Geithner and Bernanke's Possibly Criminal Roles
Lehman Brothers Scandal Rocks the Fed
by Mike Whitney l ICH
After a year-long investigation, court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas has produced a deadly 2,200 page report which details the activities that led to the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The report is a keg of dynamite. The question now is whether anyone in government has the nerve to light the fuse. Valukas provides powerful evidence that Lehman executives were involved in “balance sheet manipulation” by implementing an arcane accounting procedure called “Repo 105” which masked the bank's true financial condition from investors and regulators.

According to Valukas, Lehman was “Unable to find a United States law firm that would provide it with an opinion letter permitting the true sale accounting treatment" using Repo 105. So, Lehman executives went outside of the country in an effort to enlist the support of a London law firm that would approve the procedure.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of Valugas's findings. The report exposes the opaque but central role of the repo market which provides essential short-term loans for financial institutions. (Lehman used repos to conceal the full extent of its collapse, by dint of the amount of leverage it was using, meaning the pitiful asset anchor tethered to a vast zeppelin of debt) More importantly, it shows the cozy and, very probably criminal relationship between the country's main regulatory bodies and the Wall Street behemoths. The activities of the New York Fed (NYFRB), which at the time was headed by Timothy Geithner, is particularly suspect in this regard. The report should trigger an immediate Congressional investigation, probing the whole affair and most importantly the role of the Fed.

This week tune in for the annual FunDrive, wherein we try to reach this year's goal of 25,000 big ones. Gorilla Radio's principles, me and Janine Bandcroft, are going off format to bring to you a compendium of information, music, rants, raves, and reasons you could and should support us and join the movement for better media and music on Canadian radio.

 

Today, I'm a vegan and not often seen near a church. In the ensuing years, however, I have discovered something else to commemorate on March 17: St. Patrick's Battalion.

 

Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010
by Tom Burghardt
A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the "barbarians at the gates," that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of "democracy on the march," "hope" and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.

Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle:

"The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender 'lonely crowds.' With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions."

And when those "presuppositions" reproduce ever-more wretched clichés promulgated by true believers or rank opportunists, take your pick, market "democracy," the "freedom to choose" (the length of one's chains), or even quaint notions of national "sovereignty" (a sure fire way to get, and keep, the masses at each others' throats!) we're left with a fraud, a gigantic swindle, a "postmodern" refinement of tried and true methods that would do Orwell proud!

by Rettet den Regenvald (Rainforest Rescue)

Since 09.03.10 1144 people have participated in this protest action.

Stop the evictions and massacres! Stop the evictions and massacres!

Multinational corporations are covetting strategic natural resources in the Lacandon Forest in the Mexican state of Chiapas. At the same time, the state government is pursuing ambitious plans to surround the Lacondan Forest with oil palm plantations, while disguising the forest around the plantations as ‘eco’- tourism areas. The corporations are preparing for those projects, by attacking and evicting indigenous communities.

On 21st and 22nd of January this year, the indigenous Tselales communities of Laguna El Suspiro and Laguna San Pedro Guanil, both inside the Biosphere Reserve of Montes Azuls in the Lacandon Forest, were evicted. Montes Azules is home to one third of Mexico’s biodiveristy.

Aren't We Cheneyed Out Yet?
by Laura Flanders
At what point do we call them the family of mass intimidation and simply stop playing into the Cheney clan's tired old terror tactics?

Liz is the latest. Cheney child number one made the headlines this week, with an innuendo-laced video questioning the loyalty of lawyers who represent Guantanamo detainees. "The Al Qaeda 7: Who are they?"

 

Asks the voice on a video released by Cheney's supposedly nonprofit, non-partisan new hit squad. (They call it an advocacy group?)

 

 

 

"Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law."

With the new law has come the new lawlessness. Nora Hamaid, 30, a graduate from Baghdad University, has now given up the career she dreamt of. "I completed my studies before the invaders arrived because there was good security and I could freely go to university," Hamaid tells IPS. Now she says she cannot even move around freely, and worries for her children every day. "I mean every day, from when they depart to when they return from school, for fear of abductions."