The Pew Research Center has a report showing not just the decline in net worth across demographic groups from 2005 to 2009, but more importantly, the relative net worth of those groups.

It shows that, no matter how bad the $23,000 drop in net worth that the housing crash represented to whites, they’re still doing far better off than people of color. Hispanics lost $12,000, fully 66% of their net worth. African Americans lost almost $6,500, more than half of their net worth.

And of course, the real scandal is that the media net worth for whites is 20 times that of African Americans and 18 times that of Hispanics.

Here’s how the report describes the source of these discrepancies (the short version is that whites have more assets in addition to their homes–and lost less value in their home–than Hispanics and African-Americans).

Hispanics: The net worth of Hispanic households decreased from $18,359 in 2005 to $6,325 in 2009. The percentage drop—66%—was the largest among all groups. Hispanics derived nearly two-thirds of their net worth in 2005 from home equity and are more likely to reside in areas where the housing meltdown was concentrated. Thus, the housing downturn had a deep impact on them. Their net worth also diminished because of a 42% rise in median levels of debt they carried in the form of unsecured liabilities (credit card debt, education loans, etc.).

Blacks: The net worth of black households fell from $12,124 in 2005 to $5,677 in 2009, a decline of 53%. Like Hispanics, black households drew a large share (59%) of their net worth from home equity in 2005. Thus, the housing downturn had a strong impact on their net worth. Blacks also took on more unsecured debt during the economic downturn, with the median level rising by 27%.

Whites: The drop in the wealth of white households was modest in comparison, falling 16% from $134,992 in 2005 to $113,149 in 2009. White households were also affected by the housing crisis. But home equity accounts for relatively less of their total net worth (44% in 2005), and that served to lessen the impact of the housing bust. Median levels of unsecured debt among whites rose by 32%.

Even with this explanation, the Pew Report doesn’t talk about the implications of this. What kind of stability can a family have if they effectively have only $6,000 to fall back on (and for 24% of Hispanic and African-American households, that $6,000 represents nothing more than a car). Given the rush to gut social security, what kind of retirement (or disability) can this family have?

And note the rise of unsecured debt among all races. A lot of folks are just living on credit cards or other debt (or were, back in 2009; a lot of people have gone bankrupt since then).

There’s a huge chunk of this country living on the edge and that group is disproportionately African-American or Hispanic.

Our Collapsing Empire

Remember how much better Hillary was on trade than Obama in the primary? She gave a really depressing speech–talking up free trade–in Hong Kong today.

Oh. Sorry. Bob Baer was only mostly serious when he said Israel would attack Iran in the fall. But who needs to attack Iran? After five Russian scientists who contributed to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant died in a plane crash last month, one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was just gunned down outside his home. Or maybe not.

This interesting take-from Gregory Johnsen, who knows a bit about Yemen–says our use of drones there are making AQAP stronger.

Jason Leopold describes how David Addington and Jim Haynes pushed David Hicks charges through to help out Prime Minister John Howard.

Our Collapsing Economy

Dan Froomkin reviews the big money being spent to pass three more NAFTA-style trade deals.

According to this post, the average duration of unemployment just shot up to a new high: 39.9 weeks. And there are now more than 2 million 99ers–folks who have been out of work for more than 99 weeks. This is not the time for austerity, but unfortunately the bozos in Washington can’t help themselves.

Everyone’s talking about this long piece on the insanity of our debt limit crisis, “What were they thinking.” My favorite line, from an anonymous ex-White House employee? “It’s not a place that welcomes ideas.”

In which Republican David Frum lectures Obama about trusting banksters.

This is an interesting piece on how Wall Street has gotten suspicious of Microsoft’s tax shell game.

Corporatists v. the Environment

Hungary is destroying 1000 acres (or much more–see joberly’s comment) of land that got planted with Monsanto’s GMO corn, apparently without the knowledge of the farmers. What’s particularly interesting about this, IMO, is the company that sold the GMO seeds that is now bankrupt. Under what business model does a company sell more expensive Monsanto seeds, particularly if the company is not viable? It almost seems like the company was a ploy to get the seeds in there.

Big Carbon is miffed about the statue at University of Wyoming suggesting that coal has ties to the explosion of pine beetles in the state. The effort to pressure the University is bad enough, but I think the statue is pretty cool on its own right.

Grist finds an interesting way to visualize what the GOP budget would destroy: by describing what it would do to 10 great vacation spots.

Your Daily Murdoch

The ACLU and Gawker are partnering to sue Governor Chris Christie for “correspondence, phone records, and calendar entries” of conversations between him and Roger Ailes. NY Magazine had reported that Ailes had pressed Christie to run for President. ACLU is arguing that Christie did not properly invoke executive privilege, and privilege wouldn’t cover such conversations in any case. I can’t help but wonder whether Gawker, at least, is going for something else, such as mention of why Christie didn’t prosecute News Corp for a US-based hacking incident with Floorgraphics.

John Brennan, Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano, and some other Administration bigwigs just rolled out the Administration’s new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime (TOC). Here’s how they define TOC:

Transnational organized crime refers to those self-perpetuating associations of individuals who operate transnationally for the purpose of obtaining power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or in part by illegal means, while protecting their activities through a pattern of corruption and/or violence, or while protecting their illegal activities through a transnational organizational structure and the exploitation of transnational commerce or communication mechanisms. There is no single structure under which transnational organized criminals operate; they vary from hierarchies to clans, networks, and cells, and may evolve to other structures. The crimes they commit also vary. Transnational organized criminals act conspiratorially in their criminal activities and possess certain characteristics which may include, but are not limited to:

• In at least part of their activities they commit violence or other acts which are likely to intimidate, or make actual or implicit threats to do so;
• They exploit differences between countries to further their objectives, enriching their organization, expanding its power, and/or avoiding detection/apprehension;
• They attempt to gain influence in government, politics, and commerce through corrupt as well as legitimate means;
• They have economic gain as their primary goal, not only from patently illegal activities but also from investment in legitimate businesses; and
• They attempt to insulate both their leadership and membership from detection, sanction, and/or prosecution through their organizational structure. [my emphasis]

It all sounds like they could be talking about Goldman Sachs or News Corp. But the specific crimes they mentioned are:

• Drug trafficking
• Human trafficking
• Russian, Italian, Japanese mafia (in addition to Mexican drug cartels)
• Counterfeiting

In other words, this initiative will look at very serious TOCs. But they won’t look at the TOCs that have done the most damage to the US in the last several years: the banksters that, through fraud, intimidation, and political influence managed to loot and then crash the economy. The same banksters that are now–frankly with DOJ enabling them–using their corporate structures to avoid any accountability for having crashed the economy.

That’s a problem. Because imagine what we could do to the banksters if we used any of the several following tools against them:

A new Executive Order will establish a sanctions program to block the property of and prohibit transactions
with significant transnational criminal networks that threaten national security, foreign policy, or economic interests.
A proposed legislative package will enhance the authorities available to investigate, interdict, and prosecute the activities of top transnational criminal networks.
A new Presidential Proclamation under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) will deny entry to transnational criminal aliens and others who have been targeted for financial sanctions.
A new rewards program will replicate the success of narcotics rewards programs in obtaining information
that leads to the arrest and conviction of the leaders of transnational criminal organizations that pose the greatest threats to national security.
An interagency Threat Mitigation Working Group will identify those TOC networks that present a sufficiently
high national security risk and will ensure the coordination of all elements of national power to combat them.

We could freeze Goldman and its executives from using their ill-gotten goods. We could recruit new whistleblowers, rather than jailing them. We could throw “all elements of national power” to combat Goldman.

Instead, we’ve been funneling trillions to them.

Now I don’t mean to be glib with this observation. The Administration is about to roll out a law enforcement regime that applies terrorist-like authorities to combat the TOCs it believes are illegitimate. While I haven’t seen the bill the Administration is proposing, it seems that the taint of illegality in one part of the TOC will qualify that TOC for such terrorist-like treatment across the network.

Except if you’re a bankster. Because if you’re a bankster, the government will use all its resources to ignore or settle the crimes that lay at the heart of your TOC, just so it doesn’t have to face the illegitimacy of the TOC as a whole.

But I guess that’s what the Administration expects to drive our economy.

The economist Milton Friedman, along with F. Hayek, is one of the villains of Naomi  Klein’s book. According to her, Friedman has stated that “only a crisis — actual or  perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” Friedman believes that during a  crisis, we only have a brief window of opportunity before society slips back into the “tyranny of the status quo,” and that we need to use this opportunity or lose it.

This is actually sound advice and in my view the strategy Western survivalists should follow. When I first started writing as Fjordman I focused on how to “fix the system.” I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies; it also contains too many internal contradictions. If we define the “system” as mass immigration from alien cultures, Globalism, multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of “tolerance,” then this is going to collapse. It’s
inevitable.

The goal of European and Western survivalists — and that’s what we are, it is our very survival that is at stake — should not be to “fix the system,” but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes. We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve. What went wrong with our civilisation, and how can we survive and hopefully regenerate, despite being an increasingly vulnerable minority in an often hostile world?

— Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto, speaking of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine

I suggested the other day that there’s a more fundamental lesson we ought to take in the face of inexplicable violence, rather than just what ideology the perpetrator adhered to. That is, guns and explosives, mixed with a threat to a person’s dignity, can have catastrophic results, regardless of ideology.

But there is an area where ideology is critical: staving off the collapse of the fabric of our society.

Since I left FireDogLake, I’ve been reading more books than I have in years. Partly as a result, I’ve had a curious distance from the negotiations on the debt limit. It has been like watching a really ugly train wreck from 1,000 feet in the air, seeing in advance it’d be ugly, but sustaining a sick curiosity about whether it would be merely horrible, or really, really horrible.

Because (as Paul Krugman has suggested) what our elected representatives in DC are arguing over, really, is whether we’re going to willingly and deliberately launch further into a Depression gradually, or with real gusto.

Meanwhile, the other thing that has been coming slowly into view at my imagined 1,000 foot perch is the ideology of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist. For a summary, go here or here (added: or here or here). But as you can see, he–like some others–embraces the idea of using crises to change society, in his case, in radical, terrible ways.

As it happens, two of the books I’ve been reading use different approaches to show what a mess the US is already in. One–still in manuscript–continues the Kevin Phillips tradition, contextualizing shadow economic stats within a narrative of how, over the last 35 years, America has been gutted.

The other, Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression, tells the stories–with narratives and images–of what the collapse of America looks like at the individual level (I highly, highly recommend it). The authors–reporter Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson–describe what it means for the $7 earned from giving blood to be a big deal. They describe a lot of hunger. And they describe more and more people who used to live “in the house on the hill” falling into such straits.

There’s one story that really hit home as I watched the debt crisis and Breivik’s ideology play out. It dates to a reporting trip Maharidge and Williamson made in the early Reagan years, their first effort to chronicle the collapse of America.They spent a day at a work camp in Texas run by a “foundation” that picks up down and out men and induces them to sign up for a month at the work camp as a way to get them off the street (and also as a way to make $1,000/day off of their unpaid labor). Maharidge describes the thinking of one of the guys who was about to willingly stay past his 30 day commitment.

“Okay weasels,” Foxface announced, “now fill it back up.”

We set to work regarding the reloading the truck by hand, forming teams that passed debris.

“I hate this shit,” Jay said.

It was a contradiction I couldn’t understand. Jay felt enmity, but he was terrified of what he called “the outside.”

“But don’t you fell they are ripping you off?” I asked.

Jay scratched at the hard ground with a foot, scraping at the dust. When he looked back up, he said, “No-o-o.” He paused.” “No.”

I shut up.

I realized what I was seeing: this was a man who had given up, utterly.

[snip]

He had arrived here a destroyed man, beaten by life and the vagaries of the economy. Now he seemed brainwashed, like the cult members I’d written about for the newspaper. Like a cult, the foundation was exploiting his weakened state of mind in order to manipulate him. The work camp practiced classic sleep deprivation: it worked men hard and then roused them after just a few hours’ sleep to do it all over again, seven days a week. Jay said this was how it had been for the previous thirty days.

One must be defeated to be controlled.

That was 30 years ago. But if anything, our society has embraced such approaches to social control in more and more areas of life. It’s certainly the kind of thing we can expect to see more of, as this Depression gets worse. Particularly given the way Republicans and many Democrats have refused to offer an alternative.

And to some degree, this is where our focus needs to be. Progressives have been pretty impotent trying to combat the Depression-embracing policies of DC’s politicians. Saving Social Security and Medicare (maybe) may be our only win on this train wreck. And while in the medium term, I think Progressives can shift the way our society thinks about taxes–and specifically, taxing the really rich, and while I think if the corporatists don’t succeed in entirely shutting down elections, we might vote a lot of them out next year, there’s not much we can do politically at the moment.

Meanwhile, those aiming to take advantage of crisis have gotten their wish and they’ve been preparing–whether far right or “just” neoliberal–a range of policies to capitalize. Yet, if this front page article in the hometown of one of the guys most active in pushing this crisis is any indication, folks aren’t necessarily going to fall for it. Even in West Michigan, people know when they’re being looted.

But to get there–to make it through this crisis without the Breiviks of the world getting their way–we’re going to have to limit the number of people who end up like Jay, quite literally embracing his slavery. Americans are pissed off and are beginning to fight back–but we have to make sure they fight, and fight in constructive ways, rather than give up.

This weekend does not bring the excitement of last did with the Women’s World Cup, but there are three notable events, two of which are even sports related.

First up is the German Grand Prix from the famed Nurburgring in the Eifel Mountains. Nurburgring was also the site of the 1961 German Grand Prix. Continuing with this year’s homage to the 50th anniversary of the Championship season for my late friend Phil Hill, let’s go back for a minute to the sounds and smell of The Ring in 1961.

Nurburgring was a far different circuit in the 60s than it is today. Phil Hill took pole position in qualifying by shattering the lap record, becoming the first person to lap in under 9 minutes, with a stunning lap of 8 minutes 55.2 seconds (153.4 km/h or 95.3 mph) in the famed Ferrari 156 “Sharknose”. In the race though, Phil could not match Stirling Moss in his Lotus-Climax. Here is the Wiki description:

The race was won by British driver Stirling Moss driving a Lotus 18/21 for privateer outfit the Rob Walker Racing Team. Moss started from the second row of the grid and lead every lap of the race. It was the first German Grand Prix victory for a rear-engined car since Bernd Rosemeyer’s Auto Union Type C took victory in 1936. Moss finished just over 20 seconds ahead of Ferrari 156 drivers Wolfgang von Trips and Phil Hill, breaking a four-race consecutive run of Ferrari victories. The result pushed Moss into third place in the championship points race, becoming the only driver outside of Ferrari’s trio of von Trips, Hill and Richie Ginther still in contention to become the 1961 World Champion with two races remaining.

It was the last home country appearance for points leader von Trips before his death at the Italian Grand Prix five weeks later. His second place finish saw Ferrari secure the constructors’ championship. The remaining championship points scorers were all from British racing teams. Scottish driver Jim Clark (Lotus 21) was fourth for Team Lotus; former motorcycle World Champion John Surtees (Cooper T53) was fifth for Yeoman Credit Racing and young New Zealander Bruce McLaren was sixth in his factory-run Cooper T58.

The Nurburgring of today is a far different, more sterile and safer track, and much shorter, with a length of just under 3 miles as opposed to the former 14 miles plus. Mark Webber of Red Bull was fast in practice Friday and took pole today with a surprising P2 for Lewis Hamilton of McLaren. Sebastian Vettel in the other Red Bull is in P3, the first time he will not start from the front row this year. The Ferraris of Alonso and Massa will start in P4 and P5 respectively. The race day weather forecast is for cool temperatures, clouds and some rain, which should make for a very interesting race. Again, the assholes at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV will make US F1 fans watch the race on a tape delay, starting at 12 EST and 9 am PST.

In other sporting news, it looks like the great NFL Football lockout is in its last throes. From Marke Maske at the Washington Post:

NFL player leaders are scheduled to meet Monday in Washington, where they are likely to recommend approval of the lockout-ending collective bargaining agreement already ratified by the league’s franchise owners, several people familiar with the deliberations said Saturday.

The lockout could officially end next Saturday with the opening of the free agent market and teams beginning training camps, those people said, cautioning that those plans were subject to change. The 10-year labor agreement first would have to be ratified by a majority of the nearly 2,000 NFL players.

But if free agency begins and training camps open Saturday, the preseason would be likely to be played as scheduled beginning Aug. 11, said those people familiar with the situation.

Lastly, and quite charmingly, we have the first vows in New York resulting from the recent passage of marriage equality in the state. As soon as the clock strikes midnight, Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd are going to be the first married under the new law at a rainbow-lit Niagara Falls. From The HuffPo:

Two Buffalo women plan to be the first to legally wed under the state’s new same-sex marriage law, which goes into effect on Sunday, one month after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law. The pair, Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd, are to be married the minute after midnight as the Niagara Falls are lit up with the colors of a rainbow.

Sounding much like any other nervous newlywed-to-be, Buffalo resident Lambert told HuffPost they were “really excited, a little overwhelmed, a whole lot frightened.” After 11 years together, she said, “I don’t know why I’m frightened by this commitment.”

Jitters or not, the couple has a big ceremony planned. Lambert, 54, and Rudd, 53, have five adult children and 12 grandchildren. The umbrella advocacy group New Yorkers United for Marriage is promoting the marriage as the first of its kind in New York State. Local politicians will be in attendance along with an estimated hundreds of friends and gay rights advocates for a meal, speeches, and a candlelight procession on Goat Island that will lead across Bridal Veil Falls and then to Luna Island. And the falls, of course, will be illuminated to look like a rainbow, a symbol of the gay rights movement.

That is pretty darn cool. Hats off to the happy couple, and let’s hope they find happiness on the other side of their rainbow.

As you probably heard, two weeks ago, a guy named Rodrick Dantzler went on a killing spree here in Grand Rapids, shooting his wife and her family, and an ex-girlfriend and her family. He was reportedly bipolar and had a history of violence; four women–none of them among his victims–had gotten protection orders against him. He might fit the profile of a “family annihilator.” But even in spite of his criminal record, no one intervened to prevent the murders.

He terrorized this city. But he was not a terrorist.

I raise Dantzler not because the murders he committed–reportedly the worst attack ever in this city–equate with those committed in Norway, but because of the crazy talk about terrorism in response to the Norway attack–first, the rush to label the attack Islamic terrorism, and now the escalating ignorance in an effort to excuse such bigotry (this beaut is from Erick Erickson)…

First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream.

With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing.

But then why is the left so gleeful that the Norwegian is a “conservative Christian” and why do they feel it so necessary to rub it in when they’re downright apathetic and hostile to the notion of radical Islam being rather mainstream within Islam when terrorist Christianity is largely nonexistent except among a few crazies?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Bible is quite on point about this.

Secular leftists and Islamists are both of this world. Christians may be traveling through, but we are most definitely not of the world. In fact, Christ commands us to throw off our ties to this world. But the things of this world love this world and hate the things of God. That’s why secular leftism can embrace both activist homosexuals and activist muslims when the latter would, when true to their faith, be happy to kill the former.

And frankly, the urge to dig up analysis of a rising right wing terrorist threat–particularly analysis that sees terrorism as a big process of action and reaction–in Europe is not much better.

A report by European police agency Europol on security in 2010 said that there was no right-wing terrorism on the continent in that period.

But it added the far right was becoming very professional at producing online propaganda of an anti-Semitic and xenophobic nature and was increasingly active in online social networking.

“Although the overall threat from right-wing extremism appears to be on the wane and the numbers of right-wing extremist criminal offences are relatively low, the professionalism in their propaganda and organization shows that right-wing extremist groups have the will to enlarge and spread their ideology and still pose a threat in EU member states,” it said.

If the unrest in the Arab world, especially in North Africa, leads to a major influx of immigrants into Europe, “right-wing extremism and terrorism might gain a new lease of life by articulating more widespread public apprehension about immigration from Muslim countries into Europe,” it added.

Public manifestations of right-wing extremism can often provoke counter-activity by extreme left-wing groups. Such confrontations invariably result in physical violence.

That’s not to say we should ignore the networks of people organizing to commit violence, whether they’re Muslim, Christian, or something else (though we’re less likely to be surprised if we don’t always try to classify it according to the ideology feeding it). It’s to say that you don’t need terrorism per se to kill a lot of people. You need a gun, or some fertilizer, or some beauty products.

When our first reaction after a person commits such atrocity is to try to label the ideology of it, we seem to miss the underlying commonality that people often respond to threats to their own dignity with violence, and that in this world, it’s fairly easy for that violence to turn massive.

I was away during the dueling banjos press conferences of Barack Obama and John Boehner this afternoon. Apparently it was quite the show. Despite stating repeatedly how he was “left at the altar” by his Orange Glo golfing chum Boehner, President Obama seemed to get surprisingly effusive praise from pundits on the left for his speech.

Indicative of the praise is this tweet from Keith Olbermann:

You know my criticisms of this POTUS. In this news conference he has been absolutely effing kickass, and properly pissed off.

David Corn of Mother Jones tweeted:

O was as passionate and as close to angry as he gets. #debtageddon

And Corn is now on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC, where Lawrence the “Eleventy Dimensional Chess Scold” himself just said of Obama’s presser:

“It was a brilliantly effective appearance for his reelection.”

And there is the problem isn’t it? Obama really was, and is, worried more about his reelection than he is the welfare of the country and the entirety of its citizens who are not members of his cherished moneyed elite and financial sector magnates.

The details seemed to ebb and flow over the last few days, but this from Bloomberg sums up the basics of what Obama was willing to pull the trigger on:

Two congressional officials said the White House told Democratic leaders it was pursuing a deal to cut spending, including on Social Security and Medicare, and a tax overhaul that could raise $1 trillion. That provoked an angry reaction yesterday from Senate Democrats, who said they feared they might be asked to swallow steep reductions in programs and trims to entitlement benefits with no assurance of higher tax revenue.

Right. What Obama was caterwauling about being “left at the altar” was his willingness, nee burning desire, to make huge cuts in spending and social safety net programs, in return for the possibility of a tax reform later.

And, make no mistake, Mr. Obama is absolutely desperate to make that deal in order to get the debt ceiling issue off the table until sometime after his reelection campaign. His “Grand Bargain” is shit for the economy, shit for almost all Americans safety net now and in the future; it is only good for the howling idiots in the Tea Party sphere and, of course, the reelection campaign of Barack Obama.

So THAT is what was “left at the altar”, and why Barack Obama was suddenly so apoplectically passionate about it. And, yes, it must be stated Boehner, Cantor and the Tea GOP are even more craven and lame than Obama here, but that is pretty weak tea to hang your hat on if you are a sentient being. And that, folks, was the way it was on the day the debt ceiling fell to the floor.

But, fear not trepidatious Americans, Mr. Obama is going to try to save your future and his “grand bargain” again tomorrow! Gee, what dedication.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman understands the ugly truth here, having issued an article today entitled “What Obama Was Willing To Give Away”. Exactly.

[The wonderful and appropos graphic is by the one and only @TWolf10]

Your Daily Murdoch

Tony Blair’s Attorney General–the guy who provided specious legal justification for the UK to go to war with us in Iraq–is catching some heat for not investigating the Murdoch hacking allegations more thoroughy.

The Telegraph hired one of the big private intelligence companies, Kroll, to figure out who leaked details of a recording they had of Britain’s Business secretary Vince Cable “declaring war” on News International (and its bid to acquire BSkyB). Kroll can’t be sure, but they think it was a former Telegraph exec who moved to News Corp.

The WSJ reports that DOJ is preparing subpoenas in an investigation of News Corp. Now, why woudl WSJ be the newspaper to report that, do yo suppose?

Some of the lawyers hacked by NotW–including Julian Assange’s, though the hack was almost certainly before he represented Assange–are just learning of that fact. This scandal resembles the illegal wiretap scandal here in the US in so many ways.

Someone just wrote a Firefox add-on to alert you if your browser is about to open a Murdoch-owned site.

Justice and Injustice

After firing the two women who did some of the most important early work on foreclosure fraud, FL AG Pam Bondi has now started trashing them publicly. I’m guessing Bondi figured out, after the fact, that firing two fairly low-level employees without cause could cause a whole lot of legal problems.

Remember the case against Joseph Adekeye I wrote about here? Ars Technica has a good profile on it.

There’s something very fishy about the custody discussions of Ali Mussa Daqduq–none of the stated excuses for the problem–the debate over whether to try terrorists in civilian or military courts–makes sense. Not least bc Daqduq is a member of Hezbollah, not al Qaeda, and we’re not at war against Hezbollah. So if we want to try him, it seems, it’s got to be in civilian courts. Which suggests the real problem is that we’re unwilling (I wonder whether we’re trying to hide ties between Hezbollah and Nuri-al-Maliki’s government) or unable (because we only have tainted evidence) to try him in civilian court. Or maybe we did something like waterboard him.

The War on Terror and Our Collapsing Empire

A bomb took out the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office today (though he was safe), followed by a shooting at a summer camp tied to the PM’s party. Norwegian police report that the attack was probably domestic–not Islamic–terrorism. In other news, bmaz’ compatriots would rather be slammed by dust storms than haboobs. See also Glenzilla on the degree to which Americans are stumped by an attack on “peaceful” Norway.

Spencer reports that the State Department refuses to allow the Inspector General for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, to have any oversight into the 5000-person mercenary army that will protect “diplomats” after our troops leave. The State Department says Bowen’s mandate only covers reconstruction. Of course, State doesn’t have a normal Inspector General–haven gotten rid of Howard “Cookie” Krongard (brother of Blackwater and CIA figure, “Buzzy”) back in 2007 in the aftermath of the Nissour Square incident.

The Saudis are considering a law that would make ordinary dissent–such as questioning the integrity of King Abdullah–a terrorist crime.

This is not the day to discuss this (I hope to return to it), but the Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists compares our response to terrorism, WMD, and banksters to our response to climate change. (h/t Grist) Even acknowledging that terrorism remains a big threat, climate change now rivals if not surpasses it in terms of death and destruction. The animation above, btw, comes from this NOAA discussion on the current heat wave.

Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri’s lawyers end their letter to Navy Vice Admiral Bruce MacDonald–who will decide whether al-Nashiri will face the death penalty–with an appeal to his role in deciding what we as a nation will condone:

One pivotal and constant question has been–what shall we condone? Shall we condone a trial that allows evidence obtained from torture? Shall we condone a trial for a detainee who has been tortured?

Indeed, one of their most surprising arguments was a reminder that his predecessor, Judge Susan Crawford, refused to refer charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani because he had been tortured.

Your predecessor, Judge Susan Crawford, did not refer charges against Mohammed Al-Qahtani for his direct role in the September 11th Attacks because he was tortured. Judge Crawford stated, “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case[.]” Here, the government’s treatment of Mr. Al-Nashiri undoubtedly meets the legal definition of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Judge Crawford was able to review the interrogation records and other documents of Mr. Al-Qahtani’s abuse before making her decision. In this case, we assume the CIA has not provided those records to you. Even without the cooperation of the CIA, sufficient evidence has been publicly released to prove that Mr. Al-Nashiri was tortured.

[snip]

In essence, the United States has lost its moral authority to seek the death penalty. Accordingly, you should not refer charges–or authorize the detah penalty–against Mr. Al-Nashiri.

I find a few things surprising. First, the suggestion that MacDonald has probably not officially been informed of al-Nashiri’s treatment. While I suppose that’s possible (it’s clear, for example, that the CIA limited how much Gitmo personnel learned of former CIA detainees), that would still be surprising.Though of course, at the very least, MacDonald has not seen the video tapes that were destroyed.

Also note that in this passage, at least, al-Nashiri’s lawyers are calling on the government to drop charges entirely against al-Nashiri, based on the Crawford precedent. Not that the appeal will work (because, particularly given that KSM is now slotted for a Gitmo Military Commission, it would take charges and the death penalty for him off the table, too). But it is notable that they asked.

Much of the rest of the letter lays out reasons I expected: al-Nashiri’s torture itself, the CIA’s destruction of exonerating evidence, the dicey appellate record for MCs, the length of time since the alleged crimes and the delay in charging, and the safety restrictions on travel to Yemen now.

And then there’s the predictable objection on legal grounds: al-Nashiri’s lawyers argue that since we weren’t at war when most of his alleged crimes occurred, an MC is an improper venue to try him. Powerfully, they cite Presidents Clinton and Bush to prove we were not at war.

When convened outside areas under martial law or military occupation, military commissions are strictly limited to the punishment of enemy forces for violations of the laws of war committed in the context of and associated with hostilities.

The limitation was affirmatively recognized and enacted by Congress into the Military Commissions Act, when it mandated that “An offense specified in this subchapter is triable by military commission under this chapter only if the offense is committed in the context of and associated with hostilities.

Mind you, the government will cite Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war against the US in 1996, but it’s hard to see how that refutes President Clinton’s assertion that “America is not at war” delivered in his eulogy to those lost on the USS Cole.

If that’s not enough, though, al-Nashiri’s lawyers now have the legal opinion of Harold Koh’s conditions that define hostilities for Libya.

The question this letter asks–whether we as a country ought to impose the death penalty on someone we tortured–is a key question. But the legal argument may well be just as compelling.

Joe Subday has a post focusing on Bill Daley’s role in the serial capitulation Obama is making to the debt hostage-takers.

Politico’s David Rogers and Carrie Budoff Brown report on the $3 trillion deal under discussion between Obama and Boehner. And, despite denials, it appears that Obama and Boehner are negotiating and the number is $3 trillion, mostly in spending cuts. Towards the end of the article is this nugget:

At the same time, the White House’s tactics in this situation most infuriate Senate Democrats, who complain that the president’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, is too quick to make concessions to Boehner, even at the party’s expense.

Yes, they are quick to make concessions at the White House. Like everyone, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s really going on. One trusted source told me that one problem is definitely Daley:

Bill Daley is behind the White House’s capitulation. He’s the Democrat’s Neville Chamberlain. It’s dominoes of caving — one cave leads to another. They are so desperate for a deal that they’ll take anything at any price. They won’t fight for anything.

Now, of course, Daley works for Obama. He hired Daley, who used to be on the Board of Third Way, the group always willing to sell out on Democratic principle. And, that’s what Daley is doing on Obama’s behalf.

Now, Joe’s right: Daley ostensibly works for Obama, and so Obama is ultimately responsible for those capitulations.

But is Obama the only one Daley’s working for?

Daley was hired, after all, because the banksters had convinced Obama that seemingly endless supplies of free money wasn’t enough for them; they also needed a bankster in the White House.

And so here we have an unelected bankster in a key role at a moment of crisis. And every time Boehner asks, Daley reportedly offers up yet more austerity in the hopes that he can prevent uncertainty in Jamie Dimon’s world.

It’s funny. Unlike Obama, Daley men aren’t exactly known for their poor negotiating skills. But this one sure seems to be acting helpless in the face of a bunch of demands for more. And ultimately, it won’t be the TeaPartiers who benefit from that process. It will be Jamie Dimon.