• Goldman threatened with audit

  Goldman Sachs is facing a threat by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to bring in outside accountants to comb through the bank’s systems for data on its derivatives business, the panel’s chairman has said. The commission will not back down from demands for information Goldman’s executives have maintained they do not track, Phil Angelides told the Financial Times. “We have a deep level of questioning about whether we’re getting the straight scoop here and whether Goldman is working with us on information that they surely have,” Mr Angelides, chairman of the US Congress-appointed commission. His comments mark the latest episode in the dispute between Goldman and the commission, which has scolded the bank for its “abysmal” response to the inquiry. The frustration of FCIC members was evident several weeks ago when two of Goldman’s executives, Gary Cohn, president, and David Viniar, chief financial officer, told the panel the bank’s accounting systems did not break out trading revenue generated strictly from derivatives.

• The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War

  Democracy Now: It’s one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. We host a roundtable discussion with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.”

• Which is the Bigger Threat: Terrorism or Wall Street Bonuses?

  Which is a greater threat to the nation — terrorism or the relentless decline of middle income families? Unless we abandon our core values out of unwarranted fear, terror cannot fundamentally change our way of life. The number of people affected by growing income disparity is vast. Income disparity is indicative of an underdeveloped and unstable society. The government appropriately devotes enormous resources to protect our lives and property from terrorism. It is unthinkable that a leader would display any weakness opposing this threat. Politicians have stiff backbones when it comes to terrorism. In contrast, the government is timid and half-hearted in its approach to the system which perversely rewards a few Wall Street traders with billions of dollars of bonuses, yet allows the foundation to decay.”

• BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

  In the first few days after BP’s Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words “Inmate Labor” printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

• WikiLeaks Afghanistan Documents Are Out — But Did We Know Everything Already?

  The Obama White House is furious about the massive leak of military documents chronicling the unvarnished truth about the Afghanistan war. At the same time, though, there must be a certain sense of relief around the West Wing. When they first learned that the whistleblower website WikiLeaks had given the New York Times, among others, an astonishing 92,0000 documents, senior Obama officials must have been in a panic about what terrible secrets might emerge. But it turns out that most of the terrible aspects of the Afghanistan war — at least those detailed by this trove of insider accounts — are already pretty well known. It’s never been a secret, for instance, that the Taliban have proven more resilient than anyone expected; that U.S. special forces hunt and eliminate Taliban leaders without the courtesy of a fair trial; that elements within our putative ally Pakistan play a sinister double game with radical Islamists; that our troops kill innocent Afghans on a regular basis. It’s not even a secret, as anyone familiar with the Pat Tillman saga knows, that the military sometimes manipulates facts about the war.”

• WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on the ‘War Logs’: ‘I Enjoy Crushing Bastards’

  Assange: “These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war — in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars. “

• Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

  A huge cache of secret US military files provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency. The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops. Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama’s “surge” strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday. The war logs also detail: • How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial. • How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. • How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada. • How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

• Iran gives Taliban support: leaked papers

  Iran is waging a covert campaign against US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan by providing money, arms, training and safe haven to Taliban insurgents, according to leaked US military intelligence. Reports from Afghan spies and paid informants, described in papers published on whistleblower website Wikileaks, accuse the Iranian government of directly supporting the insurgents. These “threat reports” cannot be corroborated, the Guardian newspaper said in a report summarizing the Iran findings, but high-level US diplomatic communications indicate concern over Iran’s growing involvement in the country.

• Bush-era CIA director: Attack on Iran ‘seems inexorable’

  A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program. Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was “way down the list” of options. But he tells CNN’s “State of the Union” that such action now “seems inexorable.” He predicts Iran will build its program to the point where it’s just below having an actual weapon. Hayden says that would be as destabilizing to the region as the real thing.

• Effort to plug well resumes as BP chief reportedly will exit

  Amid reports that embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward is negotiating his departure from the company, the effort to plug the leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico got back on track Sunday after it was delayed three days by Tropical Storm Bonnie. Early in the day, a drill rig began reconnecting to the relief tunnel that will pump in mud and cement to seal the well for good. Crews had pulled nearly a mile of segmented steel casing pipes out of the water Thursday and Friday after the government ordered an evacuation ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said 39 of the 67 casing joints had been completed as of 11:30 a.m. EST. He expected Development Driller III, which is working on the primary relief well, to be fully connected by midnight Monday. “

• Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert

  Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday. The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders. Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

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