Gareth Porter at AsiaTimes writes about the choice of new commander of US/NATO forces in Afghanistan as less than McChrystal clear.

    On the bank plan, the administration is following a policy that is in some ways a continuation of the [former Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson plan under the Bush administration. In some respects, the plan goes back and makes some mistakes that the previous Treasury started to make and then turned away from. This is all very troublesome. The issue is a question that effects the strategic direction of the economy and the stability and soundness of the banking system going forward.

    The choices being made in the [Obama administration Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner program going forward are misguided. This program is based around the assumption that the assets will recover values. But when you look at the stress tests, they seem to have been largely designed as a statistical exercise relating the valuation of different classes of assets, which the banks hold in different proportions, depending on institutions, to the performance of the economy. 

    If I'm right about the underlying quality of a large part of that asset base, then these loans are going to default and go back to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on a nonrecourse basis. That means that this plan is a way of rescuing incumbent management and bondholders of the major banks that were most responsible for the crisis and, in a disguised way, transferring the losses from the books of the banks, where they sit now and have to be recognized, to the FDIC and the taxpayers. It is a way of avoiding the necessity of devaluing those assets now and requiring their present owners - the banks - to take the losses that are appropriate to take.

    The strategic reason that the administration is doing this is to preserve the large banks. The result of the decision to do that is that in a financial sector, which is much too big relative to the economy, the shrinkage that will occur will fall elsewhere. It will force smaller banks to the wall and it will force institutions which are more community oriented and more vulnerable to be bought up or suffer from very big increases of insurance charges. We will end up with a banking system which is much more concentrated than it should be and where you have these enormous executions of small banks, which experience shows you really can't prevent."

Daphne Eviatar at The Washington Independent on Obama's probable renewal of once disgraced Bush military commissions: 

"Recent reports quoting anonymous officials within the Obama administration suggest the president is considering reviving the same military commissions that he called “an enormous failure” as a candidate and that were created by a law he voted against when he was a U.S. senator. Some of the rules would reportedly be rewritten to limit the use of coerced evidence and to otherwise offer more rights for detainees.

"The news has come as a shock to many defense lawyers. In one of his first official acts as president, President Obama asked military prosecutors to seek a 120-day suspension of the military commissions so that his staff could review their procedures and the cases before them. To most observers, that suggested that President Obama planned to eventually abolish an institution created by President George W. Bush that, like the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had become an international symbol of U.S. arrogance and lawlessness. But The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration may ask for another 90-day suspension (the current one expires on May 20) and then restart the commissions in the United States.

"Created by the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the commissions were charged with trying “enemy combatants” for war crimes, and provided much more relaxed rules of evidence that would permit the admission of hearsay, coerced evidence, and secret evidence never shown to the defense. Such evidence is not permitted in U.S. federal civilian courts, or in regular U.S. military courts, because it is considered inherently unreliable and violates a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses and evidence against him.

"Although in court documents the administration said only that the military commissions procedure would be “reviewed”, leaving open the possibility that they could be revived in some form, most lawyers representing detainees assumed that the commissions had been so maligned and were so widely considered a failure that they would never be revived.

"But the commissions were never completely dismantled, and, in fact, continued despite the administration’s suspension of the trials. In the case of Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul, for example, an alleged al-Qaeda media director who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a military commission in November after he boycotted the trial and refused to present a defense, the government is now seeking to “finalize and approve his conviction and sentence,” said David Frakt, his military defense lawyer. The commission’s “convening authority” can either approve the conviction and sentence, or can amend it or grant clemency. 'It’s interesting that they continued to press forward despite the suspension,' said Frakt."

Pepe Escobar at Tomgram with Pipelineistan goes Af-Pak or the energy struggle in Eurasia.

"...it all comes down to black gold and "blue gold" (natural gas), hydrocarbon wealth beyond compare, and so it's time to trek back to that ever-flowing wonderland -- Pipelineistan. It's time to dust off the acronyms, especially the SCO or Shanghai Cooperative Organization, the Asian response to NATO, and learn a few new ones like IPI and TAPI. Above all, it's time to check out the most recent moves on the giant chessboard of Eurasia, where Washington wants to be a crucial, if not dominant, player.

"We've already seen Pipelineistan wars in Kosovo and Georgia, and we've followed Washington's favorite pipeline, the BTC, which was supposed to tilt the flow of energy westward, sending oil coursing past both Iran and Russia. Things didn't quite turn out that way, but we've got to move on, the New Great Game never stops. Now, it's time to grasp just what the Asian Energy Security Grid is all about, visit a surreal natural gas republic, and understand why that Grid is so deeply implicated in the Af-Pak war.

Kevin Zeese writes at Counterpunch: "Last week when I was one of the Baucus Eight, so-named because eight of us were arrested before Sen. Baucus, I hopped others would join us. Yesterday, they did. And, the single payer movement grew stronger.

"Before the hearing I joined nearly 50 people in a spirited protest outside the U.S. senate letting all who entered know we wanted a single payer national health care plan.

"And, inside there were a series of protests.

"As the hearing began, and Sen. Baucus was speaking a group of about 30 nurses, dressed in their red hospital uniforms, stood up and turned their backs on Baucus. They had pinned to their backs: “Nurses Say: Stop AHIP. Pass Single Payer.” (AHIP is America’s Health Insurance Plans – the health insurance industry lobby.)

"The nurses left the room to applause.

"Now, 13 have been arrested – the Baucus 8 have morphed into the Baucus 13 – demanding a seat at the table; merely urging that the most popular health reform among the people as well as among doctors, nurses and economists be part of the conversation.

"Outside as each new Baucus criminal was walked before the crowd, now approximately 75 people -- they were all cheered.

"These are the democracy heroes. These are the types of people that change the equation from money and profits to people and human rights."