The Divine Mr. M

..via Penny Red
Tuesday, 9 August 2011

I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green were looted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of serious injuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is the third consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has now spread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?

In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator has opened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in any doubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That much should be obvious to anyone who is watching Croydon burn down on the BBC right now. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder 'mindless, mindless'. Nick Clegg denounced it as 'needless, opportunistic theft and violence'. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge - declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was "utterly unacceptable." The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart.

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.

Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken down entirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to go out onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is coming closer. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at least fifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, and communities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting on rival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to the disenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight, and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are all about.

Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.

Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.

I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road in Chalk Farm. Ealing and Clapham and Dalston are being trashed. Journalists are being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are in retreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being set alight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wake up to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none of which will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stock market clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.

~Earlier today I posted my Budget Crisis Meme over on the Talk Politics Comm. This is a good example what I mean by Meta-Trolling, re stirring up conflict in order to make a Point, as opposed to regular old Trolling, which is stirring up shit just to be a dick...though of course dickishness is certainly part and parcel of Meta-Trolling as well.

So, a few days ago one of the Mods wrote me a long LJ/PM saying he'd seen/read me etc on The Recession and thought my thoughts interesting and would I consider joining his Comm and so on. Apparently he'd forgotten that he and I had flamed rather severely in Under-L's LJ some time last year[?] and that he'd been so ticked off he'd banned my from his own LJ, which I don't think I ever even got to.

My post has the Comm 'all a buzz' – though they seem a might Drama Queenish over there anyway – and I'm not really laughing, but am more cynically amused. There's all this fighting and snarking and dick-swinging about What Is Right, most of it totally ignoring that The Power of The Corporate State is presently Transcendent and that all this is akin to arguing over the details of one's own funeral.

However, this outcome does also point out the general pointlessness of most Meta-Trolling in that those being Trolled, as a rule, will never get the Point being made. It's only use is as an example to display for the detached outside observer...and the Point, more or less, is:

“Our choice as a species is either between the triumph of an essentially fascist Global Corporate Combine – which is pure Patriarchy – a path to near extinction as a species at best or total extinction at worst. Or the New Matriarchy as proposed by my Spirit Guide. That there are other paths is certainly possible, but none of them seem at all likely.”

Of course, if you're a regular reading de moi, you know that already. And so it is....

From The New York Review of Books

Malise Ruthven

In the flurry of commentaries about the July 22 Norway killings, certain features stand out. Commentators on the right are more inclined to dismiss Anders Behring Breivik as a deranged lunatic, with the implication that his mass murder of young Norwegians at a socialist camp on the island of Utoya and his detonation of a lethal car bomb in the government quarter of Oslo were one-off events. By contrast, writers and bloggers on the left—citing passages in the rambling 1,500-page manifesto Breivik posted on the Internet before his rampage—are more likely to take the view that there is some linkage between his monstrous crimes and new versions of far right ideologies that have been leaching into mainstream European politics. These divergent interpretations have brought fresh urgency to the question of whether highly charged political rhetoric can play a part in motivating extreme forms of violence.

For the first view, consider the comment by Simon Jenkins, a former editor of the London Times, and prolific columnist on the libertarian right. In the Guardian, Jenkins argues:

A man so insane he can see nothing wrong in shooting dead 68 young people in cold blood is so exceptional as to be of interest to criminology and brain science, but not to politics …He tells us nothing about terrorism or gun control or policing or political holiday camps. His avowal of fascism could as well have been of communism or Islamism or anarchism. The desperate, perhaps understandable, search to find meaning is dangerous. Breivik does not even measure up to the ideological coherence of the Nazism he admired. He is plainly very sick.

Melanie Phillips, stalwart of the right-wing British tabloid Daily Mail, and author of Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within has long used her column to stir up alarm about the dangers posed by Muslim immigrants to Europe, and Breivik cites her extensively in his tract. Yet in her blog, after denouncing his atrocity, she makes a distinction between even ultra-nationalists such as the Northern Ireland terrorists (though she doesn’t mention them specifically) and what she sees as the apocalyptic vision underpinning Breivik’s actions.

The former may be appalling in its effects but is nevertheless fundamentally rational since its goal, however noxious, is achievable. The latter is fundamentally irrational since its goal is a utopian fantasy. Consequently those who are in the grip of millenarian apocalyptic fantasies tend to be lunatics or psychopaths.

The argument that political rage can be clearly distinguished from apocalyptic fantasy is problematic, to say the least. Christian eschatology ranges seamlessly from premillennialists, who believe the world will end soon in a series of catastrophic events, to mainstream believers who interpret the Second Coming as a message of hope for the future. The same may be said for believers in secular utopias, whether communist or nationalist, who occupy a broad range of positions across the political spectrum. The Thousand Year Reich was a millennialist dream, as was the communist utopia, but not all Nazi or communist party members were mass killers.

Judging from his manifesto, Breivik is an obsessive man, with an idée fixe about the evils of Islam and multiculturalism. He believes that European leaders, especially those belonging to social democratic parties, are cultural traitors who are inflicting irreversible damage on their countries. Hence his attack on Utoya island, where the flower of Norway’s social democratic youth—reservoir of its future leaders— were gathered. He wants to see all Muslims expelled or repatriated unless they allow themselves to be converted into believing or “cultural Christians.” These aims may seem impracticable—but given the history of population expulsions and exchanges that he cites at some length in his document, they are neither utopian or millenarian.

Towards the end of his manifesto Breivik says that Europe should strive to become a civilization where the individual‘s acquisition of wealth would no longer be the driving force, and where more resources are committed towards social betterment. “Good welfare arrangements,” he opines,

requires a solid cooperation/symbiosis (social cohesion) and [this] is only possible in a monoculture where everyone has complete confidence in everyone else. The problem with today‘s society is that it has become fanatically egalitarian. In our quest to appease everyone (except the traditional cultural group) we have created a habit and tradition of cheering mediocrity and weakness. Your position in the victim hierarchy decides your position in society.

The sentiment is virtually identical to that expressed by Phillips:

Multiculturalism is said to promote equal treatment for all cultures. But this is not true. There is one culture that it does not treat equally at all, and that is the indigenous British culture. What purports to be an agenda of equality actually promotes the radical deconstruction of the majority culture, the idea of the nation itself and the values of Western democracy…This is a cultural scorched-earth policy: year zero for the secular universal world order.

Breivik’s manifesto appears paranoid and at times narcissistic. He evidently sees himself as a kind of Wagnerian hero, a “Justiciar Knight” charged with striking the first blow in the looming war against the demons of multiculturalism. His anxieties may be vastly exaggerated, but his ideas are presented systematically, and are generally consistent with the critiques of Islam and multiculturalism appearing in the mainstream press, as well as right-wing blogs. It would be premature, even dangerous, to suppose that the source of his action can only be understood by reference to synaptic glitches in an individual psychopath’s brain.

As Thomas Hegghammer, the Norwegian expert on Islamism, has argued, Breivik is in some respects an occidental mirror of Osama bin Laden—a dangerous monster, perhaps, but not necessarily an irrational one. Breivik’s manifesto, Hegghammer explains, departs from established categories of right-wing extremism such as ultra-nationalism, white supremacism, or Christian fundamentalism, to reveal “a new doctrine of civilizational war that represents the closest thing yet to a Christian version of al-Qaeda.” The concept of “civilizational conflict ” or “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West, first articulated by Bernard Lewis, is shared by many on the right and some in Europe’s liberal mainstream.

Both Breivik and the leaders of al-Qaeda see themselves as engaged in a conflict that extends back to the Crusades, with both of them using references to medieval chivalry. Both have resorted to catastrophic violence on behalf of transnational entities: the Ummah or “community” of all Muslims in the case of al-Qaeda, and “Europe” in the case of Breivik. Both frame their struggle as wars of survival, with the emphasis placed on defending a religiously-based culture rather than a distinctive nationality or ethnicity. Both hate their respective governments for “collaborating” with the outside enemy. Both use the language of martyrdom. Where Islamists refer to suicide bombings as “martyrdom operations” Breivik refers to an individual “martyr cell” in anticipation of his attack on defenseless youngsters. Both, as Hegghammer notes, lament the erosion of patriarchy and the emancipation of women.

Just as al-Qaeda represents an extreme, activist variant of political views held by a much wider constituency of Muslim radicals, most of whom would never consider crossing the boundary between thinking and action, so Breivik (judging from his manifesto) holds a broad range of positions common to what might be called the “counter-jihadist” or “paranoid right.” This is represented—among others—by Robert Spencer, Daniel Pipes, and Pamela Geller in the US, the controversial Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, and Bat Ye’or and Melanie Phillips in Britain. All these writers—most of whom have denounced the Utoya massacre in the most unequivocal terms—subscribe to variants of the thesis that Europe is sleepwalking into cultural disaster or (in the case of Phillips) enabling Islamist terrorists to gain a foothold.

Critics of the counter-jihadists in blogs and published articles have not been slow to point out the affinities between their utterances and the “classical” anti-Semitism of 1930s Europe. Jonathan Haari, writing in the Independent, names Bat Ye’or (the pseudonym of Giselle Littman, an Egyptian-born Jewish writer) as one of the “intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a theory about Muslims that comes close to being a 21st-century ‘Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.’” Bat Ye’or’s best known work, Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis, which Breivik cites extensively, castigates a supine European Union for allying itself with Arab states at the expense of Israel and the Atlantic alliance, creating a situation whereby Christians and Jews will be reduced to the status of dhimmis (the protected but subordinate minority communities of classical Islam). They will be second class citizens forced to ‘walk in the gutter.” In a letter of protest to the publishers of the Hebrew translation of Eurabia, Adam Keller, the Israeli peace activist compared it ) to Edouard Drument’s La France Juive (1886), the anti-Semitic tract that provided the ideological underpinnings for the deportation of France’s Jews under the Vichy government half a century later.

A striking, if ironic, feature of the “new right” discourse is the way that Islam and Muslims have replaced Jews as the specter of alien enemy aiming at world domination. According to some reports Brevik may have had plastic surgery to make him appear more “Aryan,” but he is no anti-Semite. Indeed his tract has a section explaining that today’s neo-Nazis are both misguided and thoroughly untrustworthy. He regards Nazism as a genocidal “hate-ideology” which he contrasts with his own brand of “cultural conservatism” aimed at defending European civilization and culture. But Zionism is to be commended. As the Jerusalem Post has observed, Breivik’s manifesto is not only fiercely anti-Islamic but also strikingly pro-Israeli. Following Bat Ye’or’s highly tendentious readings of Islamic history, he states that Israel is the Jewish homeland due in large part to the persecution suffered by Jews at the hands of Muslims. Jews who support multiculturalism - the primary target of his ideological venom, “are as much a threat to Israel as they are to us. So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers with all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxist/multiculturalists.”

This redefinition of the universal enemy would be disturbing even without the appalling events in Oslo and Utoya island. Breivik is far from alone in making this transition. The English Defence League— which is praised in Breivik’s document and with which he may have been in contact—strongly supports Israel as a bastion of western civilization facing the “totalitarian threat” of Islamic fundamentalism. Israeli flags are now waved routinely at demonstrations mounted by the EDL in places of high Muslim concentration. Right-wing parties, such as the National Front in France, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, and the Austrian Freedom Party are now forming links with the governing Israeli Likud (led by premier Bibi Netanyahu) and its coalition partner Yisrael Beiteinu (led by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman).

As Ayoob Kara, a deputy Israeli minister for development who is actively promoting these contacts, told the Israeli daily Maariv in June, “I am looking for ways to lessen the Islamic influence in the world. I believe that is the true Nazism in this world. I am the partner of everyone who believes in the existence of this war.” His sentiments are echoed by Eliezer Cohen, a former member of the Knesset with Yisrael Beiteinu in a recent interview with Spiegel Online: “Right-wing politicians in Europe are more sensitive to the dangers facing Israel. They are talking exactly the same language as Likud and others on the Israeli right.”

Islamophobia may appear to be the “new anti-Semitism,” but the context is significantly different from the situation in 1930s Europe. In the 1930s some Jewish people were wealthy, and became the targets of populist envy incited by the Nazis. But as communities the Jews were tragically vulnerable, without external support. Today many of Europe’s Muslims may appear to be vulnerable minorities, with lower levels of educational attainment than members of other religious minorities (such as Sikhs and Hindus, as well as Jews), and with a disproportionate presence in Europe’s prisons. But they are not without external support.

In his manifesto Breivik deplores the spread of “Saudi theo-fascism” in Europe, and marvels at the way the West demonises Shi‘a Iran, while cozying up to Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. His anxieties may be overdrawn, but they are far from irrational. Despite the challenges to social harmony posed by burqa-clad women, or even the occasional act of violence driven by rage at the host society’s perceived hostility, or indifference, the deeper dangers posed by a growing Muslim minority in Europe are not to the host communities: they are rather to the Muslims themselves. The export of the ultra-conservative, anti-integrationist cult of Salafism from the Arabian peninsula and similar cults from South Asia—with doctrines that enjoin disdain for, even hatred of European values and life-styles—is a real threat to social harmony, because they serve to ghettoize Muslims, to create in them a sense that they are a people apart.

Before the recent atrocity, a group of Muslims residing in a major Norwegian city sought permission to build a mosque. They explained that the biggest part of their funding—around $ 3 million—would come from Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. The municipal authorities—backed by the Norwegian government—turned them down.

This was not Islamophobia, but a wise decision that should be emulated throughout the West. The construction of mosques, which serve as community centers as well as places of worship, is to be welcomed when the funding comes from sources that are accountable to communities that use them. When that funding comes from the state that produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists (and whose intelligence services may even have been implicated in the attack, or from other religious sources that preach hatred or disdain for “infidels,” the authorities have every right to refuse.

August 9, 2011 11:30 a.m.

Since Reagan, Republicans have been on a “starve the beast” campaign – by which they mean eviscerate the government by taking away as much revenue as they can.

Starving the beast has been the biggest bait and switch con game that has ever been perpetrated on the American people.  And the most tragic. "

As Paul Krugman pointed out, Republicans offered popular tax cuts so that they could later cut popular government programs “as a necessity.”  Oh, we’d love to continue providing low cost, effective medical care under Medicare, but you see, the country just can’t afford it … Of course we can’t.  Billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street traders pay less in taxes than their secretaries.  And most corporations pay little or no taxes.

Starve the Beast was coupled with a clever campaign to make government appear to be a collection of bumbling bureaucrats who wasted tax money for pure pleasure.  Long after it became politically impossible to stereotype racial and ethnic groups (with the possible exceptions of Muslims) it was – and is – quite acceptable to characterize government workers as shiftless, lazy and incompetent.

As a result, once the Republicans succeeded in cutting government revenue to the bone and beyond, it became impossible to raise taxes – who wants to give any more of their hard earned money to a bunch of lazy bureaucrats? 

Never mind that most big government programs are far more efficient than their private sector equivalents.  That’s a mere fact.  Can’t let that get in the way of starving the beast.

Bait and switch.  Divide and Conquer.

So, after starting with a surplus in 2000, Republicans used two wars, two rounds of tax cuts, and a giant giveaway to big Pharma, to get the country racking up debt like a drunken sailor. 

Along comes the Bush recession, and the debt accelerates, and the Republicans declare the debt to be an “emergency” and right on schedule immediately attack popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student loans –and virtually anything that doesn’t help the uber rich or the corporations suddenly must be cut if we are to stay solvent.

Never mind that cutting Social Security to balance the budget is like attacking the mailman because your car doesn’t work.  It has nothing to do with the budget – but again, that’s a mere fact.  When you’re drowning the beast, facts don’t matter. 

So OK.  The beast is drowned. Keynes is dead.  Now what?

Well, if past is prologue, welcome to the next Great Depression. 

See, the dirty little secret is that we never had a debt “crisis.”  We had a jobs crisis. 

While Republicans were arguing about the faux “crisis” and the press and Obama joined them, we got a series of disturbing economic signals. Consumer confidence was down, manufacturing was off, May and June’s job numbers were pathetic. In fact, if not for a hiring binge by McDonald’s there would have been a net job loss in May. That’s something to hang your hat on: McDonalds accounted for what little job growth there was.  What’s next, America gets saved by an uptick in Wall Mart greeters? 

Look. This whole drown the beast strategy has been nothing more than a stealth tactic for instituting an extremist version of a laissez faire, market uber-alles policy designed by and for the Plutocracy.

And to be sure, it’s worked great for them. Today, the richest 1% owns 40% of the nation's wealth, and the top 10% owns nearly 75% of it.

The rest of us?  Not so much.

Income and wealth inequality in the US has been increasing rapidly since Reagan,  (with a slight break under Clinton). In terms of income inequality, the US now ranks about the same as Ivory Coast, Uganda and Cameroon – countries not exactly noted for being prosperous, equitable and just societies.

News flash for all the debt mongers, Tea Partiers and other assorted ignoramuses. You can’t run a consumer-based economy when the vast majority of consumers don’t have enough money to buy anything.  After all, Paris Hilton can only buy so many yachts; Corporate CEOs can only purchase so many jetliners – even with their special jet tax credits; and Wall Street traders can only buy so many Bugattis.  But middle and working class Americans need to spend their money on food, lodging, and other necessities.  

Here’s the dirty little secret: Republicans want the economy to fail.  They want Obama to fail, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.  They want these things, because the beast is in the bathtub and they can almost taste its demise. 

The pieces are in place for the Plutocrats final victory … an industry friendly Supreme Court; a Democratic Party that is either in collusion with the plutocrats, or so cowardly as to be neutered; a press that reports outlandish lies and objective facts as if they were equivalent; and a public that is dazed and confused and convinced the government is their enemy. 

 But government isn’t the enemy.  Laissez faire economic policies are. Every time we’ve tried them, they've produced profound income inequalities and the severe economic downturns that inevitably follow.

With private industry sitting on top of some $2 trillion in profits, exporting jobs, and shutting down plants, only government spending stood between us and an economic Armageddon. 

Now, nothing does.

So, congratulations, America.  You’ve finally gotten big bad gubmint off your back.

Enjoy the coming Great Depression.

Bagger Jackass: "As a far-right wing conservati­ve, I realize that there must be compromise­, and as a debt deal is reached (which it shall), the left and the right will come together to work out the *best* solution possible. Unlike most of you who are freaking out, I stand back and I thank God for the wonderful nation I live in where compromise is freedom, not Presidenti­al edict. Regardless of what they come up with, I'll support it. Compromise is the key to freedom, not one-party rule. I consider our President a Marxist, the Democratic Party Socialists­, but be that as it, we conservati­ves must meet them half way. Our party got us into two wars, Mr. Obama has gotten us into a third and now we have to work together to fix it."

Moi: "That anyone considers a Center/Rig­ht Corporatis­t like Obama - whose presidenti­al campaign got a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS from American Corporatio­ns - to be a 'Marxist', or even a Socialist, shows just how totally and utterly Mass Democracy has failed in this country. You and your ilk, sir, are The Doom of The Republic."

...from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/31/durbin-debt-deal-keynes-deficit_n_914356.html

Senate Quickly Kills Boehner Debt Bill
http://www.truth-out.org/senate-quickly-kills-boehner-debt-bill/1312030751
Carl Hulse and Robert Pear, The New York Times News Service: "After a 24-hour delay and concessions to conservatives, the House on Friday narrowly approved a Republican fiscal plan that the Senate quickly rejected in a standoff over the federal debt ceiling that was keeping the government on a path to potential default. Despite a day of frenzied legislative maneuvering... the two parties made no visible progress in finding common ground, leaving Washington, Wall Street and much of the nation watching the clock toward a deadline of midnight Tuesday."

Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story
http://www.truth-out.org/mainstream-reporters-too-close-field-and-teams-get-debt-story/1312033901
Jeff Cohen, Truthout: "If you were a spectator in a sky box seat looking directly down on the Washington debt debate, you’d be seeing a contest both narrow and off to one edge of the field - like watching a football game being played entirely between the 10-yard line and the goal line. The big items that added trillions to the debt are not even on the field of debate. Because the two teams are not contesting them."

World Reacts to Debt Ceiling Debacle: "Irresponsible," "Worst Kind of Absurd Theatrics"
http://www.truth-out.org/world-reacts-debt-ceiling-debacle-irresponsible-worst-kind-absurd-theatrics/1312035874
Ken Sofer, ThinkProgress: "From France and Germany to China and India, countries around the world are angry that American politicians play with the possibility of a U.S. default like a yo-yo with little regard for the international economic system that depends on American solvency... Even if Congress manages to forge a deal against the wishes of the Tea Party and deliver a bill to President Obama's desk raising the debt ceiling before default, the damage to our international standing has already been done."

Economists: Now is Wrong Time for Congress to Cut Spending
http://www.truth-out.org/economists-now-wrong-time-congress-cut-spending/1312039103
Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers: "Despite the weak growth, politicians aren't arguing about stimulating the economy; rather they're debating how quickly and how much to cut spending, thus shaving economic growth in the process... The U.S. economy grew at an anemic 1.3 percent rate from April to June, the Commerce Department reported Friday. It also revised downward the growth rate over the first three months of 2011 to just 0.4 percent."

Large Mortgage Service Filed False Documents in Foreclosure Bid
http://www.truth-out.org/large-mortgage-service-filed-false-documents-foreclosure-bid/1312042309
Paul Kiel, ProPublica: "GMAC, one of the nation's largest mortgage servicers... wanted to foreclose on a New York City homeowner but lacked the crucial paperwork needed to seize the property... Three months later, GMAC had an answer. Itfiled a document with New York City authorities that said the delinquent Ameriquest loan had been assigned to it 'effective of' August 2005. The documentwas dated July 7, 2010, three years after Ameriquest had ceased to exist... In New York, it's a felony to file a public record with 'intent to deceive.'"