Video of Canadian Gitmo detainee post-torture released

From the New York Times, that evil bastion of the liberal media.

OTTAWA — Video recordings released Tuesday showing interrogations of the only Canadian held at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba provided an unprecedented glimpse inside the compound.

The mood of the detainee, Omar Khadr, just 16 years old at the time of the interrogations, in February 2003, swings between calm and indifference to rage and grief in the recordings, which were released by his lawyers.

The video footage, which provides the most extensive videotaped images yet seen from inside Guantánamo Bay, shows Mr. Khadr pleading with a Canadian intelligence agent for help and, at one point, shows him displaying chest and back wounds that had still not healed months after his capture in Afghanistan.

The poor quality recordings were made by the United States military, and were given to Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyers by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service under the terms of a court order.

They show Mr. Khadr, who is accused of killing a United States soldier in Afghanistan during a battle in July 2002, being questioned by an unidentified member of the Canadian intelligence agency.

In all, about seven hours of recordings were given to Mr. Khadr’s lawyers, but the lawyers released a selection of only about 10 minutes of video recording on Tuesday.

Mr. Khadr maintains that he was abused by American interrogators both at Guantánamo Bay and in Afghanistan. It appears from the recordings, as well as from written documents of the interrogations that were released last week, that Mr. Khadr initially believed that the Canadian agent had come to help him.

But Mr. Khadr eventually seems to realize that the agent is only there to extract information.

Much of the material released shows Mr. Khadr — who is wearing an orange uniform — sobbing and repeatedly saying, in a moan, “Help me, help me.”

In the interrogation, Mr. Khadr says he wants to return to Canada, but the agent suggests that the situation is so good in Cuba he might want to stay there himself.

“The weather’s nice," the interrogator, whose face was electronically obscured, said. "No snow.”

In the film, Mr. Khadr, who had been shot and was near death at the time of his capture in Afghanistan, repeatedly complains about his medical treatment and his physical condition. At one point, he lifts his shirt to show the agent the wounds on his back and stomach that were still not healed.

The agent, however, is unmoved. “I’m not a doctor, but I think you’re getting good medical care," he responded.

Later, a sobbing Mr. Khadr said: “You don’t care about me.”

Slats, apparently from a ventilation grill in the detention center, obscure most of the images. The documents released last week under the same court order suggest that the sound on much of the rest of the unreleased video is inaudible.

Amnesty International and several Canadian groups have been pressuring the Canadian government to ask the United States to return Mr. Khadr to Canada from Guantánamo Bay. Last week, however, Prime Minister Stephen Harper again rejected those calls.

Nathan Whitling, one of Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyers, said that he hoped the airing of the videos, which were prominently featured on the morning new programs of Canadian television networks, would change the government’s mind.

“The only way to get him released is through a political process,” Mr. Whitling said from his office in Edmonton, Alberta. “So we are pleading in the court of public opinion.”

US fiscal policy undermining neighbors

Macroeconomics isn't my specialty. I get the feeling that two different schools of macroeconomic thought are being discussed in this video. I'm unable to fully ascertain the accuracy of the statements made, but I think the premise is quite plausible: the US is essentially causing worldwide inflation, particularly in countries whose economies are closely linked and/or use the dollar or peg their currencies closely to the dollar. This has foreign policy implications.

Why the GSEs are doomed

A Motley Fool article by Alex Dumortier, CFA, contains a nice, concise explanation why Freddie and Fannie were doomed.

The worse they behaved, the more they were supported
If I'd followed my own advice to its logical conclusion, I might have realized that the current crisis was inevitable, or at least highly likely -- because the 'shareholder-owned GSE' model is inherently unstable. As government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie and Freddie are chartered by Congress to provide liquidity in the U.S. mortgage market, and to promote affordable home ownership. Investors naturally believed that the U.S. government would act as ultimate guarantor on their debt, enabling the government-sponsored enterprises to obtain lower-cost funding than their competitors.

However, the GSEs serve a second master: their shareholders, who require profit growth to stay happy. Growth is what they got, as Fannie and Freddie increased the size of their commitments, despite inadequate capital and poor risk management. After all, what's the worst that can happen when you've got Uncle Sam (i.e. taxpayers like you and me) ready to foot the bill in a worst-case scenario?

This is a textbook illustration of moral hazard at work -- a situation in which the government's implicit backing created a one-sided bet that encouraged management to take on ever-greater amounts of risk. Perversely, the more risk they took on, the less the government could allow them to fail.

As a government-chartered duopoly, Fannie and Freddie were the ultimate golden-egg-laying goose. It now looks like greed and short-sightedness have led their managers and Congressional backers to cook that goose.

And now, the downside over Anheuser Busch InBev

AB's board has finally accepted InBev's offer. Having castigated the folks who went on and on about how America couldn't allow its beer to be sold to Belgium, I feel it's also important to elucidate the downside of this deal for the US.

AB had a lot of non-core assets like theme parks. Management perks and distribution and union agreements also made their costs higher.

Now that InBev had to sweeten its offer by a large sum, it will be under even more pressure to produce cost cuts, with Ann Gilpin, a Morningstar analyst, saying that there are in fact very little opportunities for synergies, since InBev and Anheuser have little overlap in the US. Therefore, InBev will certainly have to sell the parks and Clydesdales, and put pressure on unions and distributors.

Gilpin also mentions integration risks, as the companies have markedly different cultures, but that was true even before InBev sweetened its offer. Besides, the money grubbing capitalists can take care of themselves.

The unions will find it harder to defend the interests of their workers. The Coloradoan has this report:

The Teamsters Union, which represents more than 500 A-B workers in Fort Collins and 7,000 in the U.S. and Canada, raised doubts about InBev's promises not to close plants or cause "any significant job losses" among production workers.

In an e-mail to reporters, Jack Cipriani, director of the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Workers Conference, said InBev CEO Carlos Brito "has a reputation as a cost-slasher, and always at the expense of workers. Given the record amount of debt tied to this acquisition, his commitments that he will not close any Anheuser-Busch plants in the U.S. or cause significant production job losses raise major credibility issues for us."

Cipriani has asked to meet with Brito and Teamsters president Jim Hoffa plans to host a meeting of union representatives from InBev's breweries in Europe, Brazil and Canada to find out more about InBev's practices.

"Our core values include protecting good-paying American jobs and their communities, as well as preserving health care and pension benefits for all workers," Cipriani said.

"We know that our European, Brazilian and Canadian counterparts have similar values. We look forward to learning about InBev from them and to seek their assistance as allies in our fight to protect our members."

This acquisition also doesn't do any good for the US' trade balance. Anheuser Busch InBev will still sell lots of beer in the US, but their profits will be repatriated to ABI shareholders, not all of whom live in the US. Countries cannot permanently sustain a large foreign trade deficit.

Lastly, there is the effect on culture. It is not good to have all your cultural institutions bought or co-opted by large foreign businesses. They have no incentive to keep local ties, and St. Louis will surely be poorer in some way in the end. InBev pledged to keep all AB's breweries running, and they may well do so if they can sell enough beer abroad, but everything else is going to get cut. That means less money going through the local economy at minimum.

Immigration treats church sanctuary carefully

An AP article describes the new sanctuary movement.

Everyone knows where Flor Crisostomo lives, even the federal immigration officials who have ordered her deported to Mexico. The reason they haven't detained her is her address — Adalberto United Methodist Church.

Another woman famously took refuge in that church as she championed immigration reform, and at least 13 other illegal immigrants are doing the same at churches around the country. So far, they have little to fear.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have arrested illegal immigrants by the hundreds in raids at factories, restaurants, malls, farms and meat packing plants, but they have handled cases involving churches delicately.

"Our agency takes enforcement actions when we deem it appropriate," said Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for ICE. "I am personally not aware of an instance when ICE has gone into a church. That being said, if there was a particular, extremely egregious, ax murderer or something else, that's not to say we would not enforce the law at that time."

Avoiding churches is unofficial policy for federal immigration officials, according to Doris Meissner, a former commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency that oversaw immigration until the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2003.

Since the 1970s the unwritten rule has been "no churches, no playgrounds, no schools," said Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

Critics say making exceptions for churches, where immigrants openly — and in Crisostomo's case, very publicly — defy deportation, makes the agency look lax.

"These are people who deliberately violated the law," said Dave Gorak, executive director of the Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. "We can't even enforce the laws without being criticized as Gestapo."

But Meissner said it wouldn't make sense for the agency to devote resources to arrest the relatively small number of people in sanctuary.

"An agency like ICE has far more work than it can possibly ever do," Meissner said. "You want to use those resources to thwart as much as possible egregious criminal behavior. A single person in a church doesn't really measure very high on a list."

Crisostomo came to the U.S. in 2000, paying a smuggler in Mexico to get her across the border. She was arrested in 2006 during a raid at a wooden pallet company in Chicago.

She has been at the West Side church for six months, since the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered her to leave the United States, holding news conferences, writing blogs and lecturing school groups about immigration issues.

Over the past year, ICE has focused on raids at workplaces.

"They pick work sites because they understand it is work that acts as a lure for unauthorized migrants to come to the U.S.," said Louis DeSipio, a political science professor who teaches Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine. "ICE is sensitive to the publicity effect of their actions. They are careful on respecting religion and churches."

At the same time, ICE must "take into account that there is a public image issue and that they're being taunted," Meissner said.

Adalberto United Methodist gained widespread attention when it offered sanctuary to another immigrant, Elvira Arellano, who used it as a base to champion immigration reform.

Arellano stayed there for a year with her U.S.-born son, and frequently spoke about immigrant rights. She was arrested and deported to Mexico only after she left her sanctuary last August to travel to a rally in Los Angeles.

"We do conduct enforcement activities at a time and place of the government's choosing," said Myers, ICE's top official. "With Ms. Arellano, we believe that an appropriate time was when she was kind of traveling outside of the institution."

Arellano has been lauded as a heroine of the New Sanctuary Movement, which calls for immigration reform, and Crisostomo says she's following in Arellano's footsteps.

"We have to show the government that we are many, we are strong, we are humans and that we deserve respect in this country," said Crisostomo. "This is a church that was made to help the fight of people who are undocumented."

The New Sanctuary Movement, which makes living arrangements for illegal immigrants at churches, is modeled after a similar movement for Central Americans in the 1980s. Its goal is to call attention to immigration reform, but organizers believe sanctuary is a temporary solution, said Kristin Kumpf, a national organizer for the movement.

"The churches have been treated as sacred space," said Kumpf. But "no one can stay in sanctuary forever."

The New Sanctuary Movement's homepage is here.

Enough money will overcome even xenophobia

InBev raised its offer for Anheuser-Busch, which accepted.

David Nicklaus of the St. Louis Post Dispatch has this to say:

“Now might be a good time for Gov. Matt Blunt, Mayor Francis Slay, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Sen. Kit Bond and others to begin backing off of the harsh anti-merger comments they made to InBev CEO Carlos Brito. If he’s going to be the CEO of a major employer in our town, it would be nice to have him think we’re a forward-thinking kind of place.”

Of course, perhaps we should just let the GSEs die

A Businessweek article contends that perhaps the US should just put F and F into conservatorship and let them eventually die. In conservatorship, their existing securities would be guaranteed, but they wouldn't issue new ones. Plenty of foreign investors bought these mortgage backed securities, seeking higher returns than US Treasuries, but with the element of safety. Guaranteeing the debt would be good foreign relations.

However, the fact that so many foreign investors were interested, and were willing to throw cash at these securities meant that effectively, cash was flooding into the US housing market. The easy availability of cash to write mortgages meant that underwriters - like banks - got sloppy. It fed the whole subprime mortgage segment, which used adjustable rate mortgages to take advantage of low US interest rates. The problem was, when interest rates went up, delinquencies mounted, and the US subprime sector self destructed even more spectacularly than Britney Spears. The capital influx also fed a spiral excessive homebuilding. While the US homebuilding industry hasn't Britney Spearsed, it's having dire troubles with excess capacity. Houses are sitting unsold. People aren't interested in buying or aren't able to get a mortgage.

The article, as well as the Morningstar video I linked in my last post, contends that one possible route is to nationalize the GSEs. Without the incentive to produce excess returns for shareholders, all they would have to do is generate enough money to fund their own operations, which would be doable once the market stabilizes. The small government folks will wail and moan, but it's one possible route. Whichever option is chosen, neither firm can be allowed to go under overnight.