The Telegraph, By Szu Ping Chan, May 23

The Nikkei 225 index closed down 7.32pc – or 1,143.28 points – at 14,483.98 – the biggest daily points fall since April 2000, and larger than the drop seen when the country was rocked by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011.

There were no risers in Japan’s benchmark index, the first time every stock has retreated since April 2005. Investors banked recent profits on the back of Chinese data that showed manufacturing in the world’s second largest economy contracted for the first time in seven months. The wider Topix index also fell 6.9pc to 1188.34.

“The negative Chinese indicator triggered today’s selling,” said Hirokazu Fujikiki, a strategist at Okasan Securities in Japan. “It was no wonder if sizeable selling could emerge as Japanese shares rose quite fast recently.”

Markets were also worried by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony to Congress on Wednesday. Mr Bernanke said that while the central bank was not “automatically aiming towards a complete wind down” and could still expand its $85bn (£57bn) a month scheme, he added that it could start reducing the artificial stimulus “in the next few meetings” if the jobs market showed sustained improvement.

Zero Hedge: Japanese Stocks Halted; Plunge 1500 Points To Close Down 7.3% – Biggest Drop In 26 Months
Zero Hedge: Japan Stock Market Crash Leads To Global Sell Off

The post Japanese stocks suffer biggest one-day plunge since 2000 appeared first on The Agonist.

Anthony Weiner has officially announced his candidacy for mayor of the city of New York, to replace three term gadabout-with-nothing-better-to-do-than-trash-my-city Michael Bloomberg.

I’ll probably end up voting for him in the primary.

That speaks less of Weiner, who has always come off in my book as a bit of a dick (ok, sorry, my bad), than it does about the other candidates running in the Democratic primary, which is essentially the coronation of the next mayor. Weiner polls second currently at 15%, and that poll was taken before he formally announced. Christine Quinn, the “frontrunner” polls at 25%, which speaks volumes about a woman who has been Council Speaker for twelve years.

Quinn should be the presumptive nominee, but at 25% she’s polling very weakly for someone with as much visibility as she’s forced upon New Yorkers, and with good reason: she’s really pretty shitty, unless you live in the West Village or happen to be gay. For those constituents, she’s about as progressive as they come.

For working and middle class New Yorkers, not so much.

We can start with the fact that she flipped on term limits, likely to get access to Bloomberg’s Rolodex of campaign contributors. She was against them before she was for them, and the cynical calculation that went on in her head must have made her dizzy. We can move onto the fact that she aided Bloomberg in defunding program after program designed to help the poor and middle class families of New York, all to help her get some tax breaks for close friends who dabbles in real estate, most notably the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village which was rezoned to a residential property and is being developed by Rudin Management.

I wonder how much money and through what trust Rudin has contributed to Quinn, her campaign, and to political organizations that assist Quinn? He’s not clumsy enough to have given money in his own name to her campaign directly. One way to get around this is to have an entity controlled by Rudin but not directly owned by him contribute money, possibly to the city or state Democratic party, which will then spend it on Quinn. Happens all the time in New York, which purportedly has the cleanest campaign finance laws in the country.

Finally, her opposition to a living wage bill, and a raise in the minimum wage, which arguably increases employment, not unemployment.

It’s been sad watching Quinn come down from her moral high ground, where she protested the St. Patrick’s Day Parade at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, over the exclusion of gays and lesbians from the march.

And now, she’s just another politico. Very, very sad.

The post Anthony Weiner’s Rise appeared first on The Agonist.

Human-caused climate change threatens us with flooding, drought, and famine. Some say it’s human nature to underestimate – grossly, even fatally – the risk from a cause so hard to see, so theoretical, as climate change. We evolved, doncha know, to be able to keep ourselves safe from such obvious things as predators and lightning; we’re not made to recognize human-caused global dangers. Is that true, or is denial driven by just a few powerful people, the way the Holocaust was driven by Hitler?

First, let’s get this over with: Climate change is happening and it is being driven by people burning fossil fuel. I don’t want to assume anything, so I’ll cite just one source showing that most scientists agree that climate change is mostly caused by people and the things we do. In a study titled “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature,” published in Environmental Research Letters, a group of authors review the abstracts to all relevant studies they can find from 1991 to 2011. Their conclusion: “Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW [anthropomorphic (human-caused) global warming] is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”

That’s in the scientific community. But what about the average Joe?

A study called “Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in April 2013”  says,

“About half of Americans (49%) believe global warming – if it is happening – is caused mostly by human activities, a decrease of 5 points since Fall 2012, but similar to levels stretching back several years” and “Belief that global warming is due mostly to natural changes in the environment is up slightly to 33% (up 3 points since Fall 2012).”

Then what’s stopping us from fixing it?

It’s lots of people. But it’s mostly the Koch brothers. Joakim Hellberg et al summarize the Kochs’ role thus: “Their aggressive funding for an extreme faction of conservatives polarized the climate policy debate in the US, making impossible any meaningful movement towards science-based emissions targets to enable an equitable global agreement.”   And according to Greenpeace, “Since 1997 the billionaire oil brothers Charles and David Koch have dumped over 61.3 million dollars into front groups that attack climate science and policies designed to solve global warming.”

In the climate protection movement, on the other hand, many have emerged as leaders but no one person has yet emerged as the leader. Folks worth following include:

• James Hansen, retired NASA scientist, who saw the similarity between Venus, with its CO2-heavy atmosphere, and the home planet before most of the science community started thinking about carbon dioxide. Hansen was a science leader in the field until his recent retirement from NASA.
• People like Naomi Oreskes and James Hoggan, who are bringing to public attention the false basis of the denier movement.
• Lots of people who have committed civil disobedience – which means risking jail time – to try to stop this thing. At the top of my personal list is Tim DeChristopher, who just came back from 2 years in jail for interfering with an illegal auction of drilling rights on public land.
• Bill McKibben, cofounder of 350.org. Bill has taken on the job of molding the people’s passion for a solution to climate change into organized action. I think it must be like trying to herd cats.

Maybe that one leader is what we need. I wish President Obama would be that leader and uase his office to fix the problem. But just as Abraham Lincoln walked on ground prepared for him by many abolitionists, perhaps President Obama needs the climate movement to prepare ground for him to make the United States, which has long been a leader among carbon emitters, into a leader in climate protection.

The post Fueling Climate Change Deniers appeared first on The Agonist.

The Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday that it has killed four Americans in overseas counterterrorism operations since 2009, the first time it has publicly taken responsibility for the deaths.

Although the acknowledgment, contained in a letter from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to Congress, does not say how the four were killed, three are known to have died in CIA drone strikes in Yemen in 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son and Samir Khan.

The fourth — Jude Kennan Mohammad, a Florida native indicted in North Carolina in 2009 — was killed in Pakistan, where the CIA has operated a drone campaign against terrorism suspects for nearly a decade. His death was previously unreported.

The post U.S. acknowledges killing of four U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations appeared first on The Agonist.

USA Today, By Richard Wolf, May 20

Washington — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether prayers can be offered at government meetings — a practice that’s been common in Congress and throughout the states for more than two centuries.

The religious expression case, which comes to the court from the town of Greece, N.Y., focuses on the first 10 words of the First Amendment, ratified in 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That Establishment Clause was violated, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year, when the Greece Town Board repeatedly used Christian clergy to conduct prayers at the start of its public meetings. The decision created a rift with other appeals courts that have upheld prayer at public meetings, prompting the justices to step in.

Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian non-profit group, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. It is supported in separate briefs by 49 mostly Republican members of Congress and 18 state attorneys general.

Via Alternet: Holy Moly — Supreme Court to Rule on Prayer at Government Meetings.

The post Supreme Court will rule on prayer at government meetings appeared first on The Agonist.

The Guardian, By Ian Cobain & James Ball, May 22

A groundbreaking research project has mapped the US government’s global kidnap and secret detention programme, shedding unprecedented light on one of the most controversial secret operations of recent years.

The interactive online project – by two British universities and a legal charity – has uncovered new details of the way in which the so-called extraordinary rendition programme operated for years in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to avoid detection in the face of growing public concern.

The Rendition Project website is intended to serve as a research tool that not only collates all the publicly available data about the programme, but can continue to be updated as further information comes to light.

Data already collated shows the full extent of the UK’s logistical support for the programme: aircraft associated with rendition operations landed at British airports more than 1,600 times.

The post New light shed on US government’s extraordinary rendition programme appeared first on The Agonist.

“I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.”

I devote a lot of time, brain cells, and column inches to various and assorted iterations of human stupidity, but sometimes The Stoopid runs so deep that it stands on its own and no commentary is necessary. Combine with mean-spiritedness, misogyny, and a lack of humanity and you have Pete Santilli, a meat sack posing as a human being. Santelli’s rumination about shooting Hillary Clinton in the vagina and then watching her suffer is about as truly sick and offensive as it gets. This gem is from the radio show that Santilli hopes to syndicate and take nationwide. Of course, he’s not certain that America and the FCC are “ready to take my show to national syndication; that is, of course, if the FCC regulated AM/FM radio stations can handle my truth & honesty.” Evidently, “truth and honesty,” at least in Santilli’s dictionary, means “misogyny and violent sexism.”

Santilli, though he walks upright and speaks in something resembling complete sentences, is human in name only.

(Read the full post at What Would Jack Do?)

The post ‘Tis better to be thought a fool and a pig than to be Pete Santilli and…oh, never mind…. appeared first on The Agonist.

Well, I am, but an informed Luddite.

Which is why the developments over the past twelve months in the Apple universe have been so distressing:

The Irish government on Tuesday denied it shelters some of the world’s largest corporations, such as Apple, from paying taxes, saying its long-standing low corporation tax regime is transparent and doesn’t make it a tax haven.

The U.S. Senate investigation report, published on Monday by the Senate’s Permanent Committee on Investigations, said that in Ireland, Apple “has negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2%.”

Ireland’s Prime Minster Enda Kenny told lawmakers Tuesday that: “Ireland does not do, let me repeat, does not do special tax [relief] for companies, ” but that companies do exploit loopholes that arise from the interaction of different national tax systems.

To be clear, the issue isn’t confined to Apple. Last week Google was in front of the U.K. Parliament’s Public Affairs Committee to discuss its tax arrangements in the U.K.

Couple this with the ongoing Foxconn controversy, and Apple is starting to become less of an attractive technology supplier to me.

I want to stress something here: none of what Apple has done is either illegal or unique to Apple. And I am not going to go full Rand Paul and demand an apology to Apple.

Apple has taken advantage of perfectly legal tax loopholes written into our tax code by the corporate overlords through their Orc minions, Republicans, Inc. and Corporatist sympathizer Democrats. Likewise, Apple has exploited the fact that Chinese workers in many instances are willing to work as cheaply as American prison inmates.

They still suck for doing so. Let me illustrate with an analogy.

Say I’m walking along the street, and I find a purse or a wallet. Looking inside, I see many thousands of dollars, some unsigned debit cards, and a winning lottery ticket.

The right thing to do is to find the owner’s phone number, call him or her and return the item whole.

Apple has rummaged through the wallet, taken all the cash and cash equivalents, and oh yes, checked the cellphone for the phone numbers of hot women and any naked photos the owner may have had.

It’s one thing to do what is legal, it’s another thing to do what is right.

Now, Senator…and I can’t believe he actually has that title…Senator Paul would claim that Apple did do the right thing. For the investors in Apple, the only audience it needs to please.

Senator… and I can’t believe he actually has that title…Senator Paul is right. But also very wrong.

You see, Apple shareholders are just a small piece of what many economic theorists call “stakeholders.” These are people to whom Apple must also demonstrate what business lingo would call “core competencies.” Stakeholders would include its employees (many of whom even in the US make less than minimum wage,) its landlords, its suppliers – and most important, its customers and the government. All of these groups, along with others, have a “stake” in Apple’s future and its operations.

GM closing a plant in Flint, MI and opening in Mexico may please the shareholders in the short term, but Flint residents losing the income and being unable to purchase GM cars makes GM vulnerable in the longer term, as an examination of the gas crises of the 70s implies: people had less money, so they bought cheaper, more fuel efficient cars. Take the income from their pockets and you can guarantee they won’t buy your cars ever again.

Eventually, your shareholders are impacted by this. It might get lost in the shuffle, but you’ve stopped operating at maximum efficiency by trying to operate at maximum efficiency.

You can sum this up by saying the perfect is the enemy of the excellent. And I want Apple to be excellent.

The post The Apple of My Eye appeared first on The Agonist.

Trenton, NJ — In a blow to clean energy advocates throughout the Northeast, Gov. Chris Christie said this morning that the state will pull out of the region’s “gimmicky” cap-and-trade program by the end of the year.

During a Statehouse news conference, Christie acknowledged the effects humans are having on climate change but said the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative was doing nothing to solve the problem.

“This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” Christie told reporters. “The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It’s a failure.”

Via Climate Progress: Chris Christie Denies Climate Change Has Anything To Do With Hurricane Sandy

More good news from DeSmog Blog: Obama Admin. Approves ALEC Model Bill for Fracking Chemical Fluid Disclosure on Public Lands

The Guardian: Plague of deforestation sweeps across south-east Asia

The post Gov. Christie announces N.J. pulling out of regional environmental initiative appeared first on The Agonist.

A government that is losing to an insurgency isn’t being out-fought, it’s being out-governed.

– Bernard Fall

In 1972, late in the Vietnam War, Jeffrey Race published War Comes to Long An – a remarkable study of a single province’s experience as the Viet Cong insurgency grew there from the late 50s to the mid-60s. This book by former State Department officer Carter Malkasian takes its title from that study and seeks to present as penetrating an analysis of a district in southern Afghanistan as Race’s work did for a province west of Saigon. Fortunately for followers of counterinsurgency thinking and the Afghan war, Malkasian has been highly successful.

Upon living in the district for two years and interviewing scores of elders, officials, notables, villagers, American soldiers, and even many Taliban, Malkasian has chronicled the Garmser district from the rebellions against the communist government in 1979 through various wars and governments to the present day. Three crucial themes stand out: administrative competence, tribal politics, and control of land.

The communist programs of the late 70s brought schooling, land reform, and greater official presence to the district. This led to resistance then open rebellion from notables (elders, landowners) who lost land and power, and from mullahs who resented non-religious education. Poor peasants who had benefited from land reform eventually placed religion over self-interest and joined the mujahideen.

In the course of the long war, many notables were killed or went into exile, and the mullahs, theretofore a politically unimportant group, rose to prominence in local affairs. Local government had changed.

The Soviet withdrawal, completed in 1989, meant victory for the mujahideen bands but it also brought infighting and chaos. This situation played itself out in much of Afghanistan, perhaps most notably in Kandahar (to Garmser’s east) where a tightly-knit group of former mujahideen and students – the emerging Taliban – suppressed warring bands, established their rule, and determined to take over the country.

The Taliban’s rise in Garmser was based more on politics than on warfare. In the absence of a unified opposition or appealing alternative, some notables accepted the Taliban for their piety, others saw them as preferable to the present turmoil, still others judged them as inevitable winners and aligned themselves accordingly. A few elders resisted, but they soon gave up or fled. Garmser fell with very little fighting.

The first Taliban government found support from the younger mullahs, who became teachers and judges and administrators, and from the poor, who had benefited from the communist land reform, which had been overturned by notables but reinstated by the Taliban. Many others found the Taliban’s autocratic but decisive rule preferable to the bickering, delay, and indecision of the notables.

The Taliban’s appeal wore away. Enforcement of austere religious codes and conscription for the interminable war against the Northern Alliance became irksome. The mullahs had religious instruction, though not much, but knew nothing about getting products to markets, building bridges and roads, or maintaining the canals that run through the district. Education and healthcare saw no improvement. Hope for postwar prosperity faded.

When the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance swept south after 9/11, the Taliban fled without a fight into Pakistan and the old Garmser notables returned to power – and with them came the old bickering, delay, and indecision. Local government was all too often inept and corrupt, leaving many residents to recall the Taliban as at least evenhanded and based on external law, not personal or tribal interest. Efforts at reconciliation with the old regime were minimal: many mullahs were harassed and beaten, and land was taken back from the poor.

Regrouping in Pakistan, the Taliban saw Garmser as ripe for retaking, though not yet for attacking. The Taliban, above all else, are adept at organization and strategy. Mullahs were sent to work with indigenous ones to agitate against Garmser notables and settle disputes independent of the government.

Cadres came later to recruit and train local youths, who rallied to the mullahs’ denunciations of government corruption and its reliance on foreign troops, though money and notions of adventure figured in young minds as well.

District government had little in the way of military force to counter the growing threat. Militias were the personal retinue of notables and there was insufficient elite consensus to form a strategy against the better organized Taliban. As of then, there were no American, British, or Afghan troops in the district. By the fall of 2006, with only sporadic opposition, Garmser was again in Taliban hands.

The second Taliban government found support from tribes that felt slighted by the former district governor, from people who had been wronged by his administrators, and from the poor who, under the Taliban, had tilled their own land – the same land that the communists had given them, that the notables had taken back, that the first Taliban government had returned to them, and that the notables had taken back. Allowing landowners to retake land was “one of America’s greatest missteps in Afghanistan” (p. 81).

The Taliban’s old failings recurred in their second government. Economic development remained weak, education worsened. The first Taliban government had made schools chiefly religious in nature; the second closed them altogether.

In late 2008, the U.S. deployed Marines to reestablish control in Garmser and after several months of hard fighting – much of which was surprisingly conventional in nature, with the guerrillas defending fixed positions – the Taliban were on their back foot. A further blow came when disputes over land ownership flared between Taliban leaders and tribal elders who had previously supported mullah rule.

The Taliban were driven far to the south of Garmser and then across the Durand Line into Pakistan.

Remaining guerrillas planted IEDs and intimidated or assassinated government officials. They still do. More ominously, many locals continue to think of the Taliban as fair administrators and guarantors of land for the poor.

From his vantage point of U.S. political officer in Garmser, Malkasian sees considerable economic and political development there over the last few years, once security was reestablished and Washington finally saw fit to allocate resources to the hapless, ravaged district.

A reasonably fair and effective district government has formed, linking the Kabul government with local notables. Judges, some with advanced degrees in Islamic law, travel about the district settling disputes more impartially than had predecessors. Schools are reopening. The economy is doing well; average income is up twenty-five percent from 2010 to 2011. Tribal militias have been integrated with the national police force, reducing the potential for warlordism.

Despite signs of progress, Garmser’s future, Malkasian notes in considerable detail, is clouded. As American forces withdraw, local confidence in their government and military is falling. With several hundred fighters just across the Pakistani border, the Taliban are beginning to reassert their presence in Garmser, increasingly by infiltrating the police and army.

Most critically, hope that the absence of U.S. troops would lead to greater cooperation among the district government, tribal elders, and landowners has thus far not been borne out. Without such cooperation, the Taliban can exploit local divisions and take control over the district, just as they did twice before in the last twenty years.

Brian M Downing served with indigenous forces in the Vietnam War and is the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

The post The Afghan War at the district level appeared first on The Agonist.

Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.

- Lord Byron

Sometimes, when it comes to Right-wing lunacy, I find it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and come up with the perfect, most ignorantly lunatic RWNJ out there. All too often there’s just too damned much competition. When everyone is worthy of being consideredThe Worst Person in the World ©…well, I can’t begin to imagine how to choose just one or two.

This past week has been an especially target-rich environment for Far Right, hyper-religious,uber-Jesus-y RWNJs, Rather than try to whittle down the list, I thought I’d let y’all sort it out. This is no run of the mill, garden variety wingnuttery, nosiree. This is the sort of thing that makes you blink and think, “You’re a very special kind of stoopid, aren’t you, son?? Somethin’s not quite right with you….”

(Read the full post at What Would Jack Do?)

The post Today’s Right Wing Follies, brought to you by the makers of Thorazine appeared first on The Agonist.

A legal deadline looms for prosecutors to bring a criminal case against Mr. Cohen related to charges against Mathew Martoma, a former SAC portfolio manager accused of illegally trading in the shares of two drug companies, Elan and Wyeth. The Martoma case is the first time that Mr. Cohen was linked to questionable trades, which occurred in late July 2008. Under the five-year statute of limitations for insider trading crimes, the government must charge Mr. Cohen by July.

Yet the eliciting of Mr. Cohen’s grand jury testimony is not entirely bad news for the hedge fund manager, at least as it relates to his criminal exposure, legal experts say. A grand jury subpoena seeking Mr. Cohen’s testimony suggests that the government is pursuing a case against SAC, but not Mr. Cohen himself. It is highly unusual for prosecutors to issue a grand jury subpoena to the target of an investigation, indicating that they want to interview Mr. Cohen broadly about his fund’s activities.

But bringing criminal charges against SAC would also be an unusual move by the government. Over the last decade, the Justice Department has moved away from indicting companies after the 2002 indictment of Arthur Andersen was widely seen as having put the accounting giant out of business.

Excuse me?

To refresh your memory, the CPA firm of Arthur Andersen voluntarily surrendered its license to practice in the United States after multiple felony convictions in connection with its audits of Enron. Yes, the Supreme Court of the United States later vacated the convictions, but not on the facts: documents relevant to the Enron investigation by the Justice Department were shredded. The case was thrown out for bad jury instructions. The facts were never at issue.

So an auditing firm, charged with making sure its client abided by what is known as GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) lies to people who are relying on their opinion that the firm is operating above board, but then destroys any proof otherwise? They deserved to be put out of business. Enron’s bankruptcy revealed not only the massive greed of conservative “capitalists” and the overwhelming hubris of people who treated customers, clients and shareholders like ants under a magnifying glass, AND warned Andersen (or rather should have) there were irregularities big enough to clog a pipeline, and yet did nothing to stop them.

And if Enron didn’t warn Andersen, they certainly could have dug a bit deeper than they did. Obviously, there was something they were trying to hide in shredding documents, if it was only how badly they were hoodwinked. Nonetheless, they were in deep and deserved to be shut down.

So if you’re wondering why the banksters were never put on trial after the subprime mortgage scandal, there’s your answer: our government is too scared to upset an apple cart or two.

The post You Wanna Get Pissed Off? Here’s Your Daily Dose of American Capitalism appeared first on The Agonist.

Assault on Wall Street

Combat veteran and armored car driver, Jim Baxford reaches a hefty body for this sort of thing.  He’s got nothing on the last three presidents of the United States who bear responsibility for military actions leading to the deaths of several hundred thousand civilians in the Middle East and North Africa.

Baxford’s actions are part of a larger social acceptance of violence as a solution to political and personal challenges.  This film is not about class warfare.  It narrates in detail the losses and pain that Baxford and his wife suffer, why he holds the Wall Streeters accountable, and how he gets his revenge on his own. (Image)

Written and directed by Uwe Boll and produced by Lynnpark Productions of Canada, the film offers an all-American series of horrors that fell on many ordinary citizens but rarely as hard as those horrors fell on the Baxford’s.

Jim and Rosie are a thirty something couple under huge pressure.  Rosie is recovering from brain cancer that responded to treatment but she needs more medical attention.  Financial hardship compounded the suffering. Rosie’s income was lost and things were a tight on Jim’s salary as an armored car driver.  Nevertheless, Jim has the money to pay for Rosie’s treatment, which will secure her recovery and allow her to have the couple’s first child.

We see Rosie with her doctor, receiving treatment, and taking injections.  Jim is with her every step of the say.

Counter posed to this real drama, we get an inside view of a big brokerage operation on Wall Street.  Jeremy Stancroft (John Heart), the firms CEO, lets his lieutenants know the score in no uncertain terms.  The company is about to tank due to bad investments in derivatives, risky financial products that led to the 2008 financial collapse.

Rather than play it straight, Stancroft makes it clear that the survival of the firm is paramount, customers be damned.  “Our goal is saving this house.  F… all the others!”  Stancroft orders his brokers to sell off the firm’s bad derivatives for added bonuses.  They’re more than happy to comply.  (Remaining images)

The losses the firm suffered from bad investments are deliberately shifted to long-term brokerage customers.  Sound familiar?

That’s the set up for the dialog between rapacious, sociopathic Wall Streeters plus their enablers on one side and the Boxford’s on the other.  Whose side are you on?

Jim finds out that his insurance won’t cover the “experimental treatment” Rosie needs.  No problem, he says, I’ve got the money in an investment account.   After treatment is underway, Jim finds out that the funds are gone.  He bought the bad paper from a broker who had done well for him in the past.

Jim seeks help from his broker, who says tough luck.  Jim hires an attorney who takes $10,000 and does nothing.  The assistant district attorney who promised to investigate does nothing.

In short order, Jim faces bankruptcy due to an inability pay his medical bills, the loss of his job due to the negative credit alerts on nonpayment, eviction, and the death of his wife at her own hand.   Convinced that she’s a burden, Rosie kills herself.

Rosie’s death is the turning point.  Jim ruminates for a period then hauls out his service issued rifle and goes to work.  He shoots three of those personally responsible for his plight; one on the porch of his mansion while enjoying a rare wine, no doubt, in the company of a lovely woman, decades younger.

The culmination of the film takes place in the investment bank – brokerage office of Wall Street wizard Jeremy Stancroft.  The firm is doing well after off loading their losses to the “little people.”  That win ends quickly and so does the film.  No need to spoil the ending that includes a plot twist that promises more of the same from director Boll.

Use Boll wrote and directed this film.  It’s plodding but thorough with a step-by-step broad indictment of the various horrors the financial elite have handed out to millions of citizens.  Baxford is like a modern day Job who quickly morphs into Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver.   Job couldn’t go gunning for God after all, but Baxford was, at some point, trained to kill.

John Heard does a fine job as the greedy investment banker.  His unapologetic greed is well played and a nice set up that carries the action forward.   Dominic Purcell is as good a choice as any for the role of the assault rifle avenger.  Purcell played Lincoln Burroughs, wrongly imprisoned by the financial elite’s shadow government in the epic series Prison Break.

Jim’s wife is played with a tragic flair Erin Karpluck.  The best friends played by Ed Furlong (American History X), Larry David, and Michael Pare couldn’t be better buddies.

But, this is no buddy film.  It’s about one man’s suffering and his choice to seek a violent solution to his problems on his own.  There’s no class warfare.  In fact, Jim emerges into the killer he becomes through a solitary research process that unveils the corruptions of Wall Street and the big banks.  There isn’t even a hint about what the fraudsters have done to millions.  It’s all about Jim and his suffering.

Around the time of the Wall Street collapse, there were stories about Wall Streeters buying guns for self-protection from the masses they swindled.  They’ll probably be at gun shows soon loading up again.  But, they have nothing to worry about.  Didn’t those well-funded studies show that films and television have little influence on real acts of violence?  Weren’t we told that there is no connection between what people see in a film and what they do in real life?

END

This article may be reposted with attribution of authorship and a link to this article.

The post Assault on Wall Street – A Review appeared first on The Agonist.

The rest of us have an opportunity to help where we can, and think about this event for a minute, because for any real understanding of climate change to take place in America, many people are going to need an Inhofe Moment. An Inhofe Moment is named after Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who is the leading climate change denier in the Senate. You have an Inhofe Moment when you realize that Senator Inhofe is absolutely full of shit, to put it politely. At a day last week when a report was issued identifying that 97% of climatologists believe climate change is a man-made phenomenon, Sen. Inhofe was claiming otherwise, and pointed to several hundred scientists he has brought before Congress who believe the science of climate change is a hoax. They assert that whatever is happening to the climate now is well within the bounds of climate change seen in the geological record, and that such changes have nothing to do with man’s activities. Sen. Inhofe has claimed if there is any global warming taking place, it is because God wills it so, and that is very clearly stated in the Bible.

There are scientists, and then there are “scientists”, the sort of people Sen. Inhofe puts his faith in, men and women who have no training or credentials in the scientific field, and many of whom are religious figures who believe in creationism. The studies done by real climate change scientists show that the continuous pumping of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by humans is the principal cause of the rise in earth temperatures and the enormous consequences which have resulted so far. One of the consequences is an intensifying of storm systems – leading to unusually large snowfalls, rainfalls resulting in floods, massive hurricanes, F4 and F5 tornadoes (which used to be unheard of in the US), and intense storms in areas that have no record before of experiencing such weather systems.

No one can claim that Moore, Oklahoma’s tornado today was the proven result of climate change and man’s burning of fossil fuels. What can be claimed is that this storm is the type of deadly weather system that is predicted by many models analyzing the effects of global warming. The melting of the north polar ice cap is another such prediction which has factual evidence supporting its occurrence. This is only the beginning of climate changes seen around the globe and which point with near conclusiveness to the burning of fossil fuels as the reason for such changes.

Sen. Inhofe turns a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a closed mind to scientific evidence. It goes against his belief in Biblical assertions that God and God alone can influence the earth’s climate. The people of Oklahoma have elected and reelected Jim Inhofe to the US Senate so he can continue to deny scientific fact and consensus, and so he can continue his campaign to denigrate climate change scientists who disagree with him. At some point Oklahomas will have to begin listening to scientists who have evidence that the increase in deadly storms such as today’s tornado is linked to global warming and man’s use of fossil fuels for energy. At some point they are going to need an Inhofe Moment.

That is the point where they are going to join other Americans and demand accountability for those politicians and their allies who deliberately and knowingly refused to believe the scientific evidence laid out before them, and which has received overwhelming consensus from the scientific community as to its premise and conclusions. When that point arrives – when a majority of Americans experience an Inhofe Moment, they are going to destroy the Republican Party, Rupert Murdoch’s news empire, various conservative and religious foundations, and other organizations which have delayed the time when this nation begins doing something about its fossil fuel addiction. Let us hope that this national Inhofe Moment arrives in time to avoid a permanent, epochal shift in the earth’s climate, with the consequences of mass extinctions of many species, including our own.

The post Is It Time Yet for an Inhofe Moment? appeared first on The Agonist.

The post No, I’m not a loner; I’m just doing the right thing appeared first on The Agonist.