Government and Corporation meet in Fraud

Plunder authorized, glorified

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

University of Missouri law, ethics and economics Professor William K. Black spoke about government/corporate fraud in an interview broadcast Monday on KPFA’s “Letters and Politics.” His ideas were compelling so I went in search of further of his thoughts on the financial crisis and its roots in the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal. What I found, again, is a depressingly entrenched and corrupt line of administrations and congresses.

Savings and Loan era

Recalling the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal, William Black writes that Richard (Dick) Pratt’s cover up strategy is what made the Savings and Loan (S&L) fiasco so expensive to resolve.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 had appointed academic finance expert Richard Pratt to head the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (Bank Board).  In that position, Black says, Pratt “gimmicked the accounting rules, cut the number of examiners, and de-supervised the industry, thus allowing saving and loans to hide real losses and create fictional income.” Pratt “championed the entry of  ‘entrepreneurs,’ primarily real estate developers with intense conflicts of interest.”

Executive and Legislative branches of government as well as mass media “treated Pratt’s fictional ‘resolutions’ and claims of brilliance as real.” 

Allowing Savings and Loans “to hide real losses and create fictional income, deregulating, de-supervising, closing none of the control frauds (which were growing in assets at an annual rate of 50 percent), and making virtually no criminal referrals (which meant there were no prosecutions) — Richard Pratt created an intensely criminogenic environment, welcoming hundreds of control frauds into that industry

The National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement report in 1993 found ‘fraud invariably present.’  “The report explained how deregulation, de-supervision, the lack of prosecutions, the accounting scams that hid real losses and created fictional income, the manipulation of professional compensation for appraisers and outside auditors by the fraudulent savings and loan executives [had produced] a … dynamic, in which bad ethics drove out good ethics of the professions.

“Perverse incentives caused by modern executive compensation, moreover, allowed CEOs to create guaranteed, record (though fictional) profits and to become wealthy by looting ‘their’ Savings and Loans.

Current banking era Thirty years on

Professor William Black continues, “For reasons only [U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Franz Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Henry Summers, and [President Barack] Obama can know, they [the Obama administration has chosen] to adopt [Reagan’s] Richard Pratt’s disastrous and dishonest anti-regulatory strategy and to parrot his dishonest claims of brilliance and success.”

At the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association (ABA), and Chairman Bernanke, Congress “successfully (and shamefully) wrested from the Financial Accounting Standards Board a change in the accounting rules — so that banks no longer had to recognize losses on their toxic mortgage paper appropriately until they sold the assets.

“Covering up the losses had three real (carefully unstated) purposes:

1.     Permitting evasions of the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law enacted by Congress in 1991;

2.     Allowing the banks to remove themselves from the strictures of the TARP program even if they are, in reality, insolvent; and

3.     Allowing insolvent and impaired banks to pay their senior executives huge bonuses based on the  (fictional) income that results when a bank does not recognize its losses.

“Each of these purposes,” he says, “is unprincipled and indefensible; but taken together, they are also dangerous…

“The administration and its odd bedfellows, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, have maximized the perverse incentives that will drive future fraud epidemics, bubbles, and severe recessions.” All told, “the administration’s banking policies” have thus achieved … terrible economics, terrible ethics, and terrible politics.”

CRONY CAPITALIZATION RULES

Corporate and government conspire in fraud

“The most common reason that firms can cheat with impunity,” Professor William Black wrote in a Benzinga article in April, “is that their CEOs are cronies of powerful politicians.  


The defining characteristics of crony capitalism are that the cronies receive subsidies, favors, and immunity from normal rules and laws. 


The cronies dominate the big corporations and provide reciprocal benefits to controlling politicians.

Managerial incompetence and wealth flourishes under crony capitalism.

Merit and efficiency suffer, income inequality surges, and class and who one knows [who not what you know] become the primary determinants of economic and political success and power. The elites become pervasively corrupt.

Crony capitalism is the antithesis of “free enterprise.” The best way to destroy free enterprise is to allow CEOs to commit control fraud with impunity because that maximizes the perverse Gresham's dynamic.

Quoting the 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat, Black sums up: “‘When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes [plunder] and a moral code that glorifies it.’”

Sources and notes

William Black was interviewed May 30, 2011, on Letters and Politics, KPFA-Berkeley: As Congress faces such burning issues as healthcare, global warming and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pacifica's Mitch Jeserich hosts “Letters and Politics” a look at national politics from a progressive perspective. http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/70193

“The Powell Memorandum's 40th Anniversary: Impunity for Control Fraud” (William K. Black, Benzinga Columnist), April 25, 2011, http://www.benzinga.com/be-your-own-boss/11/04/1029309/the-powell-memorandums-40th-anniversary-impunity-for-control-fraud

“If Obama Thinks the Response to the S&L Debacle Failed, Why Is He Adopting It?”  (William Black, November 1, 2010, Tweet,   http://my.firedoglake.com/williamblack/2010/11/01/if-obama-thinks-the-response-to-the-sl-debacle-failed-why-is-he-adopting-it/

Frederic Bastiat

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (b. 1801, Mugron, near Bayonne, France; d. 1850, Rome, Papal States [Italy] French economist, best known for his journalistic writing in favor of free trade and the economics of Adam Smith.[Britannica note]

War hero John Sidney McCain III (Senator, Arizona) became embroiled in the most spectacular case to arise out of the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, as a result of his connections with Charles Keating Jr., the head of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California, who had engaged in fraud. Although cleared by the Senate in 1991 of illegalities in his dealings on Keating's behalf, McCain received a mild rebuke for exercising ‘poor judgment.’ [Britannica note]

William K. Black

Professor William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (2005), “developed the concept of ‘control fraud’ – frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a ‘weapon.’ Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined and kill and maim thousands.” He has helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae’s former senior management.  

Black is Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law (UMKC) where he teaches “White-Collar Crime, Public Finance, Antitrust, Law and Economics (all joint, multidisciplinary classes for economics and law students), and Latin American Development (co-taught with Professor Grieco, UMKC – History).”

He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from (2005-2007); taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

Black was litigation director of the U.S. Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, University of Michigan Law School, and University of California-Irvine.   http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/black.htm

“The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was legislation passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush (October 3, 2008). “It was designed to prevent the collapse of the U.S. financial system during the subprime mortgage crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide brought about by widespread losses in the subprime mortgage sector.

“The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) sought to restore liquidity to credit markets by authorizing the secretary of the treasury to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-backed securities and other troubled assets from the country’s banks, as well as any other financial instrument the secretary deemed necessary ‘to promote financial market stability.’

“The act also included provisions to minimize foreclosures on federally owned mortgages, to recover possible future losses on the government’s mortgage investments, to prevent windfalls for executives of banks that benefit from the act, and to monitor the investments of the Treasury Department through reports to Congress and a specially created oversight board.

“The EESA authorized the treasury secretary to establish a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to protect the ability of consumers and businesses to secure credit.…” Britannica note

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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Memorial Day innocents dead, NATO “Sorry”

Compiled, edited, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Apologies are never enough. Honor for life and justice rises not from war but from a sensibility that takes the tougher road beyond violence: a compelling character to settle conflict and “want” by means other than aggression. Foreign Wars against the peoples of South/Central Asia (the Middle East/Africa and elsewhere) must end.

Truly moral and ethical world leaders must assume the helm and establish new, truly progressive policies of foreign relations, which are rooted in nonviolence.

Consequences of character flaw

U.S./NATO War against Afghanistan

Fatalities by Country—Country Total [http://icasualties.org/oef/]

Australia 24 — Belgium 1 — Canada 156 — Czech 3 — Denmark 40 — Estonia 8 — Finland 2 — France 58 — Georgia 8 — Germany 52 — Hungary 6 — Italy 36 — Jordan 2 — Latvia 3 — Lithuania 1 — NATO 6 — Netherlands 25 — New Zealand 2 — Norway 10 — Poland 26 — Portugal 2 — Romania 19 — South Korea 1 — Spain 31 — Sweden 5 — Turkey 2 — UK 368 — US 1598 — — TOTAL: 2495

Two International Security Assistance Force service members died today following an improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan.

An International Security Assistance Force service member died today following “a helicopter hard landing in southern Afghanistan.”

Four Afghan police officers died today and five Italian soldiers suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded in the western Afghan city of Heart. A car bomb also reportedly detonated at the gates of a NATO compound.

A NATO soldier died today after being shot by an Afghan soldier in southern Afghanistan… An ‘individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform , later confirmed to be an Afghan soldier, turned his weapon on a member of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)

The number of off-duty members of the U.S. National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers, nationally, who have committed suicide between 2009 (80) and 2010 (145) nearly doubled.

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Peter Clore, 23 years old, of New Philadelphia died Saturday in Afghanistan.

Five (est.) people died today and 34 suffered wounds, Al Jazeera reports, after armed men launched multiple attacks in the western Afghan city of Herat.…  At least 27 other civilians were wounded, along with four Afghan troops and three police officers. Coordinated attacks targeted a building of the provincial reconstruction team of the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and a busy crossroads about two kilometers from the base.

Attacks have taken place in cities across the country in recent weeks, with the government and security forces and foreign military targets singled out in increasingly bold assaults.

Apologizing, again, for the unforgivable —

Killing innocents

At least 14 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in a NATO air raid in the Afghan southern province of Helmand. According to a provincial government statement to the press, U.S. Marines in Helmand’s Nawzad district called in air support after their base came under attack from small arms fire. “During the air strike, two civilian houses were targeted, which killed 14 civilians and wounded six others.” Among the dead, the statement said, were five girls, seven boys and two women.”

In Sunday airstrikes, NATO forces killed 52 mostly civilian people. In separate incidents, the governor of Nuristan reported to the press, “18 civilians and 20 police were killed by ‘friendly fire’ during recent U.S.-led air strikes against al-Qaeda-linked fighters in his troubled northeastern province.”

Sorry

The Guardian and other sources are reporting today “NATO/International forces in Afghanistan [have apologized] for air strikes that killed at least nine civilians.”

The article went on to report that President Hamid Karzai, in a statement that revised police commander Abdul Rauf Ahmadi’s casualty figures — saying that 10 children, two women and two men had been killed — condemned the attacks. The Afghan president “called for an end to coalition attacks that resulted in civilian deaths, calling such operations ‘inhumane.’”

However, the article said, “It is unclear what leverage Karzai ultimately has over military operations conducted by NATO, which is [operating] in Afghanistan under an international mandate.” No comment on Karzai’s comments came from the White House except a standard line, “the U.S.  [shares the Afghan president’s] concerns about civilian deaths and worked with Afghan officials to avoid them.”

Not good enough

The world deserves better and the human spirit is capable of rising above, moving beyond a medieval state of intellectual darkness and barbarity, constant violence: war and conflict, threat and theft, provocation and domination. 

This is not a partisan wish or partisan condemnation. It is an acknowledgment that what we have and have had for a long time is regressive, not good enough, and we can and must do better.  It is a Memorial Day thought.

Sources and notes

Casualty site Icasualties’ news today compiled from news sources: Iraq/Afghanistan casualties, http://icasualties.org/oef/

“Deadly attacks hit Afghan city — At least five killed and 34 wounded after armed men launch multiple attacks in western city of Heart,” May 30, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/201153081134362477.html

“Deadly attack in volatile southwestern province followed small arms fire on U.S. Marines,” May 29, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011529102045125188.html

Guardian.co.uk, Monday, May 30, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/30/nato-apologises-afghan-civilian-deaths

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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“THEY’LL SAY —

“‘she must be from another country’”

Poet, filmmaker, artist Imtiaz Dharker              

Excerpted by Carolyn Bennett 

When I can’t comprehend
why they’re burning books or slashing paintings,
when they can’t bear to look at god’s own nakedness,
when they ban the film and gut the seats to stop the play
and I ask why they just smile and say,
‘She must be from another country.’ 

When I speak on the phone and the vowel sounds are off
when the consonants are hard and they should be soft,
they’ll catch on at once
they’ll pin it down
they’ll explain it right away
to their own satisfaction,
they’ll cluck their tongues and say,
‘She must be from another country.’ 

When my mouth goes up instead of down,
when I wear a tablecloth to go to town,
when they suspect I’m black or hear I’m gay
they won’t be surprised,
they’ll purse their lips and say,
‘She must be from another country.’ 

When I eat up the olives and spit out the pits
when I yawn at the opera in the tragic bits
when I pee in the vineyard as if it were Bombay,
flaunting my bare ass
covering my face
laughing through my hands
they’ll turn away,
shake their heads quite sadly,

‘She doesn’t know any better,’ they’ll say,
‘She must be from another country.’

Maybe there is a country
where all of us live,
all of us freaks
who aren’t able to give
our loyalty to fat old fools,
the crooks and thugs
who wear the uniform
that gives them the right
to wave a flag,
puff out their chests,
put their feet on our necks,
and break their own rules. 

 But from where we are
it doesn’t look like a country,
it’s more like the cracks
that grow between borders behind their backs. 

That’s where I live.
And I’ll be happy to say,
‘I never learned your customs.
I don’t remember your language or know your ways.
I must be from another country.’  

“Here is no glib internationalism or modish multiculturalism. If you trust this voice, it is because its ‘bigness’ is never grandiose; it is arrived at through a process of concerted exfoliation.

“Displacement here no longer spells exile; it means an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices.

“There is an exultant celebration of a self that strips off layers of superfluous identity with grace and abandon, only to discover that it has not diminished, but grown larger, generous, more inclusive.…”  [Arundhathi Subramaniam] 

Sources and notes

© Imtiaz Dharker

From: I Speak for the Devil

Publisher: Penguin Books India, 2003

ISBN: 014-303089-2

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2824&x=1

Poet, artist and documentary filmmaker Imtiaz Dharker was born in Lahore, Pakistan, (1954); and grew up in Britain. She is author of Purdah and Other Poems (1989), Postcards from God (1994 and 1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001).  

Sawnet – Bookshelf, http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php?Dharker+Imtiaz

The Hindu— “Squatter Speak” (Tishani Doshi): Review of Dharker’s I Speak for the Devil in The Hindu (Sunday, May 2, 2004), http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=2720

Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet, writer and web editor based in Mumbai, India. She is author of three collections of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves (2001) and Where I Live (2005) and Where I Live: New and Selected Poems (2009). She is also the author of a prose study The Book of Buddha (2005), and was co-editor of Confronting Love (2005), an anthology of contemporary Indian love poetry in English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhathi_Subramaniam

“Mark Tully considers those on the edge: of society, of the arts, of religions, and of perceived wisdom — People who don’t quite belong but who often offer us new insights.” Program “Something Understood,” BBC Radio 4, May 29, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011j39d

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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WAR has endless consequences

For those who make WAR, for those made to suffer because of WAR

Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

She received a four-year jail sentence last week “for offending a public official, inciting hatred of the ruling system, and taking part in illegal protests.”

Since the March 15 declaration of martial law, “an unprecedented number of Bahraini women, more than 100, have been seized by security forces — at least a third of the women are still in custody.”

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) says those arrested have been physicians, nurses, and teachers. Schoolgirls have been arrested and asked to identify dissidents in their schools. Women detainees have reported cruel treatment, sexual assault, forced labor.

Violence against women in Bahrain is illustrative of what is happening across the region. In Libya, a woman reported having been gang raped by “militia.” Amid Egypt’s revolution in Tahrir Square, a number of women were reported raped.

After the “revolution,” the chair of Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights received death threats warning her to discontinue her women’s rights campaign. Women protesters on International Women’s Day March 8 received threats.

Though Saudi Arabia has avoided mass demonstrations, Saudi women have come under attack “for daring to flout the rules.”

A woman was arrested on May 22 and “charged with besmirching the kingdom’s reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion” for having driven a vehicle in defiance of “the kingdom’s ban on female drivers.” [IFEX Communiqué]

AFGHANISTAN

“The attacker wore a police uniform.”

Two German soldiers died today and three suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded in the northern Afghan city of Taloqan. Among the injured were General Markus Kneip, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in northern Afghanistan; and the governor of Takhar, Abdul Jabar Taqwa. Among the dead were the police chief of northern Afghanistan, General Mohammed Daud Daud, and the head of the provincial police in Takhar, Shah Jahan Noori. The incident reportedly left a total seven people dead and nine injured.

Al Jazeera also reported ongoing violence on Saturday between Taliban and Afghan security forces in the northeastern province of Nuristan.

May 24 Kandahar province

Ten workers died and 28 suffered wounds when a roadside bomb exploded in southern Afghanistan. The people, whose jobs involved clearing streams and rivers in the southern province, were riding in a truck Tuesday morning on their way to work.

The day before this incident four people died and 14 suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded in a crowded Afghan  bazaar in the small town of Najeel Khail in the Alishing district of Laghman province about 100km east of the capital, Kabul. Last Sunday, six members of the Afghan security forces died when the Taliban stormed a traffic police office and two suicide bombers detonated their explosives in a nine-hour standoff.

“A wave of Taliban suicide bombings has accompanied the militants’ announcement of the start of their annual spring offensive late last month.”

May 21, 2011, North

Protesters used stones

Germany’s Defense Ministry in Berlin said on Friday May 20 that German soldiers had in an earlier incident “not only fired warning shots but also targeted demonstrators during violent protests in the Northern Afghanistan city of Talokan.”  The soldiers “deliberately shot several people during a violent protest on Wednesday outside their base” in this Afghan city.

Using stones, hand grenades and Molotov cocktails, protesters had reportedly “attacked the German soldiers’ camp.” The deadly reaction left 3 German soldiers and 5 Afghan guards wounded, and 12 demonstrators dead.

PAKISTAN

Recent attacks [Al Jazeera reports]

• May 13 - 98 died, Charsadda, suicide bomb attack
• May 16 - Saudi diplomat died, Karachi, Gunmen
• May 18 - 17 including 15 insurgents died,  outskirts of Peshawar, security post gun battle
• May 20 - One Pakistani died, 12 others wounded (among them 2 U.S. nationals), U.S. consulate,  Peshawar, attack
• May 21 – 16 died, Khyber tribal region, bomb attack
• May 22 - 10 military personnel died, two U.S.-supplied surveillance aircrafts destroyed; naval base in Karachi, militants attack

Today at least eight people died and 10 others suffered wounds when a detonated device hit a marketplace in a tribal region near the Afghan border. The bomb blast came as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was wrapping up a visit to Pakistan “with words of conciliation … [and] some stern demands for the country.”

Reporting from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Al Jazeera correspondent Imtiaz Tyab said Clinton asked that “very decisive steps to be taken by the government to combat a rise in extremism and extremist groups operating in the country” and the day before the Secretary had “pledged further support to Pakistan.” Also on Friday, 27 people died in the town of Hangu, in the country’s northwest, when a suicide car bomb exploded.

May 26

Retribution

Dozens of people died and 56 suffered wounds Thursday in the town of Hangu when someone detonated explosives on a pick-up truck. The device reportedly exploded near several government buildings including the office of the district commissioner.

Several attacks have been carried out since “the Pakistani Taliban group vowed retaliatory attacks to avenge the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid.” An earlier attack, before Thursday’s attack, targeted a naval base in the city of Karachi. Thirteen people died and 20 others suffered wounds.

The base was the headquarters of Pakistan’s naval air wing. Armed attackers destroyed two P-3C Orion aircraft from the United States, crucial assets for Pakistan’s anti-submarine and maritime surveillance capability. Approximately 100 commandos, rangers and marines were deployed to kill the attackers and recapture the base.

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Rafah crossing opens with restrictions to Gazans

The Rafah crossing has been opened by Egypt in eight-hour periods daily except Fridays and public holidays. Saturday, after four years, Egypt reopened its border with the Gaza Strip, easing travel restrictions on isolated Palestinians. Two ambulances carrying patients from the blockaded strip were the first to make the journey for treatment in Egypt.

Approximately 300 Palestinians reportedly traveled in four buses into Egypt. More are expected to cross the border in the coming days after the Hamas government in Gaza lifts its own restrictions.

All Jazeera correspondents from Gaza report the change “was ushered in by Egypt’s new government in a bid to ease the suffering of the territory’s residents” but “there will still be restrictions in place, preventing men younger than 40 from leaving the enclave, which is ruled by the Palestinian group, Hamas.”

SYRIA

Months of unrest, hundreds dead

In the latest violent incidents, 12 people have died, according to Syrian rights activists. Syrian authorities have reported nine deaths and a number of wounded among them several police officers.

LEBANON

Israeli spies

Lebanon since 2009 “has launched a nationwide crackdown on Israeli spy cells.” More than 100 people have been arrested among them members of security forces and telecommunications personnel, on suspicion of spying for Israel’s spy agency of Mossad. “A number of the suspects have admitted to their roles in helping Israel identify targets inside Lebanon, mostly belonging to Lebanon’s resistance force, Hezbollah, which Tel Aviv heavily bombed during its 2006 war against the country.”

According to a Friday report, “The Lebanese Army has taken control of a Telecommunications Ministry building, a day after some 400 heavily-equipped members of the Lebanese police force raided the facility. A Lebanese Army unit, the Internal Security Forces (ISF), took control, secured the second floor of the telecoms building in Beirut’s Adlieh district, and imposed security in the area.”  

JORDAN

Anger about peace treaty with Israel

Protesters under the name “Youth of Tafileh” took to the streets Friday, calling on the government to cut ties with Israel and demanding the resignation of Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit’s government and the dissolution of the Lower House of the parliament.

The Tafileh province protesters reportedly “furious over their country’s peace treaty with Tel Aviv burned an Israeli flag.” They also “slammed remarks made by Israeli Knesset member Arye Eldad as ‘racist and provocative.’” Eldad last week had “urged Jordanian King Abdullah II to set up a Palestinian state in his country instead of in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

On Thursday, Jordan’s 120-member Lower House also issued a statement condemning Eldad and calling on the government to take a firm position against his harmful statements to Jordan and its people. Their statement also asserted Jordan’s unceasing call “for the creation of an independent Palestinian state on Palestinian national soil with al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.”

PALESTINE

May 25

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said after the Israeli prime minister’s speech in the U.S. earlier this  week that without a renewal of peace talks with Israel, the Palestinians will seek UN recognition.

Benjamin Netanyahu [and some of the Western leaders] had said “‘The Palestinian attempt to impose a settlement through the United Nations will not bring peace; it should be forcefully opposed by all those who want to see this conflict end.’”

The Palestinian leader said Netanyahu’s speech added obstacles on the road to peace and contained “‘errors and distortions.’” Abbas stated the first choice of his people as negotiations “‘but if there is no progress before September,’” he said, “‘we will go to the United Nations.’” Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayeh restated the view that the Israeli prime minister’s speech “had left Palestinians with one choice — ‘to go to the UN General Assembly in September.’”

BAHRAIN

U.S. 5^th Fleet

Since the start of anti-government protests in mid-February, Bahrain’s capital city, Manama, has launched a harsh crackdown on anti-government protesters, rounding up senior opposition figures and activists in dawn raids and arresting doctors, nurses, lawyers and journalists who have voiced support for the protest movement.

Officials have charged protesters with attempting to overthrow the monarchy and have tried them in a special security court set up under martial law.

Human Rights Watch has called on the country to stop trying civilians in military courts. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized the Bahraini government for its brutal crackdown on civilians. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to see and contact Bahraini-detained activists since mid-March but Manama has refused to grant it permission.

On Friday, the Saudi-backed Bahraini forces attacked anti-government protesters in several villages across Bahrain. Bahrain’s state news agency says that military prosecutors have asked the country’s highest court to review death penalties issued against two anti-regime protesters.

KUWAIT

‘Day of Rage’

Hundreds of Kuwaitis gathered outside the national assembly in Kuwait City on Friday to press their demand for the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

Protests reportedly stem from “Sheikh Nasser’s refusal to face questioning in the parliament for allegedly wasting public funds and committing financial and administrative irregularities.”

LIBYA

Misurata violence continues

Cease fire Secretly discussed?  

NATO’s overnight raids have caused “‘human and material’” damage near Mizda, to the south. Fighting on Friday took a heavy toll on people on the western outskirts of Misurata. Five opposition fighters died and more than a dozen others suffered combat wounds, according to physicians at local hospitals.

Al Jazeera reported sources Saturday saying, “Secret channels are being opened between the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi and British citizens with a view to ending the conflict.” However, anti-government fighters “would not be in favor of any kind of ceasefire [because] they want Gaddafi to stand trial for crimes against humanity.”

YEMEN

A country in which 40 percent of its 23 million people live on less than $2 a day could become a failed state located on a shipping lane through which three million barrels of oil pass daily.

At least 120 people died in fighting this week, prompting thousands of residents to flee Sana’a. Concerns rose about increased violence “[benefitting] the Yemen-based branch of al-Qaeda and [threatening] adjacent Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading oil exporter.”

The latest violence between pro- and anti-government forces — sparked by President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s refusal to sign a power transfer deal — is being described as “the bloodiest since pro-democracy unrest erupted in January.” Explosions continued Saturday in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

In other reports on Saturday, three French aid workers have disappeared in Yemen’s southern province of Hadramout.

IRAQ

U.S. stay beyond December 31 will incur Mahdi army against U.S. forces

Thousands of supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in Baghdad Thursday in a show of force against any extension of U.S. military presence in the country past a year-end deadline.

Peaceful protesters marched without weapons but their message for Americans was clear. “‘If you stay beyond the deadline set by the SOFA agreement, the security agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraq — if they stay beyond that date which is 31 of December, the end of this year, the Mahdi army will resume its military activities and they will battle U.S. forces,’” said Al Jazeera’s reporter, Al Saleh.

Al-Sadr became popular among Iraqi Shiites in the months after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when his Mahdi Army fighters battled U.S. troops. American troops remaining in Iraq are estimated at 45,000, primarily tasked with training and equipping their Iraqi counterparts. Under the terms of a bilateral security agreement, foreign troops must withdraw by the end of the year.

In early January, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a national dialogue to gauge whether U.S. troops should stay beyond 2011. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed hopes that Iraqi leaders will ask the Americans to stay beyond the deadline.

CASUALTY SITES' REPORTS

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD

Casualty sites reporting May 28, 2011

(Accurate totals unknown)

Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20,

2009: 226] Information out of date

•

Wounded 33,041-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: May 24, 2011

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

•

Iraq Body Count

The worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation

Documented civilian deaths from violence

101,060 – 110,384

Full analysis of the WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs may add 15,000 civilian deaths.  http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

•

ICasualties figures:

AFGHANISTAN:

1,595 United States

2,487 Coalition

IRAQ: 4,454 United States

4,772 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/

TODAY IN HISTORY

Amnesty International — 

Dedicated to informing public opinion about human rights and to 

securing the release of political prisoners, 

Amnesty International was founded in London, England, May 28, 1961.  

Amnesty International won the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sources and notes

Women face human cost of Arab Spring uprisings, May 25, 2011, IFEX Communiqué Vol. 20, No 21, May 25, 2011 http://www.ifex.org/2011/05/25/comm_20_21/

http://www.ifex.org/middle_east_north_africa/2011/05/25/arab_spring_women_targeted/

International Freedom of Expression Exchange Network (IFEX) was created in Montréal, Canada in 1992 when a dozen leading free expression organizations came together to create a coordinated mechanism to rapidly expose free expression violations around the world. IFEX today numbers more than 80 independent organizations worldwide and is recognized internationally as a highly credible and effective global network.

IFEX runs the world’s most comprehensive free expression information service through its daily Alerts, weekly IFEX Communiqué newsletter, free expression headlines Digest and website – www.ifex.org. Thousands of subscribers receive information via e-mail. Highly publicized alerts have helped free journalists, writers and free expression advocates from detention, or even helped save their lives.

The IFEX Clearing House, based in Toronto, Canada, runs the day to day operations of the network and is managed by founding member organization Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE).

As violations of the right to free expression continue, so do the efforts of the membership of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange Network (IFEX), which has emerged as a strong global opposition to forces challenging the right to free expression.    http://www.ifex.org/what_we_do/

AFGHANISTAN

“German soldiers killed, NATO general wounded in Afghanistan attack — Two German soldiers and the police chief of northern Afghanistan were killed in a suicide attack in Takhar province. General Markus Kneip, the German commander of NATO forces in the region, survived the attack,’ May 28, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15114394,00.html

“Afghan police commander killed in blast — Gen. Daood Daood among the dead after Taliban suicide attack on compound of a northern provincial governor [A large blast has hit the compound of the governor of Afghanistan’s northern Takhar province, killing at least six people, including General Daood Daood, the regional police commander, and several German soldiers, officials say],” May 28, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011528135517924431.html

“Roadside bomb ‘kills Afghan workers’ Ten laborers dead, dozens wounded after their truck hits a roadside bomb in Kandahar, says local doctor,” May 24, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011524631516255.html

“German army confirms firing on violent protesters in Afghanistan,” May 21, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15094515,00.html

PAKISTAN

“Deadly bomb blast hits Pakistan — At least eight people killed and 10 others wounded in marketplace explosion near Afghan border,” May 28, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/201152863447829481.html

“Deadly blast hits northwest Pakistan — At least 26 killed after explosives are detonated on pick-up truck driving through Hangu, north west of the country,” May 26, 2011,  

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/201152614035857935.html

“Suicide blast hits Pakistan police station  — Taliban claims responsibility for car bomb attack in Peshawar, which left at least six dead and up to 26 wounded,” May 25, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/05/2011525033781560.html

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

“Egypt opens gateway to Gaza for first time in four years,” May 28, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15113657,00.html

“Egypt opens Rafah border with Gaza  — Palestinians welcome easing of four-year blockade on coastal enclave - a move ushered in by Egypt’s new leaders,” May 28, 2011,  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201152872159493180.html

“Nine killed in Syria violence,” May 28, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182162.html

Lebanon’s army takes telecom building, May 28, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182084.html

“‘Jordan must cut ties with Israel,’” May 28, 2011

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182072.html

“Abbas: Palestine to go to UN in September — Abbas determined to take diplomatic campaign to UN after Netanyahu rules out peace negotiations based on 1967 borders,” May 25, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/2011525105036617619.html

BAHRAIN

“Bahraini Shia cleric calls for reform, May 28, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182140.html

Manama is the capital and largest city of the state and emirate of Bahrain. It lies at the northeast tip of Bahrain Island in the Persian Gulf.

Long an important commercial center of the northern Persian Gulf, the traditional economy was based on pearling, fishing, boatbuilding, and import trade. Harbor facilities were poor; ocean vessels had to anchor in the open roadstead 2–4 miles (3–6 km) offshore. The discovery of petroleum on Bahrain (1932) revolutionized the city’s economy and appearance, with the construction of many modern buildings.

Manama developed as a trade, financial, and commercial center; it is the seat of numerous banks.

About one-fifth of the emirate’s population lives in the city.

First mentioned in Islamic chronicles about AD 1345, it was taken by the Portuguese (1521) and by the Persians (1602).

It has been held, with brief interruptions, by the ruling Āl Khalīfah dynasty since 1783. Because Bahrain concluded a series of treaties (1861–1914) placing the country under increasing British protection, there was a British political agent stationed at Manama from 1900, subject to the political resident for the Persian Gulf, whose headquarters were long at Bushire, Iran. In 1946, the residency was moved to Manama, where it remained until the city became the capital of independent Bahrain in 1971.

KUWAIT

“Kuwaiti protesters call for PM ouster,” May 28, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182078.html

LIBYA

“‘Talks under way’ to end Libya fighting  — Libyan deputy foreign minister hints at ongoing exchange of views between UK citizens and Gaddafi's government,” May 28,  2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/05/2011528143329921352.html

YEMEN

“Tenuous ceasefire eases unrest in Yemen — Saleh’s government and armed tribesmen agree to temporary truce after five days of clashes that left up 120 people dead,” May 28, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201152815531552947.html

IRAQ

“Sadr supporters rally over U.S. troops in Iraq — Iraqi cleric’s supporters march in Baghdad, threatening to take up arms if US troops stay beyond year-end deadline, May 26, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/05/201152614115431859.html

Today in history, Britannica note
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