major oil producer like Iran would even need nuclear power for electricity when it has such an abundant supply of petroleum, a safer fuel. The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Iran's Mehr News Agency that "10 new enrichment plants will be built," Reuters said, and that locations for five of them had already been decided. The 10 proposed enrichment plants would be the same size as the facility at Natanz, Iran's main enrichment site.

Credibility deficit could doom Bernanke renomination

2009-11-28T16:54:00.000-08:00

It might be funny, if the economic crisis wasn't so painful to so many, to hear U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke complain about efforts in Congress to overhaul the government's financial regulatory system. Bernanke was sharply critical of a Senate proposal to transfer much of the Fed's authority to regulate banks to a new consumer protection agency, according to the New York Times. Bernanke wrote an opinion column on the Washington Post Web site warning Congress and taxpayers unhappy about the nearly trillion-dollar bailout of the financial sector to leave the Federal Reserve system alone. "Now more than ever, America needs a strong, nonpolitical and independent central bank with the tools to promote financial stability and to help steer our economy to recovery without inflation," Bernanke wrote. But Bernanke, appointed by former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2006 and nominated by U.S. President Barack Obama to a new 14-year term beginning next year, has a lot of explaining to do. Particularly, he needs to explain why the Federal Reserve and executive branch regulators were seemingly asleep at the controls when the financial system tanked. It was fairly obvious even to lay people that the overheated housing market, where financial institutions were allowed to make thousands of bad home loans and then sell those bad loans to other institutions as securities to back even more bad loans, was headed for a crash. So, why didn't regulators -- and Bernanke, the lead expert -- stop such practices before it was too late?

Kremlin says U.S. and Russia to sign weapons-reduction deal in December

2009-11-27T12:17:00.001-08:00

Anybody still remember the Cold War? Remember air-raid sirens and fallout shelter drills? Remember Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev saying "We will bury you?" Remember the Soviet Union? Those days were brought to mind Friday when Russia said it expected to sign a new agreement with the United States to destroy a portion of the two countries' arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons, according to the Reuters international news service. The new deal, designed to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expires Dec. 5, got a boost in April when Russian President Dimitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama issued a joint statement about reaching a new agreement and again in July when the two agreed to cut their arsenals by a third. Diplomatic frictions that damaged Russia-U.S. relations were relaxed in September when Obama said he would roll back plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe, even though outstanding issues from Russia's brief war with U.S. ally Georgia remain unresolved. Today's report was attributed by Reuters to an unnamed source in Minsk, where Medvedev was meeting with regional leaders. "This treaty is a great move ahead and will improve relations between the United States and Russia," Roland Timerbayev, a former Soviet ambassador and nuclear arms negotiator, told Reuters. But both sides said it is possible that they will not be able to reach a deal before the Dec. 5 expiration of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. "The delegations of Russia and the United States are working incessantly but not looking at the time," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. "The timeframe for signing new agreement is important but does not define the negotiating process; rather, (the process is defined) by the striving of the leaders of Russia and the United States to agree a full, properly working bilateral agreement." Diplomats from both countries say continuing cooperation between Russia and the United States on dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions have helped them to resolve remaining issues on a new treaty.

Israel rejects Palestinian rejection of peace moves

2009-11-26T18:34:00.001-08:00

Maybe Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was only kidding Thursday when he said Israel was more interested in winning international support for its efforts toward peace with Palestinians living in the West Bank than what the Palestinians themselves think. Or, maybe, just maybe, his remarks reflected Israel's frustration with the Palestinian Authority's blanket refusal to begin talks on a peace settlement until Israel stops building homes on land the Palestinians want for their own country. "The last thing that should interest us is the Palestinians' concern," Lieberman said on Israel Radio, according to the Reuters international news service. "Before the Palestinian issue, what should interest us is our friends in the world. We spoke to them and most said, 'help us to help you.'" Lieberman's statement was in reaction to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' outright rejection of Israel's announcement of a 10-month partial freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered the partial freeze in an effort to get the PA to agree to restart peace negotiations. But Abbas, who is threatening to leave government if and when his current term ends, demands a total freeze on building on lands claimed by his stateless people including East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and made it part of its capital, but most of the world's nations have not accepted it. Yet Western nations lined up behind Netanyahu's proposal despite Palestinian objections, Reuters said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Israel's move "a positive contribution to peace, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged that Israel's proposal "become a step toward resuming meaningful negotiations." Israel's chief backer, the United States, has called for the resumption of negotiations without preconditions. But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Israel's Army Radio that Israel's proposal was merely a bid to deflect pressure from the United States, Reuters said. "At the end of the day, Netanyahu needs to make peace with us, the Palestinians, he doesn't need to make peace with Americans," Erekat said. "If that's what he wants, that is his business. The last I know, Washington is 6,000 miles from Jerusalem, while Jericho is 67." More than 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alongside 2.7 million Palestinians, Reuters said.

General Motors could close Saab next week

2009-11-25T00:42:00.000-08:00

The latest word from General Motors Corp. in Detroit is that it could close its Saab Automobile subsidiary next week if it cannot find a new buyer after a reported deal to sell the legendary company collapsed. The troubled U.S. automaker said today that its board would meet next week to decide the fate of the 70-year-old Swedish automaker, which it bought in two parts in 1990 and 2000, according to the New York Times. GM could be forced to close the 4,000-employee company because Swedish exotic car maker Koenigsegg unexpectedly pulled out of the deal Tuesday. Koenigsegg issued a statement blaming the collapse on GM taking too long to close the deal. “The time factor has always been critical for our strategy to breathe new life into the company,” Koenigsegg said. “Unfortunately, delays in closing this acquisition have resulted in risks and uncertainties that prevent us from successfully implementing the new Saab business plan.” GM appeared surprised by Koeinsgegg's decision, Reuters said. “We negotiated in good faith and we met all our timing obligations under the agreement,” said a G.M. spokeswoman, Renee Rashid-Merem. GM chief executive Fritz Henderson said he was "very disappointed" by the failure of the Saab deal. But Henderson should not have been surprised. It is the third time in the past two months that a GM brand sale was scuttled at the last minute. Its proposed sale of its Saturn brand to Penske Automotive Group collapsed just before it was final in September, and GM pulled out of a deal to sell its Opel operations in Europe last month. GM is being forced to sell off some of its parts as it reorganizes under bankruptcy court protection.

Lessons learned? Federal Reserve asks for some of its billions back

2009-11-24T04:19:00.003-08:00

Here we go again! News that the U.S. Federal Reserve had asked some banks to repay money they got from last year's $700 billion financial system bailout would seem to be good news, since it means those institutions have recovered. But what many U.S. banks who are trying to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program really want is to escape the tighter oversight imposed by the federal government as a condition of receiving taxpayer funds, the Reuters international news service reported Tuesday. Citing an unnamed source, Reuters said nine of the 10 banks that were among the 19 stress-tested in May and found to need additional capital are now clamoring to leave the program, which provided billions in capital to more than 500 banks and a few struggling industrial companies. But the nine, including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup, Wells Fargo & Co. and Fifth Third Bancorp, began to prosper again in no small part due to the restrictions imposed by the program. Requirements for participation included perfectly sensible limits on executive compensation, dividend payouts and share buybacks. If those banks are released from the program, they also get released from those requirements. What is to prevent them from doing the same things that got them into so much trouble? Sure, there are regulators, but there were regulators before and the financial collapse still happened. The 10th bank, GMAC Corp., is not expected to be able to raise capital anytime soon. The 10 banks that passed the June test repaid the government in June and have already left the program, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Citigroup's situation is different from the other stress-tested banks because the federal government invested billions of dollars in shares of the bank's common stock and trust-preferred securities in an effort to keep it solvent.

U.S. airlines fined for stranding passengers on plane

2009-11-24T04:18:00.001-08:00

Today's announcement that fines have been imposed on three airlines for stranding 47 passengers for six hours overnight on a plane at the Rochester, Minn., airport does raise a few questions. The fines, totaling $175,000, were the first ever imposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Airline Enforcement Office against any airlines for stranding passengers aboard aircraft, according to the Reuters international news service. The questions? There's an Airline Enforcement Office? The first fines ever? This is certainly not the first stranding -- what has the Airline Enforcement Office been doing all this time? A check of the agency's Web site offers no clues, except that the agency has been in existence for at least 10 years. Now, according to the site, the agency is proposing new rules to require airlines to do more to reduce the likelihood of stranded passengers and to take better care of them when it does happen. Continental Airlines and its affiliate, ExpressJet Airlines, were fined $100,000 and Mesaba Airlines, a unit of Delta Air Lines, was fined $75,000 for the
Aug. 8 incident, in which a Continental Express jet operated by ExpressJet en route from Houston to Minneapolis was forced to land at Rochester because of bad weather. The passengers were kept on the plane because Mesabe, the only airline operating in Rochester at the time, refused to allow them to deplane and enter the terminal because there were no federal security officers on duty. But AEO officials determined that Mesaba could have allowed the passengers to enter the terminal to wait, provided they stayed in the secure area, Reuters said. Why isn't that a matter of simple common sense to airlines?

Islamic cleric's anti-government views achieve new stature in Iran

2009-11-21T12:07:00.001-08:00

From Iran comes word that a high-ranking Islamic cleric once close to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the inspiration of the 1979 revolution, has emerged as the spiritual leader of ongoing opposition to the reigning government in Tehran. Followers of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, regarded as the most knowledgeable Islamic scholar in the country of 66 million, could pose a real threat to the Shiite theocracy headed by current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to the conservative government of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran's president. Montazeri has long been critical of Khamenei in his religious edicts but has stayed out of trouble during the post-election crackdown, probably because of his religious credentials and his role in the 1979 revolution, the New York Times said Saturday. Montazeri, now in his 80s, was seen as Khomeini's successor following the revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran. But the two had a falling out over what Montazeri saw as as abuses of power by the Islamic government during a series of executions of political prisoners in 1988, the Times said. The crackdown on opposition following the June election, in which Ahmedinejad claimed to have been re-elected but his chief opponent, former prime minister Mir Hussein Moussavi, alleged a fraudulent ballot count, has refocused the country's attention on Montazeri. Thousands have been arrested and many executed, and those imprisoned have complained about terrible treatment by authorities. "A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” Montazeri said in written comments posted on Web sites since the election, the Times said. Mehdi Kalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former seminary student in Qom, said Montazeri is the leading cleric criticizing the theocracy from a religious perspective. “We have many intellectuals who criticize this regime from the democratic point of view,” Khalaji told the Times. "He criticizes this regime purely from a religious point of view, and this is very hurtful. The regime wants to say, ‘If I am not democratic enough that doesn’t matter, I am Islamic.’ He says it is not an Islamic government.” Montazeri's contentions also make sense to the West, where political observers wonder about religion's role in the Iranian government's excesses, including its apparently single-minded pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

Feds move to drop charges against one Blackwater guard

2009-11-20T07:17:00.001-08:00

What does it mean that the U.S. Justice Department wants to dismiss criminal charges against one of five former Blackwater security guards facing multiple manslaughter charges for their roles in a 2007 shooting incident in Baghdad in which 14 civilians were killed? Well, it might mean very little, since the charges would be dropped without prejudice and could be refiled later in the case. More likely, it means that a second guard, Nicholas Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., has agreed to give testimony against the four others who still face charges stemming from the shooting of civilians by a private security company hired by the U.S. military to protect diplomats in Baghdad threatened by unrest in the years following the 2003 invasion. The five former guards pleaded not guilty to 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 attempted manslaughter counts and one weapons violation in January. A sixth Blackwater guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway, 34, of Fallbrook, Calif., pleaded guilty to fewer charges in 2008 in a deal for his testimony, according to the Reuters international news service. The Nisour Square shooting helped to sour relations between Iraq's elected government and the Bush administration, which had destroyed the former government of Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Subsequent investigation found Hussein's government played no role in the 2001 attacks. The incident prompted Iraq's government to refuse to renew Blackwater's authority to operate there, and the company's military contract was not renewed in May. However, Blackwater guards have continued to operate in Iraq while replacement contractors are being sought. The shooting also reignited a debate over the use of private contractors to fulfill duties traditionally handled by soldiers at substantially lower costs. The motion to dismiss charges against Slatten was filed under seal, and no explanation was offered publicly, Reuters said. "While we never comment on sealed motions, it is a long-standing legal principle that charges against a defendant dismissed without prejudice allow the government to recharge the defendant at a later date if the evidence warrants," said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. The shooting happened on Sept. 16, 2007, as guards escorted a diplomatic convoy through a crowded Baghdad intersection, Reuters said.

Pretrial publicity forces relocation of trial of transit cop who shot passenger in Oakland

2009-11-19T11:54:00.004-08:00

Relatives of Oscar Grant, the young Hayward man whose slaying by a transit cop on a train platform in Oakland sparked riots and protests in the California city's downtown, applauded the news Thursday that the trial of now former BART police officer, who is accused of murder, will be moved to Los Angeles. Family members did not want the case moved to more-conservative San Diego, one of several counties considered as a venue for the trial by the Oakland judge who decided to move the case last month, according to the http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/20/BAP71ANCJB.DTL. But Grant's family also opposed moving the trial out of racially diverse Alameda County, across the bay from San Francisco. Grant, 22, was shot and killed while being restrained along with a dozen others at the transit agency's Fruitvale Station following a disturbance on a train. BART is an acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit, a regional rail system that carries 350,000 passengers daily. The shooting was captured on dozens of cell phone cameras and has been seen by millions on the Internet and on television, the Chronicle said. A BART-commissioned found transit police did not respond adequately to either the disturbance or in the aftermath of the shooting, leading to calls for the disbandment of the BART force. Jacobson ruled last month that the former officer, Johannes Mehserle, could not get a fair trial in Alameda County because of pretrial publicity and the possibility of civil unrest during and after the proceeding. Mehserle resigned from the BART police force immediately after the shooting, presumably to avoid being compelled to give testimony under oath. Mehserle's attorneys, who say the officer pulled his gun by mistake, sought to have the case moved to San Diego County. "I think I can get justice for Oscar in Los Angeles," said Cephus Johnson, Grant's uncle. An attorney for the Grant family, widely known Oakland lawyer John Burris, said Jacobson's ruling was "the most important ruling that will be made in this case other than the verdict." Burris said "Mehserle would have walked" if the case had been moved to San Diego County. Jacobson's decision Thursday to move the case to Los Angeles, to the same courthouse where ex-football star O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and a friend in 1995, came after more than an hour and a half of argument, the Chronicle said. Jacobson said he would ask for a different judge to be appointed to preside over the trial.

Amnesty offer on overseas bank accounts attracts nearly 15,000 takers

2009-11-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

U.S. tax authorities say publicity about a settlement with a giant European bank has at least helped inspire nearly 15,000 U.S. owners of overseas bank accounts that have been off the books for years to come forward and pay taxes on their holdings. Tuesday's announcement by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, reported by the New York Times, attributes the response to the Oct. 15 end of an amnesty program under which U.S. taxpayers who declared their holdings were eligible for reduced penalties and avoid tax evasion charges. The catalyst was the future release of the identifies of more than 4,000 U.S. residents with offshore accounts with UBS, a Swiss megabank that offered anonymity to depositors. But UBS agreed in February to reveal names of 4,500 depositors with accounts totalling more than $18 billion as part of a settlement of a U.S. government lawsuit charging the bank with selling offshore financial products intended to enable tax evasion, the Times said. Under the terms of the deal, UBS also must admit criminal wrongdoing and pay $780 million in fines. and admit to criminal wrongdoing. “We are talking about billions of dollars coming into the U.S. Treasury,” said IRS chief Douglas Shulman, the Times said. head of the Mr. Shulman said. “We have now gained access to thousands of taxpayers and bank accounts that we have never had before.” More than half of the depositors revealed their holdings in the month before the deadline. "We had a flood at the end," Shulman said. Many of the accounts belonged to UBS customers but many did not, the Times said. The IRS said it was expanding its investigation of offshore tax havens around the world. But not a word was said about holding the Swiss banking industry to account for the billions of dollars stolen from Europeans during World War II by the Nazi government of Germany and deposited in Switzerland, where it presumably remains.

Kosovo conducts first election as independent nation

2009-11-15T13:04:00.003-08:00

Low turnout by European standards failed to dim the excitement among government leaders in Pristina on Sunday as voters in Kosovo went to the polls for its first local election since declaring itself independent from Serbia last year. "Today we are showing that our country and its citizens have deserved independence, democracy and the European Union perspective," Prime Minister Hashim Thaci exulted after the vote, according to the Reuters international news service. Forty-five percent of Kosovo's 1.5 million voters turned out for the balloting, in which the population chose mayors and councilmembers in the new country's 36 municipalities. Winners will not be determined until runoff elections next month. Some analysts blamed the low turnout on frustration over the country's sluggish economy and 40 percent unemployment rate, Reuters said. "The faith is lost in Kosovo because of high corruption among the political parties," said Halil Matoshi, a local analyst. "People that vote today are mainly party militants." That's certainly possible, but it's a little hard to believe that the population of a brand new country that fought so hard to be independent would be jaded by politics. The turnout also was impacted by Serbian calls for a boycott by voters of Serbian descent, who make up seven percent of Kosovo's population. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nine years after NATO bombers drove Serbian forces from the then-province to stop the killing of ethnic Albanians, who make up 88 percent of the population. Kosovo's independence has only been recognized by 63 countries, primarily Western nations, including the United States. Serbia and Russia have refused to recognize the new country. Kosovo is the poorest country in Europe, with a per capita income of $2,300 annually, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Britain takes stock of Iraq war abuse claims

2009-11-14T13:30:00.001-08:00

News from London that the British government has launched an investigation into more than 30 allegations of abusive conduct by its soldiers in Iraq makes it likely that the staunch U.S. ally has already realized that the price of war goes far beyond the cost in treasure. In a statement released Saturday, the British Ministry of Defence said many of the claims filed by Iraqi civilians have been pending for awhile but would be resolved, according to Cable News Network (CNN). "We are now looking into these new cases," a ministry spokesman told CNN. "Some of the cases we are looking at though go back a while, some are even from February this year, so all 30-something cases are at different stages in the investigation." An attorney for the Iraqis told Independent Television News, a CNN affiliate in London, that most of allegations involved sexual abuse of civilians. "There was a lot of sexual abuse," said the attorney, Paul Shiner, who likened the abuse to what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Shiner said allegations include forcing a 14-year-old boy to commit sexual acts and the rape of an Iraqi man by two soldiers. "It is using sex as a mechanism to humiliate," Shiner said. "There are too many cases. Armed forces minister Bill Rammell said it was too early to jump to conclusions about the allegations but all would be investigated. "Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast, vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behavior, displaying integrity and selfless commitment," Rammell said. "While there have been instances when individuals have behaved badly, only a tiny number of individuals have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards." But soldiers who engage in sexual abuse of prisoners and children are not merely 'falling short' of some lofty standard. They are not just boys letting off a little steam. They are criminal deviants who have no place in human society, let alone handed sophisticated weaponry and entrusted with the defense of one of the world's great countries. It looks like the British armed forces, like the U.S. military, must at a minimum put more energy into understanding the psychological makeup of their soldiers and into understanding the effects of what is certainly unimaginable stresses on them. And if military leaders of both countries do not want to or are incapable of taking this seriously, both countries must find other military leaders who will and can.

Human Rights Watch report raises troubling questions about China

2009-11-13T15:02:00.003-08:00

If it is indeed true that China's government is permitting local authorities to operate secret jails in Beijing where citizens are mistreated, it's time for the United States to re-evaluate trade relations with the world's most populous nation. Of course, we're not talking about returning to the days of complete non-engagement -- the U.S. and China are far too interdependent economically for that. Rather, it is because we are so tied together economically that China would be likely to respect and comply with reasonable demands to restrain its totalitarian tendencies. Beijing certainly understood that its decision to become part of the world economy meant unprecedented scrutiny of its internal affairs and, as a result, an obligation to conduct itself in a more transparent and civilized manner. That's why Thursday's report from the nonprofit group Human Rights Watch is so troubling. The report alleges that the government in Beijing permits local governments to operate a system of secret prisons in which prisoners are routinely mistreated, according to the New York Times. Abuse is routine even in detention centers run by the national government but is even worse in the unofficial jails, the report said. "We're talking about a country with torture in formal detention centers, and the black jails are 10 floors down" in terms of treatment of detainees, said Sophie Richardson, the group's advocacy director for Asia. Richardson said abuses that were widespread in China’s official prison system, which has some judicial supervision, were even worse in unofficial jails, which have no oversight. But China denies that the unofficial detention system exists. “There are no black jails in China,” Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in Beijing on Thursday, the Times said. “If citizens have complaints and suggestions about government work, they can convey them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and normal channels.” But Human Rights Watch said China's system for protecting detainees was being subverted by local officials, who had an incentive to block such complaints from reaching national officials. The issue is considered serious enough by the U.S. government for President Barack Obama to raise when he meets next week in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to National Security Council official Jeffrey Bader, the Times said.

Why does Iran need more time to decide if it will fulfill its nuclear obligations?

2009-11-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

Monday's report from Vienna that a top U.S. diplomat said Iran should get more time to decide whether to fulfill the obligation to give up most of its nuclear fuel under a deal negotiated in Geneva in September does not make sense unless something else is going on that has been left out of the public record. Iran agreed to the deal to secure enriched uranium for its nuclear medicine facility and avoid stepped-up economic sanctions by the United States and other world powers; if Tehran wants out of the agreement, it should drop pretending and continue on the road to pariah statehood. "There have been communications back and forth. We are in extra innings in these negotiations. That's sometimes the way these things go," said Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations-sponsored entity that monitors on nuclear activity worldwide. "We want to give some space to Iran to work through this," Davies said. "It's a tough issue for them, quite obviously, and we're hoping for an early, positive answer from the Iranians." But the Iranians have a history of stalling for time to continue developing their offensive capacities, and not to contribute to peaceful resolution of ongoing disputes. Iran contends its nuclear development is intended for peaceful purposes, despite its huge oil reserves and the revelation in September that it was building a secret enrichment plant at a military base near Qom. U.S. experts say the plant could not have enriched enough uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant and was almost surely designed for nuclear weaponry. Turkey has offered to mediate the international dispute, but it is apparent that Tehran is not willing to halt its activities despite the risk of sanctions. That's why Iran has not yet offered a formal reply to international demands that it comply with the agreement, and why it doesn't make sense to give the Islamic republic even more time to stall. If the international community's patience is "not infinite," as Germany's chief negotiator said the other day, it's time to bring on the "consequences" that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of in Berlin. There is no reason to wait until the end of the year. Iran can continue to protest diplomatically all it wants, but it should do so without its stash of nuclear fuel and without its ability to threaten nearby countries.