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The story of the financial debacle will end the way it began, with the super-hustlers from Goldman Sachs at the center of the action and profiting wildly. Never in U.S. history has one company wielded such destructive power over our political economy, irrespective of whether a Republican or a Democrat happened to be president.

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Here is the link to Thursday's live blog. Please check the page regularly for updates.

7:45am PDT: The BBC has a disturbing first hand video report from a hospital in Port-au-Prince where, last night, injured people waiting for treatment slept amongst dead bodies.

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Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

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Washington - A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit seeking to hold a government contractor partly responsible for a secret CIA program to whisk terror suspects to undisclosed prisons overseas for brutal interrogations.

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 6 to 5 to dismiss the lawsuit filed on behalf of five individuals who charged they were seized and imprisoned without legal process, and tortured at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Media conservatives, led by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, are comparing a Florida church's plans to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks to plans to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan.

AP: Christian minister "vowed" to "burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." A September 8 Associated Press article reported, "A Christian minister vowed Tuesday to go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks despite warnings from the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that doing so would endanger American troops overseas." AP continued:

Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center said he understands the government's concerns, but plans to go forward with the burning this Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the attacks.

He left the door open to change his mind, saying he is still praying about his decision, which was condemned Tuesday by an interfaith coalition that met in Washington to respond to a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry.

Gen. David Petraeus warned in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan - and around the world - to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley echoed that, calling the plan to burn copies of the Quran "un-American" and saying it does not represent the views of most people in the U.S.

Miami Herald: Pastor "also plans to burn copies of the Talmud, a sacred Jewish text." A September 5 Miami Herald article reported that the Gainesville Dove World Outreach Center also plans to burn copies of the Talmud.

Beck: "It's just like the Ground Zero mosque plan." In a September 6 blog post to his website The Blaze, Glenn Beck wrote:

I'm on vacation and trying to unplug but the news can make that hard. I just read the story about the Florida church planning to burn copies of the Koran.

What is wrong with us?  It's just like the Ground Zero mosque plan.   Does this church have the right?  Yes.  Should they?  No.  And not because of the potential backlash or violence. Simply because it is wrong.

Palin: Quran burning "is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation - much like building a mosque at Ground Zero." In a September 8 post to her Facebook account, Fox News contributor Sarah Palin wrote:

Book burning is antithetical to American ideals. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation - much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.

I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will consider the ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don't feed that fire. If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive.

Our nation was founded in part by those fleeing religious persecution. Freedom of religion is integral to our charters of liberty. We don't need to agree with each other on theological matters, but tolerating each other without unnecessarily provoking strife is how we ensure a civil society. In this as in all things, we should remember the Golden Rule. Isn't that what the Ground Zero mosque debate has been about?

Barnes: "[T]his is similar in one way to the Ground Zero mosque." On the September 7 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox news contributor and Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes criticized plans to burn the Quran, and claimed that "Islamophobia" was "not sweeping America." Barnes further claimed:

But look, this is similar in one way to the Ground Zero mosque, the mosque that is planned to be built on the fringe of Ground Zero. And that is, it is what Sarah Palin called an unnecessary provocation. And this is a provocation, and that's what General Petraeus is worried about.

Beck guest host Glover: "[T]his burning the Quran issue is very similar to building the mosque on ground zero." During the September 8 edition of The Glenn Beck Program, guest host Dave Glover said that the debate over whether it was appropriate to burn copies of the Quran was "about wise choices" and that "this burning of the Quran issue is very similar to the building of the mosque on ground zero." Glover further claimed, "Just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean you should."

Bolling and Geller agree: "The sensitivity issue" of Islamic community center and burning Qurans is "the same." During the September 7 edition of Fox Business' Money Rocks, host Eric Bolling claimed, "The sensitivity issue seems to be the key here for the mosque. Is it not the same issue with the Quran burning on Saturday?" He then asked, "So therefore, if you don't want them to burn the Quran on Saturday, why wouldn't Muslims -- moderate Muslims -- simply say, 'Hey, it's too sensitive an area downtown; move the mosque?'" Guest Pamela Geller, who has helped lead the push against the Islamic community center, said that the two were "the exact same issue." Geller also said that "the burning of books is wrong."

Boehner lumps in "Pastor Jones" with "those who want to build the mosque." During the September 8 edition of ABC News' Good Morning America, host George Stephanopoulos asked House minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) about Jones' plans to burn copies of the Quran. Boehner invoked the Islamic Community Center in Manhattan in his response: "Well, to Pastor Jones and those who want to build the mosque: Just because you have a right to do something in America does not mean it is the right thing to do."

Chile only exploited 33 ex-diggers when their site collapsed.

Pakistan is in the eye of many storms. It lies at the heart of the United States’s almost decade-long “war on terror”, with an ever-ambiguous position (in Washington’s view) as an unreliable and perhaps even renegade ally. It is a society riven by enormous social inequalities and deep political, religious and ethnic divisions. It is frequently hit by acts of pitiless violence, from the targeting by religious extremists of members of rival faiths to “drone attacks” by US forces which kill innocent civilians.

Now, it is now battered by catastrophic floods which have destroyed the livelihoods of millions of the country’s people, threatening even greater humanitarian disasters to come. The United Nations reported on 7 September 2010 that as many as 10 million people have been living entirely without shelter for six weeks. And even in sport there is no release, for players in the national cricket team are charged with taking money in return for aiding a betting-scam by altering their on-field behaviour.

This mix of political crisis, natural tragedy and everyday corruption is itself an indication of how intractable Pakistan’s problems are. What is also clear is that the most serious of these problems go to the very top, and relate to the nature of the state and its institutions (not least its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] agency). If there is a way forward for Pakistan, a path beyond violence and extremism, it surely lies in addressing how these institutions operate - in particular, how the years of war in Afghanistan and its spillover effects in Pakistan have entrenched militarism and strengthened those forces in Pakistan most beyond democratic control.

The real policy

The role of Inter-Services Intelligence was highlighted once more with the disclosure by the WikiLeaks project on 25 July 2010 of a vast trove of classified United States military documents on its operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The approximately 90,000 pages of Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010 are the latest evidence from a series of reports that the ISI has given ongoing support to Islamist militant networks operating in Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan.

The WikiLeaks “revelations” provoked a great outpouring of publicity, which in great part is owed to the nature of the project and the way it cooperated with established newspapers (such as the New York Times and Der Spiegel) to maximise impact. So it is important to stress that where the ISI is concerned the documents offer nothing new. US military intelligence has known for several decades that Pakistan’s state sponsors Islamist networks (see Paul Rogers, "The Afghan war via WikiLeaks", 29 July 2010).

There are many examples to confirm this in existing official records. For example, two declassified reports of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington - dated two weeks after 9/11, and released in September 2003 - observe that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network was “able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan directives” and funded by the ISI.

In addition, confidential Nato reports and US intelligence assessments circulated to White House officials in 2008 confirm consistent ISI support for Taliban insurgents. They indicate that Pakistan’s current chief-of-staff, General Ashfaq Kayani - who served as head of the ISI from 2004-07 - presided over Taliban training-camps in Pakistan’s western province of Balochistan and provided militants with over 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 400,000 rounds of ammunition. In the same year, US intelligence intercepted Kayani’s description of the senior insurgent leader Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani as a “strategic asset” in the insurgency around Kabul and eastern Afghanistan.

Britain, another key ally of both Pakistan and the United States, has also long been aware of this involvement. A leaked report in 2006 by the ministry of defence-run think-tank, the Defence Academy, spelled out the ISI’s “dual role in combating terrorism” while simultaneously “supporting the Taliban [and] supporting terrorism and extremism”.

A practice of successive British governments has been to overlook such evidence while trumpeting Pakistan’s brilliance at fighting the “war on terror”. In late June 2010, the new foreign secretary William Hague praised General Kayani’s efforts to combat extremism, emphasising the significance of Britain’s long-term strategic and economic relationship with Pakistan. This made the new prime minister David Cameron’s condemnation of Pakistan’s “export of terror” all the more was unexpected and wounding to Islamabad - especially as it was uttered during a visit to India.

The logic of war

The WikiLeaks documents may not have provided anything really new, but they did present Washington with a problem in that they again exposed the mismatch between its public support for Pakistan and its awareness of Pakistan’s extensive links with the Taliban. However, the United States’s official response - beyond condemning WikiLeaks for putting the lives of some of the people named in the documents at risk - showed no sign of acknowledging this contradiction.

The US vice-president Joe Biden insisted that the leaks predate the Barack Obama administration’s policy. He and other spokespeople argued that any ISI support for the Taliban is a rogue operation by isolated “elements” in the organisation.

This stance is consistent with Washington’s longer-term rhetorical, military and political support of Pakistan. The chairman of the US joint chiefs-of-staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, has argued that General Kayani was committed to purging the ISI in order to end its support for militant networks. He and other officials persuaded the US Congress in October 2009 to commit to an unconditional five-year package of $6 billion in military and economic assistance to Pakistan.

Such positions are contradicted by US officials interviewed (under cover of anonymity) by the New York Times who confirmed that the portrayal of the ISI’s “collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.” The documents, the paper concluded, show that the ISI has “acted as both ally and enemy”, appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while exerting influence in Afghanistan.

The inconsistency between the documentary record and the assertions of figures such as Biden and Mullen could not be clearer. This itself raises two serious questions about the nature of the regional and indeed global war being waged by the United States and its allies. 

The first is whether Washington and London’s unconditional military support for Pakistan has served to fuel the 90% increase in violence in Afghanistan over the past year. Indeed, Ola Tunander of Oslo’s Peace Research Institute even argues in a confidential report to Norway’s foreign-affairs ministry that the US strategy in Afghanistan is deliberately to “support both sides” in order to “calibrate the level of violence”.

The result of the Taliban advance over 2009-10 - anticipated by senior Nato official Thomas Brouns’s warning in Military Review (summer 2009) of “the possibility of strategic defeat” - has now led Obama’s team to reconsider an option suggested under the George W Bush administration: a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban, in part to create enough stability to enable a trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline to go ahead.

The second question is about the relation between Washington’s regional war aims and the wider geopolitical objectives of its “war on terror”. Ola Tunander sees its broader agenda as being to mobilise other governments to support US global policy, thus legitimising the effort to sustain a US-dominated unipolar order. The logic of this approach is that the US seeks to perpetuate global warfare not merely to target local insurgents or anti-American regimes but effectively to stall the emergence of an “economic-political multipolar power-structure”, which would give states and regions such as China and Europe a more significant world standing.

The need for change

The hardest effect of the policies of Pakistan’s state and its foreign allies falls on the people of the region - millions of Pakistanis and Afghans living in poverty, under intense pressures of insecurity, and now (in the case of Pakistan) suffering enormous hardship and danger from weeks of unprecedented flooding. The inability or unwillingness of their political masters to deliver proper aid and support to desperate people both encourages further support for insurgents and creates space for militants and their networks to extend their influence: by (for example) establishing free madrasas, setting up relief-camps, and providing medicine and even generators.

There is no easy way to untangle the contradictions and hypocrisies in which the actions of Pakistan and its allies are enmeshed. But the process could begin if the United States and Britain were to make military and economic aid to Pakistan conditional on Islamabad ceasing support to Islamist insurgent networks, which would undercut these networks’ principal source of financial and logistical support; reduce Nato forces in order to reverse the direct correlation between the Afghan surge and the escalation of insurgent violence; and divert aid from military to humanitarian, development and infrastructure projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such serious joint action would signal to the ISI that the game has changed.

As long as Pakistan’s security mandarins believe that Nato is dependent on them to win the war in Afghanistan, they will feel free to expand their regional strategic influence by military means. And as long as western backers of Pakistan continue to fuel violence through a military-dominated strategy underpinned by cold geopolitical calculations, they will aid Taliban recruitment efforts and prolong conflict indefinitely. The storms that assail Pakistan will only be relieved if the interests of Pakistani citizens are put at the centre of policy.

Institute for Policy Research & Development

Pakistan Security Research Unit

Foreign Policy - AfPak channel

Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History (C Hurst, 2005)

Pakistan Policy Blog

Long War Journal

Pakistan Conflict Monitor

Story of Pakistan

Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy (Pluto Press, 2007)

Shaun Gregory, Pakistan: Securing the Insecure State (Routledge, 2008)

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, And How to Save It (Pluto Press, 2010)

At least 100 advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News program since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Here are his September 8 sponsors, in the order they appeared:

• Tax Masters
• Rosland Capital
• MyLife.com
• Lifestyle Lift
• News Corp. (FX's Hannity)
• Liberty Medical
• Merit Financial
• Sokolove Law, LLC
• MySolarBackup.com
• Arriva Medical
• Lear Capital
• VisitingAngels.com
• DebtOK
• News Corp. (FX's College Challenge)
• Goldline International, Inc.
• Lifestyle Lift
• Rosland Capital
• News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Johnson Law Group
• EasyWater.com
• Poet.com

This originally appeared on Robert Reich's blog

General Motors Co. is testing software that would let drivers talk to their cars to update status messages on the Facebook social media website, as well as listen to Facebook messages, the company said Wednesday.

Obama travels to Cleveland to pitch a tax break package worth as much as $300 billion for businesses. But economists are skeptical that many jobs can be gained this way.

A new round of tax incentives for US businesses could have some positive impact on the job market, but it's not likely to ignite massive employment.

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Sharron Angle just says words, ok? It's not her job to make sure that the words are true, or make sense! So it's not fair -- it's never fair -- to ask her to explain what she meant, by these words. That's GOTCHA JOURNALISM. And that is why Sharron Angle is totally justified in denying that she ever said things that she was recorded saying.

Allegations of employment discrimination by Muslim-Americans are on the rise, with the number of annual complaints more than doubling since 2004, according to data compiled by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.