Public Option In Senate Bill, Protesting Bankers, Bombing In Baghdad, Afghanistan Events
Some good news today. I heard that the public option was in the Senate Bill that Senator Reid presented to the floor of the Senate today. Now all we need is to see if it makes it to the conference committee with the House and if it gets through to the President to be signed into law. That could be months from now. I have never been so interested in a bill going through Congress. This is the first time there has been a group of people in power that I thought might be able to push through some progressive legislation since Clinton was first elected in 92.
The only major problem I see in this is the ability of the states to opt out. But at least it is in and that is what we need. Senator Schumer was all smiles on MSNBC tonight.
Today on Democracy Now I heard a discussion about the protests at the meeting of the American Bankers Association in Chicago. It looks like it will be a hot time in the old town this week.
“Showdown in Chicago: Protesters Greet American Bankers Association Conference
When the American Bankers Association scheduled their annual meeting in Chicago for this week, they probably weren’t expecting the reception they’ve received. Instead of a quiet convention in a downtown hotel, the ABA has been greeted by a parallel gathering of thousands of people in what organizers call the “Showdown in Chicago.” Spearheaded by the group National People’s Action, organizers have tried to bring together a cross-section of Americans affected by the financial meltdown, including homeowners, renters, farmers, workers and retirees. The Showdown kicked off Sunday when protesters entered the lobby of the hotel where the ABA delegates are gathering.”
It is about time. People are getting over the shock of the event and are now taking action to protest the rip off of the American Tax Payer by the bankers. This is a populist movement that should unite both right and left. We all should be outraged and not just at the outrageous payments going to these robbers. The banks need to be regulated. They need to be roped in and tied down to serve the people not for us to serve them.
There was a massive bombing in Baghdad that killed 155 people Sunday. This is the worst bombing since 2007. A reporter on the ground in Baghdad said this was done to destabilize the Maliki government.
Also today we had the reported deaths of 14 Americans in Afghanistan which included 3 DEA agents. It seems that the Plan Columbia war on drugs there has now cost that agency its first deaths since they began operating in Afghanistan in 2005. It seems that the DEA has decided to send some 80 agents over there to go after the dealers. Most of the Americans killed were apparently in a shoot out with drug dealers.
This is the AP wire report.
14 Americans killed in 2 Afghan helicopter crashes
Oct 26, 8:18 AM (ET)
By HEIDI VOGT
KABUL (AP) - A helicopter crash and separate collision involving two other choppers killed 14 Americans on Monday in one of the deadliest days for U.S. troops in the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military said.
In the first crash, a helicopter went down in the west of the country after leaving the scene of a firefight with insurgents, killing 10 Americans - seven troops and three civilians working for the government. Eleven American troops, one U.S. civilian and 14 Afghans were also injured.
In a separate incident in the south, two other U.S. choppers collided while in flight, killing four American troops and wounding two more, the military said.
U.S. authorities have ruled out hostile fire in the collision but have not given a cause for the other fatal crash in the west. Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmedi claimed Taliban fighters shot down a helicopter in northwest Badghis province’s Darabam district. It was impossible to verify the claim and unclear if he was referring to the same incident.
U.S. forces also reported the death of two other American troops a day earlier: one in a bomb attack in the east, and another who died of wounds sustained in an insurgent attack in the same region. The deaths bring to at least 46 the number of U.S. troops who have been killed in October.
The deaths come as U.S. officials debate whether to send tens of thousands more troops to the country and the Afghan government scrambles to organize a Nov. 7 runoff election between President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah from an August vote that was sullied by massive ballot-rigging.
President Barack Obama’s administration is hoping the runoff will produce a legitimate government. Another flawed election would cast doubt on the wisdom of sending more troops to support a weak government tainted by fraud.
In Washington, Obama was to meet with his national security team Monday in what was to be the sixth full-scale Afghanistan conference in the White House Situation Room.
Also Monday, Abdullah called for election commission chairman Azizullah Lodin to be replaced within five days, saying he has “no credibility.”
Lodin has denied accusations he is biased in favor of Karzai, and the election commission’s spokesman has already said Lodin cannot be replaced by either side.
Abdullah made the demand in a news conference during which he spelled out a list of what he said were “minimum conditions” for holding a fair second round of voting, including the firing of any workers implicated in fraud and the suspension of several ministers he said had campaigned for Karzai in the first round before the official campaigning period began.
Abdullah did not say what would happen if his demands were not met. “I reserve my reaction if we are faced with that unfortunate situation,” he said.
This has been the deadliest year for international and U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban. Fighting spiked around the presidential vote in August, and 51 U.S. soldiers died that month - the deadliest for American forces in the eight-year war.
Earlier this month, insurgents killed eight American troops in an attack on a pair of isolated U.S. outposts in the eastern village of Kamdesh near the Pakistan border. That was the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle since July 2008, when nine American soldiers were killed in a raid on an outpost in Wanat in the same province.
“These separate tragedies today underscore the risks our forces and our partners face every day,” Col. Wayne Shanks, a spokesman for the NATO-led coalition, said Monday. “Each and every death is a tremendous loss for the family and friends of each service member and civilian. Our grief is compounded when we have such a significant loss on one day.”
U.S. military spokeswoman Elizabeth Mathias said coalition forces had launched an operation to recover the wreckage of the helicopter that was downed in the west.
She said the aircraft was leaving the site of a joint operation with Afghan forces when it went down.
The joint force had “searched a suspected compound believed to harbor insurgents conducting activities related to narcotics trafficking in western Afghanistan,” NATO said in a statement. “During the operation, insurgent forces engaged the joint force and more than a dozen enemy fighters were killed in the ensuing firefight.”
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium - the raw ingredient in heroin - and the illicit drug trade is a major source of funding for Taliban and other insurgent groups.
Elsewhere Monday, Nangarhar province Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai survived an assassination attempt after a gunman fired automatic weapons at his convoy in Jalalabad, according to his spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. Sherzai’s bodyguards killed the gunman, as well as another attacker wearing a suicide vest and carrying grenades.
Meanwhile, security forces in Kabul fired automatic rifles into the air for a second day Monday to contain hundreds of stone-throwing university students angered over the alleged desecration of Islam’s holy book, the Quran, by U.S. troops during an operation two weeks ago in Wardak province. Fire trucks were also brought in to push back protesters with water cannons. Police said several officers were injured in the mayhem.
U.S. and Afghan authorities have denied any such desecration and insist that the Taliban are spreading the rumor to stir up public anger. The rumor has sparked similar protests in Wardak and Khost provinces.
Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez, Todd Pitman and Robert H. Reid contributed to this report from Kabul; Noor Khan reported from Kandahar.”
This morning I heard a brave woman from Afghanistan say on KPFK that the best thing would be for the foreign troops should leave Afghanistan. The next best thing would be for the Americans to stay long enough to disarm the fundamentalist groups that were created by the CIA in the cold war with the Soviet Union. She said that both the Taliban and the Northern alliance are the enemies of the people and that they were formed by the USA.
This woman Zoya from the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan is putting her life on the line. By advocating the development of civil society by Afghanis themselves she has made herself a target for the US backed fundamentalists. She is brave, heroic even and our country is responcible for the ongoing bloodletting in her homeland.
We are obligated to do something to stop our nation from committing more barbarities.
Tags: American Trained Terrorists in Afghanistan, Protesters Against Bankers.