Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman will appear on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes on Sunday, February 5th from 8 -10am EST.

The conventional understanding you get from the media is that Israel is worried that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a serious threat to the country's existence.

Is that really what's happening, though? Another interpretation is that Iran might want nuclear weapons not to launch any such an attack but to prevent an attack on its country--nuclear deterrence, in other words. (Of course, it's important to note that there is currently no evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program.)

I was struck when I heard Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman bring up some of these ideas on NPR's Talk of the Nation on January 30. Bergman is no outsider critic of Israeli policy; when he appeared recently on the NewsHour (1/12/12) and was asked about the assassination of Iranian scientists, his answer was: "I don't know. And even if I knew, I would tell you that I don't know."

Here's what he said on NPR, appearing to talk about his New York Times magazine piece on Israel and Iran:

NEAL CONAN: Chris, thanks very much for the call. Israel itself possesses, what, 300 nuclear weapons we believe, maybe more? Why does not deterrence work? Israel, of course, would retaliate if Iran were to use a nuclear weapon.

BERGMAN: I would assume that--oh, I know that most of Israel's leaders do not believe that Iran is going to use nuclear weapons against Israel. The problem is not the nuclear threat. The Iranians are not stupid. They want to live.... And I think that most leaders, and me personally as well, see that there are only a few people who believe that Iran would be hesitant enough to--sorry, brutal enough and stupid enough to use nuclear weapon against Israel.

The problem is that once Iran acquires this ability, it would change the balance of power in the Middle East. And a country that possesses nuclear weapon is a different country when it comes to support proxy jihadist movement. And these Israeli leaders afraid would significantly narrow down the variety of options from the point of view of Israel, just to quote one example coming from Minister of Defense Barak, when he said, just imagine--he told me in a meeting we had on the 13th of January in his house--said, just imagine, Ronen, that tomorrow we go into another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon like we did in 2006, and this time we are determined to take them out. But Iran comes forward and say, to attack Hezbollah is like attacking Iran, and we threaten you with nuclear weaponry.

Now, Minister of Defense Barak says it's not necessarily that we would be threatened not to attack, and we would decide to cancel the war, but it would certainly make us think twice.

In other words, Israel's position might be that an nuclear-armed Iran could make it harder to have future wars. That's a very different discussion from the one we're having now.

If you've read FAIR's latest alert on ABC's Iran propaganda, let ABC know how you feel. And please post your letters/comments in the thread below.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who's been called the "bard of the 1 percent" for his writings in defense of the economic elite, is at it again--telling people not to worry about the concentration of wealth at the very top of the income scale. Brooks writes in his January 31 column that the claim that "America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources" is a "distraction." Brooks argues:

The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

Brooks' claim, then, is that inequality is really a matter of the top one-fifth, not the 1 percent. Well, that's not what the Congressional Budget Office (10/11) says.

It's true that what you might call the upper middle class has done better than the middle class and poor over the past three decades or so--their income has grown by 65 percent, vs. 40 percent for the middle class and only 18 percent for the poor. But over the same time period, the income of the richest 1 percent has soared--by 275 percent. That's close to quadrupling.

So while the share of income claimed by the upper middle class has stayed about the same since 1979, the poor and middle class have gotten substantially less while the piece of the pie taken by the 1 percent has more than doubled in size. As it turns out, the real driver of inequality and unfairness--is the financial elite who hog society resources.

Score one for Occupy Wall Street--zero for David Brooks.

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer (2/2/12) accurately reports how Republicans want to frame the disputed over the Keystone XL pipeline. But she does almost nothing to challenge that framing.

Under the headline, "For GOP, Pipeline Is Central to Agenda," Steinhauer explains:

Republicans are framing Keystone as an urgent jobs and energy project at a time of high unemployment and creeping gasoline prices, and trying to portray Mr. Obama as giving in to hard-left environmentalists in an election year at the expense of addressing both.

Instead of challenging that narrative, the Times bolstered it, alluding to what Republican presidential candidates are saying about Keystone and quoting from Keystone-supporting Democrats.

"This week, Democrats moved to blunt the Keystone attacks," the Times went on--which merely set up more quotes from potentially Keystone-friendly Democrats like Senator Harry Reid, who wants the project to keep the oil in the U.S.

The Times then went back to Republican PR:

For Republicans, the pipeline is a political trifecta. It unites most of their party and divides the Democrats. It is also fairly easy to explain to voters, and it hits on the key concerns of many Americans: jobs, energy independence and fear of economic competition with China, which Republicans have said will be the recipient of the Canadian oil without the Keystone plan.

You can challenge that "trifecta," but the Times mostly passed on that option. The only hint of skepticism comes late in the article:

The number of jobs that could be created by the Keystone expansion--supporters say 20,000--is disputed. But many companies and labor unions around the country were counting on the expansion and had already made materials or hired workers to gear up.

The numbers are disputed. How so?

As we've talked about before, this is arguably the key issue here. An outside estimate from Cornell says 2,500-4,000 jobs. The State Department says 5 or 6 thousand.

It's not difficult to cite these numbers, or to ask Keystone proponents to explain where they're getting their much higher estimates (hint: from the company). This is especially important in a piece about how this issue will be an important part of the Republican presidential campaign strategy.

The Times notes near the end:

A wild card is whether workers invested in the project will serve as an echo chamber for the Republicans' criticism.

Today the  New York Times certainly served that function.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Although Mitt Romney has yet to win a majority in a Republican primary, he won big in Florida. After he and the pro-Romney super PACs flooded the airwaves with millions of dollars’ worth of ads in a state where nearly half the homeowners are underwater, he talked about whom he wants to represent. “We will hear from the Democrat Party the plight of the poor, and there’s no question, it’s not good being poor,” he told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. “You could choose where to focus, you could focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You could focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.” Of the very rich, Romney assures us, “They’re doing just fine.” With an estimated personal wealth of $250 million, Romney should know.

Romney’s campaign itself is well-financed, but his success to date, especially against his current main rival, Newt Gingrich, is driven by massive cash infusions to a so-called super PAC, the new breed of political action committee that can take unlimited funds from individuals and corporations. Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating their activities with a candidate’s campaign. Federal Election Commission filings made public Jan. 31 reveal that the principal super PAC supporting Romney, Restore Our Future, raised close to $18 million in the second half of 2011, from just 199 donors. Among his supporters are Alice Walton, who, although listed in the report as a “rancher,” is better known as an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, and the famously caustic venture capitalist and billionaire Samuel Zell, the man credited with driving the Tribune media company into bankruptcy. William Koch, the third of the famous Koch brothers, also gave.

Juxtapose those 199 with the number of people living in poverty in the United States. According to the most recent figures available from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.2 million people lived in poverty in 2010, 15.1 percent of the population, the largest number in the 52 years the poverty estimates have been published. 2010 marked the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.

Click to read the rest of this column at Truthdig.org.

Alarmist corporate media coverage of the "threat" from Iran is everywhere, thanks to a Senate appearance yesterday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

But Clapper said very little in his remarks that would justify the propagandistic coverage we're seeing.  His main point was that Iran could launch attacks if it felt threatened. It is hard to see how this is particularly surprising. Clapper pointed to the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. as evidence that Iran seems more eager to assert itself, perhaps even inside the United States. But there were many people who raised serious questions about that rather implausible scenario (which involved hiring a Mexican drug gang to carry out the assassination).

As the Wall Street Journal reported (one of the few corporate outlets I saw pushing back against the official alarmism):

There is still widespread doubt that an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was authorized at the highest levels in Tehran, said Karim Sadjadpour, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"If that's the only data point, I think it's a stretch to conclude that the regime is now looking to commit acts of terror on U.S. soil," he said.

That kind of caution was in short supply on the network newscasts. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams (1/31/12) announced:

Iran's threat. Not just the nuclear program. Tonight, U.S. intelligence warns Iran may be prepared to strike on American soil.

Williams called Clapper's testimony  a "chilling new assessment about the scope of the threat from Iran." As correspondent Andrea Mitchell explained,  "Experts warn that the U.S. is even more vulnerable than Israel if Iran retaliates or launches a pre-emptive bomb plot.... Soft U.S. targets like embassies throughout the Persian Gulf, and 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan, next door to Iran."

It wasn't until the end of Mitchell's report that any notes of caution were sounded:

Still, intelligence officials told the Senate today they don't think Iran has taken the final step, deciding to build a bomb. But Israel does think Iran has crossed that red line, and U.S. officials say if attacked, Iran would not hesitate to retaliate against both Israel and the U.S.

So Iran is a substantial threat, though then again it might not even be developing the weapons the U.S. and Israel claim are in the works. And really, the "threat" seems mostly that Iran might be ready to respond to an attack on its country--something virtually any country in the world would do.

But for sheer propaganda value, ABC World News' January 31 broadcast would be tough to top.

First, start with alarming graphic:

Then Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz announced, "The saber rattling from Iran has been constant."

Match that with threatening B-roll footage from the enemy country. Weapons  on display at a military parade, for instance:

Iran "may be more ready than ever to launch terror attacks in the United States," Raddatz explained. Cue footage of apparently menacing soldiers:

Don't forget to show the enemy county's leader (or, rather, a close approximation) meeting with other Official Enemies. Like this:

And why not one more, while reminding viewers that such figures "have little love for the U.S.":

It's important to remember, amidst all this hoopla, that it is U.S. military officials and the president who have regularly threatened that "no options" are "off the table" in dealing with Iran. That is code for using nuclear weapons--and Barack Obama's latest repetition of that apocalyptic threat got a standing ovation from Congress.

It is hard to argue honestly that the real escalation  is coming from the Iranian side. But that's what propaganda is for.

From Amanda Terkel in the Huffington Post (2/1/12):

Newt Gingrich Florida Primary Results 2012: The Candidate Who Refuses to Operate Within Reality

...From the beginning to the end of Gingrich's election night party, the campaign and its supporters seemed to be operating outside of realities, denying the importance of this large state's primary contest and insisting that victory was going to be theirs as soon as voters opened their eyes and truly saw Florida winner Mitt Romney as a "Massachusetts moderate." Gingrich, in fact, never even congratulated Romney on his win.

I'm a fan of Terkel's work, but this genre of punditry is unfortunate. At the moment (Real Clear Politics, 2/1/12), Gingrich is the top choice of Republican voters nationwide, according to surveys by Gallup, NBC/Wall Street Journal and Rassmussen. True, Romney has major advantages in terms of fundraising, organization and party support.  But if Gingrich chooses to believe that being the candidate more Republican voters want makes him the candidate most likely to be nominated, that hardly makes him delusional.

Even if he were well behind in the polls, but still wanted to give voters a chance to hear his message and decide whether or not he deserved their support--is that really a reason to ridicule him? More than 90 percent of the nation's voters have yet to have a chance to take part in the nominating process; it's a little early to mock anyone for not having the same foresight as the political pundits who know the results are already a foregone conclusion.

Barack Obama did something yesterday that government leaders tend not to do: He talked about the CIA drone war in Pakistan.

This admission--which, it should be pointed out, happened in a Google-sponsored Q & A with the public, not a session with reporters--made it into the papers. The New York Times (1/31/12) flagged civilian deaths as the most newsworthy aspect, headlining a report by Mark Lander "Civilian Deaths Due to Drones Are Not Many, Obama Says." Lander writes:

Mr. Obama, in an unusually candid public discussion of the Central Intelligence Agency's covert program, said the drone strikes had not inflicted huge civilian casualties. "We are very careful in terms of how it's been applied," he said. "It is important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash."

It would have been helpful for the Times to point out that there are other sources who might comment on civilian casualties from drone strikes. The Times addressed this topic last year, challenging the CIA's absurd claims that there were no civilian deaths at all.  The British Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted  (8/10/11) that between 391 and almost 800 civilians have reportedly been killed since the drone program began in 2004, including 168 children.

The Times offers a curious explanation for the government's refusal to speak openly about their program:

The CIA's drone program, unlike the use of armed unmanned aircraft by the military in Afghanistan and previously in Iraq, is a covert program, traditionally one of the government's most carefully-guarded secrets. But because of intense public interest--the explosions cannot be hidden entirely--American officials have been willing to discuss the program on condition of anonymity.

Granting anonymity to official sources  because of "intense public interest" in a story is a little puzzling.

The Wall Street Journal also weighed in (1/31/12), pointing out that the "U.S. says roughly 60 civilians have been killed there. Pakistani officials and some human-rights group say the number of civilian dead is far higher."

The Journal adds that some think secrecy is bad PR:

Proponents of more disclosure inside the administration and the military argue U.S. secrecy has fueled charges in Pakistan that the drone strikes frequently kill civilians. They say releasing at least some details about the operations will help deflect criticism.

Or maybe the drones do actually kill innocents, and it's better not to acknowledge this fact.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón is known for ordering the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and seeking to indict members of the Bush administration for their role in torturing prisoners. Now Garzón himself is facing a trial in Madrid, after right-wing groups objected to his investigation of atrocities committed by supporters of the dictator Francisco Franco. While prosecutors reportedly disagreed with the charges that Garzón had exceeded his authority, Spanish law allows civilians to lodge criminal charges. If convicted, Garzón could lose his right to sit as a judge in Spain. He appeared before Spain’s Supreme Court today. On Wednesday we will interview Reed Brody, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch who has been in the courtroom observing Garzón’s trial.

Speaking on Democracy Now! last year, Garzón said between 150,000 and 200,000 civilians disappeared during the Franco regime, which seized power during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Garzón has used the doctrine of universal jurisdiction to investigate war crimes and torture across national lines, famously indicting Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda in 2003 and attempting to indict members of the Bush administration for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay and overseas. In 1998, he ordered the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, leading to Pinochet’s arrest in Britain.

During an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1/25/12), NBC's Today host Ann Curry said this:

Well, one of the key topics that we have been hearing a lot about is all of this concern about Iran. You know what's been happening, the concerns, the tensions in the Straits of Hormuz, the concerns about Iran's rise in its efforts, everybody believes, in creating nuclear power--not only nuclear power, but nuclear weapons. Are we headed, in your view, based on all you know, for war with Iran?

Of course "everyone" doesn't believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. More to the point, no one has been able to show that they are. It's important to ask questions about whether we're headed towards war with Iran. But journalism that treats allegations about Iran as facts doesn't do anyone any good.

No comment.

NBC Nightly News (1/29/12)

LESTER HOLT:

And a sign of the times tonight on a football field in Hawaii. The NFL is relaxing its strict social media policy and allowing players to use Twitter to interact with fans during the Pro Bowl in Honolulu. There'll be one designated computer on each sideline, no smartphones allowed. Players will be tweeting with the hashtag probowl. And by the way, you can catch the game coming up next, here on NBC.

At a time when millions of Americans are are experiencing massive unemployment, a painfully slow economic recovery, wage stagnation and the after-effects of the bursting of a multi-trillion dollar housing bubble, isn't  it time someone demanded that they suffer a little bit?

Of course not, you might say. But that's why you don't work in the media big leagues.

Here's NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory yesterday (1/29/12), speaking to Obama adviser David Axlerod:

But if you look at how dire the fiscal situation is in the country, we just came off a debt debacle this past summer. Alan Simpson, responding to the State of the Union, said: Where's the guts? Where's the hard stuff? Where's the beef? Where are the hard choices that Americans are going to have to make? What are Americans going to have to do with less of if this president gets re-elected?

Axelrod, to his credit, noted that plenty of people are actually hurting. But that didn't seem to impress Gregory:

GREGORY: But we're not dealing with the big drivers of the debt, as you know. The debt commission that the president convened is not advice that he acted on. And the reality is that the fiscal situation is dire. If we're not dealing with entitlements--what, you talk about shared sacrifice, would the president...

AXELROD: Listen, the...

GREGORY: Wait a second. He--there was a stimulus plan. There was a new healthcare entitlement, but there was nothing dealing with the big drivers of the day.

It's hard to overstate just how committed elite media are to the concept of government austerity as the fix to our current economic problems. Economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker might disagree, and the public would seem to think the "hard stuff" could be spending less on, say, the military. But that doesn't seem to register with people like David Gregory, who demand that politicians must be brave enough to cut Social Security--a program he's falsely declared to be one of the "big drivers" of the debt.

Newt Gingrich’s attacks on reporters who have asked him tough questions during the 2012 Republican presidential primary may sound familiar to Democracy Now! listeners and viewers. Watch the video above to see Amy Goodman question Gingrich about the GOP’s "war on women" and why he hadn’t apologized for calling First Lady Hillary Clinton a "bitch" — first in 1995 during his tenure as speaker of the House and again at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia.

Click here to see the 1995 comment by Gingrich’s mother that Goodman refers to in her questions. During a nationally broadcast interview on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, Gingrich’s mother whispered that her son called Hillary Clinton a "bitch."

See all of Democracy Now’s coverage of Election 2012.

AMY GOODMAN: Back in 1995, when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House, I had an interesting conversation with him about the war on women. We’re going to introduce that little interaction with the news piece that introduced it, which was the news anchor at the time, Verna Avery-Brown.

VERNA AVERY-BROWN: The usually unflappable speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was knocked a bit off stride today during his daily speaker’s conference, when Pacifica reporter Amy Goodman raised the issue of whether Republicans are waging an unofficial war against women with their welfare reform efforts.

AMY GOODMAN: I have a question about tone. You were talking about that earlier. Many people are talking about what’s going on in the House as a war on women, that most of the poor are women, the whole issue about reproductive rights that keeps getting raised. But this is a question not about legislation. Some say you really fired the opening salvo against women when you didn’t apologize to American women for calling the First Lady a bitch. Why haven’t you apologized?

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: I never—I never said I—I never agreed to say anything about that. And I can’t imagine you asking this question.

AMY GOODMAN: Why haven’t you apologized for it?

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: I’ve talked to Mrs. Clinton. She understands exactly where we—

AMY GOODMAN: Why haven’t you apologized to American women, because it goes beyond calling—

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: I never said—I never said—to the best of my knowledge, I never said what you just said.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re calling your mother a liar then?

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: No, I’m calling you a remarkably foolish person for having that kind of a conversation here. And I am very sorry you would care to bring what Connie Chung back into the public arena. Connie Chung lied—

AMY GOODMAN: Sir, why—

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: Connie Chung lied to my mother.

AMY GOODMAN: She said—

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: You’re now trying to exploit a lie by a professional reporter to my mother. And I’m not going to take any more comment from you. I think it is very embarrassing that you, as a reporter, would try to take any use of Connie Chung having lied to my mother. And I think you should be ashamed.

AMY GOODMAN: Sir, your mother said it to more reporters than Connie Chung. It’s not about Connie Chung.

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: I think you should be—yes, it is.

AMY GOODMAN: Why haven’t you apologized to American women for calling Hillary Clinton a bitch?

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: Because I—because I didn’t—I’ll say it one more time. You’re trying to use my mother in what I think is a very despicable way. And I am very—

AMY GOODMAN: Your mother said something, and we’re responding to what she said.

SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH: I think it is very sad, and I have advised my mother to talk to no reporters because of precisely this kind of exploitation by people like you. Next question.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re denying—

AMY GOODMAN: That was Newt Gingrich in 1995 at speaker’s conference, which had been going on for many years. The speaker would hold a news conference every day. He ended it soon after that. Apparently, he blamed it on that interaction, among a few others. I thought it was more to do with the bombing of the Oklahoma City building. It happened just after that that he canceled the speaker’s conference, because his rhetoric sounded too much like those that surrounded Timothy McVeigh.

But anyway, I had a chance to follow up on the conversation when I met Newt Gingrich at Jimmy Hoffa’s party.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you doing now?

NEWT GINGRICH: I’m spending about half my time learning, and then I’m at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution studying. And I have a consulting firm called the Gingrich Group, and I have a website called newt.org. And I’m a commentator on Fox. So, I’m not bored.

AMY GOODMAN: So you’re a commentator. Well, let me ask you for this comment. You’re on national television now. Will you apologize to American women for calling the First Lady a bitch?

NEWT GINGRICH: I never did that. That’s just plain false.

AMY GOODMAN: Your mother said you did.

NEWT GINGRICH: I—no, she did not say I did. That’s just false. Go back and read the record. What you just said is false.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we heard her telling Connie Chung.

NEWT GINGRICH: And I’m frankly offended. And I’m frankly offended that you would say that.

AMY GOODMAN: You said—

NEWT GINGRICH: I did not say that. Go back and look at the record.

AMY GOODMAN: But your mother said you said it.

NEWT GINGRICH: No, she didn’t. Go back and look at the record. You have it exactly backwards. And I find it very offensive that you would bring up my mother, as I found it offensive when Connie Chung brought up my mother. And I think it’s nuts for the national news media to pick on people who are clearly amateurs, who, in my mother’s case, had opened her home. My father had baked a cake. They were thrilled to be open. And she was exploited by a reporter. And I think it’s a very offensive that you would try to exploit my mother, which is what you just did.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it was your mother, who said that you had called—

NEWT GINGRICH: No, she didn’t say that. Listen to what I said.

AMY GOODMAN: She did say it.

NEWT GINGRICH: She did not say that I called her that.

AMY GOODMAN: She did say it. But then my question is, you were talking about the Contract with America.

NEWT GINGRICH: I have nothing to say to you. If you’re telling me what my mother said, that’s pretty offensive.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, she said it on national television.

NEWT GINGRICH: No, she didn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: You were describing—

NEWT GINGRICH: No, no, no.

GINGRICH AIDE: There’s no more. There’s no more. There’s no more.

AMY GOODMAN: As you were—

NEWT GINGRICH: No.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, no, I have a fair question to ask that I’d like you to respond to.

NEWT GINGRICH: No, no, no.

GINGRICH AIDE: There’s plenty of nice people here who are interested in talking. We don’t need—you know, we’re here with friendly people. You’re being rude, just not nice.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m not being rude. I’m asking a very serious question.

GINGRICH AIDE: OK, but we—we’re not—we’re not going—we’re not talking about it anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: And that was the interaction with Newt Gingrich at the Jimmy Hoffa party that was sponsored by the Republicans.

Niall Ferguson is undoubtedly an expert. As the bio on his Newsweek column points out, he's "a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution." His latest column (1/23/12) is about the need to sell the public on the policies recommended by experts:

To the kind of people who spend their careers inside elite institutions, the technocratic turn is welcome. Decisions about economic policy, they reason, are too difficult to be entrusted to the people's elected representatives.... But there's a catch. The sacrifices we need to make are bound to be painful: just look what Greece and Italy are going through now. Yet people can tolerate job losses, spending cuts and tax hikes if they believe that a payoff will come in the foreseeable future. How to persuade them of that? The only way is through political leadership.

Ferguson's column concludes:

American voters want competent government. But they also need to be convinced to swallow the bitter medicine that competent government sometimes prescribes. In austerity-stricken Europe, too, the populists are waiting in the wings, ready to deliver rabble-rousing rants. Perhaps 2012 will turn out to be their year after all.

The problem with all this is that "painful" austerity policies are not actually "the sacrifices we need to make"; the decision to make people in Europe "swallow the bitter medicine" has actually made the situation there worse--as an IMF report acknowledged the day after Ferguson's column appeared (Economist, 1/24/12). The "bitter medicine" prescribed by the Conservative-led government in Ferguson's native Britain has recently succeeded in making the economic crisis there worse than the Great Depression--no small achievement.

That's the problem with technocratic government--you have to be careful which experts you listen to.

The Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections tells Democracy Now! it has transferred Mumia Abu-Jamal out of solitary confinement and into general population. The move comes seven weeks after Philadelphia prosecutor Seth Williams announced he would not pursue the death penalty against the imprisoned journalist. Abu-Jamal’s legal team confirmed the move in an email from attorney, Judy Ritter. "This is a very important moment for him, his family and all of his supporters," Ritter wrote.

Supporters of Abu-Jamal note prison officials just received more than 5,000 petitions calling for his transfer and release. Superintendent John Kerestes has previously said Abu-Jamal would have to cut short his dreadlocks, and meet several other conditions, before a transfer would be allowed.

While on death row at SCI Green, Abu-Jamal made regular phone calls to Prison Radio in order to record his columns and essays, but prison officials revoked his phone privileges after he was moved to SCI Mahanoy, the Frackville, PA prison in which he’s currently being held. Prison Radio has since announced it will continue to record and distribute Abu-Jamal’s essays as read by his well-known supporters.

Click here to listen to Noam Chomsky read Of Idiots and Sages.

See all of Democracy Now’s coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Democracy Now! just returned from Park City, Utah, where we covered the Sundance Film Festival’s documentary track for the third year in a row. While there, we spoke with Cara Mertes, who oversees the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program and Fund. In this interview, she describes how Sundance pairs selected filmmakers with advisory editors to "step back from the day to day and look again at how they’re telling the story." One of those documentaries, Bananas, drew the ire of Dole Food Company for telling the story of how its plantation workers in Nicaragua successfully sued the company for its continued use of a pesticide that can cause sterility and possibly cancer. This year, the follow-up film, Big Boys Gone Bananas!, also directed by Fredrik Gertten, premiered at Sundance and exposed the corporate scare tactics Dole used to stop the documentary from being shown. Mertes notes that "documentarians are taking on these questions of power and corruption, increasingly, as journalists can’t."

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, at the Sundance Film Festival. And we’re joined now by Cara Mertes, who is the director of the Documentary Film Program and Fund here at the Sundance Institute.

Welcome to Democracy Now! and happy 10th anniversary.

CARA MERTES: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: So, 10 years of the documentary—

CARA MERTES: Mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: —track here at the Sundance Film Festival.

CARA MERTES: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what the labs are here.

CARA MERTES: Sure, yeah. Sundance has a very unique lab structure. We’ve been doing that for 30 years, as well. It started with feature film. And it’s a very immersive retreat kind of opportunity. And we now have two doc edit story labs, and we bring a really creative village, actually, up at Sundance resort in the mountains, in the Wasatch Range. It’s incredibly beautiful. And we bring in about 25 or 30 people—advisers, directors and entire teams with films. We recreate their edit rooms. We bring in an assistant editor to support them. And then we spend the entire nine days, the entire group looking at each film and really helping the directors rebuild the film, from scratch, in a way, to revisit their original intentions.

And the whole idea is that we can really bump up the quality of the film by allowing the filmmaker to step back from the day to day and look again at how they’re telling the story. And I think the proof of the quality of the lab—we invite people that we really think can take the heat and really absorb all of this feedback, and pretty consistently we see those films are very successful on the festival and broadcast circuit. So, Queen of Versailles this year, which opened the festival, was a film that we labbed. And Lauren Greenfield will tell you it completely changed how she approached her storytelling.

AMY GOODMAN: Queen of Versailles, this brings up an interesting issue about taking on power, which so often documentaries do. You have another documentary here about the making of a film called Bananas!*, taking on Dole and pesticide use that ends up being used against Nicaraguan workers. The film, original film, Bananas!*, was to air at the L.A. Film Festival, and they were threatened with a suit. The filmmaker, a Swedish filmmaker, was threatened with a suit. Maybe you can tell us about what the next version of that film is that is now airing now at the Sundance Film Festival.

CARA MERTES: It’s premiering here. And interestingly, it’s Fredrik Gertten, is the filmmaker, who’s a journalist. And we supported Bananas!*, the original film. We funded and worked with him on it. And when he tried to bring it to Los Angeles, where the original lawsuit against Dole was based, Dole, of course, sued him, and sued the film festival. So it’s a very interesting cycle that we’re in now, as documentarians are taking on these questions of power and corruption, increasingly, as journalists can’t. What the corporations are doing, they’re trying to sue the weak link in the chain, which tends to be a non-profit. So, in that case, it was the Los Angeles Film Festival. In other cases, it’s the filmmaker, like Joe Berlinger’s case, where they go right after Joe Berlinger as an artist, who’s not making a lot of money, but he’s, you know, someone that perhaps the corporation can pressure into changing the outcome.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Chevron suing—

CARA MERTES: That was Chevron.

AMY GOODMAN: —Joe Berlinger’s film Crude.

CARA MERTES: Correct. And that also premiered at the festival. And so, this year, with Queen of Versailles, David Siegel sued Sundance Institute, actually, for defamation, and is not really something—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain what Queen of Versailles is about.

CARA MERTES: Well, Queen of Versailles is about the Siegels, and David Siegel owns the largest timeshare property business in the world, actually, Westgate. And it’s a portrait, really, of the sort of American Dream gone wrong, through the lives of the Siegels. And they’re quite extraordinary people, actually, for letting Lauren spend four years working with them. And there was a—there was a question of whether or not the film might damage the reputation of the company, and that’s what the lawsuit is based on. But interestingly, it’s directed toward the Institute itself, as a non-profit, to try and—you know, try and affect the outcome of, you know, the way that the film will roll out. And beyond that, I can’t say too much about it, because I’m actually named in the lawsuit.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Cara Mertes, I thank you very much for being with us.

CARA MERTES: Thanks.

By the tone of  some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday.  On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline "Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military," readers learn in the first paragraph:

The Pentagon's new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases--moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.

The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage--"Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please"--there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don't know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period--roughly $8 trillion.

The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, "The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons." PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.

Even coverage of the Pentagon's new "austerity" that managed to include some helpful context didn't make things very clear. "The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war" was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:

Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years--and $487 billion over the decade--its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon's base budget over the next five years.

So the "first major step" in cutting the military budget... isn't really a cut?

A Washington Post piece by Craig Whitlock (1/27/12) had a more accurate lead--"The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year"-- but later tries to make a 1 percent cut sound more significant: "While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department."

To make matters even more confusing, the Post points out later that

Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year's $531 billion, under Obama's current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter.

Kudos to Nancy Yousef of McClatchy for writing a piece (1/26/12) that took a different tack. Under the headline "Defense Budget Plan Doesn't Cut as Deeply as Pentagon Says," Yousef led with this:

Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.

To Yousef, the Pentagon was " employing a definition of the term 'reduction' that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else."

And activist/writer David Swanson pointed out that the first question at Panetta's briefing got right at this question of whether the cuts are really cut. From the transcript:

Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?

Panetta's answer:

Yeah, I think the simplest way to say this is that under the budget that was submitted in the past, we had a projected growth level for the Defense budget. And that growth would've provided for almost $500 billion in growth. And we had obviously dedicated that to a number of plans and projects that we would have. That's gotta be cut, and that's a real cut in terms of what our projected growth would be.

See the new release from the Institute for Public Accuracy for more of the context largely missing from the Pentagon budget coverage.

There's a news article in the Washington Post today (1/26/12) that really captures that paper's view of the way the world works, and how it ought to work. Headlined "After Earthquake, Japan Can't Agree on the Future of Nuclear Power," Chico Harlan's piece begins:

The hulking system that once guided Japan's pro-nuclear-power stance worked just fine when everybody moved in lockstep. But in the wake of a nuclear accident that changed the way this country thinks about energy, the system has proved ill-suited for resolving conflict. Its very size and complexity have become a problem.

And what exactly is that problem?

Nearly a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi facility, Japanese decision-makers cannot agree on how to safeguard their reactors against future disasters, or even whether to operate them at all.

Some experts say this indecision reflects the Japanese tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus--even when none is likely to emerge. The nation’s system for nuclear decision-making requires the agreement of thousands of officials. Most bureaucrats and politicians in Tokyo want Japan to recommit to nuclear power, but they have been thwarted by a powerful minority--reformists and regional governors.

The obstruction by this "powerful minority," the Post goes on to say, has "heavy consequences": "record financial losses for major power companies and economy-stunting electricity shortages." The story warns that "Japan, once the world’s third-largest nuclear consumer, could be nuclear-free, if it is unable to win approval from local communities to restart the idled units."

Then, after musing about the "elaborate network of hand-holding" that used to govern Japan's nuclear infrastructure, Harlan slips in a fact that changes everything:

Since the March 11 accident, just enough has changed to stall that cooperation. Two-thirds of Japanese oppose atomic power. Politicians in areas that host nuclear plants are rethinking the facilities; they hold veto power over any restart. A few vocal skeptics have emerged in the government, and in the aftermath of the accident, Japan has created at least a dozen commissions and task forces for energy-related issues.

So when the pro-nuclear goals of "most bureaucrats and politicians" are "thwarted by a powerful minority," that's a sign of the dysfunctional Japanese system, with its "tendency to search for, and sometimes depend on, consensus." The fact that this "minority" actually represents the large majority of the Japanese public who oppose the technology that has rendered substantial parts of their country uninhabitable--well, that's just another roadblock that the establishment is going to have to overcome.

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

In his State of the Union address, many heard echoes of the Barack Obama of old, the presidential aspirant of 2007 and 2008. Among the populist pledges rolled out in the speech was tough talk against the too-big-to-fail banks that have funded his campaigns and for whom many of his key advisers have worked: “The rest of us are not bailing you out ever again,” he promised.

President Obama also made a striking announcement, one that could have been written by the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly: “I’m asking my attorney general to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”

Remarkably, President Obama named New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as co-chairperson of the Unit on Mortgage Origination and Securitization Abuses. Schneiderman was on a team of state attorneys general negotiating a settlement with the nation’s five largest banks. He opposed the settlement as being too limited and offering overly generous immunity from future prosecution for financial fraud. For his outspoken consumer advocacy, he was kicked off the negotiating team. He withdrew his support of the settlement talks, along with several other key attorneys general, including California’s Kamala Harris, an Obama supporter, and Delaware’s Beau Biden, the vice president’s son.

In an op-ed penned last November, Schneiderman and Biden wrote, “We recognized early this year that, though many public officials—including state attorneys general, members of Congress and the Obama administration—have delved into aspects of the bubble and crash, we needed a more comprehensive investigation before the financial institutions at the heart of the crisis are granted broad releases from liability.”

When news of Schneiderman’s appointment surfaced, MoveOn.org sent an email to its members declaring: “Just weeks ago, this investigation wasn’t even on the table, and the big banks were pushing for a broad settlement that would have made it impossible. ... This is truly a huge victory for the 99 percent movement.”

The stakes are very high for the public, and for President Obama. He relied heavily on Wall Street backers to fund his massive campaign war chest in 2008. Now, in this post-Citizens United era, with expected billion-dollar campaign budgets, Obama could find himself out of favor with Wall Street. For the public, as noted by the Center for Responsible Lending: “More than 20,000 new families face foreclosure each month, including a disproportionate percentage of African-American and Latino households. CRL research indicates that we are only about halfway through the crisis.”

Unanswered at this point is whether or not Schneiderman’s appointment signals his willingness to go along with the multistate settlement now said to be nearing completion. Details are not yet public, but the deal is said to involve a $25 billion payment from the largest banks as a settlement for charges surrounding problematic mortgage-loan practices like robo-signing documents and grossly inadequate loan servicing, making foreclosures more likely. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who has been doing essential investigative reporting on the financial crisis, told me: “It doesn’t make sense for companies to settle without New York or California, since the potential liability from those two states alone could put them out of business, could cripple any of the too-big-to-fail banks.”

Obama is aware that those at the Occupy Wall Street protests around the country include many who were his most active supporters during the 2008 campaign. Does the formation of the new task force signify a move to more progressive policies, as MoveOn suggests?

Longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader doesn’t hold much hope: “This financial crimes unit, that’s like putting another label on a few doors in the Justice Department without a real expansion in the budget.” Delaware’s Biden expressed similar concerns about the task force, asking: “How many FBI agents are being put on it? How many investigators? How many prosecutors?”

This is the Occupy Wall Street conflict distilled. Will Eric Schneiderman’s new job lead to the indictment of fraudulent financiers, or to just another indictment of our corrupt political system?

© 2012 Amy Goodman