From The Black Agenda Report
By Bill Quigley

Some say crime causes a city to be under siege; others say crime is the symptom of a city under siege. Either way, New Orleans is in serious trouble. Our criminal justice system is in unprecedented crisis.

Thursday there were four murders in 24 hours in New Orleans. Over the weekend three more people died from gunshots. So far this year, 170 people have been murdered in New Orleans – a rate seven times the national average.

The District Attorney of New Orleans just resigned at the insistence of the Mayor, the Attorney General and several legislators. His office owes a group of discharged employees a federal civil rights judgment of over $3 million – and neither the City nor State was willing to pay unless he resigned. There is high turnover in the office and thousands of people arrested have been released because the office could not timely decide whether to charge them with crimes or not. His resignation will not make New Orleans any safer.

Katrina severely damaged an already dysfunctional criminal justice in New Orleans. In fact, what has occurred and is happening now in New Orleans is really neither “justice” nor a “system.” Before Katrina, New Orleans averaged 1000 violent crimes each quarter. In the second quarter of 2007, New Orleans reported over 1300 violent crimes – despite the fact that not many more than half the people of New Orleans are back.

Read more New Orleans

From The Huffington Post
By Jeremy Scahill

Apparently there is one set of rights for Blackwater mercenaries and another for the rest of us. Normally when a group of people alleged to have gunned down 17 civilians in a lawless shooting spree are questioned, investigators will tell them something along the lines of: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” But that is not what the Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16 Nisour Square shooting in Iraq were told. Most of the Blackwater shooters were questioned by State Department Diplomatic Security investigators with the understanding that their statements and information gleaned from them could not be used to bring criminal charges against them, nor could they be introduced as evidence. In other words, “Anything you say can’t and won’t be used against you in a court of law.”

ABC News obtained copies of sworn statements given by Blackwater guards in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, all of which begin, “I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry,” and that, “I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding.” Constitutional law expert Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the offering of so-called “use immunity” agreements by the State Department is “very irregular,” adding he could not recall a precedent for it. In normal circumstances, Ratner said, such immunity is only granted after a Grand Jury or Congressional committee has been convened and the party has invoked their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It would then be authorized by either a judge or the committee.

Read more Blackwater

From The Dissident Voice
By Gary Corseri

An Interview with Gareth Porter

Gary Corseri: I want to focus on your book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, with its exposition of policy-making during the Vietnam War—and we’ll consider how that process applies today. I’ll ask you about current world crises—Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine. But first, I’d like to know how you come to have the authority to write about the policy-making process?

Gareth Porter: I don’t know that I have the authority—that’s subjective. I think I have the right background, though: the curiosity of the historian to figure out what actually happened—to solve mysteries or puzzles—in terms of American policy, specifically, policy towards war; and then, International Politics. I have an interest in policy on a theoretical level. I studied under Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago. Morgenthau had turned against the Vietnam War by then. I considered myself a realist, taking the idea of the Balance of Power seriously—that nation-states act in terms of power relationships. That was really the only way to understand the behavior of states in international politics. Obviously, that played a role in the way I looked at, in retrospect, the Vietnam War.

GC: Perils was published in 2005. Would you describe the theme, or themes?

GP: There are really two interrelated themes.

When I began my research, I understood that power relations had something to do with the road to war in Vietnam. But, it seemed, the pertinent literature had ignored that. I had a strong sense from my reading of Cold War history, specifically of Vietnam, and particularly my editing of a two-volume documentary history of the Vietnam War back in the late 70s—I had an intuition that the Communist world was much weaker than had been reflected in the history of the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. I began my research convinced that was a key to understanding how and why the US stumbled into war.

Read more Interview

From CounterPunch
By Rev. William E. Alberts

A classic denial of reality is seen in the defensive reactions of CBS “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley in his September 23, 2007 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Pelley’s defensiveness is an attempt to deny the reality of an American foreign policy soaked in blood: “The American people believe . . . your country is a terrorist nation,” and that “you have American blood on your hands,” because “it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and know-how are killing Americans in Iraq.” Ahmadinejad responded that “American officials” were making that charge to divert attention from their failed policy in Iraq, a policy opposed by many Americans, and that he was “amazed” that Pelley, “representing a media and . . . a reporter” would “speak for . . . 300 million” Americans. Pelley repeated, “Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands.” Scott Pelley and CBS do not want the American people to know who really has “American blood” on their hands.

CBS itself has “American blood” on its hands. On February 5, 2003, CBS’s “60 Minutes II” presented a program designed to build public support for pre-emptive war against Iraq called, “The Case Against Saddam” [italics added]. “The Case” began with Secretary of State Colin Powell, fresh from his blatantly false, dishonorable UN presentation on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that morning, telling host Dan Rather, “I spent most of the last four days going over every sentence in my statement. . . . What you see is the truth . . . I think I put forward a case today that said . . . there are many smoking guns.”

CBS’s “The Case Against Saddam” followed Secretary of State Powell with a clip of Saddam Hussein in a recent rare interview saying, “I tell you, as I have said on many occasions before, that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq whatsoever. And we challenge those who say the opposite to give the simplist proof. These weapons are not aspirin pills that one can have in his pockets.”

Read more Trail of Blood

From The BBC News

Oil prices have hit a new record of $94 a barrel, as US government data showed a surprise fall in crude stockpiles for the second week in a row.

New York light crude jumped $3.62, or 4%, to $94 a barrel, while London Brent traded at $90.74 a barrel, up $3.30, in late afternoon trade in Europe.

The US government’s figures showed that domestic crude stocks fell by 3.9 million barrels last week.

Analysts had forecast an increase of 100,000 barrels.

“I am very surprised, the crude number is insanely bullish, it’s a big drop, for the second week in a row,” said Mike Wittner, global head of oil research at SocGen in London.

Weak dollar

An array of factors have been driving oil prices higher.

The weak dollar makes oil – which is priced in the greenback – cheaper to buy outside the US, lifting prices.

Read more Oil Prices

From The Asia Times
By Gareth Porter

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.

And they did not give up the illusion until late 2005, according to a former high-level Foreign Service officer who participated in United States discussions with Iran from 2001 until late 2005.

Hillary Mann, who was the director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 2003 and later on the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, observes that the key to neo-conservative policy views on Iran until 2006 was the firm belief that one of the consequences of a successful display of US military force in Iraq would be to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime.

That central belief was conveyed to conservative columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times in April 2002 by prominent neo-con figures who told him the Bush administration “had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East”.

The Bush doctrine of pre-emption, they said, “had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out of power”. The removal of Saddam Hussein, according to the neo-con scenario, would bring a democratic Iraq that would then spread through the region, “bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf”.

Read more Plan B

From Raw Story
By John Byrne

It’s not quite signing statements, where President George W. Bush used legal means to “interpret” laws, allowing him to avoid Congressional directives, but the White House is now planning to implement as much new policy “as it can” by administrative order “after concluding that President Bush cannot do much business with the Democratic leadership.”

According to officials who spoke to the Washington Post, Bush blames Democrats for the holdup of Judge Michael Muskasey’s nomination as attorney general, the failure to pass budget bills and an inability to reach compromise on child healthcare.

Bush vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, saying Democrats hadn’t found a way to offset spending for the expansion of the program. Democrats have reservations about Mukasey because he has refused to denounce the president’s policy on waterboarding.

“White House aides say the only way Bush seems to be able to influence the process is by vetoing legislation or by issuing administrative orders, as he has in recent weeks on veterans’ health care, air-traffic congestion, protecting endangered fish and immigration,” the Post authors write. “They say they expect Bush to issue more of such orders in the next several months, even as he speaks out on the need to limit spending and resist any tax increases.”

House Democrats disagree with Bush’s assessments.

Read more Avoiding Congress

From The Washington Post
By Dan Froomkin

Just a lot of political posturing, right?

Well, maybe not. It’s increasingly looking like Bush’s petulance is not just for show.

Apparently, a year of dealing with a Democratic Congress — even one as supine as this one — has profoundly upset him. And he may have given up on reaching any accommodation with them at all.

Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman write in The Washington Post: “The White House plans to try implementing as much new policy as it can by administrative order while stepping up its confrontational rhetoric with Congress after concluding that President Bush cannot do much business with the Democratic leadership, administration officials said. . . .

“White House aides say the only way Bush seems to be able to influence the process is by vetoing legislation or by issuing administrative orders, as he has in recent weeks on veterans’ health care, air-traffic congestion, protecting endangered fish and immigration. . . .

Read more Stomping Feet

From Crooks and Liars
By Nicole Belle

On Tuesday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann looks once again at proof that the world’s last remaining superpower is being run by a petulant child prone to temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way.

Watch Video

From Think Progress

Today, House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding and requested that the administration hand over more than 600 pages of documents relating to the White House’s activities with fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff. From Waxman’s letter:

Despite the refusal of key witnesses to provide testimony, the Committee has learned that some senior White House officials had regular contact with Mr. Abramoff. Former White House political director Matt Schlapp cooperated with the Committee’s investigation and provided voluntary testimony in a deposition. Mr. Schlapp estimated that he had “monthly” contact with Jack Abramoff on subjects that often involved official government business. He also told the Committee that Mr. Abramoff and his associates “had many friends in the administration”; that Mr. Abramoff was regarded as a “point of information” because of “his knowledge and his experience and his judgment on issues surrounding politics and policy and how the town works”; and that Mr. Abramoff’s lobbying team was “viewed by many as a very respected lobbying team.” […]

The withholding and redacting of documents that describe internal White House deliberations relating to Mr. Abramoff is not appropriate. As you know, the Committee takes the position that responsive documents that are relevant to the Committee’s investigation cannot be withheld unless the President makes a valid assertion of executive privilege, No such assertion has been made in this case. Therefore, I request that you provide these documents to the Committee by November 6,2007.

Read more Letter