When in the course of human events . . .

2011-08-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

Tasers . . .

Taser deaths investigated by police watchdog

Police restraint tactics are under fresh scrutiny after a third member of the public died following the use of either a Taser stun gun or pepper spray by officers.

Amnesty International said the number of fatalities over the past eight days had reaffirmed its concerns that Tasers were "potentially lethal" weapons. Read more . . .

"potentially lethal" weapons . . .

Some doubt 'excited delirium' condition cited in Taser-related deaths

. . .

You won't find excited delirium listed as a recognized condition or diagnosis by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization. Nor is it listed as a validated diagnostic entity in either the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Disorders.
Some human rights groups say that's because it doesn't exist.

Eric Balaban, senior staff council for the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, calls excited delirium a "catch-all" diagnosis police and forensic pathologists use to whitewash cases of excessive police force, inappropriate restraint or brutality that leads to in-custody deaths. Read more . . .

What they said . . .

Police Department Tasers a Mentally Ill man 11 times in the span of 4 minutes, resulting in his death

Officer Glen Felton fired his Model X26 Taser at Graham and held the trigger for 13 seconds, attempting to administer a shock of 50,000 volts. Graham fell to the ground but continued to kick violently, the report says. He removed the wired probes and rose to his feet to attack police.

Sgt. Thomas Cossette, who is now a lieutenant, attempted to “drive stun” Graham with his Taser by placing it directly against Graham’s body. Cossette deployed the device 10 times over a span of about four minutes, with shocks lasting between five and 11 seconds, according to the report.

However, “other than further agitating him it had no noticeable effect” on Graham, the report says.

The report concluded that both Felton and Cossette, who is the chief’s brother, used the devices properly. Although Felton’s shock was long and Cossette’s were frequent, “it is not definitively known” whether there was enough contact through Graham’s clothing to render the shocks, reads the state’s attorney’s report.

A fourth officer assisted at the scene and then four more came to relieve the first responders, who were treated for various injuries at MidState Medical Center and released.

It took five sets of handcuffs to restrain Graham’s arms and legs. Once that was done his “breathing and pulse were getting shallow,” the report says.

Emergency personnel attempted CPR and he was taken to MidState, but he could not be resuscitated. Read more . . .

Maybe if someone trained police that if it doesn't work the first time, shoot, this young man would still be alive. One assumes, of course, that the police didn't INTEND to kill him.

Helena mother questions taser-related death of son

The mother of a man who died following an altercation with police last week says she's still trying to make sense of what happened that night.

Lois Mitchell said she called 9-1-1 on the evening of Aug. 14 out of concern for her son, 41-year-old Roger Chandler. Mitchell said she never imagined that her son would end up dead in a Great Falls hospital three days later.

The exact cause of Chandler's death is still unknown. Read more . . .

Man dies after Oklahoma City police use Taser to arrest him

A man died early Sunday in Oklahoma City police shortly after officers shot him with a Taser to take him into custody.

Oklahoma City Police Capt. Patrick Stewart dicusses the investigation of man who later died after officers used a Taser to take him into custody Sunday.

Montaleto McKissick, 37, who was fleeing from police investigating a fight at a nightclub, was taken to OU Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.

There's some light reading for you . . .

2011-08-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

In Texas schools, a criminal response to misbehavior

By Donna St. George, Published: August 21
SPRING, TEX. — In a small courtroom north of Houston, a fourth-grader walked up to the bench with his mother. Too short to see the judge, he stood on a stool. He was dressed in a polo shirt and dark slacks on a sweltering summer morning.

“Guilty,” the boy’s mother heard him say.

He had been part of a scuffle on a school bus.

In another generation, he might have received only a scolding from the principal or a period of detention. But an array of get-tough policies in U.S. schools in the past two decades has brought many students into contact with police and courts — part of a trend some experts call the criminalization of student discipline.

Now, such practices are under scrutiny nationally. Federal officials want to limit punishments that push students from the classroom to courtroom, and a growing number of state and local leaders are raising similar concerns. Read more . . .

2011-08-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

TSA Guard: “Get used to radiation”

Going through the line that approaches the security check at Seattle airport, I asked a TSA guard lady if I have to go somewhere else if I want to avoid the scanners. She said, “Just tell them when you get up there. You might want to get used to radiation because Seattle airport will not have any other options very soon.” I said, “Get used to radiation?” She confirmed, “Yes”. I said, “I don’t know about that.”

We need to end the TSA!

2010-10-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Israeli Rabbi Blesses Honeytrap Sex For Female Spies

An Israeli rabbi has blessed the use of female spies in "honeytrap" or "honeypot" stings against terrorists, according to a study called "Illicit Sex for the Sake of National Security."

The ruling by Rabbi Ari Schvat, contained in a study published by the Zomet Institute, was first reported by the news agency DPA and published by Haaretz.com.

Israeli officials confirmed the rabbinical ruling and the gist of the study for ABC News.

The Zomet Institute studies the intersection of religion and modernity. It examined whether it was acceptable for female agents of Israel's foreign secret service, Mossad, to have sex with the enemy in so-called "honeypot" or "honeytrap" sting missions.

Read more . . .

2007-10-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

Lords debate airline liquids ban

Exploding Marmite threat revealed

Who remembers the deadly liquid bomb airliner plot? Most of you, we're guessing, as there are still a lot of fairly mindless restrictions on taking liquids aboard planes - no matter that the plot was actually rather far-fetched.

But fear not, UK readers, as your unelected representatives are alert to your interests. Yesterday saw the liquid ban debated in the House of Lords, as ordinary legislative nobles grilled government mouthpiece Baron Bassam of Brighton. The good Baron, raised to the peerage from among the common herd after more than a decade's trusty service on Brighton council, didn't seem to have been furnished with a very comprehensive brief. Here are a few of the pearls he offered:

Scientist says tests back Russia Arctic claim

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian scientist said on Thursday that fresh test results back his country's legal bid to take control of the Arctic, just weeks after a submarine planted the Russian national flag on the North Pole's seabed.

The race to claim ownership of the Arctic, home to vast untapped gas and oil reserves, has intensified with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the U.S. all vying with Russia to build their political and legal case to claim jurisdiction.

Tax the Rich, End the War

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46521/

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," cries George W. Bush, the downmarket, twangy version of Shakespeare's Henry V. But that king, on stage and off, was a war leader who actually fought in the battles he asked other men to die in. Regardless, the President is moving to commit more of our soldiers and more of our money to try one more time to win the war in Iraq.

This latest "surge" against the unseen enemy, the umpteenth of its kind, is to be called A New Way Forward. New Way Forward is not to be confused with the February 2006 Operation Together Forward.

It demands some concentration to keep straight the names of our various operations, strikes, offensives, surges and initiatives in Iraq. Among others, we have had over the long weary years Operation Southern Focus, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Ivy Needle, Operation Longstreet, Operation Chamberlain (what was that about?), Operation Sweeney (who was Sweeney?), Operation OK Corral, Operation Eagle Curtain, Operation All American Tiger, Operation Ivy Cyclone, Operation Boothill, Operation Bulldog Mammoth, Operation Panther Squeeze, Operation Red Dawn, Operation Arrowhead Blizzard, Operation Rifles Fury, Operation Rock Slide, Operation Tomahawk, Operation Rocket Man, Operation Rocketman III (no record of a Rocketman II), Operation Warhorse Whirlwind, Operation Centaur Rodeo, Operation Lancer Lightning, Operation Wolfpack Crunch, Operation Rapier Thrust, Operation Spring Clean Up, Operation Phantom Fury, Operation Steel Curtain, Operation Swarmer and Operation Giuliani.

There has been more than one "sweep" operation, as in Operation Tiger Clean Sweep, Operation Industrial Sweep, Operation Market Sweep, Operation Rifle Sweep and Operation Ripper Sweep. Also favored have been the "iron" operations, as in Operation Iron Hammer, Operation Iron Promise, Operation Iron Grip, Operation Iron Force, Operation Iron Resolve, Operation Iron Saber, Operation Iron Bullet and Operation Iron Justice.

Why there should be an Operation Giuliani but not one named after other noncombatant, civilian heroes is a puzzle. Perhaps with the new, contemplated "surge" there may be an Operation Iron Rumsfeld, Operation Rifle Rice or an Operation Cheney Sweep.

The President has not been talking about how Operation New Way Forward is to be paid for. Some of it will be paid for in our young people's lives, of course, but as for the money... Congress is to appropriate it, the Treasury Department is to borrow it from China and Mr. Bush will spend it.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic hero of the hour, says that she will resist sending more troops to Iraq. But, though the new House Speaker has a lot going for her, she will not be able to block this escalation of the war effort. There are not enough votes in Congress for something so drastic.

For the same reason, yet more drastic measures are yet more out of reach, so those who, like Cindy Sheehan, hope that the much-spoken-of power of the purse will be used to force the President to end the war are going to be disappointed. The Democrats, scared that the Republicans will attack them as national-defense weenies, twinkies and cupcakes, will make sure nobody can say they failed to support the troops by failing to send more troops.

In this case the power of the purse turns out to be useless. Or does it? Another, indirect way is there for the taking. It is a way that shelters the Democrats from being called soft on the war on terror, closet pacifists and defeatists.

The Democrats can tax our way out of the war. This would be a Victory Over Terror tax to be levied on incomes of $5 million a year or more. It should be a surcharge of 20 percent over and above what people in that rarified income bracket are already paying. It should be levied on all income, regardless of what form it takes, so it would include stock options, jet plane rides, company-paid-for health and life insurance, retirement programs, golden parachutes, the use of apartments in Paris, cars and drivers.

The people in this stratospheric income category have enjoyed the big tax cuts that have gone into effect while the nation has been attacked and been at war. Individuals making $1.25 million a year have gotten tax cuts of almost 20 percent, but many of these would be spared paying the Victory Over Terror tax, which only cuts in at the $5 million level.

Needless to say, those paying this tax do not represent the Democrats' voter base. As these things go, this is politically pain-free. The tax is aimed at war profiteers, overpaid CEOs and grossly fat cats in general, most of whom carry a lot of weight at the White House. If there is any group of people in the world whom George Bush listens to, it is this bunch of billionaires. Call this a backdoor use of the power of the purse. And since the surcharge expires when the war on terror is won or declared over, those taxed will have a powerful incentive to tell the President it is time to get a move on.

Source

2007-01-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation’s top firms were representing prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms’ corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.

The comments by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, produced an instant torrent of anger from lawyers, legal ethics specialists and bar association officials, who said Friday that his comments were repellent and displayed an ignorance of the duties of lawyers to represent people in legal trouble.

“This is prejudicial to the administration of justice,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University and an authority on legal ethics. “It’s possible that lawyers willing to undertake what has been long viewed as an admirable chore will decline to do so for fear of antagonizing important clients.

“We have a senior government official suggesting that representing these people somehow compromises American interests, and he even names the firms, giving a target to corporate America.”

Mr. Stimson made his remarks in an interview on Thursday with Federal News Radio, a local Washington-based station that is aimed at an audience of government employees.

The same point appeared Friday on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, where Robert L. Pollock, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, cited the list of law firms and quoted an unnamed “senior U.S. official” as saying, “Corporate C.E.O.’s seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists.”

In his radio interview, Mr. Stimson said: “I think the news story that you’re really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA request through a major news organization, somebody asked, ‘Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there?’ and you know what, it’s shocking.” The F.O.I.A. reference was to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Monica Crowley, a conservative syndicated talk show host, asking for the names of all the lawyers and law firms representing Guantánamo detainees in federal court cases.

Mr. Stimson, who is himself a lawyer, then went on to name more than a dozen of the firms listed on the 14-page report provided to Ms. Crowley, describing them as “the major law firms in this country.” He said, “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”

Karen J. Mathis, a Denver lawyer who is president of the American Bar Association, said: “Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

In an interview on Friday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said he had no problem with the current system of representation. “Good lawyers representing the detainees is the best way to ensure that justice is done in these cases,” he said.

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had any official comment, but officials sought to distance themselves from Mr. Stimson’s view. His comments “do not represent the views of the Defense Department or the thinking of its leadership,” a senior Pentagon official said. He would not allow his name to be used, seemingly to lessen the force of his rebuke. Mr. Stimson did not return a call on Friday seeking comment.

The role of major law firms agreeing to take on the cases of Guantánamo prisoners challenging their detentions in federal courts has hardly been a secret and has been the subject of many news articles that have generally cast their efforts in a favorable light. Michael Ratner, who heads the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights group that is coordinating the legal representation for the Guantánamo detainees, said about 500 lawyers from about 120 law firms had volunteered their services to represent Guantánamo prisoners.

When asked in the radio interview who was paying for the legal representation, Mr. Stimson replied: “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”

Lawyers expressed outrage at that, asserting that they are not being paid and that Mr. Stimson had tried to suggest they were by innuendo. Of the approximately 500 lawyers coordinated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, no one is being paid, Mr. Ratner said. One Washington law firm, Shearman & Sterling, which has represented Kuwaiti detainees, has received money from the families of the prisoners, but Thomas Wilner, a lawyer there, said they had donated all of it to charities related to the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Mr. Ratner said that there were two other defense lawyers not under his group’s umbrella and that he did not know whether they were paid.

Christopher Moore, a lawyer at the New York firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton who represented an Uzbeki detainee who has since been released, said: “We believe in the concept of justice and that every person is entitled to counsel. Any suggestion that our representation was anything other than a pro bono basis is untrue and unprofessional.” Mr. Moore said he had made four trips to Guantánamo and one to Albania at the firm’s expense, to see his client freed.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wrote to President Bush on Friday asking him to disavow Mr. Stimson’s remarks.

Mr. Stimson, who was a Navy lawyer, graduated from George Mason University Law School. In a 2006 interview with the magazine of Kenyon College, his alma mater, Mr. Stimson said that he was learning “to choose my words carefully because I am a public figure on a very, very controversial topic.”

Source: NYTimes

2007-01-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

Six Years After Florida, Where Are We?
Warning! Adult Content, Shocking Material

Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News

Washington, DC Understanding Florida 2000 is central to understanding where we stand today as a nation. Al Gore’s clear victory in the popular vote was obscured immediately by the last minute drama of the Florida vote count. The extended melodramatics of the post election period further confused and confounded the fundamental problems with that election.

The birth of a lie. The last shall be first by media acclamation and judicial ratification.

Rather than focus on the at least 50 thousand plus black Floridians who were summarily removed from state registration rolls due to a faulty felon purge computer program (citizens who had every right to vote), we had to endure the endless discussion of a few hundred flawed ballot in a retirement community.

Instead of focusing on the over 20,000 invalidated presidential ballots in Duval County, which came almost exclusively from Democratic precincts, and the tens of thousands more mostly minority ballots that were arbitrarily tossed out by so-called election judges, we had to endure a dyspeptic Judge from Leon County who told the lawyers he had plenty of time when he knew time was of the essence.

And when the votes were finally being recounted in Miami Dade, instead of focusing on a preppy riot by Republican Congressional staffers flown in just for that event; a riot that ended the vote count, we were diverted to minutiae. Even though knowing their identity would have been a huge story, no one bothered to tell us who these scary folks were.

Click for big version
Washington DC based Republican Congressional staffer show up at Miami Dade County Board of Elections and stage the preppy riot that lead the board of elections to suspend its Presidential vote recount. These Republican operatives helped change history.

What was the grand plan to prevent any more elections like Florida 2000? Lets all vote on computerized voting machines, really complicated machines. Everybody knows you can’t cheat with a computer. We’ll even spend billions to buy states and counties voting machines from vendors with strong Republican ties. And even better, we’ll set up an Election Assistance Commission that focuses almost exclusively on voting technology while totally ignoring race and class bias plus political dirty tricks, the real problems with Florida 2000…a bipartisan effort.

The Sorry Record of Questionable Elections

When a solution fails to match the problem in question, the problem persists. In 2002, Max Cleland and Barnes went from substantial pre-election leads to substantial post election deficits (last minute swings between 9% and 16%). Quite a surprise: two reversals like that in the same state, on the same day, from the same party, and both very well liked public officials. The other surprise is that five thousand voting machines in densely populated, Democratic Counties were secretly modified just before the election. According to whistleblower Chris Hood, this was done the orders of the president of the voting machine company, Diebold, Inc., who told the contractor making the changes to make the change without notifying the county authorities.

Shouldn’t this have been a clue? Apparently it wasn’t. We rolled into 2004 with few lessons learned. The Kerry campaign placed thousands of lawyers in place around the country to spot election fraud. The most substantive result of the effort was the production of this empirical study of a major county in Washington State by attorney Paul Lehto, one of the Kerry poll watching lawyers. There was no challenge. Of course, the Libertarians and Greens were more than willing to cry foul and note the emperor had no clothes in Ohio, to their great credit.

The 2004 election produced a major anomaly, one that will not go away. The truth emerged about how the candidates had been tracked by the National Exit Polls. These showed a Kerry victory. They were not for on air use but ended up being broad case anyway. The mathematical odds are overwhelmingly in favor of a Kerry win. Nobody bothered to tell the American people. The topic has never been seriously discussed by the mainstream media. It’s all there in black and white. There’s even a free Excel interactive program that allows you to enter your own assumptions to force a Bush win. It’s very difficult

2000, 2002, 2004…still asleep at the switch.

The persistent set of machine mal functions from 2000 forward developed as a theme – surprise or last minute victories by Republicans amidst questions about undervotes, over votes, machine problems, long lines, confusing voting instructions, etc, etc. The machine manufacturers and elections officials who enable them offer sanctimonious explanations which usually blamed voters.

Human error is their theme. By the way, this is the same set of lies told by the apologists for spoiled ballots, which were almost always in predominantly minority precincts. Back then it was a thinly veiled racist meme – the uneducated voter just didn’t know how to mark a ballot. This was a lie and the vile assertion was dismissed once and for all in a moment of scholarly brilliance. Now we’re back to the not so swift old voter in the case of the latest excuse for 18,000 ballots for Congress lost in the race for the seat vacated by Bush Secretary of State Kathleen Harris.

Georgia 2002 was the warning shot that Florida 2000 was no coincidence. The loss of a victory for a second time in 2004 was the outcome of a failure to heed that warnings. Subsequent unbelievable results like the Ohio Special Measures election with a 20-40% reversal of reliable pre-election polls, and the lost of one in seven votes in Sarasota County, the strong hold for the losing candidate, are the world as will know it in elections to come as long as those in power fail to recognize that machine foul ups are just an updated version spoiled ballots. They have a consistent outcome. Democrats lose.

The Prospects for Real Reform the New Congress

Plan A: Home grown. Action on elections is a hot item in this Congress. At the opening, Representative Rush Holt, Dem, NJ stood to raise a point of order that will allow hearings on the Florida 13th race, a bold move at this point. The legislative remedies don’t match this boldness: tinkering around the edges with no one willing to say the “F” word – FRAUD. Meaningful reform is not readily apparent in any current form. The hope is that the Jennings Election Contest, a very strong case, will generate a serious wake up call to all who favor fair and inclusive elections. It may just do that if Christine Jennings and her attorney Kendall Coffee get a fair hearing.

Plan B: Globalism to the rescue. How hard is it to set up a voting system, let alone an efficient voting system? Not very hard, if you use India as an example. The nation adopted a low tech electronic voting and reporting system that serves more than 600 million voters . That’s a lot of citizens exercising the franchise. But in India the stakes are very high. The political factions there take their politics very seriously. There is a history of violence surrounding elections. There were some problems but the Indian approach looks like a success. So here you are, $300 (US) a piece – tested in the killing fields of no nonsense politics in the world’s largest democracy, and, if we fail to change our laws, the last hope the United States has for free and fair elections: INDIA’S EVM.

Click for big version
India’s election commission makes the case for the low tech by design EVM (electronic voting machine). If we can’t get election fraud recognized as a real event and a remedy through Hand Counted Paper Ballots, we can always just swallow our price and adopt a model that works.

2007-01-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

President Bush added a "signing statement" in recently passed postal reform bill that may give him new powers to pry into your mail - without a warrant.

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.

The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.

Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.

"The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into."

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority.

"In certain circumstances - such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' - the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said.

Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency.

Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime.

But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed.

Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

2006-12-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation

ROME, Ga., July 29 - When they charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug.

But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms.

So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to "finish up a cook," some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

Malvika Patel, left, and her husband, Chirag, in Ringgold, Ga. Ms. Patel spent three days in jail in a drug case before being cleared. The authorities had accused her of selling a medicine used to make methamphetamine.

The case of Operation Meth Merchant illustrates another difficulty for law enforcement officials fighting methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that can be made with ordinary grocery store items.

Many states, including Georgia, have recently enacted laws restricting the sale of common cold medicines like Sudafed, and nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter. Walgreens agreed this week to pay $1.3 million for failing to monitor the sale of over-the-counter cold medicine that was bought by a methamphetamine dealer in Texas.

But the case here is also complicated by culture. Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel.

The biggest problem, defense lawyers say, is the language barrier between an immigrant store clerk and the undercover informants who used drug slang or quick asides to convey that they were planning to make methamphetamine.

"They're not really paying attention to what they're being told," said Steve Sadow, one of the lawyers. "Their business is: I ring it up, you leave, I've done my job. Call it language or idiom or culture, I'm not sure you're able to show they know there's anything wrong with what they're doing."

For the Indians, their lives largely limited to store and home, it is as if they have fallen through a looking glass into a world they were content to keep on the other side of the cash register.

"This is the first time I heard this - I don't know how to pronounce - this meta-meta something," said Hajira Ahmed, whose husband is in jail pending charges that he sold cold medicine and antifreeze at their convenience store on a winding road near the Tennessee border.

But David Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said the evidence showed that the clerks knew that the informants posing as customers planned to make drugs. Federal law makes it illegal to sell products knowing, or with reason to believe, that they will be used to produce drugs. In these cases, lawyers say, defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

In one instance, Mr. Nahmias said, a store owner in Whitfield County pulled out a business card from a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and told the informant that he was supposed to contact the agent if someone requested large amounts of the materials. When the informant asked if he would call, Mr. Nahmias said, the owner replied, "No, you are my customer."

"It's not that they should have known," Mr. Nahmias said. "In virtually or maybe all of the cases, they did know."

Like many prosecutors, Mr. Nahmias describes methamphetamine, a highly potent drug that can be injected, ingested or inhaled, as the biggest drug problem in his district. While only about a third of the meth here is made in small labs - the majority of the drug used in this country comes from so-called superlabs in Mexico - those small labs can be highly explosive, posing a danger to children, the environment and the police departments that are forced to clean them up. Their sources, he said, are local convenience stores.

Ellison's winning platform

Ellison's views reflect Democratic ideals and discontent. (Watch what Ellison said about Katrina victims, abortion and insurance for the poor -- 2:38)

He is opposed to the war in Iraq and on his Web site, he has called "for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq."

"I opposed the war before it began. I was against this war once it started and I am the only candidate calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops."

His religious message is one of inclusiveness.

Regarding his Muslim faith, he said, "people draw strength and moral courage from a variety of religious traditions."

"Mine have come from both Catholicism and Islam. I was raised Catholic and later became a Muslim while attending Wayne State University. I am inspired by the Quran's message of an encompassing divine love, and a deep faith guides my life every day."

Ellison's position on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is supportive of the two-state solution and the road map to peace process. He has been critical of the Hamas movement.

"Peace is necessary for both Israeli and Palestinian people, and I wholeheartedly support peace movements in Israel and throughout the region," he said in a statement on his Web site.

He was endorsed by the Twin Cities newspaper, the American Jewish World, which said, "In Ellison, we have a moderate Muslim who extends his hand in friendship to the Jewish community and supports the security of the State of Israel."

Ellison is pro-choice and pro-labor, and supports "universal single payer health care" -- long popular stances among liberals.

The seat Ellison won had been held by Rep. Martin Olav Sabo, the longtime Democratic incumbent, whose retirement sparked a wide-open race. Sabo won 70 percent of the vote for the House seat in 2004.

Source

2006-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

The Votes Are In! And I Didn't Win. :(

BUT, I got 11.4% of the vote. Not so bad, considering I barely campaigned. Something about breaking up with a husband and having the previous husband die that just takes the thrill out of it. LOL And, I didn't believe I would win. Between my late entry into the race and the local papers hatred of Libertarians that turned the race into "the evil Libertarians against the good Dems/Reps", there was little chance of my swaying the majority.

Here are the results:

NP - Michael J. Wallace	26340	27.42
NP - Bernard L. Stewart	24264	25.26
NP - Jacob Eapen	24096	25.08
NP - Gwen S Todd	10795	11.24
NP - Steve Strayer	10228	10.65
Write-in	335	0.35

Stay tuned. I already have my candidate info site for the next run and have learned a lot about what to expect. Watch this space for me to be the WINNER of the race next time around.

2006-11-07T10:16:00.001-08:00

Not Child Left Behind . . .just suspended and humiliated

Fourth Grader Suspended After Refusing to Answer Exam Question

By David Evans

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Tyler Stoken was a well-behaved fourth grader who enjoyed school, earned A's and B's and performed well on standardized tests.

In May 2005, he'd completed five of the six days of the Washington State Assessment of Student Learning exam, called WASL, part of the state's No Child Left Behind test.

Then Tyler came upon this question: ``While looking out the window one day at school, you notice the principal flying in the air. In several paragraphs, write a story telling what happens.''

The nine-year-old was afraid to answer the question about his principal, Olivia McCarthy. ``I didn't want to make fun of her,'' he says, explaining he was taught to write the first thing that entered his mind on the state writing test.

In this case, Tyler's initial thoughts would have been embarrassing and mean. So even after repeated requests by school personnel, and ultimately the principal herself, Tyler left the answer space blank. ``He didn't want them to know what he was thinking, that she was a witch on a broomstick,'' says Tyler's mother, Amanda Wolfe, sitting next to her son in the family's ranch home three blocks from Central Park Elementary School in Aberdeen, Washington.

Because Tyler didn't answer the question, McCarthy suspended him for five days. He recalls the principal reprimanding him by saying his test score could bring down the entire school's performance.

``Good job, bud, you've ruined it for everyone in the school, the teachers and the school,'' Tyler says McCarthy told him.

`He Cried'

Aberdeen School District Superintendent Martin Kay ordered an investigation. ``My suspension was for refusal to comply with a reasonable request, and to teach Tyler that that could harm him in the future,'' McCarthy told an investigator. ``I never, for a second, questioned my actions.''

Tyler, who's 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs 70 pounds (32 kilograms), hasn't been the same since, his mother says.

``He liked the principal before this,'' she says. ``He cried. He didn't understand why she'd done this to him.''

Now, Tyler blows up at the drop of a hat, his mother says. ``They created a monster. He'll never take that test again, even if I have to take him to another state,'' she says.

Tyler's attitude about school changed. He became shyer. He's afraid of all tests and doesn't do as well in classes anymore, his mother says.

`Blatant Defiance'

McCarthy's May 6, 2005, letter to Tyler's mother detailed her son's suspension. ``The fact that Tyler chose to simply refuse to work on the WASL after many reasonable requests is none other than blatant defiance and insubordination,'' McCarthy wrote.

In the letter, she accused Tyler of bringing down the average score of the other 10 students in his class. ``As we have worked so hard this year to improve our writing skills, this is a particularly egregious wound,'' McCarthy wrote.

Her accusation was wrong, state regulations show. There is no averaging of the writing scores. Each student either meets or fails the state standard.

Tita Mallory, director of curriculum and assessment for the Aberdeen School District, says school officials feel tremendous pressure because of the high-stakes tests.

While there's no academic effect on elementary school children taking the exams, there can be repercussions for school administrators. When schools repeatedly fail to show adequate yearly progress, as defined by No Child, the principal can be fired.

``In many ways, there's too much emphasis on the test,'' Mallory says. ``I don't want that kind of pressure on our kids.''

Out of 74,184 fourth graders taking the WASL test last year, 42.3 percent failed to meet the state standard for writing.

Juanita Doyon, director of Mothers Against WASL and author of, ``Not With Our Kids You Don't! Ten Strategies to Save Our Schools'' (Heinemann, 144 pages, $14.95), says Tyler's experience is representative of what's wrong with tests like the WASL.

``They took a student who loved his school and crushed his spirit,'' Doyon, 46, says.

``We've elevated test scores to be the most important part of school. The principal and teachers are so pressured by the test that they've lost good sense in dealing with children.''

To contact the reporter for this story: David Evans in Los Angeles at davidevans@bloomberg.net

2006-11-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

From Swami Beyondananda's Newsletter 11-2-06

No Story, No World ...New Story, New World

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

In her book, Butterfly, Norie Huddle offers a powerful biological metaphor about the caterpillar' s metamorphosis into a butterfly. Inside the cocoon, new cells -- called, appropriately "imaginal cells" -- begin to pop up. Initially, these cells are recognized as "not the caterpillar" and are attacked. At some point, there are enough imaginal cells that they begin to communicate with each other and cluster together in communities. Although the caterpillar organism is still attacking these cells, the new cells become stronger and eventually and inevitably, the imaginal cells become the butterfly. So, you may be asking as you read or watch the news, where's the butterfly? Or, as the Swami has said, "Will the new age get here before old age does?"

And certainly, on the surface it's all caterpillar out there. But just as there is a moment where the field shifts from caterpillar to butterfly, I can assure you that the imaginal cells are popping up everywhere and beginning to cluster and communicate. And just as sure as a caterpillar never says, "You know, I'm not sure about this flying butterfly thing so I think I'll just go back to being a crawly caterpillar, " the process of evolution is a one-way street leading onward and upward.

In my travels to just about every region in the country over the past two years, I've seen this awakening and "up-wising." On one hand, those who allow themselves to see are facing the awful truth of how we've been betrayed by our leaders and institutions. On the other, people are also embracing the awesome opportunity as they see things as they can be, were we to actualize our human potential. It can be an emotional roller coaster to go from one extreme to the other, wondering how long it will take for a critical mass of citizens to awaken to the "critical mess." One thing is for certain, though. We can't get there from "here" when "here" means continuing to do what we've always done.

We Can't Get There From Here Unless We Find a New "Here"

To paraphrase Albert Einstein, a problem can never be solved at the level it was created. So it should come as no surprise as we shift from the Newtonian world view of force vs. opposing force, that we recognize that the dualistic political parties and cultural forces will only keep us stuck doing what we've been doing. Neither of the dominant dominator stories -- dogmatic religion or cynical materialism -- will be able to help us achieve this new emergent phase. A new story is needed, one that encompasses the spiritual and the material, that celebrates the individual and yet honors community, that anchors us with all that is precious in the past and also points us where none have gone before.

Thanks to a combination of intention and graceful good fortune, I am working with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton (The Biology of Belief) on a book that offers a new story based on the latest understandings of biology and quantum physics, and -- not coincidentally -- consistent with the teachings of the great spiritual masters. Boiled down, the message is this: "Just as our body is a harmonious community of 50 trillion cells, we humans are a 6.5 billion cell community on the surface of the earth. Since nature tells us that patterns repeat at higher levels of complexity -- from cell to organ to organism to planet -- what works under our skin is very likely to work in our human community as well."

On a purely biochemical level, the cell, the organism and the planet all need the same things: Clean water, nutrients and oxygen. Should any of these be compromised on any level, from cellular to planetary, life itself is threatened. On the psychological, social and spiritual level, harmony works better than disharmony. Throughout the recorded history of civilization, we have suspected this is true. It's what just about every religion or spiritual path has at its root, some version of the Golden Rule. Over millennia, we humans have been "content" to -- in the words of Alan Watts -- worship the finger instead of noting where the finger is pointing. But now, the dysfunctionality has gotten so profound and destructive to the entire planet, that we must finally turn to living those truths our teachers have been patiently trying to teach us for centuries. Put bluntly, unless we consciously choose to play "the world game," the "end-of-the- world" game will play itself out.

And the Good News Is ... the Bad News IS The Good News This bad news is good news indeed. It means we humans can no longer survive at this level of consciousness, and must metamorphose into something greater. The good news is that "truth" is inclusive, that Jesus and Einstein were both right, that we are indeed "all in this together, here to re-grow the Garden and have a heaven of a time doing it." Yes, it is easier said than done. However, we must say it before we can do it. And instead of the stories we've been telling ourselves -- either we are helpless children who can only be saved by divine intervention, or that we're even more helpless isolated entities stuck in an uncaring and random universe -- we need an empowering and enlightening story that encompasses science and spirit.

Getting back to those imaginal cells, what finally brings forth the new organism is the growing coherence of a new field. On the human level, the foundation of that coherence is a new story. Think about all the good work and well-intentioned organizations in this country and around the world. Consider those who understand and are working for environmental health, personal wellness, universal spiritual awareness without dogma, social and economic justice, sustainable business, enlightened education of our children, non lethal forms of problem-solving, etc., etc., etc. All of these great causes ...

And yet, it seems like so many of these well-meaning organizations are overworked and underfunded, seemingly in competition with one another for limited resource, and far too often disheartened and discouraged. A coherent and unifying story of what the "butterfly" looks like when it's up and flying can help us see how all of this work fits together, and how we can prioritize and move forward. It's my profound hope and intention that this book, The American Evolution, and the accompanying website will help transform the imaginal field of dreams into reality.

2006-10-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Army monitors soldiers' blogs, Web sites
Oversight operation checks for anything that may compromise security

RICHMOND, Va. - From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or entrances to camps.

In some cases, that information can be detrimental, said Lt. Col. Stephen Warnock, team leader and battalion commander of a Manassas-based Virginia National Guard unit working on the operation.

In one incident, a blogger was describing his duties as a guard, providing pictures of his post and discussing how to exploit its vulnerabilities. Other soldiers posted photos of an Army weapons system that was damaged by enemy attack, and another showed personal information that could have endangered his family.

"We are a nation at war," Warnock said by e-mail. "The less the enemy knows, the better it is for our soldiers."

In the early years of operations in the Middle East, no official oversight governed Web sites that sprung up to keep the families of those deployed informed about their daily lives.

The oversight mission, made up of active-duty soldiers and contractors, as well as Guard and Reserve members from Maryland, Texas and Washington state, began in 2002 and was expanded in August 2005 to include sites in the public domain, including blogs.

The Army will not disclose the methods or tools being used to find and monitor the sites. Nor will it reveal the size of the operation or the contractors involved. The Defense Department has a similar program, the Joint Web Risk Assessment Cell, but the Army program is apparently the only operation that monitors nonmilitary sites.

Now soldiers wishing to blog while deployed are required to register their sites with their commanding officers, who monitor the sites quarterly, according to a four-page document of guidelines published in April 2005 by Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

Spc. Jean-Paul Borda, who has indexed thousands of military blogs for a site called Milblogging.com, said in an e-mail interview that the military still is adapting to changing technology.

"This is a new media — Blogging. Podcasting. Online videos," wrote Borda, 32, of Dallas, who kept a blog while he was deployed in Afghanistan with the Virginia National Guard. "The military is doing what it feels necessary to ensure the safety of the troops."

Warnock said the Web risk assessment team has reviewed hundreds of thousands of sites every month, sometimes e-mailing or calling soldiers asking them to take material down. If the blogger doesn't comply with the request, the team can work with the soldier's commanders to fix the problem — that is, if the blogger doesn't post anonymously.

"We are not a law enforcement or intelligence agency. Nor are we political correctness enforcers," Warnock said. "We are simply trying to identify harmful Internet content and make the authors aware of the possible misuse of the information by groups who may want to damage United States interests."

Some bloggers say the guidelines are too ambiguous — a sentiment that has led others to pre-emptively shut down or alter their blogs.

"It's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from not a violation to a violation. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music," said Spc. Jason Hartley, 32, who says he was demoted from sergeant and fined for reposting a blog he created while deployed to Iraq with the New York Army National Guard.

According to Hartley, the Army had forced him to stop the blog even before the oversight operation existed, citing pictures he had posted of Iraqi detainees and discussions of how he loaded a weapon and the route his unit took to get to Iraq.

Warnock contended that soldiers should not be discouraged from blogging altogether.

Military bloggers "are simply expressing themselves in a wide open forum and want to share their life-changing experiences with the rest of the world," Warnock said. "Giving soldiers an outlet for free expression is good. American soldiers are not shy about giving their opinions and nothing the Web Risk Cell does dampens that trait."

Matthew Currier Burden, 39, a former intelligence officer who wrote "The Blog of War," a collection of entries from bloggers who served in the war, said soldiers' Web sites can go a long way toward portraying positive aspects of the war and other "stories that need to get told."

But he said it's legitimate to fear that some information could be used the wrong way.

"The enemy knows the value of the blogs," Burden said. "The biggest thing that we fear is battle damage assessment from the enemy. We want to deny them that."

Source: msnbc.msn.com

2006-10-30T20:52:00.000-08:00

I got a call from the newspaper reporter, Angela Woodall, who is covering the election for the Argus. She wanted to know why I hadn't filed a financial statement. Well, because I didn't raise any money and I haven't spent any money. It isn't a crime, in fact the guy who registered me explained that I didn't need to spend a lot of money. I've campaign word of mouth, but I don't hold any real illusions about my chances. She pointed out that two of the incumbants had raised large sums for publicity. Well good on them. I guess having a couple of challengers has helped the local economy. LOL

But I also got an answer to a question that had been bothering me and which I had posted in my column last week. Why did she make such a big deal of my political party when it's for a non-partisan position. Well, the answer friends is that she doesn't like Libertarians and felt that the public knowing I am Libertarian was more important than their knowing any thing else. She doesn't even know what party the other candidates are, that didn't matter to her. As long as she could expose me and the other challenger as Libertarian and expose the Libertarian Party for trying to take over.

So much for unbiased reporting, my loves. Don't know what her issue is, but she came out and admitted she "outed" me on purpose. It wasn't my imagination. And she admitted that she knew that identifying me as a Libertarian (California has a few Greens they tolerate, but has no use for Libertarians, to hear her tell it.) damaged me more than her revealing my religious background. (former Mormon, former Wiccan)

As I told her in the original interview, I have no illusions about winning. This is a test run. I've been interested in running for office for years and the time was right for a tryout. I think I would be an excellent asset the hospital and a chance for the public to actually know what goes on there behind the closed doors where all the decisions are illegally made and I know that I'm new and, as if that weren't enough, the local reporter covering doesn't want the party I am affliated to to win.

Just thought you all might like to know that you can count on your local paper to protect you.

2006-10-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called "water-boarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

The U.S. Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider water-boarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that's banned by U.S. law and by international treaties that prohibit torture. Some intelligence professionals argue that it often provides false or misleading information because many subjects will tell their interrogators what they think they want to hear to make the water-boarding stop.

Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have said that a law Bush signed last month prohibits water-boarding. The three are the sponsors of the Military Commissions Act, which authorized the administration to continue its interrogations of enemy combatants.

The radio interview Tuesday was the first time that a senior Bush administration official has confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding against important al-Qaida suspects, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammad was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, and turned over to the CIA.

Water-boarding means holding a person's head under water or pouring water on cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth to simulate drowning until the subject agrees to talk or confess.

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.

"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

In the interview on Tuesday, Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D., told Cheney that listeners had asked him to "let the vice president know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives."

"Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?" Hennen said.

"I do agree," Cheney replied, according to a transcript of the interview released Wednesday. "And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation."

Cheney added that Mohammed had provided "enormously valuable information about how many (al-Qaida members) there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth. We've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that."

"Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" asked Hennen.

"It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president `for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in," Cheney replied. "We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that."

The interview transcript was posted on the White House Web site. Interview of the Vice President by Scott Hennen, WDAY.

CIA spokeswoman Michelle Neff said, "While we do not discuss specific interrogation methods, the techniques we use have been reviewed by the Department of Justice and are in keeping with our laws and treaty obligations. We neither conduct nor condone torture."

2006-10-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama: 'I Inhaled — That Was The Point'

"I inhaled — that was the point."

That was what Illinois Senator Barack Obama, currently on a book tour that may or may not segue into a run for the 2008 presidency, said to New Yorker editor David Remnick this afternoon at the American Magazine Conference, after Remnick asked Obama whether or not his admission of drug use in the book would become problematic if he does, if fact, run for president.

The softspoken Obama, who during an appearance on Meet The Press yesterday admitted he would consider a run for the White House, openly criticized the Bush administration in front of 500 or so magazine executives during a wide-ranging, 45-minute discussion, occasionally with Remnick's prodding. "This is the most ideologically driven administration in my memory, so obstinate in resisting facts, dissenting opinions ... [They entered the White House] with a set of preconcieved notions." Obama said. "I think this administration has done great damage to this country."

"I wouldn't fit in with this administration [because I think] actually being informed is a good basis for policy," Obama said to laughter. "OK, that's a low-blow."

Obama was particularly critical of the war in Iraq. "We've used up so much political capital [in Iraq]," adding that it is "going to take the current military the same amount of time it took the military to recover from Vietnam."

After some lighthearted grilling, Obama said Remnick "sounds nicer in his columns, but turns out to be somewhat of a prickly guy."

Remnick, who at this point could be considered the President of the United States of Magazines, forced Obama to address the topic of religion. "It's not 'faith' if you are absolutely certain," Obama said, noting that he didn't believe his lack of "faith" would hurt him a national election. "Evolution is more grounded in my experience than angels."

Throughout the interview, Obama expressed doubt about his willingness to put his family through the scrutiny of a presidential race. "My wife would be leading the bandwagon for me to be running for president ... if I was married to someone else."

When asked if the White House would be a plac e worth inheriting in 2009, Obama said, "There are a lot of problems to clean up, and nopt a lot of resources to work with." He added that the first agenda of a new president should be to "stabilize and extricate ourselves" from Iraq.

FishbowlNY will be blogging live this week from the American Magazine Conference — the annual pow-wow of high-powered magazine executives — at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix. Check back often for our extended coverage.

2006-10-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

US govt bans Vegemite
The US has banned importation of icky Australian delicacy Vegemite (a brown gunky spread that is simultaneously delicious and grody), enraging Aussie expats in the US, who require a steady supply of Vegemite in order to remain functional.

The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite contains folate, which in the US can be added only to breads and cereals.
Expatriates say that enforcement of the ban has been stepped up recently and is ruining lifelong traditions of having Vegemite on toast for breakfast.
Former Geelong man Daniel Fogarty, who now lives in Calgary, Canada, said he was stunned when searched while crossing the US border recently.
"The border guard asked us if we were carrying any Vegemite," Mr Fogarty said.

Source: boingboing

2006-10-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

Bush Urges Nation To Be Quiet For A Minute While He Tries To Think

WASHINGTON, DC—While acknowledging every American's inalienable right to free speech, the president asked citizens to "hold off on it for, say, 60 seconds."

2006-10-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

Nine ex-Republicans run as Dems in Kansas

Political crossover striking in bedrock Bush territory

By Peter Slevin

The Washington Post

Updated: 3:54 a.m. MT Oct 19, 2006

WICHITA - Paul Morrison, a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general -- as a Democrat.

He is now running neck-and-neck with Republican Phill Kline, an iconic social conservative who made headlines by seeking the names of abortion-clinic patients and vowing to defend science-teaching standards that challenge Darwinian evolution. What's more, Morrison is raising money faster than Kline and pulling more cash from Republicans than Democrats.

Nor is Morrison alone. In a state that voted nearly 2 to 1 for President Bush in 2004, nine former Republicans will be on the November ballot as Democrats. Among them is Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, who changed parties to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.

"I'd reached a breaking point," Parkinson said, preparing for a rally in Wichita alongside Sebelius. "I want to work on relevant issues and not on a lot of things that don't matter."

The Kansas developments coincide with efforts by Democrats across the country to capture moderate Republican and independent voters dismayed with partisan bickering from both parties, particularly from the Republican right. The spirit of the attempted Democratic comeback in Kansas, set by Sebelius, is a search for the workable political center.

Though yet untested in the election booth, the Democratic developments in Kansas reflect polls in many parts of the country. As elsewhere, Democrats and moderate Republicans say they are frustrated with policies and practices they trace to Republican leadership, including the Iraq war, ballooning government spending, ethics violations and the influence of social conservatives.

A long-standing split among Kansas Republicans has deepened in recent years. One fresh sign came from the Johnson County Sun, which said it would endorse virtually the entire Democratic ticket, including Morrison and Parkinson, after endorsing fewer than a dozen Democrats in the past half-century.

‘The Republican Party has changed’
"So what in the world has happened?" publisher Steve Rose asked in a recent column. "The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally. You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore." Ron Freeman, executive director of the Kansas GOP, called the migrating candidates -- Parkinson, Morrison and seven state House candidates, including one party-switching incumbent -- "a simple case of political opportunism."

"It's really more about them than it is about the party," Freeman said. "They obviously feel the Democratic Party is weak enough that, without any history in the party, they can be front-runners in the party."

Republicans control three-quarters of the state Senate and two-thirds of the House. The state has not elected a Democratic U.S. senator since the 1930s, although voters have been more willing to put Democrats in the governor's mansion. Rep. Dennis Moore became the lone Kansas Democrat in Congress in 1998 by appealing to crossover moderates -- the heart of this year's strategy.

Democrats consider it significant that 58 GOP incumbents in the state House drew Democratic opposition this year, compared with 39 in 2004. In the September primary, moderates mobilized to carry two Board of Education seats held by conservatives who had embarrassed many Kansans by endorsing a fundamentalist-Christian critique of evolution.

The recruiter-in-chief is Sebelius, who persuaded Republican Cessna executive John E. Moore to switch parties in 2002 and run to be her lieutenant governor.

"These are people who felt banished," Sebelius said in an interview before crowing to Democratic campaign workers: "We have some remarkable conversions. My favorite kind of revival is going to a place where someone says, 'I've been a Republican all my life, and I've seen the light.' " Sebelius, who has a solid lead over Republican challenger Jim Barnett, is the daughter-in-law of a Republican former member of Congress, and she likes to say the first Republican she converted was her husband. She has shown, notably in debates over school funding and the state budget, that she can negotiate compromises acceptable to both parties. Kansas has had a balanced budget for four straight years after six years of deficits.

This year, with Moore stepping aside, Sebelius recruited Parkinson, who views himself as squarely in the mainstream, talking up fiscal responsibility and a favorable business climate. He favors embryonic stem cell research, a woman's right to choose abortion and the teaching of evolution as settled scientific theory.

It was also the governor who sold Morrison on the attorney general's race. "She said what I'd been thinking for three years," Morrison said.

In a Morrison radio ad, John Walsh of "America's Most Wanted" introduces the Johnson County district attorney as "one of the toughest prosecutors Kansas has ever seen" and names two of Morrison's best-known murder cases. Walsh asserts, in a dig at Kline, that after 26 years as a prosecutor, Morrison has the "right priorities."

Kline is a confident politician who has buoyed the Republican right and disturbed his opponents. He drafted a law restricting late-term abortion and won a recent Supreme Court case reinstating the death penalty. His most controversial moves were subpoenaing the medical records of more than 80 women and girls who received abortions in 2003 and seeking to require health workers to report the sexual activities of girls under 16.

‘Fairly moderate’
"The office has become much more political under his leadership," Morrison said in an interview in his Olathe office. Morrison says his political hero is former U.S. senator John C. Danforth, the Missourian who recently published a rebuke of the GOP that contends the national party is beholden to the Christian right.

"Most Kansas Republicans are fairly moderate," Morrison said. "They're like most Kansas Democrats."

Kline spokeswoman Sherriene Jones denied Morrison's contention that the Kansas GOP has moved too far to the right: "The Republican Party reflects Kansas values, reflects loyalty and reflects family," she said. "It's Mr. Morrison who has changed."

The Democratic National Committee is spending money and sending staff to Kansas as part of Chairman Howard Dean's much-debated 50-state strategy of extending the party's influence in unlikely places. The DNC will not reveal its spending or the size of the staff, but a spokesman said the infusion permits a statewide organizing effort not possible before.

With Sebelius and Parkinson so far ahead in the gubernatorial race, attention has shifted to the competition for attorney general, considered too close to call. As Parkinson, who describes Morrison as his best friend, puts it, "It's going to say a whole lot about what the state of Kansas is right now."

‘Temporary setback’
Whatever happens, Kansas State University political scientist Joseph A. Aistrup said, the duel between Republican moderates and conservatives will no doubt continue. He said the party switchers represent a "temporary setback" for the state GOP.

"The cultural conservatives have lost before, and they just keep on coming back," Aistrup said. "They don't pick up their marbles and go home."

2006-10-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

2006-10-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

Never Underestimate The Power of Makeup

2006-10-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

1 Man Still Locked Up From 9/11 Sweeps
By Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press Saturday 14 October 2006

>In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.

But he has been in custody for five years.

His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.

Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system.

Just this summer, it was reported that an Algerian man, Benemar "Ben" Benatta, was the last detainee, and that his transfer to Canada had closed the book on the post-9/11 sweeps.

But now The Associated Press has learned that at least one person - Partovi - is still being held. The Department of Homeland Security insists he really is the last one in custody.

"Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely," said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.

And so he remains, a curious remnant of a desperate time.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks - before it was even clear if they were over - the FBI was ordered to identify the terrorists who had managed to slip so smoothly into American society and to catch anyone who might have been working with them. The FBI operation was called PENTTBOM; it was swift and fierce, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.

When in doubt, the orders came, arrest now and ask questions later. To make this easier, law enforcement officials were authorized to use immigration charges as needed. The risk of allowing terrorists to slip away just because there wasn't ample evidence to hold them on terror charges could not be tolerated. And thus hundreds of individuals who were not terrorists, nor associated with terrorists, were temporarily taken into city, county and federal custody.

They were caught in their bedrooms while they slept, pulled from the restaurant kitchens where they worked, stopped at the border, even federal offices where they had gone to seek help. In the end, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's call for "aggressive detentions" in the unprecedented sweeps netted more than 1,200 individuals in less than two months.

The initial reaction to the sweeps was confusion. Members of Congress, leading civil rights organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, even the Justice Department's internal watchdogs, didn't know how to react.

"After 9/11, everyone was caught off guard. There was so much secrecy surrounding the government's policies that it took a number of months before the public and civil-liberties groups began unraveling what the government was doing," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

Then came demands, from Congress, from the Justice Department's Inspector General, from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and from Arab and Muslim activists, that these individuals must be accounted for.

To date that hasn't occurred.

"The fact is the United States has not come forward with information on what happened to these people, or released their names," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy organization that represents several detainees being held in Guantanamo. "Our understanding is that the majority of these people who were swept up on immigration violations were then held in detention until they were cleared of any connection to terrorism. We believe that accounts for the vast majority of people who were swept up."

Here's what is known: 762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.

Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.

There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.

As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.

"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's Gelernt.

The repercussions are still being felt, say advocates.

"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."

"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"

In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.

The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.

"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue to work toward the development of formal joint policies and approaches for the handling of such national security cases during periods of national impact," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

However, Boyd stressed that guidelines were set up in 2004 to make sure detainees' rights are being protected on a case-by-case basis.

"We learned from the past," he said. "We evaluate each situation to make sure it's being handled fairly."

Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.

"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."

When the AP wrote Ali Partovi to ask for an interview, he called collect from the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run detention center in Arizona where he is held. Adamantly, he said he did not want to be interviewed and that he wanted to remain private, even though he said understood his case files, including litigation he files himself, are part of the public record.

He later reportedly told a public affairs officer at the facility that he is too busy for an interview - perhaps preparing his many legal appeals.

In his lawsuits - there have been seven so far - Partovi claims he is a victim of civil rights abuses and demands between $5 million and $10 million in restitution. The most recent was filed in July.

The staff at the jail where he was first held "poured hot coffee on my body, they also poured cold ice water on my body," he wrote in one, claiming that staffers also cuffed his hands and feet, which caused "my ankle and lower extremities to swell abnormally."

"It is my firm belief that I am constantly subjected to physical abuse (because) of my ethnicity, I am Iranian of Persian birth," he wrote in another, filed this summer. In that lawsuit he claimed that immigration officers forced him to kneel while handcuffed, and then kicked and punched his stomach and kidneys.

"As you can imagine, this is very, very painful when you are cuffed from behind," he wrote.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney said that office was aware of the lawsuits but could not comment on them. A detention center spokesman said he was not aware of any lawsuits and could not respond.

Partovi doesn't have a lawyer, and he told the AP he doesn't want one, choosing instead to represent himself, gleaning expertise from the prison library.

He did have a lawyer once, when he was arrested in Guam in the fall of 2001, trying to enter the country on a fraudulent Italian passport.

"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport. He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal government thought he might be a terror suspect," said Curtis Charles Van de Veld, who was hired by the federal government to represent him.

Partovi was sentenced to 175 days in custody, which he had already served by the time he pleaded guilty in 2002. Then he was turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.

Until the AP contacted him, Van de Veld didn't realize his former client was still in custody.

"I'm surprised he hasn't contacted me," he said.

2006-10-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Libertarians after Washington Hospital old guard
Two challengers run against three incumbents for spots on board

It's David meets Goliath this year on the Washington Hospital Board of Directors, with two Libertarian would-be reformers — Gwen Todd and Steve Strayer — running against three incumbents.

The longest-serving board member, Michael Wallace, wants to preserve Washington's independence from chains such as Sutter, and to oversee the hospital's seismic upgrades and expansion of its emergency room, 40 percent of which is being paid for by a $190 million bond voters approved in 2004.

The vice chairman of Fremont Bank, Wallace would focus on keeping the hospital competitive financially by attracting patients with cutting-edge medical techniques.

That would allow Washington to generate funds to offset the money it loses on treating uninsured patients and through sinking Medicare reimbursement rates, said Wallace, who was first elected 16 years ago.

Likewise, incumbent Bernard Stewart supports keeping the hospital financially strong and independent, making sure the bond construction projects are completed on time and within budget, and providing state-of-the-art medical care.

Washington's ability to remain profitable while many other hospitals in the state are losing money is a result of good management, said Stewart, elected to the board in 2002. He said he would look for alternative sources of funding to deal with the declining Medicare and Medi-Cal reimbursement rates.

"It is a tremendous challenge," he said.

Jacob Eapen, thenewest board member, wants to improve access to health care and transparency of government, and to promote public health issues. The Fremont resident favors expanding health care for the uninsured.

"People sensitive to these issues have to be at the helm, or they will only get worse," said Eapen, elected to the board in 2004.

Challenger Todd, a Fremont office manager and political novice, acknowledges that her chances are slim.

However, Todd is determined to be a public advocate because "one of the most important issues facing us is our health care," she said.

Having been uninsured herself, Todd said she wants an insider's perspective on the health care system to find out why it is not providing adequate help to the public.

"In order for a society to be healthy, individuals must be healthy," she said.

Her fellow Libertarian Party member, Strayer, decided to run for a board seat to make the hospital accountable to the public.

Strayer said he would actively seek out people who have had a bad experience at Washington and try to keep such things from happening again.

"Few people want to hear about problems, but I do," he said. However, he would reject a universal health care plan, he said, calling the concern for the rising number of uninsured Americans "overblown."

Strayer said the strongest quality he would bring to the board is common sense.

"I would ask how something benefits customers," he said. "I want to make this hospital function for the people."

Washington Hospital Board of Directors

Jacob Eapen
Age: 54
City of residence: Fremont

Education: Master's degree in public health, University of California, Berkeley; residency at Stanford University

Background: Pediatrician, Alameda County Health Services; public health commissioner, Alameda County; adviser to "Every Child Counts" Commission, Alameda County; elected to the board of the Association of California Healthcare Districts.

Position: Improve access to health care; invest in preventative health care through outreach and education; reduce disparities in the rates of immunization, obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

Bernard L. Stewart
Age: 64
City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree, San Jose State University; Doctor of Dental Surgery, Northwestern University Dental School

Background: Private dentistry practice in Fremont

Position: Keep the hospital financially strong and independent; make sure the bond construction projects are completed on time and within budget; and provide state-of-the-art medical care.

Steve Strayer
Age: 63

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, University of Kansas

Background: Engineering consultant

Position: Favors the interests of taxpayers and patients above the medical establishment; seeks feedback from patients who have experienced problems while seeking care at Washington.

*Gwen Todd
Age: 49

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Theater studies, Marietta College, Ohio

Background: Office manager, Realty World-Viking Realty

Position: Increase transparency of governance; be a public advocate for patients; direct resources to benefit the community.

Michael Wallace
Age: 58

City of residence: Fremont

Education: Bachelor's degree, Ohio State University; master of business administration, University of Santa Clara

Background: Vice chairman, Fremont Bank

Position: Safeguarding hospital independence; rebuilding Washington Hospital to comply with new, strict California seismic standards.

Source: The Argus

2006-10-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

U.S. Says Blacks in Mississippi Suppress White Vote

Kate Medley for The New York Times

Ike Brown, chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Noxubee County, Miss., faces a federal suit.

MACON, Miss., Oct. 5 — The Justice Department has chosen this no-stoplight, courthouse town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.

Kate Medley for The New York Times

Roderick Walker, county prosecutor, says the lawsuit is about “fair play.”

The action represents a sharp shift, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is charging blacks with voting fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks’ right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.

The Justice Department’s main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles to the southwest. Mr. Brown, tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating — with the help of others — “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians — ones supported by Mr. Brown, that is — in office.

To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.

Mr. Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in supporting documents of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.

To run against the county prosecutor — one of two white officeholders in Noxubee — Mr. Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to the supporting documents, who never even bothered to turn on the gas or electricity at his rented apartment. That candidate was disqualified.Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population here, are circumspect when discussing Mr. Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county.

Still, many whites said privately they welcomed the Justice Department’s lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.

“In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play,” said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Mr. Brown tried to oust, in 2003. “They were doing something wrong.”

Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, the white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. “There’s a lot of voting irregularities, but that’s all I’m going to say,” one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.

The Justice Department’s voting rights expert is less reserved. “Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them,” the expert, Theodore S. Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.

Mr. Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse, but that is where he casually greets visitors, in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, “when I was in Maxwell prison in ’95 and ’96, the show went right on,” he said.

There are so few whites in the county, Mr. Brown suggests, that the tactics he is accused of are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.

“They can’t win anyway unless we choose to vote for them,” he said with a smile. “If I was doing something wrong — that’s like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone.”

He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of whites who feel disenfranchised, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots, or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. “I wouldn’t sign my name,” Mr. Brown said.

But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit, and wants to force Mr. Brown to agree to the same cease-and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.

The state’s Democratic establishment has hardly rallied around Mr. Brown; privately some Democrats here express disdain for his tactics. Instead, he is being defended by a maverick Republican lawyer who sees the suit as an example of undue interference in the affairs of a political party.

“To do what they want to do, they would virtually have to take over the Democratic Party,” said the lawyer, Wilbur Colom, adding that Mr. Brown’s notoriety had made him the focus of the investigation. “I believe they were under so much pressure because of Ike’s very sophisticated election operation. He is a Karl Rove genius on the Noxubee County level.”

In Jackson, though, a leading light in Mr. Brown’s own party, Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark, a longtime moderate in state politics, refused to endorse him.

“Anybody who tries to prevent people from voting is breaking the law,” Mr. Clark said. “I certainly suspect some of that has been going on.”

Back in Macon, in the shadow of the courthouse green’s standard-issue Confederate monument, Mr. Brown spoke of history: “They had their way all the time. They no longer have their way. That’s what it’s all about.” The case is “all about politics,” he said, “all about them trying to keep me from picking the lock.”

But Mr. Walker, the county prosecutor, insisted the past had nothing to do with the case against Mr. Brown. “I wouldn’t sit here and pretend black people haven’t been mistreated,” he said. “I hate what happened in the past. But I can’t do anything about it.”

Source

2006-10-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

Condi Rice: More Sordid Than Foley

They are such liars. And no, I am not speaking only of the dissembling GOP House leaders led by Speaker Dennis Hastert who, out of naked political calculation, covered up for one of their own in the sordid teen stalking case of Rep. Mark Foley.

Call me old school, but I am still more concerned with the Republicans molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to be guarding the nation's security, an assignment that they have totally botched. The news about the Foley cover-up, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation.

On Monday, a State Department spokesman conceded that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had indeed been briefed in July 2001 by George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, about the alarming potential for an al-Qaida attack, as Bob Woodward has reported in his aptly named new book, "State of Denial."

"I don't remember a so-called emergency meeting," Rice had said only hours earlier, apparently still suffering from some sort of post-9/11 amnesia that seemed to afflict her during her forced testimony to the 9/11 commission. The omission of this meeting from the final commission report is another example of how the Bush administration undermined the bipartisan investigation that the president had tried to prevent.

Surely lying under oath in what was arguably the most important official investigation in the nation's history should be treated more seriously than the evasiveness in the Paula Jones case that got President Bill Clinton impeached. Nor is it just Rice who should be challenged, for Tenet seems to have provided Woodward with details concerning the administration's indifference to the terrorist threat that he did not share with the 9/11 commission.

In his book, Woodward described an encounter between Rice and Tenet, in a near panic about a rising flood of intelligence warnings just presented to him by top aide Cofer Black. Tenet forced an unscheduled meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, because he wanted the Bush administration to take action immediately against al-Qaida to disrupt a possible domestic attack.

"Tenet ... decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately. Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away," Woodward reports. "He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action." A mountain of evidence proves that the Bush administration did nothing of the sort.

Now, if Rice truly does not remember that now-confirmed meeting -- which was apparently first reported in the Aug. 4, 2002, issue of Time magazine in an article titled "Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?" -- wouldn't that indicate she didn't take it that seriously? Not remembering confirms her inattention to terror reports at a time the Bush administration was already fixated on "regime change" in Iraq.

Rice is famously sharp and has an awesome memory. Considering the trauma of 9/11 and its effects, it is inconceivable that Rice would not recall such an ominous and prescient briefing by Tenet and Black, especially after the 9/11 commission forced her to document and review her actions in those crucial months.

It is, however, as she stated Monday, "incomprehensible" that she, then the national security advisor to the president and the person most clearly charged with sounding the alarm, would have ignored the threat. But ignore it the administration did, and then later tried to lay the blame on the Clinton administration, which, Rice claimed at the 9/11 commission hearings, lied when it said it had given the incoming White House team an action plan for fighting al-Qaida.

"We were not presented with a plan," Rice infamously argued under questioning from former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., but instead were given a memo with "a series of actionable items" describing how to tackle al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Such weaseling would be funny if the topic were not so serious. But there is no way Rice can squirm out of this one, despite her impressive track record of calculated distortion on everything from Iraq's nonexistent WMDs to the trumped-up ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Can there be any better case for turning over control of at least one branch of Congress to the opposition party so that we might finally have hearings to learn the truth of this matter, which is far more important, and sordid, than the Foley affair?

2006-10-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Only Way to the Truth---Torture Hastert

Is there anything worse, in the minds of most Americans than being a sexual predator to underage kids? Why it's right up there with rape and murder. Finding out who in Congress knew about Foley, when did they know it, and why didn't they do anything about it is as important to the nation as finding out who was behind 9/11.

Are our children worth less?

There's only one way to get this information. Send Foley, Hastert, Boehner, and the rest of them to Guantanamo and torture the information out of them.

I mean, that's this administration's policy, isn't it? Why restrict it to Muslims? Why not just expand it to all involved in anti-social activities, especially one as serious as this.

That we'd have to build a double-wide waterboard for Hastert is beside the point.

Habeas Corpus? Pfaff! If President Bush can waive it for Muslims, he can waive it for those who prey on our children, right?

It's the policy of the administration that Bush has the power to choose whom to torture. It's only logical thing to do, and the only way to get the truth out of these Republican Congressional leaders.

Living by the sword makes for tough payback.

Source

2006-10-05T11:59:00.000-07:00

In Bill’s Fine Print, Millions to Celebrate Victory

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — Even as the Bush administration urges Americans to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans in Congress have put down a quiet marker in the apparent hope that V-I Day might be only months away.

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital “for commemoration of success” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

Now Congressional Republicans are saying, in effect, maybe next year. A paragraph written into spending legislation and approved by the Senate and House allows the $20 million to be rolled over into 2007.

The original legislation empowered the president to designate “a day of celebration” to commemorate the success of the armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to “issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

The celebration would honor the soldiers, sailors, air crews and marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it would be held in Washington, with the $20 million to cover the costs of military participation.

Democrats called attention to the measure, an act that Republicans are likely to portray as an effort to embarrass them five weeks before the midterm election. The Democrats said both the original language and the extension were pushed by Senate Republicans. A spokesman for the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee said it was protocol not to identify sponsors of such specific legislation.

The overall legislation was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent and overwhelmingly in the House after a short debate.

Democrats nevertheless said they were not pleased.

“If the Bush administration had spent more time planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq, and less time planning ‘mission accomplished’ victory celebrations, America would be closer to finishing the job in Iraq,” said Rebecca M. Kirszner, communications director for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Pentagon spokesman, said late Tuesday that the event was envisioned as an opportunity for “honoring returning U.S. forces at the conclusion” of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. “As the funds were not used in F.Y. 2006,” the official said, using the initials for fiscal year, “the authorization was rolled over into F.Y. 2007.”

Source: NY Times

2006-10-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Voter group sues Alameda County over new voting system

Three Alameda County voters filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court Wednesday afternoon against the county and its registrar of voters office, over concerns about security and accuracy of the county's new voting system.

The group of voters -- being coordinated by the nonprofit Voter Action organization -- claims Alameda County has not performed independent, expert security vulnerability testing on its new Sequoia voting equipment. The group claims such testing was a prerequisite stipulated by county supervisors before the county would issue payment for the system.

Dave Macdonald, the county's acting registrar, said the county did in fact hire an independent third party to perform vulnerability tests, and those test results will be shown to the supervisors during a public meeting Oct. 10. He called the results "very positive."

"I would challenge anyone to find another county that is going to the lengths we are to ensure the security of our voting system," said Macdonald, adding the county also has yet to start payment for the new system.

In June, Alameda County supervisors approved the purchase of the new Sequoia voting system, which consists mainly of paper ballots that will be scanned electronically as well as 1,000 touch-screen machines.

The handful of voters suing claim the county and registrar, however, did not abide by the county supervisors' decision to test the equipment before purchase. This group contends the county entered into a contract with Sequoia that calls for the company to decide which tests to conduct, and does not stipulate that the testing be done by a third party.

Alameda County Counsel Richard Winnie said that allegation is incorrect, and the contract does not call for Sequoia to decide testing parameters. Winnie added the county has indeed performed its own third-party testing and is anticipating sending payment to Sequoia only after this November results have been certified and the county judges the equipment satisfactory.

Robert Friese, attorney for the trio of plaintiffs, said he does not believe the county and the registrar of voters have performed any testing. If they have, Friese said, that testing has not been done to an acceptable level. He added that he would like the independent, third-party tester to be observed by another impartial referee during the testing to verify the results.

"We are seeking these measures to make sure whoever receives the most votes in a given election in Alameda County is declared the winner," Friese said.

In March, Voter Action sued 18 counties, including Alameda, and the state for allowing touch-screen machines built by the Texas-based Diebold Election Systems to be used in elections. That lawsuit has since been dismissed.

The county's supervisors agreed to purchase the new Sequoia system after having problems with its Diebold machines, purchased in 2001. Those problems included once assigning votes to the wrong candidate.

Diebold eventually agreed in 2004 to pay the state and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to the county.

Source

2006-10-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote

October 03, 2006 1:22 PM

Brian Ross and Maddy Sauer Report:

Former Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) interrupted a vote on the floor of the House in 2003 to engage in Internet sex with a high school student who had served as a congressional page, according to new Internet instant messages provided to ABC News by former pages.

ABC News now has obtained 52 separate instant message exchanges, which former pages say were sent by Foley, using the screen name Maf54, to two different boys under the age of 18.

This message was dated April 2003, at approximately 7 p.m., according to the message time stamp.

Maf54: I miss you
Teen: ya me too
Maf54: we are still voting
Maf54: you miss me too

The exchange continues in which Foley and the teen both appear to describe having sexual orgasms.

Maf54: ok..i better go vote..did you know you would have this effect on me
Teen: lol I guessed
Teen: ya go vote…I don't want to keep you from doing our job
Maf54: can I have a good kiss goodnight
Teen: :-*
Teen:

The House voted that evening on HR 1559, Emergency War Time supplemental appropriations.

According to another message, Foley also invites the teen and a friend to come to his house near Capitol Hill so they can drink alcohol.

Teen: are you going to be in town over the veterans day weekend
Maf54: I may be now that your coming
Maf54: who you coming to visit
Teen: haha good stuff
Teen: umm no one really

Maf54: we will be adjourned ny then
Teen: oh good
Maf54: by
Maf54: then we can have a few drinks
Maf54: lol
Teen: yes yes ;-)
Maf54: your not old enough to drink
Teen: shhh…
Maf54: ok
Teen: that's not what my ID says
Teen: lol
Maf54: ok
Teen: I probably shouldn't be telling you that huh
Maf54: we may need to drink at my house so we don't get busted

Source: The Blotter

2006-09-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

Sherwood Ross: George Bush vs. Gospel of Matthew

George Bush vs. the Gospel of Matthew

By Sherwood Ross

According to the gospel of Matthew, it came to pass that Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, “ Do you not hear all this evidence that is brought against you?” for even in those days of rudimentary justice a man had the right to hear the charges of his accusers. Yet two thousand years later, under a bill urged by President Bush, a compliant Congress may agree to allow a prisoner of war to be tried without hearing all the evidence against him, some being held back in the name of “national security.” For what is more important, the life of one individual or the security of the State? Every totalitarian regime knows the answer to that. And so prisoners may be put to death, perhaps on false charges, without even knowing what wrong they are accused of.

According to the gospel of Matthew, not long before his trial and while journeying to Jerusalem, Jesus took his disciples aside and told them he would be arrested in the city where he would be handed over to a foreign power, to be tried and crucified. And so, too, today, there are more than 400 captives in Guantanamo prison, removed from their homeland by a foreign power in defiance of Geneva, men who have been made to suffer for years in a strange land half a world away from their homes and families, without being charged, without a lawyer, without trial, every one of the uncharged denied due process and thus every one of them innocent. And others, even more unfortunate, have been abducted by the CIA against international law, handed over to a foreign power to be imprisoned, tortured, and, in some cases, crucified, with no trial, and the new bill urged by Mr. Bush allows the CIA to continue its practices.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus extolled those who showed mercy, saying, “ when I was naked ye clothed me; when I was ill ye came to my help, and when I was in prison ye visited me.” By some strange reversal of New Testament teaching, in the same way as Jesus was stripped of his clothing, captives in U.S. prisons have been stripped of theirs and confined naked in rooms of extreme temperature or threatened by dogs or stacked naked in human pyramids or mocked and scorned or sexually abused or beaten. Such actions, contradicting the words of Jesus, “ That which ye do to the least of my brethren ye do also to me,” violate Common Article 3 of Geneva that forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

As for being visited in prison, many a captive in U.S. custody, such as those in the CIA compound in Kabul, has been denied visits by the International Red Cross, and some have been held incognito, as the “ghost” prisoners of Guantanamo, whose names are not even carried on the prison rolls, also a violation of Geneva. Nor do their families have the opportunity to visit them, a privilege that was commonly afforded even in the days of primitive justice in the time of Jesus, who saw prison visits as a blessing.

But what is international law to President Bush, who reportedly told aides, “the Constitution is just a damn scrap of paper”? By contrast, Jesus said, “ If any man therefore sets aside even the least of the Law’s demands, and teaches others to do the same, he will have the lowest place in the kingdom of Heaven..”

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus went up to the hills, and “When he was seated there, crowds flocked to him, bringing with them the lame, blind, dumb, and crippled, and many other sufferers…and he healed them…and they gave praise to the God of Israel.”

Only in Bush’s prisons, the sighted are put in darkness for days at a time, whole men are beaten until they are crippled, and sane men are driven mad and to suicide. Recall the words of Matthew: “They (the chief priests) put him in chains and led him away, to hand him over to Pilate, the Roman Governor.” Today, in America’s prisons, men are being chained in stress positions for days at a time or hung by chains suspended from the ceiling for a week or longer.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, “ Do not murder,” an injunction not followed by the Bush White House, as more than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody, likely every one of them murdered, and several admittedly murdered by their handlers. As for following the Lord’s injunction, “ anyone who commits murder must be brought to judgment,” not one administration official in an executive position responsible for shaping the brutal torture policy has been put on trial.

According to the gospel of Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “ How blest are those who show mercy; mercy shall be shown to them.” Yet, the world sees none of it from the White House. Mercy, a gift within the reach of all humanity, is also within the grasp of President Bush and a Congress that appears liable to codify his inhumane bill on the trial and treatment of prisoners. Any member of Congress who votes “aye” will be guilty of condoning torture and subject to prosecution under international law. Equally despicable, any member of Congress who approves the bill will be voting in defiance of the highest moral law ever preached on this planet.

The president’s biographers write he is a regular reader of the Bible. If so, he must be reading the King George version.

*************(Sherwood Ross writes for newspapers and magazines. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

Source

2006-09-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

::snerk, snerk::

2006-09-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new US Police State!

WHAT DOES HR 4844 DO? The votes

What HR 4844 does is require "government-issued, current and valid photo identification
for which the individual was required to provide proof of United States citizenship as a condition
for the issuance of the identification" -- this is quoting from the text of the bill.
Drivers licenses do not fit this definition because proof of citizenship is not required to obtain a driver's license (there are three states that DO require proof of citizenship but the majority do not).
The only existing document that fits this definition is a passport. In order to get a passport
you need to obatin your state issued birth certification (not a hopsital version). There are
fees connected to getting your birth certificate. Married women might need to provide copies of their marriage license to document their name change (another cost and more hassle).

All this just to be given a ballot in order to vote. Not to register to vote but to cast a ballot.
HR 4844 is an add-on to the "Real ID" bill that was tacked on to the Defense Appropriations bill last year. It is part of a strategic plan to track U.S. citizens in all aspects of their lives. The Hyde bill has been lurking since April, ready to be sprung in time for election year grandstanding.

Text of Bill visit THOMAS and search on "Federal Election Integrity" HR 4844

Getting a passport where I live takes 30-40 days but can expediated for a fee of $35 in addition to the original cost ($30 in 2002), the cost of two-away overnight postage (I ship a lot so I know it would be around $15 each way.) and the cost of the photo (place in the mall does it for $15).

You will need a birth certificate. For me, the cost is $19 and takes around 6 weeks. AFTER you have proven you are who you say you are. In California, where my current husband was born, you have to have notarized documents proving your identity.

As a married woman, I could be required to establish my name changes. At three marriages and two divorces, I will need to come up with two marriage licenses (One "disappeared" while being copied by Social Services about 15 years ago and I might have burned one of them okay.) and divorce papers. THAT I can do. I think I framed the first one. I have yet to figure out how I go about get a copy of the marriage license from Ohio. Talk about a pain in the butt website. So let's just put it at $10 each and at least 4 weeks to obtain.

Those documents would establish I am who I say I am. Here's the list of what it would cost me to vote.

Birth Certificate 6 weeks $19.00
Marriage License 4 weeks $10.00
Marriage License 4 weeks $10.00
Divorce Papers Have .00
Total for docs: $39.00

Passport app 30-40 days $30.00
Expediated 7-10 days $35.00
Photo $15.00
Shipping $30.00
Total admin costs: $110.00

So I'm seeing 8 weeks and $149 to be allowed to vote. IF I start NOW. Imagine how much price gouging will go on if this becomes law and everyone MUST have these documents?

Anyone else have a problem with this?

2006-09-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

Help defeat the Public Expression of Religion Act

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on a bill that makes a stealth attack on the First Amendment. The Public Expression of Religion Act [H.R. 2679], introduced by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN) would prevent plaintiffs who sue over First Amendment Establishment Clause issues from recovering their litigation fees. This is brazenly designed to make it next to impossible for private citizens to sue to protect their First Amendment rights as federal court litigation and lawyers' fees are prohibitively expensive. Marci Hamilton at Findlaw writes:

"Obviously, the religion Hostettler and the other PERA supporters intend to establish is Christianity. Once again, a majority wants to water down disestablishment principles to squelch a minority. (As of 2001, about 80% of Americans identified as Christian, though that encompasses many denominations, while only a little more than 5% identified themselves as believers in other religions. About 15% identified themselves as atheist, agnostic, or having no religion.)
In other words, these Representatives want to cement the establishment of their own religion - already commanding the belief of a supermajority of Americans — as dominant via the force of the government, and the force of law. This is an old story, and it puts these representatives in a light that makes them look very much like the Puritans at the time of the Constitution's Framing who expelled dissenting religious believers (like Baptists and Quakers), because they did not believe what the established church required.
To be blunt, this is yet another bill pandering to the Christian religious right, who persistently but misguidedly insist that the separation of church and state is anti-Christian. That, of course, is historical revisionism at its worst. As I explained in a previous column, the disestablishment principles embodied in modern Establishment Clause cases were derived from the principles of a variety of Christian organizations. So to argue that the separation of church and state is hostile to Christianity is to say Christianity is hostile to itself - an argument ad absurdum, to say the least."

If you want your fellow Americans to be able to continue to vigorously defend their rights to practice the religion of their own choice, or to practice no religion at all, then write to your Congressional Representatives today. Our friends at the Council For Secular Humanism have made it easy to e-mail them, but I suggest you call as well. If you don't know who your Representative is, you can quickly find out by using this page at the U.S. House of Representatives website.

Source

2006-09-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you, congress critters, for seeing to it our men and women aren't safe while they defend us!

See how YOUR congress critter voted.

2006-09-13T06:18:00.001-07:00

I made the decision to write “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” while gardening at a community farm in Montana during the summer of 2005. I had come to Montana to prototype Solari Investor Circles, private investment partnerships that practice financial intimacy — investing in people and products that we or our network know and trust. If we want clean water, fresh food, sustainable infrastructure, sound banks, lawful companies and healthy communities, we are going to have to finance and govern these resources ourselves. We cannot invest in the stocks and bonds of large corporations and governments that are harming our food, water, environment and all living things and then expect these resources to be available when we need them. Nor can we deposit and do business with the banks that are bankrupting our government and economy.

Surviving and thriving as a free people depends on creating and transacting with currencies and investments other than those printed and manipulated by Wall Street and Washington to the eventual end of our rights and assets.

What I found in Montana, however, was what I have found in communities all across America. We are so financially entangled in the federal government and large corporations that we cannot see our complicity in everything we say we abhor. Our social networks are so interwoven with the institutional leadership — government officials, bankers, lawyers, professors, foundation heads, corporate executives, investors, fellow alumni — that we dare not hold our own families, friends, colleagues and neighbors accountable for our very real financial and operational complicity. While we hate "the system," we keep honoring and supporting the people and institutions that are implementing the system when we interact and transact with them in our day-to-day lives. Enjoying the financial benefits and other perks that come from that intimate support ensures our continued complicity and contribution to fueling that which we say we hate.

Sitting in the rich dirt among the beautiful vegetables and flowers, I was facing the futility of trying to craft solutions without some basic consensus about the economic tapeworm that is killing us and all living things — while we blindly feed the worm. In a world of economic warfare, we have to see the strategy behind each play in the game. We have to see the economic tapeworm and how it works parasitically in our lives. A tapeworm injects chemicals into a host that causes the host to crave what is good for the tapeworm. In America, we despair over our deterioration, but we crave the next injection of chemicals from the tapeworm.

With this in mind, I decided to write “Dillon Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” as a case study designed to help illuminate the deeper system. It details the story of two teams with two competing visions for America. The first was a vision shared by my old firm on Wall Street — Dillon Read — and the Clinton Administration with the full support of a bipartisan Congress. In this vision, America's aristocracy makes money by ensnaring our youth in a pincer movement of drugs and prisons and wins middle class support for these policies through a steady and growing stream of government funding, contracts for War on Drugs activities at federal, state and local levels and related stock profits. This consensus is made all the more powerful by the gush of growing debt used to bubble the housing and mortgage markets and manipulate the stock, gold and precious metals markets in the largest pump and dump in history — the pump and dump of the entire American economy. This is more than a process designed to wipe out the middle class. This is genocide — a much more subtle and lethal version than ever before perpetrated by the scoundrels of our history texts.

The second vision was shared by my investment bank in Washington — The Hamilton Securities Group — and a small group of excellent government employees and leaders who believed in the power of education, hard work and a new partnership between people, land and technology. This vision would allow us to pay down public and private debt and create new business, infrastructure and equity. We believed that new times and new technologies called for a revival that would permit decentralized efforts to go to work on the hard challenges upon us — population, environment, resource management and the rapidly growing cultural gap between the most technologically proficient and the majority of people.

My hope is that “Dillon, Read & the Aristocracy of Prison Profits” will help you to see the game sufficiently to recognize the dividing line between two visions. One centralizes power and knowledge in a manner that tears down communities and infrastructure as it dominates wealth and shrinks freedom. The other diversifies power and knowledge to create new wealth through rebuilding infrastructure and communities and nourishing our natural resources in a way that reaffirms our ancient and deepest dream of freedom.

My hope is that as your powers grow to see the financial game and the true dividing lines, you will be better able to build networks of authentic people inventing authentic solutions to the real challenges we face. My hope is that you will no longer invite into your lives and work the people and organizations that sabotage real change. If enough of us come clean and hold true to the intention to transform the game, we invite in the magic that comes in dangerous times.

Yes, there is a better way and, yes, we can create it.

Source

2006-09-12T13:09:00.000-07:00

2006-09-07T17:16:00.001-07:00

Government, Industry To Use Computer Microphones To Spy On 150 Million Americans
Invasive surveillance and advertising obliterates even Minority Report style technology

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | September 6 2006

Private industry and eventually government is planning to use microphones in the computers of an estimated 150 million-plus Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance and minority report style invasive advertising and data mining.

Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific American, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the late 1990's and these originally dormant devices were planned to be activated when the invasive advertising revolution arrived - 2006 marks that date.

The advent of digital video recording devices such as TiVo (Sky Plus in the UK) introduced the creation of psychological algorithm profiles - databases on what programs you watched, how long you watched them for, which adverts you liked or didn't like. This information was retained by TiVo and sold to the highest bidders - an example being Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the 2003 Super Bowl half-time show - TiVo were able to compile lists of how many people had rewound the clip and how many times they had replayed it.

Two way communications systems like OnStar also have the ability to tap into private conversations as Americans become increasingly conditioned, by means of the private sector, to having their every movement, web session and conversation tracked and catalogued by big brother.

Each time a new flash application requests permission to run on newer computers, you will notice that a privacy setting box pops up asking if the particular website you are surfing can access your microphone and webcam. Though the webcam is external, the microphone is internal and is a standard feature of all new models.

Now Google have gone a step further by announcing that they will use in-built microphones to listen in on user's background noise, be it television, music or radio - and then direct advertising at them based on their preferences.

"The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject," reports the Register .

Since at least 150 million Americans are Internet-active they will all be potential targets for secret surveillance and the subsequent sell-off of all their information to unscrupulous data mining corporations and government agencies.

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.

"Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage."

The American public has already been brainwashed into thinking that having snooping software record their private phone conversations on behalf of the government is to protect them from terrorists and the Google program is just an entree to the expansion of these 1984 style technologies.

The Bush administration has sold its warrantless NSA spying agenda as the "terrorist surveillance program," and has used its Neo-Con mouthpiece media organs to argue the insanity of "not listening in to Osama bin Laden when he calls the US," despite the fact that Al-Qaeda stopped using phones years before 9/11 when it was publicized that all bin Laden's calls were routinely intercepted anyway.

NSA spying on Americans was spun as a necessary reaction to 9/11 and yet it had been taking place for at least a decade before.

Firstly, the Echelon program has collected information in violation of the 4th Amendment from American citizen's phone calls since th e early 90's at least. In addition, a 2001 European Parliament report stated that "within Europe all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted" by the NSA.

The fact that Echelon barely even merited a mention during the recent furore created by the original USA Today NSA spying piece goes to show how utterly useless our media are in recalling what has already been admitted and proven.

In 1999 the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to "every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission."

"As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security," said Bill Blick, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security and the man who oversaw the Australian government's intelligence apparatus.

A large sector of Echelon is dedicated to industrial espionage. For example, in November 1999 the BBC reported that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.

Google's ceaseless drive to dominate Microsoft and reap untold profits has come at the expense of privacy as the company jettison's its "don't be evil" mandate and merges itself into a proxy NSA outfit, creating all the tools necessary for the state to suffocate its subjects under an inescapable high-tech panopticon control grid.

2006-09-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

The myth of fair elections in America

The debacle surrounding the Republican victory in 2000 demonstrated to the world that America's electoral process is wide open to abuse. But as Paul Harris discovers, the system has actually worsened since then

Thursday September 7, 2006
Observer.co.uk

One person, one vote. Count the totals. The one with the most wins. The beauty of democracy is its simplicity and its inherent fairness. It equalises everyone, even as it empowers everyone. What could go wrong? In America, it turns out, quite a lot.

Everyone remembers the debacle in Florida, 2000. The recounts, the law suits and the eventual deciding of a presidential election - not by the voters - but by the Supreme Court. The memory still causes a collective shudder to America's body politic.

Which makes the fact that America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before so utterly shocking. Across the country a bewildering series of scandals or dubious practises are proliferating beyond control. The prospect of a 'second Florida' is now more likely not less. There are many - and not all of them are conspiracy theorists - who believed it may have happened in Ohio in 2004.

This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. The Times is editorialising on a shocking government report into electoral rules in Ohio's biggest county, Cuyahoga, which contains the city of Cleveland. It details a litany of errors and a large discrepancy between the paper record of a ballot and the result recorded by the new Diebold electronic voting machines the county has just installed. It also worried that 31 per cent of black people were asked for identification as they voted compared to 18 per cent of other voters. '[The] report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide,' the paper thundered.

But Ohio is far from isolated. The problem is simply that America has no national standard for tallying the votes in its elections. Apart from a few federal mandates to safeguard broad constitutional rights, it is left up to local officials to sort out the details on the ground. This means in one state a machine might be used. In others a simple paper ballot and a pen. Or it varies from county to county. In one small town a touch screen machine might be on hand, a few miles away other voters might use a punch ballot and in the next county after that you might use a pen. Or pull a lever. Or countless other complex ways to do what should be so, so simple. It also means in one place there is a solid (paper) record of a vote that can be recounted, while in others, it is all down to famously fallible machines and their electronic memories.

In some places you can't vote if you have a prison record. In others, you can. In some states you need identification to vote. In others you don't. In some a drivers' licence will be enough, in others it won't. All this is fundamentally a violation of the basic genius of democracy: it should be simple and uniform. In America that is simply not true.

Then there is another layer of trouble. Because elections are organised locally they are often run and controlled by state office holders or county level election supervisors. Often these officials are nakedly partisan and all too willing to use the power of that office to favour one party over another. Their county or state is, after all, their patch of turf and they seek to protect it for their side.

Then you add a large dose of dirty tricks that are again all too common at a local level in US politics. Forget Ohio or Florida. Just look at Milwaukee where mysterious fliers appeared in 2004 in a black neighbourhood informing residents that all felons and their relatives - even those guilty of traffic violations - could not vote. Or an election in New Hampshire in 2002 where senior state Republicans hired a firm to jam the Democrats phone bank system. Three people are now in jail due to that little escapade. Similar examples of other abuses can be found all over the country.

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that there is a cunning secret plan, set out in detail beforehand and then masterfully carried out to deliberately steal presidential elections. In fact, you don't actually need a shadowy plot to get much the same effect.

There is little doubt that at a grassroots level America's election is in disarray and being abused. And at a time of narrow election victories where presidential races come down to a single state (Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004) a microscope is instantly cast on that state's electoral practises. And lo, they are found wanting. Or open to fraud. Or being abused. Or local groups (from both sides) are going hell for leather to keep the other side from the polls. This is not because this is being planned out of Washington and targeted into those key states. It is because it is actually happening all over the country. We just notice because it has come down to the wire at that particular state.

You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be seriously worried about this state of affairs. In many ways, it is more worrying that the system is not being deliberately stolen from on high. It is actually broken from the ground up.

Source

2006-09-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

Press secretary to the president of Pakistan tells ABC Osama bin Laden will not be captured if he agrees to live 'peaceful life'

Ron Brynaert
Published: Tuesday September 5, 2006

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Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, tells ABC News that -- if found -- Osama bin Laden won't be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a "peaceful citizen."

"If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden 'would not be taken into custody,' Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, 'as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen," report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC's blog, The Blotter.

"No, as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody," said Khan. "One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity."

"The surprising announcement comes as Pakistani army officials announced they were pulling their troops out of the North Waziristan region as part of a 'peace deal' with the Taliban," reports ABC.

Pakistan will also be returning many Taliban prisoners and seized weapons.

According to VOA, "security experts say Afghan insurgents and remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network have managed to establish several bases in the region."

Earlier today, President Bush cited Pakistan's help in working together "to stop the world's most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons," in a speech on the global war on terror he gave in Washington, D.C. to the Military Officers Association of America.

"Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the AQ Khan network," Bush had said. "This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons."

The president also said that "we're working with friends and allies to deny the terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world."

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, famously known as the "father of Pakistan's nuclear program," was dismissed from his position as Science Adviser to President Musharraf in January of 2004 but was never arrested. A month later, after apologizing to the nation on television, Musharraf pardoned A.Q. Khan.

Reports of al Qaeda in Pakistan

It has recently been reported that al Qaeda's production company, As Sahab, is based in Pakistan.

"Five years after 9/11, Pakistan appears to have replaced Afghanistan as the group's center of gravity," reported CNN. "Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are widely believed to be in the more remote parts of this country."

"Waziristan is one of the places where bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are thought to have hidden out and where As Sahab produces its work," wrote Henry Schuster for CNN.

Two-and-a-half years ago, after reports surfaced that al-Zawahiri had been "captured or killed" in Pakistan, Shaukat Sultan Khan, then spokesman for the Army, said that nobody could "be confident" about such news.

"It can't be said with certainty who is here and who is not here," said Shaukat Sultan Khan in March of 2004.

ABC'S Report

"In effect, the Pakistani government said today as long as bin Laden and the Taliban promise to behave they can stay in Pakistan and will not be taken into custody," reported Brian Ross on ABC's broadcast Tuesday evening.

ABC noted that the deal with Taliban militants "comes just six months after President Bush said Pakistani President Musharraf was committed to victory against terrorists."

"Mr. President and I reaffirmed our shared commitment to a broad and lasting strategic partnership," Bush had said in a joint press conference with Musharraf held during his March visit to Pakistan. "And that partnership begins with close cooperation in the war on terror."

In that press conference, a reporter asked the president if the United States was "getting the access and the help that it needs to go after al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden."

"The best way to defeat al Qaeda is to find -- is to share good intelligence to locate them, and then to be prepared to bring them to justice," Bush had said.

News that Pakistan will "in effect" leave Osama bin Laden alone if he behaves "peacefully" in the region is certain to cause a stir less than a week before the five-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Democrats, as well as many Republicans, may characterize Pakistan's stance as going against President Bush's 2001 declaration that nations which harbor terrorists should be considered "hostile."

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make," Bush told the world on September 20, 2001. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime," Bush had declared.

After Bush's speech today, Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee, accused the president of losing "focus" on the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

"Because President Bush lost focus on the killers who attacked us and instead launched a disastrous war in Iraq, today Osama bin Laden and his henchmen still find sanctuary in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they still plot attacks against America," said Kerry.

Early Wednesday morning, ABC reported that Pakistan was now denying "it would allow Osama bin Laden to avoid capture under terms of a peace agreement it signed with Taliban leaders in the country's North Waziristan area," and that the Pakistani military spokesman had been "grossly misquoted."

"'If he is in Pakistan, today or any time later, he will be taken into custody and brought to justice,' the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in a statement," according to The Blotter.

2006-08-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

Inquiry Criticizes U.S. Broadcasting Official Over Hiring

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — State Department investigators have concluded that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, improperly hired a friend on the public payroll for nearly $250,000 over two and a half years, according to a summary of their report made public this afternoon by Democratic Congressional staff members.

They also said that Mr. Tomlinson, whose job puts him in charge of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, used his government office for personal business, including running a “horse racing operation” in which he supervised a stable of thoroughbreds he named after leaders from Afghanistan, including President Hamid Karzai and the late Ahmed Shah Massoud, that have raced at tracks across the United States. They also said that Mr. Tomlinson repeatedly used government employees to do his personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.

The State Department inspector general presented those findings in a report last week to the White House and on Monday to some members of Congress. Three Democratic lawmakers, Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Representatives Howard Berman and Tom Lantos of California, requested the inquiry last year after they were approached by a whistleblower from the agency about the possible misuse of federal money by Mr. Tomlinson and the possible hiring of phantom or unqualified employees.

In providing the report to the members of Congress, the State Department warned that making it public could be a violation of federal law, people who have seen the report said. Today, Mr. Berman’s staff released a summary of the report.

Mr. Tomlinson was ousted from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting last year following a separate inquiry that found evidence that he had violated rules meant to insulate public television and radio from political influence. His renomination by President Bush to another term as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors is pending before the Senate.

The summary of the State Department inspector general’s report said the United States attorney’s office in Washington had been given the report and decided not to conduct a criminal inquiry into the matter. It said the Justice Department was pursuing a civil investigation that focused on a contract Mr. Tomlinson had awarded to his friend.

The three lawmakers who had requested the inquiry sent a letter to the president this afternoon urging him to remove Mr. Tomlinson from his position immediately “and take all necessary steps to restore the integrity of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.”

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said President Bush continues to support Mr. Tomlinson’s renomination. She declined to comment about the State Department report.

Asked about the report and the call for his ouster, Mr. Tomlinson and his lawyer, James Hamilton, would not immediately comment.

Mr. Tomlinson is a 62-year-old Republican and former editor of Reader’s Digest who has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political strategist and senior adviser. Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson served together on the board of predecessor agency to the Broadcasting Board in the 1990’s. Mr. Tomlinson has been chairman of the Broadcasting Board since 2002.

The board, whose members include the secretary of state, plays a central role in public diplomacy. It supervises the government’s foreign broadcasting operations, including Radio Marti, Radio Sawa and al-Hurra; transmits programs in 61 languages; and says it has more than 100 million listeners each week.

Mr. Tomlinson’s ouster last November from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was prompted by a separate investigation by that organization’s inspector general. That inquiry found evidence that Mr. Tomlinson had violated rules as he sought more conservative programs and that he improperly intervened to help the staff of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page win a $4.1 million contract — one of the largest programming contracts issued by the corporation — to finance a weekly program on public television.

The heavily edited State Department report on Mr. Tomlinson’s activities at the Broadcasting Board of Governors did not specify the identity of the friend who received the improper contract at the direction of Mr. Tomlinson. Agency officials said he was a retired worker already on a government pension who was rehired by Mr. Tomlinson, without the knowledge of the board or any competitive bidding process, to work on projects for him. The employee was known by other employees as “the phantom” because he was often not at work, other agency employees said.

Mr. Tomlinson was rebuked in the earlier inspector general report by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for improperly hiring an acquaintance from a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union to monitor several public radio and television shows, including Bill Moyer’s “Now” program, for political bias.

The State Department report said that from 2003 through 2005 Mr. Tomlinson had requested compensation in excess of the 130 days permitted by law for the post he holds. It said that he had requested and received pay from both the broadcasting board and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the same days worked on 14 occasions, but that investigators were unable to substantiate whether they were for the same hours worked on the same days.

Investigators who seized Mr. Tomlinson’s e-mail, telephone and office records found that he had improperly and extensively used his office at the Broadcasting Board to do nongovernmental work, including work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and horse racing and breeding ventures. The material seized included racing forms and evidence that he used the office to buy and sell thoroughbreds.

Mr. Tomlinson’s longstanding interest in foreign affairs has carried over to his horse breeding operation. As the owner of Sandy Bayou Stables near Middleburg, Va., his most recent horses have been named after Afghanistan leaders who have opposed Russian and Taliban control of the country. The horses include Massoud, Karzai and Panjshair, the valley that was the base used by forces to overthrow the Taliban. Most of the horses have not been in the money, although Massoud appears to have been quite successful, earning purses of more than $140,000 over the last two years, according to track records.

People who have seen the report said it noted that in the middle of in interview with investigators, Mr. Tomlinson terminated the interview on the advice of his lawyer. One person familiar with the inquiry said Mr. Hamilton ended the interview as the investigators started to ask about the use of Mr. Tomlinson’s office for his horse-racing venture.

Mr. Hamilton declined to comment about the interview.

Original Article

2006-08-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

Health Care: It's What Ails Us
by Doug Pibel and Sarah van Gelder

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them—an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

But it’s not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.

Businesses are suffering too. Insurance premiums increased 73 percent between 2000 and 2005, and per capita costs are expected to keep rising. The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) estimates that, without reform, national health care spending will double over the next 10 years. The NCHC is not some fringe advocacy group--its co-chairs are Congressmen Robert D. Ray (R-IA) and Paul G. Rogers (D-FL), and it counts General Electric and Verizon among its members.

Employers who want to offer employee health care benefits can’t compete with low-road employers who offer none. Nor can they compete with companies located in countries that offer national health insurance.

The shocking facts about health care in the United States are well known. There’s little argument that the system is broken. What’s not well known is that the dialogue about fixing the health care system is just as broken.

Among politicians and pundits, a universal, publicly funded system is off the table. But Americans in increasing numbers know what their leaders seem not to — that the United States is the only industrialized nation where such stories as Joel’s and Kiki’s can happen.

And most Americans know why: the United States leaves the health of its citizens at the mercy of an expensive, patchwork system where some get great care while others get none at all.

The overwhelming majority — 75 percent, according to an October 2005 Harris Poll — want what people in other wealthy countries have: the peace of mind of universal health insurance.

A wild experiment?

Which makes the discussion all the stranger. The public debate around universal health care proceeds as if it were a wild, untested experiment -- as if the United States would be doing something never done before.

Yet universal health care is in place throughout the industrialized world. In most cases, doctors and hospitals operate as private businesses. But government pays the bills, which reduces paperwork costs to a fraction of the American level. It also cuts out expensive insurance corporations and HMO's, with their multimillion-dollar CEO compensation packages, and billions in profit. Small wonder "single payer" systems can cover their entire populations at half the per capita cost. In the United States, people without insurance may live with debilitating disease or pain, with conditions that prevent them from getting jobs or decent pay, putting many on a permanent poverty track. They have more difficulty managing chronic conditions — only two in five have a regular doctor -- leading to poorer health and greater cost.

The uninsured are far more likely to wait to seek treatment for acute problems until they become severe.

Even those who have insurance may not find out until it’s too late that exclusions, deductibles, co-payments, and annual limits leave them bankrupt when a family member gets seriously ill.

In 2005, more than a quarter of insured Americans didn't fill prescriptions, skipped recommended treatment, or didn’t see a doctor when sick, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s 2005 Biennial Health Insurance Survey.

People stay in jobs they hate — for the insurance. Small business owners are unable to offer insurance coverage for employees or themselves. Large businesses avoid setting up shops in the United States — Toyota just chose to build a plant in Canada to escape the skyrocketing costs of U.S. health care.

All of this adds up to a less healthy society, more families suffering the double whammy of financial and health crises, and more people forced to go on disability.

But the public dialogue proceeds as if little can be done beyond a bit of tinkering around the edges. More involvement by government would create an unwieldy bureaucracy, they say, and surely bankrupt us all. The evidence points to the opposite conclusion.

The United States spends by far the most on health care per person — more than twice as much as Europe, Canada, and Japan which all have some version of national health insurance. Yet we are near the bottom in nearly every measure of our health.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the U.S. health care system 37th of 190 countries, well below most of Europe, and trailing Chile and Costa Rica. The United States does even worse in the WHO rankings of performance on level of health -- a stunning 72nd. Life expectancy in the U.S. is shorter than in 27 other countries; the U.S. ties with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia for infant mortality — ahead of only Latvia among industrialized nations.

The cost of corporate bureaucracy

Where is the money going? An estimated 15 cents of each private U.S. health care dollar goes simply to shuffling the paperwork. The administrative costs for our patched-together system of HMO's, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, and government programs are nearly double those for single-payer Canada. It’s not because Americans are inherently less efficient than Canadians — our publicly funded Medicare system spends under five cents per budget dollar on administrative overhead. And the Veterans Administration, which functions like Britain’s socialized medical system, spends less per patient but consistently outranks private providers in patient satisfaction and quality of care.

But in the private sector, profits and excessive CEO pay are added to the paperwork and bureaucracy. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry averages a 17 percent profit margin, against three percent for all other businesses. In the health care industry, million-dollar CEO pay packages are the rule, with some executives pulling down more than $30 million a year in salary and amassing billion-dollar stock option packages.

Do those costs really make the difference?

Studies conducted by the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and various states have concluded that a universal, single-payer health care system would cover everyone -- including the millions currently without insurance -- and still save billions.

Enormous amounts of money are changing hands in the health-industrial complex, but little is going to the front line providers — nurses, nurse practitioners, and home health care workers who put in long shifts for low pay. Many even find they must fight to get access to the very health facilities they serve.

Doctors complain of burnout as patient loads increase. They spend less time with each patient as they spend more time doing insurance company mandated paperwork and arguing with insurance company bureaucrats over treatments and coverage.

Americans know what they want

In polls, surveys, town meetings, and letters, large majorities of Americans say they have had it with a system that is clearly broken and they are demanding universal health care. Many businesses -- despite a distaste for government involvement -- are coming to the same view. Doctors, nurses, not-for-profit hospitals, and clinics are joining the call, many specifically saying we need a single-payer system like the system in Canada. And while we hear complaints about Canada’s system, a study of 10 years of Canadian opinion polling showed that Canadians are more satisfied with their health care than Americans. Holly Dressel’s article shows why.

Although you’d never know it from the American media, the number of Canadians who would trade their system for a U.S.-style health care system is just eight percent.

Again, the public dialogue proceeds from a perplexing place. Dissatisfied Canadians or Britons are much talked about. But there’s little mention of the satisfaction level of Americans. The Commonwealth Fund’s survey, for instance, shows that, in 2005, 42 percent of Americans doubted whether they could get quality health care. At a series of town hall meetings in Maine, facilitators asked participants to discuss dozens of complex health care policies but excluded single-payer as an option. (See Tish Tanski’s article. Only after repeated demands by participants was the approach that cuts out the corporate middle-men allowed on the list.

The same story played out across the country at town meetings convened by the congressionally mandated Citizens’ Health Care Working Group. In Los Angeles, New York, and Hartford, participants simply refused to consider the questions they were given about tradeoffs between cost, quality, and accessibility. They insisted that there’s already enough money being spent to pay for publicly funded universal health care.

But it’s not only about the money. Comments from participants in the town meetings, from Fargo to Memphis, from Los Angeles to Providence, revealed an understanding that this is about a deeper question. It is an issue of the sort of society we want to be -- one in which we all are left to sink or swim on our own or one in which we recognize that the whole society benefits when we each can get access to the help we need.

Likewise, when we asked readers of the YES! email newsletter what would make you healthier, nearly all answered in terms of “we.” Any one of us could get sick or be injured. Any one could lose a job and with it insurance. Our best security, they said, is coverage for all.

What form might this take?

As elections near and the issue of health care tops opinion polls as the most pressing domestic issue, various proposals for universal health care are circulating. The bipartisan NCHC looked at four options: employer mandates, extending existing federal programs like Medicaid to all those uninsured, creating a new federal program for the uninsured, and single-payer national health insurance. All the options saved billions of dollars compared to the current system, but single payer was by far the winner, saving more than $100 billion a year.

Meanwhile, the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, which held those town meetings around the country, has issued interim recommendations. They state the values participants expressed: All Americans should have affordable health care, and assuring that they do is a shared social responsibility. Sadly, that bold statement is followed by inconclusive recommendations: more study, no preference for public funding, and a strong commitment to get everybody covered by 2012—but with no means to do it. The commission will make final recommendations to the president and Congress, and is accepting public comment through the end of August.

What is the obstacle?

With all the support and all the good reasons to adopt universal health care, why don’t we have it yet? Why do politicians refuse to talk about the solution people want?

It could be the fact that the health care industry, the top spender on Capitol Hill, spent $183.3 million on lobbying just in the second half of 2005, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. com. And in the 2003–2004 election cycle, they spent $123.7 million on election campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Politicians dread the propaganda barrage and political fallout that surrounded the failed Clinton health care plan. But in the years since, health care costs have outpaced growth in wages and inflation by huge margins, Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured at the rate of 2 million each year, and businesses are taking a major competitiveness hit as they struggle to pay rising premiums.

Healthcare-Now (www.healthcare-now.org) is holding town hall meetings throughout the United States (they’ve held 93 so far), and people are pressing their representatives to take action. Over 150 unions have called for action on universal health care, and polls show overwhelming majorities of Americans feel the same way.

Some political leaders are pressing for universal health care. Remember Joel, who was kicked out of the hospital with $100,000 in medical debt? He started giving speeches about the catastrophe of our health care system, and eventually got hired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to head his universal single payer health care effort. Conyers’ "Medicare for All" bill now has 72 co-sponsors. Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) Health Security Act has 62.

Around the United States, state and local campaigns for universal health care are making progress. (See Rev. Linda Walling’s update).

One of these days, the lobbyists and their clients in government may have to get out of the way and let Americans join the rest of the developed world in the security, efficiency, and quality that comes with health care for all.

2006-08-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

"Ethnic Profiling" and the "War on Terrorism" on Board Northwest Flight 42
All Muslims on board were handcuffed

Most of you must have read or heard of the drama in the air where 12 passengers, all Indian businessmen/traders in textile, all of them Muslims, 10 of them from Mumbai, were handcuffed and detained, after the Northwest Airlines flight No. 42 with US sky marshals on board on its way to Mumbai , was escorted by F-16 fighter jets back to Amsterdam . Who pays for these F-16 escorts is another matter ....

After several hours a statement was made by the Dutch authorities that they were " NOT TERRORISTS ".

Without giving you my own subjective remarks on the incident I would like to quote a Dutch national A. Slotboom who was on board the same flight who has stated that the 12 Indians on board were treated " inhumanely ".... when the plane arrived in Amsterdam " I thought it was inhuman......They were treated like dogs ....." He deserves to be applauded for his courage ,as it was an act of solidarity with those being persecuted and terrorized all over the world, whether they are Muslims , or working people or poorer farmers or employees increasingly working for over 10 to 12 hours in offices.

The Dutchman further stated in a statement reproduced in a newspaper that:

"....When the plane was in the air we just heard over the address system that the flight was being diverted to Amsterdam and did not know that anyone was going to be detained . Once we landed there the police authorities seemed to treat the 12 persons very badly and handcuffed them and humiliated them in front of all the others...."

He emphasized that " their arrest seemed part of the of an offensive against Arabic people.....they did not hit them , but they pushed them . They let them surely feel that they have no power ........"

He further said that he too was taken off the aircraft when he commented "that the way the Indians were being treated reminded him of what the Germans had done under Hitler." They came to him and said" Okay , you come with us."

Meanwhile, during a TV debate, the issue was raised, that since there have been so many random and indiscriminate arrests made of Indian Muslims in India , in Mumbai , Gujarat and other places in India with so many defamatory statements and so much prejudice orchestrated through the media against Indian Muslims within India; whether the Government in India was on strong moral grounds in condemning this treatment by the Dutch authorities, as increasingly Indians who are Muslim are being openly discriminated against in India and some political leaders without any action by law enforcing agencies ,are repeatedly permitted to openly abuse citizens who are culturally Muslim, with some regions of increased foreign investment being termed the laboratories for " Indian fascism "

One way of identifying which governments are a part of the overt or covert alliance in this " War of Terror " which has seen merciless bombing operations using Depleted Uranium and Bunker Busters with DU against defenseless people in Yugoslavia , Iraq , Afghanistan , Palestine , Lebanon is the nature of articulation of the " Terrorist " threat from Muslims / Arabs in these countries , and the bombings organized against working citizens even as the oligarchy remains safe and protected .

The maximum bombings of innocent citizens are taking place in countries occupied by foreign troops .

We also have the memories of Ireland and the covert bombing operations . It now appears a part of an Imperial tradition to bomb citizens .

There are terrorist acts by armed groups in Assam , the North East and other places in India, admittedly non-Muslim regions aided and abetted by covert agencies . Yet the political class and the oligarchy, instruct official agencies to identify terrorism with people of Muslim origins , and day in and day out this is repeated on all television channels to the disgust of citizens of all communities in India though there are no trains or buses or airplanes segregated on the on the basis of religion .

The very suggestion therefor that people of one religious group are terrorists, and will bomb a plane or a train or a bus, is absurd as people of every religion and denomination including Shia and Sunni walk on the roads and travel by the same facilities whether Christian , Jewish, Hindu , Buddhist , Tamil etc .....

What is significant however the world over, is only the rich and those holding high office have private cars and are therefore not bombed along with working citizens.

Moreover the Generals are based in the occupied countries in the Green Zone . Only the lowly foot soldier is exposed .The pilots have special facilities in the former palaces or elite residential areas of occupied countries .

The travel advisory for citizens of the world ,is to avoid countries resorting to Islamophobia or where frequent bomb blasts take place . In any case the Airlines of the USA , Britain , Israel and those NATO countries with occupation forces in Afghanistan and Iraq should be avoided by people from South Asia

Similarly travel to Pakistan , India and Bangladesh where authorities are co-operating in this " War of Terror " on Arabs, Muslims , should also be avoided by citizens of Europe ,Asia and the Arab world .

As of now the maximum number of people dying in India are farmers from suicides and government figures itself indicates more than on lakh , whereas unofficial figures average a few lakhs all over India .This indicates that farmers are being "Terrorized " by their conditions .

Moreover India is the sixth country on the list of countries where children's lives are seriously endangered says an official International report .Also evidence of children being indiscriminately terrorized by the nature of their society.

There is no doubt that we are being seriously terrorized in South Asia ,we only differ on the nature of our threat.

Please avoid South Asia on your travels ,apart from the USA, UK and Israel and those countries of Europe and other continents who are partners in the " War of Terror" against citizens , as millions have been killed in one form or another.

South Asia includes Sri Lanka, a country which was once the role model for nutrition , health care and education, though formally not socialist , which became a " basket case " for the IMF and World Bank , after neo-liberal policies were introduced, the rest is history where no peace plan is allowed to succeed, and both sides were trained according to a book by a former Mossad agent , in Israel .

There are collaborators in every country , in every religious group ,however in this crazy world , one time collaborators themselves will be handcuffed and face trial ......the tragic fate of President Saddam Hussain . The former President Diem of South Vietnam. Keneth Lay of Enron . The Dayton accord did not save the former President of Yugoslavia and the country was mercilessly divided and broken up for a " New Eurasia " .

There are plans for a " New Middle East " and a " New South Asia " . There are also plans for a " New European Union" and a " New United States " minus all social security , with 12 hour working days upto the age of 65-70 with no health care .

A recent Judgement of a court of the United States in a Suit filed by the American Union for Civil Liberties among other Plaintiffs , indicates what is the state and predicament of the " Rule of Law" in America.

Original Article at GlobalResearch.ca

2006-08-29T05:27:00.001-07:00

The Sins of September 11
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

I am beginning to despise reading. I have lost count of the number of times I have read some passage in a politically-oriented book, and then been uncontrollably motivated to hurl said book against a wall or across the room in fury. My library looks like someone took a weed-whacker to it; all the dust-jackets have taken a fearsome beating.

The book currently on my desk has begun to retain a damaged appearance. Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" is a meticulously researched and foot-noted tour de force through the last ten years of the brainless savagery of American politics. The retelling of the contrived scandals clarioned by a media establishment which abandoned any pretense of journalistic integrity, pushed by a cabal of House members and right-wing activists whose worshipped altar was the desire for raw power, and the sad and sorry tale of the impeachment itself, is a difficult but necessary review of a truly pathetic time in our history. Blumenthal manages to bring his readers back to that tar pit, and keep them enthralled, with an excellent and deft literary touch.

Since I have read most of the other books on the scandal-gasm and impeachment, there was not much through the middle of this book that brought me up short, though Blumenthal does present interviews and perspectives of players on both sides of that aisle which are not present in the other histories (It was amusing to read Congressional impeachment warrior James Rogan speak of being "On the wrong side of history" regarding the trial in the Senate). No, the book began to take its obligatory pounding when I reached page 656, and the second part of the chapter entitled "The Twenty-First Century."

The astounding level of blunt ignorance within the American populace about the events surrounding the attacks of September 11 cannot be easily quantified. In a nation with thousands of newspapers, thousands of radio stations, and a ceaseless data stream from CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS, some 70% of the population believed as late as a month ago that Saddam Hussein was centrally involved in and personally responsible for the attacks which destroyed the Towers and struck the Pentagon. Beyond that, what most people know about the single most important event in American history does not go much beyond "evildoers" who "hate our freedom."

That is, simply, incredible. It is also not an accident. This ignorance has a great deal to do with the stunning mediocrity of the television news media, that empty well where most Americans go to become informed. This ignorance also, and far more importantly, has a great deal to do with the Clinton-era actions of a large number of conservatives, many of whom are in positions of power today, many of whom are now making careers out of September 11.

The two great myths that have settled across the nation, beyond the Hussein-9/11 connection, are that Clinton did not do enough during his tenure to stop the spread of radical terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, and that the attacks themselves could not have been anticipated or stopped. Blumenthal's insider perspective on these matters bursts the myths entirely, and reveals a level of complicity regarding the attacks within the journalistic realm and the conservative political ranks that is infuriating and disturbing.

Starting in 1995, Clinton took actions against terrorism that were unprecedented in American history. He poured billions and billions of dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community. He poured billions more into the protection of critical infrastructure. He ordered massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack. He order a reorganization of the intelligence community itself, ramming through reforms and new procedures to address the demonstrable threat. Within the National Security Council, "threat meetings" were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure. In 1996, Clinton delivered a major address to the United Nations on the matter of international terrorism, calling it "The enemy of our generation."

Behind the scenes, he leaned vigorously on the leaders of nations within the terrorist sphere. In particular, he pushed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to assist him in dealing with the threat from neighboring Afghanistan and its favorite guest, Osama bin Laden. Before Sharif could be compelled to act, he was thrown out of office by his own army. His replacement, Pervez Musharraf, pointedly refused to do anything to assist Clinton in dealing with these threats. Despite these and other diplomatic setbacks, terrorist cell after terrorist cell were destroyed across the world, and bomb plots against American embassies were thwarted. Because of security concerns, these victories were never revealed to the American people until very recently.

In America, few people heard anything about this. Clinton's dire public warnings about the threat posed by terrorism, and the massive non-secret actions taken to thwart it, went completely unreported by the media, which was far more concerned with stained dresses and baseless Drudge Report rumors. When the administration did act militarily against bin Laden and his terrorist network, the actions were dismissed by partisans within the media and Congress as scandalous "wag the dog" tactics. The TV networks actually broadcast clips of the movie "Wag The Dog" to accentuate the idea that everything the administration was doing was contrived fakery.

The bombing of the Sundanese factory at al-Shifa, in particular, drew wide condemnation from these quarters, despite the fact that the CIA found and certified VX nerve agent precursor in the ground outside the factory, despite the fact that the factory was owned by Osama bin Laden's Military Industrial Corporation, and despite the fact that the manager of the factory lived in bin Laden's villa in Khartoum. The book "Age of Sacred Terror" quantifies the al-Shifa issue thusly: "The dismissal of the al-Shifa attack as a scandalous blunder had serious consequences, including the failure of the public to comprehend the nature of the al Qaeda threat."

In Congress, Clinton was thwarted by the reactionary conservative majority in virtually every attempt he made to pass legislation that would attack al Qaeda and terrorism. His 1996 omnibus terror bill, which included many of the anti-terror measures we now take for granted after September 11, was withered almost to the point of uselessness by attacks from the right; Jesse Helms and Trent Lott were openly dismissive of the threats Clinton spoke of.

Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, killed Clinton's bill on this matter and called it "totalitarian." In fact, he was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders.

Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed, and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement. According to Time magazine, in an article entitled "Banking on Secrecy" published in October of 2001, Bush economic advisors Larry Lindsey and R. Glenn Hubbard were urged by think tanks like the Center for Freedom and Prosperity to opt out of the coalition Clinton had formed. The conservative Heritage Foundation lobbied Bush's Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, to do the same. In the end, the lobbyists got what they wanted, and the Bush administration pulled America out of the plan. The Time article stated, "Without the world's financial superpower, the biggest effort in years to rid the world's financial system of dirty money was short-circuited."

This laundry list of partisan catastrophes goes on and on. Far from being inept on the matter of terrorism, Clinton was profoundly activist in his attempts to address terrorism. Much of his work was foiled by right-wing Congressional conservatives who, simply, refused to accept the fact that he was President. These men, paid to work for the public trust, spent eight years working diligently to paralyze any and all Clinton policies, including anti-terror initiatives that, if enacted, would have gone a long way towards thwarting the September 11 attacks. Beyond them lay the worthless television media, which ignored and spun the terrorist issue as it pursued salacious leaks from Ken Starr's office, leaving the American people drowning in a swamp of ignorance on a matter of deadly global importance.

Over and above the theoretical questions regarding whether or not Clinton's anti-terror policies, if passed, would have stopped September 11 lies the very real fact that attacks very much like 9/11 were, in fact, stopped dead by the Clinton administration. The most glaring example of this came on December 31, 1999, when the world gathered to celebrate the passing of the millennium. On that night, al Qaeda was gathering as well.

The terrorist network planned to simultaneously attack the national airports in Washington DC and Los Angeles, the Amman Raddison Hotel in Jordan, a constellation of holy sites in Israel, and the USS The Sullivans at dock in Yemen. Each and every single one of these plots, which ranged from one side of the planet to the other, was foiled by the efforts of the Clinton administration. Speaking for the first time about these millennium plots, in a speech delivered to the Coast Guard Academy on May 17, 2000, Clinton said, "I want to tell you a story that, unfortunately, will not be the last example you will have to face."

Indeed.

Clinton proved that Osama bin Laden and his terror network can be foiled, can be thwarted, can be stopped. The multifaceted and complex nature of the international millennium plots rivals the plans laid before September 11, and involved counter-terrorism actions within several countries and across the entire American intelligence and military community. All resources were brought to bear, and the terrorists went down to defeat. The proof is in the pudding here. September 11, like the millennium plots, could have been avoided.

Couple this with other facts about the Bush administration we now have in hand. The administration was warned about a massive terror plot in the months before September by the security services of several countries, including Israel, Egypt, Germany and Russia. CIA Director George Tenet delivered a specific briefing on the matter to the administration on August 8, 2001. The massive compendium of data on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda compiled by Sandy Berger, and delivered to Condoleezza Rice upon his departure, went completely and admittedly unread until the attacks took place. The attacks themselves managed, for over an hour, to pierce the most formidable air defense system in the history of the Earth without a single fighter aircraft taking wing until the catastrophe was concluded.

It is not fashionable these days to pine for the return of William Jefferson Clinton. Given the facts above, and the realities we face about the administration of George W. Bush, and the realities we endure regarding the aftermath of September 11, the United States of America would be, and was, well served by its previous leader. That we do not know this, that September 11 happened at all, that it was such a wretched shock to the American people, that we were so woefully unprepared, can be laid at the feet of a failed news media establishment, and at the feet of a pack of power-mad conservative extremists who now have a great deal to atone for.

Had Clinton been heeded, the measures he espoused would have been put in place, and a number of powerful bulwarks would have been thrown into the paths of those commercial airplanes. Had the news media been something other than a purveyor of masturbation fantasies from the far-right, the American people would have know the threats we faced, and would have compelled their Congressmen to act. Had Congress itself been something other than an institution ruled by narrow men whose only desire was to break a sitting President by any means necessary, we would very probably still have a New York skyline dominated by two soaring towers.

Had the Bush administration not continued this pattern of gross partisan ineptitude and heeded the blitz of domestic and international warnings, instead of trooping off to Texas for a month-long vacation, had Bush's National Security Advisor done one hour's worth of her homework, we probably would not be in the grotesque global mess that currently envelops us. Never forget that many of the activists who pushed throughout the 1990s for the annihilation of all things Clinton are now foursquare in charge of the country today.

These are the sins of September 11. Thank you, Sidney. I'm sorry I broke your book.

2006-08-28T15:39:00.000-07:00

Swords ban to beat violent crime

Swords were handed in and destroyed during a knife amnesty

A crackdown on the sale of swords has been launched as part of a campaign to tackle knife crime and violence.

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson announced laws to ban swords unless sold for legitimate reasons.

Shops selling swords will need a licence, as will businesses dealing with non-domestic knives and other bladed weapons such as machetes.

The measures are the latest steps from the Scottish Executive to curb the problem of knife crime.

They come weeks after a nationwide knife amnesty.

A total of 12,645 blades - including lock knives, machetes, swords, meat cleavers, bayonets and axes - were handed in during the five-week amnesty.

People must realise that swords cause horrific injuries when they get into the wrong hands

Det Chief Supt John Carnochan
Violence Reduction Unit

Exemptions to the ban on sword sales include swords that are to be used for Highland dancing, museum displays, historical re-enactments, fencing and martial arts.

Ms Jamieson said: "Knife-carrying is all too prevalent in some communities, particularly in the west of Scotland, and has cut short and scarred too many young lives.

"In these areas police, doctors and law-abiding citizens have seen the damaging effects of swords, including samurai swords, being wielded on the streets.

"It is simply far too easy at present for these weapons to be bought and sold."

Anyone selling swords under the exemptions would have to take "reasonable steps" to establish that the intended use was a legitimate one.

Commercial sellers will have to comply with strict new licensing conditions, including keeping records of all sales.

'Deep-rooted culture'

Ms Jamieson added: "The licensing regime for sales of all non-domestic knives should help weed out unscrupulous traders and help legitimate traders take steps to avoid these dangerous weapons falling into the wrong hands."

Shops selling swords under exemption would need a licence

The measures will be included in a new Sentencing Bill, which will go before the Scottish Parliament later in the year.

It comes after First Minister Jack McConnell announced a five-point plan to tackle knife crime in November 2004.

Other parts of the plan brought in under the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act doubled the maximum penalty for carrying a knife to four years, gave police the unconditional power to search someone they suspect of carrying a weapon and increased the minimum age for buying a knife from 16 to 18.

Det Ch Supt John Carnochan, head of the police's violence reduction unit, hailed the measures as "another major step forward in the fight against knife crime and violence".

More than half the murders in Scotland each year are carried out with knives or other sharp weapons.

Det Ch Supt Carnochan said a licensing scheme alone would not solve "the deep-rooted culture of violence which is prevalent in parts of Scotland" but added that combined with the other measures it would have a positive impact.

Cultural problem

He added: "People must realise that swords cause horrific injuries when they get into the wrong hands. We routinely see incidents involving swords, which result in appalling injuries."

Kenny MacAskill MSP, justice spokesman for the SNP, said: "We must continue to recognise that knives are as much of a cultural problem in our communities as they are a criminal one.

"We must ensure we tackle the causes as well as the symptoms of this scar on our communities."

Margaret Mitchell, justice spokeswoman for the Scottish Conservatives , said: "I broadly welcome these moves but legislation alone is never going to be enough.

"We have to make sure that anyone who would use any kind of knife or weapon feels the full force of the law and the strongest possible custodial sentence."

2006-08-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Rep. Harris Condemns Separation of Church, State

By Jim Stratton
Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Aug. 25 -- Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics.

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris told interviewers from the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. She cited abortion and same-sex marriage as examples of that sin.

Harris, a candidate in the Sept. 5 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, said her religious beliefs "animate" everything she does, including her votes in Congress.

Witness editors interviewed candidates for office, asking them to describe their faith and their positions on certain issues.

Harris has always professed a deep Christian faith. But she has rarely expressed such a fervent evangelical perspective publicly.

Political and religious officials responded to her published remarks with outrage and dismay.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said she was "disgusted" by the comments "and deeply disappointed in Representative Harris personally."

Harris, Wasserman Schultz said, "clearly shows that she does not deserve to be a representative."

Ruby Brooks, a veteran Tampa Bay Republican activist, said Harris's remarks "were offensive to me as a Christian and a Republican."

"This notion that you've been chosen or anointed, it's offensive," Brooks said. "We hurt our cause with that more than we help it."

Harris told the journalists "we have to have the faithful in government" because that is God's will. Separating religion and politics is "so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers," she said.

"And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women," then "we're going to have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our Founding Fathers intended, and that certainly isn't what God intended."

Harris campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Marks would not answer questions about the Harris interview. Instead, she released a two-sentence statement.

"Congresswoman Harris encourages Americans from all walks of life and faith to participate in our government," it stated. "She continues to be an unwavering advocate of religious rights and freedoms."

Original Story

2006-08-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

Police property: It’s finders keepers in NH

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006

The state Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the government can keep and destroy more than 500 CDs taken from Michael Cohen, owner of Pitchfork Records in Concord, in 2003 even though the state failed to prove that a single disk was illegal.

Cohen was arrested for attempting to sell bootleg recordings. But the police case collapsed when it turned out that most of the recordings were made legally. Police dropped six of the seven charges, and Cohen went to trial on one charge. He beat it after the judge concluded that the recording was legal.

However, the police refused to return Cohen’s CDs. In the state Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling, Chief Justice John Broderick, writing for the majority, reasoned so poorly that it appeared as if he’d made up his mind ahead of time.

Dissenting, Justice Linda Dalianis wrote, perceptively, that “the majority does not explain how statutes prohibiting the production, publication, or sale of certain works render possession of such works unlawful.”

Further, Dalianis concluded that “the state’s failure to establish in any way that the seized property constitutes contraband” made it impossible to justify keeping Cohen’s property.

Indeed, the majority’s reasoning is chilling. The majority concedes that no crime or illegal act was proven, but allows the confiscation anyway by concluding that a crime might have been committed. The majority used words such as “apparently,” “likely” and “would have” to describe the alleged illegal activity.

It should go without saying that speculation by a few judges that a crime might have been committed is a frightening basis for taking someone’s property.

Earlier this year, Nashua police confiscated video recordings of two officers being rude to a citizen at his own home. Though police dropped all charges against Michael Gannon and admitted they could not prove the recordings were illegal, they still kept the tapes.

If someone is found with cocaine or any other item clearly illegal to possess, confiscation is easily justified. But the illegality of these items was never proven, and mere possession was not itself illegal.

If the government can seize and keep a citizen’s property by simply asserting that it is contraband, even when the assertion is unsupported by the facts, then we have entered into dangerous territory.

2006-08-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

Biotech Firm, Govt. Hid Rice Contamination from Public
by Megan Tady

The recently revealed spread of genetically modified rice has critics alarmed on two levels: the problem itself and the fact that authorities suppressed the news.

Aug. 24 – Last week, the US Department of Agriculture announced that US commercial long-grain rice supplies are contaminated with "trace amounts" of genetically engineered rice unapproved for human consumption.

The genetically engineered (GE) rice is known as Liberty Link (LL) 601. Its genetic code has been modified to provide resistance to herbicides and is illegal for marketing to humans because it has not undergone environmental and health impact reviews by the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). LL601 was field-tested from 1998 to 2001 under permits granted by the USDA, but Bayer Corp Science, the developer of the experimental rice, did not seek commercial approval for it.

The contamination was only disclosed after Bayer notified the USDA itself. Currently, the government relies on self-reporting from food companies to determine genetically engineered (GE) contamination, rather than a federal testing system. The USDA dismissed concerns that companies may not always "self-report" or even be aware of their mistakes, which would lead to further undetected contamination of unapproved GE food.

It appears a separate company first detected the contamination in January of this year and that Bayer may have known about the contamination since May. But the government was not notified until July 31. It took another 18 days for the USDA to tell the public.

At a press conference, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns would not divulge how the contamination had happened, or how far it had spread. It was unclear whether he even knew. Jim Rogers, a USDA spokesperson, told The NewStandard the contaminated rice was detected in barrels sent to Missouri and Arizona.

"But the rice could have come from anywhere [in the US]," Rogers said.

Riceland, a farmer-owned cooperative that markets rice produced by Southern farmers, issued a press release on August 18, saying it first discovered the contamination in January. Riceland conducted its own tests from several grain-storage locations and found: "A significant number tested positive for the Bayer trait. The positive results were geographically dispersed and random throughout the rice-growing area."

Riceland notified Bayer of the contamination in May, but did not notify the public or the government.

Johanns indicated that an economic motive was behind the government's delay of nearly three weeks before informing the public about the contamination, as the government anticipated foreign rice importers might reject the product. The Secretary said the USDA spent the time preparing tests for rice importers to check the product for contamination. The US constitutes about 12 percent of the world's rice trade.

There are currently no plans to destroy or recall the rice, and Rogers is unsure if Bayer will be fined. While the government "validates" its tests for the rice, Johanns directed people to Bayer's website, saying the company "has made arrangements with private laboratories to run tests" on the rice.

Although the field tests for LL601 ended in 2001, the contamination appeared in a 2005 harvest, leaving some food-safety advocates to worry that the contamination has been present for several years and suggesting that genetically modified strains can persist in the environment well after they have been discontinued in experiments.

Two other varieties of rice with the same gene and from the same company have already been approved for human consumption, though never marketed. There is currently no known, intentional commercial US production of genetically engineered rice.

Johanns said that based on "available scientific data" provided by Bayer, the USDA and the FDA have concluded "that there are no human-health, food-safety or environmental concerns associated with this GE rice."

When pressed about the health implications of the contaminated rice, Rogers noted that foods from pesticide- and herbicide-resistant crops are already on the market. In fact, according to the USDA, 70 percent of processed foods on grocery store shelves contain genetically engineered ingredients.

Rogers dismissed concern that, because the government relies on companies' self-reporting, there could be widespread contamination of unapproved GE ingredients in the US food supply. He said the government did not have plans to begin testing food itself.

But this is not the first time unapproved genetic material has escaped detection in the food supply. In 2004, the company Syngenta admitted that for four years, it had sold unapproved GE maize in the US.

In response to the Bayer revelation, Greenpeace has called for a worldwide ban on imports of US rice. Already, Japan has suspended US rice imports.

The Center for Food Safety, a public-interest organization, is also calling for a moratorium on all new permits for open-air field testing of GE crops. The Center is concerned that open-air testing allows GE crops to cross pollinate with neighboring non-GE crops.

"We see this as an opportunity to get out the message that this is a radically new technology," said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center. "These foods have not been tested, and we don't know if they're safe."

Original

2006-08-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

Universal Health Care: Is Senate Bill 840 too good to be true?

By Kevin Uhrich

As health care costs continue to spiral out of the financial reach of average citizens, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl is sponsoring legislation that would provide universal health coverage for every resident of California, regardless of their ability to pay.

Sound too good to be true? Perhaps.

Is it about time? Absolutely, says Jackie Knowles of the League of Women Voters Pasadena Area, which is presenting a public forum on March 2 on Kuehl’s legislation.

The forum, which is being co-sponsored by a number of religious, legal and social service organizations, is at 7 p.m. at the Community Education Center, 3035 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena

“I know it sounds too good to be true. That’s why we want people to come to this forum. We want to hear what questions other people might ask,” said Knowles, a former writer for the Pasadena Star-News.

“The League of Women Voters considers this to be right on a par with women’s suffrage; a cause to crusade for,” said Knowles. “Every person in California owes it to themselves to learn everything they can about this bill.”

Co-sponsors of tonight’s forum include the Pasadena Senior Advocacy Council, the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church, the Southern California Ecumenical Council, the San Gabriel Valley Pharmacists Association, Health Care for All Los Angeles, Move-On-Pasadena, the NAACP, the Latino Issues Forum and the ACLU.

Introduced in 2004 by Kuehl, a Democrat from Santa Monica, SB 840 has passed the Senate and has cleared the Assembly Health Committee. Presently, the bill requires language that addresses the funding mechanisms that would cover the medical, dental, optical and other health needs of each Californian.

Hundreds of consumer, labor, civic and faith-based organizations are rallying together to support the bill. Insurance companies and brokers and chambers of commerce are lining up against it.

SB 840 would establish a nonprofit insurance plan to reduce administration costs. A single insurer would be chosen and each person could choose their own physicians and other health care providers. By comparison, Kaiser uses a single insurance plan, as does the Veterans Administration and Medicare.

Kuehl’s research indicates such a plan could save California taxpayers $5 billion a year by cutting prescription drug and medical equipment costs.

In addition, each person would be covered for life, even if they have a pre-existing condition. In addition, all services, drugs, hospital stays, therapies and medical equipment would also be covered.

Kuehl’s bill would establish the position of Health Czar, a nonpartisan elected Commissioner of Health who would serve no more than two 8-year terms, a Health Policy Board and a network of consumer advocates, including community-based Partnerships for Health to identify and help solve local service problems.

Ample parking is available under the power lines on the west side of the Community Education Center, which is located between Sunnyslope and Santa Paula avenues. The fee is 75 cents to park for the entire evening.

2006-08-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

Israeli Police Investigating Sex Case Take Items From President’s Home
By GREG MYRE

JERUSALEM, Aug. 22 — The Israeli police have confiscated a computer and documents from the official residence of President Moshe Katsav and plan to question him as part of an investigation into sexual harassment accusations, the police said Tuesday.

Mr. Katsav’s position is largely ceremonial, and any legal proceedings against him would not directly threaten the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

But the case comes at a time when several senior government figures have been involved in legal or political controversies. In addition, many Israelis have been sharply critical of the country’s political and military leadership over the handling of the recent fighting in Lebanon.

The case involving Mr. Katsav surfaced almost two months ago when a woman who previously worked for him told an Israeli newspaper that he had sexually harassed her. Later, a second woman made similar allegations. Neither woman has been identified.

Mr. Katsav wrote to the attorney general, saying one of the women had demanded money from him before she made her accusation publicly.

The attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, ordered an investigation last month, but the case was overshadowed by the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

The police said they entered the president’s official residence on Monday night, taking the computer and documents. The authorities are searching for communications between Mr. Katsav and his accusers, according to Israel radio.

Police investigators will return to Mr. Katsav’s residence on Wednesday to question him, according to a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.

Mr. Katsav has denied any wrongdoing, and his office said Tuesday that he was fully cooperating with the investigation.

No charges have been filed, but if they are, Mr. Katsav is expected to resign.

Israel’s justice minister, Haim Ramon, resigned Sunday after he was charged with forcibly kissing a female soldier last month.

In other recent controversies, the state comptroller has been investigating the circumstances surrounding Mr. Olmert’s sale of his Jerusalem home two years ago, and the purchase of a new one nearby. Critics contend that he received an above-market price for the sale of his old home and that he paid below the market rate for his new one.

Also, the army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, has faced a storm of criticism after a newspaper disclosed that he spoke to his bank and sold mutual fund shares several hours after Hezbollah staged its cross-border raid on July 12, precipitating the fighting in Lebanon.

Mr. Katsav was appointed to his post in 2000, after his predecessor, Ezer Weizman, resigned amid a corruption scandal. Mr. Weizman quit after it was disclosed that during the 1980’s, when he was a member of parliament and a government minister, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a French businessman with interests in Israel.

In other developments Tuesday, an Israeli military court in the West Bank charged the speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Dweik, a Hamas member, with belonging to an illegal organization, The Associated Press reported.

Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and membership in the group is banned under Israeli law.

Original

2006-08-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Federal Appeals Court: Driving With Money is a Crime
Eighth Circuit Appeals Court ruling says police may seize cash from motorists even in the absence of any evidence that a crime has been committed.

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime.

On May 28, 2003, a Nebraska state trooper signaled Gonzolez to pull over his rented Ford Taurus on Interstate 80. The trooper intended to issue a speeding ticket, but noticed the Gonzolez's name was not on the rental contract. The trooper then proceeded to question Gonzolez -- who did not speak English well -- and search the car. The trooper found a cooler containing $124,700 in cash, which he confiscated. A trained drug sniffing dog barked at the rental car and the cash. For the police, this was all the evidence needed to establish a drug crime that allows the force to keep the seized money.

Associates of Gonzolez testified in court that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck to start a produce business. Gonzolez flew on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy a truck, but it had sold by the time he had arrived. Without a credit card of his own, he had a third-party rent one for him. Gonzolez hid the money in a cooler to keep it from being noticed and stolen. He was scared when the troopers began questioning him about it. There was no evidence disputing Gonzolez's story.

Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez's story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is 'strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

Judge Donald Lay found the majority's reasoning faulty and issued a strong dissent.

"Notwithstanding the fact that claimants seemingly suspicious activities were reasoned away with plausible, and thus presumptively trustworthy, explanations which the government failed to contradict or rebut, I note that no drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug records were recovered in connection with the seized money," Judge Lay wrote. "There is no evidence claimants were ever convicted of any drug-related crime, nor is there any indication the manner in which the currency was bundled was indicative of
drug use or distribution."

"Finally, the mere fact that the canine alerted officers to the presence of drug residue in a rental car, no doubt driven by dozens, perhaps scores, of patrons during the course of a given year, coupled with the fact that the alert came from the same location where the currency was discovered, does little to connect the money to a controlled substance offense," Judge Lay Concluded.

The full text of the ruling is available in a 36k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: US v. $124,700 (US Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit, 8/19/2006)

Original Story

2006-08-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Out of sight, out of mind

[Like something out of a Star Trek flashback]

Authorities in Padua have decided to seal off a crime-ridden estate from the rest of the city rather than tackle its problems, reports Barbara McMahon

Monday August 14, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

The wall built on the outskirts of Padua to seal off the Serenissima housing estate. Photograph: Marco Bruzzo/EPA

The Serenissima housing estate in the suburbs of Padua was once a place that lived up to its name. It was a tranquil location with doctors, lawyers, architects, journalists and students populating the 273 apartments spread out over six blocks.

A former resident remembers the friendly atmosphere. "When one of the youngsters graduated, the whole staircase would go into action," she said. "One person brought the pasta, someone else prepared the salad and we all had a big party in the yard."

Those days are over. Nobody seems able to pinpoint exactly when the area began to change but slowly, local people moved out and groups of immigrants, mostly from Africa, moved in. Many Italians took advantage of the new arrivals, snapping up multiple apartments and renting bedsits at speculative rates of up to 1,000 euros a month.

Six, seven or eight immigrants shared each space and slept in shifts to reduce the rent even further. Unable to work legally, and with little money, the new arrivals hung around with nothing to do. Petty crime flourished and prostitutes and drug dealers targeted the area. Italians who couldn't afford to move out became too scared to open their doors at night.

In a recent editorial, Corriere della Sera described the area as "the worst possible example of failed integration" and said it was an example of what can happen if ghettos are allowed to form. It pointed out that Italian immigrants themselves were in the same situation a century ago in Bayard Street in New York's Little Italy, where 1,324 immigrants huddled in 132 rooms, and their miserable existence was chronicled by anti-slums campaigner Jacob Riis.

Matters came to a head last month, when a pitched battle raged for several hours one night between gangs of Moroccans and Nigerians wielding clubs, machetes, knives and crowbars. Tear gas was used to break up the fight and the incident shook the citizens of Padua. The city known for its artworks by Giotto, Donatello and Mantegna, and which is home to Italy's second-oldest university, where Galileo was once a professor of mathematics, had the distinction of having the most dangerous housing development in northern Italy.

Now Padua has another dubious claim to fame. A large and ugly barrier has been erected to help protect local residents from the run-down apartment blocks, largely filled with immigrants. Stretching for 84 metres, three metres high and made of thick steel panels, there is a police checkpoint at the entrance as well as CCTV cameras. The project has been welcomed by local people but is highly controversial. The barricade has already been dubbed Padua's Berlin wall and has reignited a debate about how to treat foreign migrants.

"It's obscene and racist," said Aurora D'Agostin, head of the local Green party. Another local group COBAS denounced the barricade as "segregation, like the concentration camps or the Jewish ghettos." Gian Carlo Galan, the centre-right president of the Veneto region, said that Padua's centre-left council had simply "given in to criminality" and that it had failed to tackle the social problems rife in the area. The hard-right Northern League party took another tack. "Raze the casbah of foreign delinquency to the ground," it roared. Some of the immigrants themselves hit back after the construction of the wall by stoning the windows of a local bar.

Some 210,000 people live in Padua, of whom 20,000 are legally resident non-EU citizens. A further 30,000 non-EU residents live in the surrounding province, which has a total population of almost a million. There are also several thousand asylum seekers, all hoping to be given leave to stay.

The mayor of Padua, Flavio Zanonato, a member of the Democrats of the Left party, has agreed that the barricade is not ideal but said he had to respond to the concerns of local people living near the estate, who were concerned about the level of violence and drug dealing. He is looking at a plan to employ immigrant police officers to patrol what has been nicknamed the Padua Bronx, on the grounds that they might be able to bring calm to the area.

He has also sharply criticised Italian property owners who are making a mint out of the immigrants. "This is a phenomenon we must face and resolve," he said about the problems of integration. "That's why shorter waiting times for obtaining Italian nationality and the right to vote are necessary instruments. The multi-ethnic society is firmly entrenched in Italy. We have to encourage integration and non-EU immigrants themselves can lend a hand."

Three of the Serenissima's apartment blocks have already been emptied of tenants and sealed up so that they cannot be reoccupied, and there are plans to move everyone else out in the next year or two "We've had no problems with the families that were relocated," pointed out the mayor. The key to assimilation, he argued, is to distribute immigrants around various areas of Padua and not to put them up in one place.

2006-08-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

Dershowitless

Alan Dershowitz is sick, demented, ghoulish. Yes, you say, but how does that distinguish him from other lawyers? Good point. But Dershowitz is so twisted, so skin-crawlingly brutish that he really missed a bet, career-wise.

I would not hesitate to cast Dershowitz as Hannibal Lechter, or in a remake of “Nosferatu.” Maybe the sequel to “The Hills Have Eyes,” planing the flesh off unsuspecting suburbanites. He could outdo pustuled, gray-fleshed Johnny Depp at the end of “The Libertine”---without make-up.

Anyone who decrees that it is acceptable for innocent little kids to die, or dirt-poor, ignorant, uneducated families to be wiped out---merely because of their physical proximity to suspected terrorists---is a fiend.

And please save the charges of naivete, and how it’s a murderous world where “morally pure” positions have no bearing in reality. I’ve heard it all before. I say that humans have grown so bellicose and bloodthirsty that “morally pure” positions are the only sensible ones left.

You know, ideas like “no war.” And “killing is bad.”

Dershowitz, like many who are so emotionally invested in the Middle East madness, has lost his witz, if not his humanity. If you missed it, the famed Harvard law professor and interruptive TV talking head wrote a commentary in the L.A. Times a couple weeks ago in which he proposed a bullgoose looney concept called a “continuum of civilianality.”

Sounds like something the Wizard of Oz would have bestowed on the Cowardly Lion, but it’s more like something that Holocaust point-man Heinrich Himmler would have dreamed up. It is a method of assigning relative worth to human life. It justifies the murder of human beings who live, work, or drink coffee near the home of a suspected “militant” who opposes Israel.

Wrote Dershowitz:
“Hezbollah and Hamas militants. . .are difficult to distinguish from those ‘civilians’ who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.”

Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians. Can it be any plainer? Dershowitz has created a gray area in order to justify the indiscriminate killing of Lebanese women and children because some of them might be tools of Hezbollah. He has cast suspicion over an entire populace.

Kristallnacht, anyone?

Because some women and children might have been recruited to aid Hezbollah, he says, whether as cooks and errand-boys or suicide bombers, therefore it is okay to bomb areas where they might be, even if this incinerates other women and children as they twiddle their thumbs, kick a soccer ball, or watch Al-Jazeera.

After all, as Uncle Al the Kiddies’ Pal, notes, those tykes and their mommies were given fair warning:
“The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some---those who cannot leave on their own---should be counted among the innocent victims.”

He’s right that all were given “well-publicized notice” to get out of southern Lebanon. We know this because some fleeing civilians were blown up by U.S.-built Israeli bombs. As for the notion of complicity by geography, this puts Dershowitz in good company with another child murder endorser, Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon, who announced on Israeli army radio that "all those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

Right. Here in Los Angeles, I live near a lot of latino gangs who regularly engage in shooting, drug sales, burglary. I must be a sympathizer.

To his credit, the Dershbag doesn’t quite go as far as Ramon. He still has a shred of humanity. He allows that those dead women and children who were unable to “leave on their own”---who couldn’t hop into their Escalades and cruise to Beirut Airport---are “innocent victims.” How gratifying! This will be a great comfort to those who lay burned, dismembered, disemboweled, dying. Good thing that Alan Dershowitz has determined that I am an innocent victim, they will think. Praise be to Allah!

The alleged point of Dershowitz’s chillingly detached commentary is to urge that the media reassess their “body count methods,” so as to separate the more circumstantially “complicit” men, women, and children from the less circumstantially “complicit” dead men, women, and children. Translation: he is upset with all the (accurate) recent reports of innocent civilians killed by Israel, and is exerting pressure on mainstream U.S. media to slant the story in Israel’s favor.

But let’s take his proposal seriously for a moment. Could such a change in media coverage be accomplished? Sure. Just investigate the deaths of each civilian in order to learn their exact motivations and political beliefs. Talk to schoolmates of dead children and ask if they ever bought a cup of coffee for a member of Hezbollah. Why, we could deputize Al “C.S.I.” Dershowitz to do it. Give him a nice flak jacket and send him to southern Lebanon to get busy. . .

On the surface, Dershowitz’s monstrous “continuum of civilianality” (say it fast ten times) is based on the ruse that there is an ongoing war---the same ruse that Bush uses to justify destroying Constitutional rights, flauting Congressionally enacted laws, rationalizing torture. “We need a new vocabulary,” Dershowitz writes, “to reflect the realities of modern warfare. . .” And: “this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.”

Nuance of warfare. Who wrote this, Dr. Strangelove? This is like “delicate disemboweling.” Listen: we are not at war. The “war on terror” is the Big Dershowitz/Bush Lie. The United States cannot fight a “war on terror” by brute military force, and neither can Israel. No one can. Brute force spawns more terrorists. Terrorism, no matter how ideological, is crime, not war. One side blows up buildings, the other invades nations in response? Doesn’t work. Dershowitz inadvertently illustrates this very point. Terrorists, he says, cannot easily be discerned among ordinary citizens. Correct. So what do you call people in a civilian population who blow up buildings, or assassinate innocents? Soldiers? How about “criminals?”

Of course, this really isn’t only about fighting terrorism, as Uncle Al would have you believe. The Dershowitz/Bush agenda is all gummed up with the subjugation of the Middle East, oil (read about the BTC oil pipeline?), the “democratization” of the world (read: empire) by force, good old-fashioned bloodsport, and a healthy dose of Jesus-is-coming Biblical prophecy.

As for the chorus of “what’s Israel supposed to do?” now being shouted into computer screens around the world, yes, this is the salient question. First, here’s what Israel should not do: earn the condemnation of much of the world’s press and populace, if not governments; unite Arab nations in new heights of hatred for Israel and Jews and the U.S.; embolden existing terrorists and terrorist groups sworn to destroy Israel and Jews and the U.S.; create generations of new terrorists sworn to destroy Israel and Jews and the U.S.; stoke anti-Semitism around the world; selfishly put the entire human population at risk of war and annihilation. (And drive Mel Gibson to drink.)

Yet this is just what Israel is accomplishing, with full U.S. support, as it turns tiny, beautiful Lebanon into a place of refugees, rubble, orphans (and yes, an unknown number of dead terrorists), and new terrorists.

And Alan Dershowitz-approved dead children.

2006-07-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

Department of Defense admits to wider surveillance of Don't Ask, Don't Tell groups

by Michael Rogers

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Department of Defense has released documents that show wider surveillance of student organizations than previously reported, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has reported.

On April 11th PageOneQ reported that the Pentagon had admitted to conducting surveillance of groups protesting the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy for gays and lesbians in the armed forces.

The new FOIA request yielded information about an undercover investigation by the Pentagon on acitivities into student groups protesting the war at State University of New York at Albany (SUNY Albany), William Paterson University in New Jersey, Southern Connecticut State University and the University of California at Berkeley, reports SLDN.

The documents released by the Pentagon on the SUNY Albany protests gave a description of planned activities. "Source received an email from [redacted by DoD] stating a protest was planned against military recruiters at SUNY Albany on 21 April 05. The text of the email is as follows:," said a report filed with the Department of Defense. Here is the image of the email from the report:

The documents released today indicate that e-mails sent by various student groups were intercepted and monitored by the government and that the government collected reports from seemingly undercover agents who attended at least one student protest at Southern Connecticut State University. None of the reports in the documentation, however, indicated any terrorist activity by the students who were monitored.

In another released document under te Department's TALON monitoring program is a paraphrasing of an email regarding a planned protest, also at SUNY Albany:

Also included in the report was monitoring of activities at William Patterson College of New Jersey. The report indicated that a protest would take place at the school on April 1, 2005:

“Federal government agencies have no business peeping through the keyholes of Americans who choose to exercise their first amendment rights,” said Servicemembers Legal Defense Network executive director C. Dixon Osburn, in the SLDN Statement. “Americans are guaranteed a fundamental right to free speech and free expression, and our country’s leaders should never be allowed to undermine those freedoms. Surveillance of private citizens must stop," he added.

The Documents included monitoring of emails from other schools as well. Here is report by the TALON service of a planned protest for April 21, 2005 at the University of California at Berkeley. UC Berkeley is regarded as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio.

Original Story

2006-07-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

License Plate Tracking for All

By Luke O'Brien

WASHINGTON -- Jealous lovers may soon have an alternative to sniffing for perfume to catch a cheating mate: Just follow their license plate.

In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws. But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements, says former policeman Andy Bucholz, who's on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a manufacturer of the technology.

Bucholz, who designed some of the first mobile license plate reading, or LPR, equipment, gave a presentation at the 2006 National Institute of Justice conference here last week laying out a vision of the future in which LPR does everything from helping insurance companies find missing cars to letting retail chains chart customer migrations. It could also let a nosy citizen with enough cash find out if the mayor is having an affair, he says.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode, says Bucholz.

Private detectives would want the information. So would repo men or bail bondsmen. And the government, which often contracts out personal data collection -- in part, so it doesn't have to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests -- might encourage it.

"I know it sounds really Big Brother," Bucholz says. "But it's going to happen. It's going to get cheaper and cheaper until they slap them up on every taxicab and delivery truck and track where people live." And work. And sleep. And move.

Privacy advocates worry that Bucholz, who wants to sell LPR data to consumer data brokers like ChoicePoint, knows what he's talking about.

"We have pretty much a Wild West society when it comes to privacy rights," says Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The overall lesson here is that we really need to put in place some broad-based privacy laws. We need to establish basic ground rules for how these new capabilities are constrained."

Current laws don't constrain much. Just as it's legal for the paparazzi to take pictures of celebrities in public, it's legal for anyone to photograph your license plate on the street. Still, there aren't enough LPR units in service yet to follow your car everywhere.

The systems, which cost around $25,000 and are made by G2 Tactics, Civica, AutoVu and Remington Elsag Law Enforcement Systems, among others, have been sold mostly to major police departments around the country.

Police in cities such as Los Angeles use them to hunt down stolen cars and felony vehicles like getaway cars. And parking-enforcement officers use LPR to collect money -- lots of it. In the first 12 hours after New Haven, Connecticut, deployed a G2 Tactics LPR to crack down on parking violations, the city towed or booted 119 cars, resulting in a $40,000 windfall, according to Bucholz.

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates. The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.

The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue.

The subway has never looked more appealing.

Original

2006-07-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

Busted for wearing a peace T-shirt; has this country gone completely insane?

By Mike Ferner
Link

Friday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "Okay, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go."

"Huh?" I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.

"You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.

"Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists.

Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go."

Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, "Not before I finish my coffee."

He insisted that I leave, but still not quite believing my ears, I tried one more approach to reason.

"Hey, listen. I'm a veteran. This is a V.A. facility. I'm sitting here not talking to anybody, having a cup of coffee. I'm not protesting and you can't kick me out."

"You'll either go or we'll arrest you," Adkins threatened.

"Well, you'll just have to arrest me," I said, wondering what strange land I was now living in.

You know the rest. Handcuffed, led away to the facility's security office, past people with surprised looks on their faces, read my rights, searched, and written up.

The officer who did the formalities, Eric Ousley, was professional in his duties. When I asked him if he was a vet, it turned out he had been a hospital corpsman in the Navy. We exchanged a couple sea stories. He uncuffed me early. And he allowed as to how he would only charge me with disorderly conduct, letting me go on charges of criminal trespass and weapons possession -- a pocket knife -- which he said would have to be destroyed (something I rather doubt since it was a nifty Swiss Army knife with not only a bottle opener, but a tweezers and a toothpick).

After informing me I could either pay the $275 fine on the citation or appear in court, Ousley escorted me off the premises, warning me if I returned with "that shirt" on, I'd be arrested and booked into jail.

I'm sure I could go back to officers Adkins' and Ousleys' fiefdom with a shirt that said, "Nuke all the hajis," or "Show us your tits," or any number of truly obscene things and no one would care. Just so it's not "that shirt" again.

And just for the record? I'm not paying the fine. I'll see Adkins and Ousley and Dubya's Director of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, if he wants to show up, in United States District Court on the appointed date. And if there's a Chicago area attorney who'd like to take the case, I'd really like to sue them -- from Dubya on down. I have to believe that this whole country has not yet gone insane, just the government. This kind of behavior can't be tolerated. It must be challenged.

I was at the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center because I'm participating in the Voices for Creative Nonviolence's 30-day, 320-mile "Walk for Justice," from Springfield to North Chicago, Illinois, to reclaim funding for the common good and away from war.
Mike Ferner served as a Navy corpsman during Vietnam War and is obviously a member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at:mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net.

Copyright © 1998-2006Online Journal

2006-06-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Did you hear the clip of Bill (psychopath) O'Reilly saying : "Now to me, they're not fighting it hard enough. See, if I'm president, I got probably another 50-60 thousand with orders to shoot on sight anybody violating curfews. Shoot them on sight. That's me... President O'Reilly... Curfew in Ramadi, seven o'clock at night. You're on the street? You're dead. I shoot you right between the eyes. Ok? That's how I run that country. Just like Saddam ran it. Saddam didn't have explosions - he didn't have bombers. Did he? because if you got out of line, your dead"

2006-06-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

National guard attempts to confiscate banned weapons from right-wing tax protest group

BOSTON - April 20

National guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned weapons were ambushed on April 19th by elements of a para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group's organizers as "criminals," issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed weapons. Gage issued a ban on private ownership of weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early this month between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that "none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily."

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government's plans.

During a tense standoff in Lexington's town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right- wing extremists. Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange. Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths.

Before order could be restored, armed citizens from the surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces overmatched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as "ringleaders" of the extremist faction, remain at large.

First reported on April 20, 1775

2006-06-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

GOP Halts Extension of Voting Rights Act

A House vote to renew the landmark 1965 law is held up by objections over federal oversight of nine states and ballots in foreign languages.

By Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The Voting Rights Act, which has protected minority voters from discrimination since its passage more than 40 years ago, appeared headed for an easy reaffirmation in the House on Wednesday — until conflicts old and new clouded its future.

Amid wide bipartisan support — the House Judiciary Committee approved the measure last month by a 33-1 vote — Republican leaders scheduled a floor debate, hoping to use the bill's passage for an election-year outreach to minority voters. The landmark legislation is due to expire next year, and advocacy groups have been pressing for its renewal for another 25 years.

But in a private morning meeting, Republicans raised objections that forced House leaders to yank the bill from the floor.

One concern had its roots in the bill's origins. The legislation requires nine states with a documented history of discrimination against black voters — such as poll taxes and literacy tests — to get Justice Department approval for their election laws.

Another objection, a spillover from the contentious debate on immigration, had to do with requirements in some states for ballots printed in several languages and the presence of interpreters at polling places where large numbers of citizens speak limited English.

Some members of the Republican caucus also suggested delaying the debate until the Supreme Court issued a ruling in a controversial 2003 Texas redistricting case. That decision, expected in the next two weeks, will examine the issue of whether Latino voters were disenfranchised.

Whatever the fuel, Wednesday's delay set off a series of brush fires on Capitol Hill.

"It was heated," said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), who supports an amendment by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) to end a requirement for bilingual ballots in jurisdictions where at least 5% of the population speaks a language other than English. "I've been in meetings for two hours. There are meetings going on all over the Hill."

Officially, House Republican leaders said in a statement that they were "committed to passing the Voting Rights Act legislation as soon as possible." Unofficially, some aides said the leadership might schedule the vote again after the July 4 recess.

Although dismayed by the delay, Democrats seized the chance to spotlight the rare public dissension in Republican ranks.

"I hope that the Republicans will be able to quickly resolve their differences and that the Congress will be able to pass this vital legislation," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). "It is critical that we do so as soon as possible, because our democracy depends on protecting the right of every American citizen to vote."

"Apparently, the leadership of the Republican Party cannot bring its own rank-and-file members into line to support the Voting Rights Act," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who represents Selma and Birmingham — the sites of seminal events in the civil rights movement that produced the bill in 1965. "That ought to be a significant embarrassment as they fan around the country trying to skim off a few black votes in the next four months."

Part of the problem, according to some GOP congressional aides, was that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), was unavailable to answer questions and allay concerns. In addition, they said, he consulted more often with his Senate counterparts than with members of his own party during deliberations over the bill.

In a statement issued later Wednesday, Sensenbrenner defended both the bill and the process. "Some members, whom I believe are misinformed, have expressed concerns about voting on this legislation now," he said.

Noting that the committee has held 12 hearings and amassed more than 12,000 pages of testimony, Sensenbrenner said the bill was one Republicans and Democrats could be "proud of because it ensures that when discriminatory practices of the past resurface, they are quickly put to rest. I hope the House leadership will bring [the bill] to the floor in the near future."

Sensenbrenner thinks opponents "keep moving the goal post," said an aide who asked not to be identified. Some of the issues being raised — such as bilingual ballots — first came up in committee, where efforts to change them were defeated, the aide said.

The House delay could complicate matters in the Senate, where Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) had planned to bring up an identical bill next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The effort to amend the requirement that nine states clear election laws with the Justice Department was led by Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). The requirement, he argued, unfairly singled out Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Others saw the vote as a vehicle to address the growing language gap in American culture. After waking up to headlines suggesting that House leaders were delaying President Bush's push to overhaul immigration laws, Garrett said he hit the telephones to rouse his constituents.

"I've been on the talk radio circuit in the last 24 hours just to get the message out to let their representatives know how they feel," he said. "If we have until after the Fourth, the issue will resonate with the base."

Minority and advocacy groups will also likely rally in coming weeks.

"The notion that a handful of Republicans from Southern states can rally enough support to hijack reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act is a slap in the face," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). "This delay is inexcusable."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-voting22jun22,1,3633542.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

2006-06-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

Demanding rights for great apes

By Jason WebbTue Jun 27, 10:54 AM ET

Spain's parliament is to declare support for rights to life and freedom for great apes on Wednesday, apparently the first time any national legislature will have recognized such rights for non-humans.

Parliament is to ask the government to adhere to the Great Ape Project, which would mean recognizing that our closest genetic relatives should be part of a "community of equals" with humans, supporters of the resolution said.

The move in a country better known for bull-fighting would follow a string of social reforms which have converted Spain from one of Europe's most conservative nations into a liberal trailblazer.

Backers of the resolution expect support from the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose government has legalized gay marriage and reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in education.

"With this, Spain will make itself a world leader in protection of the great apes," said Pedro Pozas, general secretary of the Great Ape Project's Spanish branch.

The resolution, presented by a Green Party parliamentarian, prompted criticism and some ridicule at first.

Spanish media quoted the Catholic Archbishop of Pamplona as saying it was ludicrous to grant apes rights not enjoyed by unborn children, in a reference to Spanish abortion laws.

But a spokesman for Archbishop Fernando Sebastian said he had been taken out of context and now supported the resolution.

"We are in favor of defending animals, but people come first," Father Santos Villanueva told Reuters.

Philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri founded the Great Ape Project in 1993, arguing apes were so close to humans they deserved rights to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

"When a loved one dies, they grieve for a long time. They can solve complex puzzles that stump most two-year-old humans," said Singer.

The Spanish move could set a precedent for greater legal protection for other animals, including elephants, whales and dolphins, said Paul Waldau, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University.

"We were born into a society where humans alone are the sole focus, and we begin to expand to the non-human great apes. It isn't easy for us to see how far that expansion will go, but it's very clear we need to expand beyond humans," Waldau said.

There are only a few hundred apes in Spain, mainly chimpanzees. But the resolution would also push the government to help endangered populations in Africa and Asia, said Pozas, speaking to Reuters at a sanctuary outside Madrid sheltering half a dozen chimpanzees rescued from abuse.

2006-06-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

NEWS RELEASE
June 26, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

CONTACT: Abraham Kneisley, info@constitutionsummer.org, 510.816.0563

Berkeley Considers First Ballot Initiative to Call for Presidential Impeachment

BERKELEY, CA The Berkeley City Council will vote tomorrow on whether to include an initiative advocating the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney on the Berkeley municipal ballot in November. If passed, the initiative will be the first of its kind and will allow Berkeley's 74,836 registered voters to decide if there is sufficient cause for the impeachment and removal of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Several resolutions calling for impeachment have passed in cities around the country, but a ballot initiative allowing voters to weigh in on the issue would be unique. Constitution Summer, a coalition of student activists from more than a dozen universities, believes that Congress' reluctance to investigate the merits of impeachment justifies taking the question to the people. True to the roots of the Free Speech Movement that still informs the culture of Berkeley, the group feels it is simply exercising its constitutional right to redress of grievances under the First Amendment.

Geoffrey King, a Democrat and President of Constitution Summer, sees impeachment as a non-partisan concern. According to King, it is not a question of whether the President should be impeached, but why he hasn't been. "President Bush has arrogated unto himself powers that in some cases went out of fashion in 1215, and in any event, in 1776. He has shown a wish and a willingness to corrupt our representative system of government by tracking the calls of and wiretapping Americans despite a federal statute that makes doing so a felony; by normalizing torture; and by revoking the right of Americans not to be disappeared and held indefinitely without charge or trial. These abuses fit perfectly with what the Framers intended the impeachment power to address. It is time to use it."

Saba Sahouria, a Republican and Treasurer of Constitution Summer, added, "The President says we must give up essential liberty to defeat al Qaeda, and yet, we are inexplicably embroiled in an unnecessary war that diverted CIA agents, Special Forces commandos, money, and ground troops from crushing the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq, which had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and which had no operational links to al Qaeda. By invading Iraq, the President has undermined our long-term security. There is no other way to describe the President's actions but as a radical, extreme, and legally baseless power grab, because they make little sense in any other context."

The current proposed ballot initiative was introduced by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. Citing the High Crimes listed above, the ballot initiative calls on the City of Berkeley to petition all members of the United States House of Representatives and all members of the California State Legislature to bring articles of impeachment against the President and Vice President. State legislatures may send articles of impeachment to the House of Representatives via Rule 603 of Thomas Jefferson's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure.

Critics of the impeachment movement, such as Rush Limbaugh, have said that it would be a gift to Republicans to push for impeachment because it would drive the Republican base to the polls and affect the mid-term elections in November. Others have noted that the Republican base includes many people mindful of liberty under law, and that a level-headed and realistic campaign to impeach would drive independents, progressives, liberals and libertarians to cast their votes as well.

In any case, King is unapologetic. "Our country is in a constitutional crisis. The President and Vice President are making claims to power that would have terrible implications for the American ideal of liberty if left unchecked."

"They have tricked, threatened, and spied on all of us. They have tried to pit Americans against each other by politicizing security, all while making us less safe by invading Iraq."

"In doing these things, they have forced Americans to choose between loyalty to them and loyalty to the country. They do not understand the character of the American people. It is coming time to remind them."

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Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush
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Release date: By 01 March, 2006

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2006-06-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Teacher gives Wal-Mart a lesson in civic activism

By Tom Lochner

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Sherry LaVars/Times

If it weren't for a luxury housing developer and the world's largest retailer, Steve Kirby might be just an energetic schoolteacher and man-about-Hercules with a million hobbies.

But today Kirby is an anti-Wal-Mart poster boy on the strength of an impassioned speech last month to the Hercules City Council, which invoked eminent domain to strip the retail giant of a lot near the waterfront.

Wal-Mart had wooed the city with promises of jobs and sales taxes. Kirby and Friends of Hercules, the grass-roots group he co-founded, warned that a big-box store would ruin the pedestrian-friendly new neighborhoods west of San Pablo Avenue.

"Wal-Mart will never, ever understand what we want," Kirby told the council. "I say, throw the bums out."

That sound bite, carried on radio, television, the Internet and in newspapers, also made the rounds at Castro Elementary School in El Cerrito, where Kirby has taught since 1983.

"A couple of first-graders came up to me when I was on recess duty and said, 'Hey, Mr. Kirby! Throw the bums out!' and we had a big laugh," he said.

He turned the episode into a writing exercise for his third-graders. "I'm trying to teach them to write certain kinds of essays, to inform and influence opinion. It became a good civics lesson."

Wal-Mart spokesman Kevin Loscotoff, without naming Kirby or Friends of Hercules, described Wal-Mart opponents as out of touch with mainstream Herculeans, who, he said, widely support a Wal-Mart store and are being denied a chance to evaluate the company's latest store proposal.

The Wal-Mart fight is not Kirby's first against a well-heeled applicant. In 2001, a Southern California developer announced plans to build more than 500 houses, a hotel, offices and stores on a wildland tract on the eastern edge of Hercules.

Kirby and some other residents formed the Friends of Franklin Canyon -- which later would evolve into Friends of Hercules -- to fight the development.

They canvassed neighborhoods, set up tables in front of stores, started a Web site, made phone calls and wrote to a growing e-mail tree, warning of an environmental debacle. Eventually, they sponsored a successful ballot initiative that rewrote the city's general plan for the Franklin Canyon area, restricting land use there largely to agriculture and recreation.

The Franklin Canyon area remains undeveloped.

"David brought down Goliath," Jeffra Cook, another founding member of the group, said after the November 2004 vote.

Kirby is not the leader of Friends of Hercules, he said, nor does it have any leaders.

"We're a coalition, a network, a committee," Kirby said. "We're on HOA boards, the chamber (of commerce), the NAACP, youth groups. We're an eclectic group of people.

"We receive information and disseminate information. We're not Republicans or Democrats. We're not that kind of political group."

Kathy Parsons does not know Kirby well on a personal level but, like many other Hercules residents, knows him through Friends of Hercules.

"He is certainly one of my heroes," Parsons said. "I would hate to think what Hercules would be like without him and his vigilance with issues, big and small, in our community."

In 2004, frustrated by what they perceived as waffling by the council over Franklin Canyon, Kirby and his group ran a slate of three candidates. One, Charleen Raines, won.

The slate lacked a campaign manager, so Kirby volunteered

"He just comes through," Raines said, "time after time after time."

Kirby, 56, was born in Berkeley and lived in El Cerrito until 1988. He attended Harding Elementary, Portola Middle and El Cerrito High schools and received a bachelor of arts in psychology and a master's in education administration from UC Berkeley.

He is not the kind of single-minded, single-issue activist who invites the comment, "Get a life."

"Steve is active in so many things, I don't know how he keeps so many balls in the air," Raines said."

Kirby is the past board president of Contra Costa Civic Theatre in El Cerrito, where he acted in four musicals, one of which he also produced. He has been his school's union representative for most of his career and has been a delegate to the National Education Association. He is president of his Bay Pointe Homeowners Association in Hercules and a member of the executive committee of the Sierra Club's West County chapter.

He plays guitar and sings with Scouts of the Cascades, a cowboy trio. He is a scuba diver and a photographer. He plays golf. He is the announcer for the Hercules Fourth of July parade. He develops Web sites and teaches in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education's academic talent development program. He has been a mentor teacher, master teacher and summer school principal and has a long list of academic awards.

He moved to Hercules in 1988, he said, "to be nearer to the open spaces, hills, hiking areas."

Although he helped block development in Franklin Canyon, elsewhere in the city, hills were flattened, traffic worsened and commercial areas went "south," Kirby said.

A series of city-sponsored neighborhood planning sessions in 2000 culminated in the Hercules Waterfront Plan and the Central Hercules Plan.

The plans favor pedestrian-friendly development such as live-work studios, houses with back alleys for car access, upscale boutiques and restaurants, a Capitol Corridor train station and a ferry terminal.

"I'd like to see it as a real nice destination for people to come to and meet friends, go to the restaurants, have some coffee, read the paper. Maybe an Internet cafe," Kirby said.

Wal-Mart's tract is 171/4 acres roughly midway between San Pablo Avenue and the Bay. A 2003 development agreement limits store size there to 64,000 square feet. Wal-Mart's latest scaled-down application calls for 99,000.

Wal-Mart is reviewing its legal options, Loscotoff has said. He disputed that the 64,000-square-foot figure is binding and added, "How is it fair to the residents of Hercules that they cannot see this project? The fact is residents have not been acquainted with our recent application."

Kirby said he hopes talks between the parties result in a deal in which "we'll buy the land and Wal-Mart will leave."

"We're not afraid that they (the city) are going to have legal fees. We want them to stay the course. We want them to prevail," he said.

"Meanwhile, we can be an inspiration to other cities bullied by Wal-Mart."

Reach Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760 or tlochner@cctimes.com.

2006-06-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

Saving American

George W. Bush is an international war criminal who should be arrested, shackled and led to the World Court to stand trial for his many crimes against humanity.

So should be any member of Congress who continues to support the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq and whose actions contributed to the unnecessary deaths of 2,500 American military men and women along with the thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians.

The pathetic, partisan attempt by the Republican leadership in Congress to tie support for the Iraq debacle to the so-called "war on terrorism" is just another sad example of how far this nation has plunged into a immoral and unethical morass that cannot be erased by spin, rhetoric or lame attempts at justification.

The United States of America, a country that once stood for freedom, justice and human rights is now an international bully, a source of worldwide terrorism that poses a far greater threat to world peace than any Islam-spouting prophet hiding in a cave in Afghanistan.

The upcoming mid-term elections in November should not be a battle between Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, right or left. It must be a battle for the survival of our nation. As citizens we can no longer stand by while this cabal of corrupt, power-mad despots destroys what little is left of the America we once respected and loved.

I'm convinced George W. Bush is a madman, a brain-damaged dry drunk whose insanity and megalomania threaten the very existence of America. He represents a clear and present danger to the peace and security of this nation and must be treated as a traitor to the very Constitution he swore to uphold in two inaugurations.

I believe he and Vice President Dick Cheney conspired to undermine the Constitution by illegally increasing the power of the executive branch, using the events of September 11, 2001, to advance personal political agendas. Neither man gives a damn about this country. They care only about their own power, their own desires and using both to reward those who bought them with financial and political support.

Bush disregards the law as a matter of course, appending "signing statements" to legislation that he plans to ignore because it infringes on his view of absolute power and divine right from God Almighty.

Cheney sees the Vice Presidency as a means to two ends: Pad his own financial portfolio and enrich his friends in the military-industrial complex.

Both men are aided in their criminal enterprise by a corrupt Republican-led Congress, a governing body so riddled with criminals, con-artists and thieves that the Mafia or Columbian drug gangs pale by comparison.

In the best of times, we could count on the checks and balances of the system to save the Constitution but those checks were neutered by single-party governance and a Supreme Court packed with compliant justices.

That's why Bush and his cronies should be led, handcuffed and shackled, to the World Court, a body not controlled by the right-wing jihad that has hijacked the Constitution and put America in danger.

Since that won't happen, our other option lies at the ballot box and enough voter anger to throw out every single one of the bitches and bastards who have helped in the overthrow of our government. I'm not talking about just Republicans. I mean every one who still votes for and supports the illegal war in Iraq; every one who still lives large at lobbyists' expense; every one who sells his or her vote for a campaign contribution and every one who supports the status quo in Washington.

Then, maybe, we can return control of this country to the people. Then, maybe, we can hold a corrupt, immoral President and his legions accountable for their vile acts.

Maybe there's still time to save this thing called America.

Original Story

2006-06-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

Violent Crime Surges for First Time in 5 Years

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 12, 2006; 1:33 PM

Overall violent crime reports surged for the first time in 15 years in 2005, including a 5 percent increase in the District, according to preliminary FBI statistics released today.

The FBI's annual crime report shows increases in three of the four major categories of violent crime -- murder, robbery and assault -- contributing to an overall increase of 2.5 percent in violent offenses from 2004.

The increase affected all categories of cities except those over 1 million in population, such as New York, Los Angeles and Detroit, where violent offenses continued to fall.

In the District, violent crime jumped by 5 percent from 2004 to 2005, driven exlusively by a 14 percent increase in robberies, the statistics show. The number of murders in the city dropped slightly, from 198 to 195, as did the numbers of rapes and assaults.

The opposite trend held in Baltimore, where violent crime dropped 3.5 percent overall.

The rise in violent offenses nationally represents the largest overall crime spike since 1991 and the first significant increase since 1992, when crime began to plummet dramatically on its way to the lowest levels in three decades.

But property crimes -- including burglary, theft and arson -- continued to register improvement in 2005, decreasing 1.6 percent from the year before.

The biggest rise came in murders, which rose 4.8 percent, to nearly 17,000, in 2005. Killings jumped particularly dramatically in cities, including Cleveland (up 38 percent), Houston (23 percent) and Phoenix (9 percent).

Robberies rose 4.5 percent and assaults grew by 1.9 percent, according to the FBI statistics. The only category of violent crime to fall was forcible rape, which dropped 1.9 percent nationwide.

On a regional basis, the increase disproportionately hit the Midwest, where violent crimes surged 5.7 percent -- at least three times the rate seen in the Northeast, South or West.

The District's 5 percent violent crime increase was due solely to a jump in the number of reported robberies, which rose from 3,057 in 2004 to 3,502 in 2005. In addition to the slight drop in murders, the city also reported a 24 percent drop in reported rapes and nine fewer assaults, to 3,854.

The FBI data is taken from reports submitted by more than 12,000 police departments and other law enforcement agencies nationwide. A final report, including more detailed statistics, will be issued in the fall.

Original Story

2006-06-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Dead detainee 'was to be freed'

One of the three men who committed suicide at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was due to be released - but did not know it, says a US lawyer.

Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees said the man was among 141 prisoners due to be released.

He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.

Meanwhile, a top US official appeared to row back from the tough line taken by other officials over the suicides.

At the weekend, one top state department official called them a "good PR move to draw attention", while the camp commander said it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

These people are told they'll be 50 by the time they get out, that they have no hope of getting out
Mark Denbeaux
US lawyer

"I wouldn't characterise this as a good PR move," Cully Stimson, US deputy assistance secretary of defence, told the BBC's Today programme, on Monday.

"What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans we value life even if it is the life of a violent terrorist captured waging war against our country."

'Despair'

The Pentagon named the prisoner who had been recommended for transfer as 30-year-old Saudi Arabian Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.

He was a member of a banned Saudi militant group, the defence department said.

The other two men who died on Saturday morning were named as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 28, from Yemen, and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, 21, another Saudi Arabian.

Ahmed was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had participated in a long-term hunger strike from late 2005 to May, and was "non-compliant and hostile" to guards, the Pentagon said.

Zahrani, 21, was a "front-line" Taleban fighter who helped procure weapons for use against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the department.

Professor Denbeaux told the BBC World Service that the feeling among detainees at the Cuba camp was one of hopelessness.

"These people are told they'll be 50 by the time they get out, that they have no hope of getting out. They've been denied a hearing, they have no chance to be released," he said.

He said US policy was to refuse to tell prisoners they were due to be released until a location had been found.

Utaybi had been declared a "safe person, free to be released" but the US needed a country to send him to, Professor Denbeaux said.

"His despair was great enough and in his ignorance he went and killed himself," he said.

Mounting criticism

The prison camp at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds some 460 prisoners, the vast majority without charge.

There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.

Criticism of the camp is mounting, even among President Bush's Republicans.

"There are tribunals established... Where we have evidence they ought to be tried, and if convicted they ought to be sentenced," said Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Some inmates had been detained on "the flimsiest sort of hearsay", he added.

The United Nations rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said European leaders should use a summit with President George W Bush next week to press for the prison's closure.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said procedures at Guantanamo Bay violated the rule of law and undermined the fight against terrorism.

Story from BBC NEWS:

2006-05-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

The low-income consumer is finally succumbing to gas prices.

"You have Wal-Mart sales that were somewhat lighter than expected, and the fear is that the low-income consumer is finally succumbing to gas prices," said Jim Awad, chairman of Awad Asset Management.

This makes it sounds like it was the GOAL . . .

2006-05-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

EU: US access to flight data unlawful

Guardian Unlimited

The EU's highest court today ruled that it was unlawful to order European airlines to hand over information about transatlantic air passengers to the US government.

The European court of justice ruling said the US did not provide adequate protection for air passengers' privacy.

Under the Passenger Name Records agreement, reached in May 2004, EU airlines have been obliged to give Washington 34 items of information about passengers flying to the US. The details include names, addresses, all forms of payment and contact telephone numbers.

The ruling, which gives the European commission and member states four months to find a solution, maintains the legality of the agreement until September 30 "for reasons of legal certainty".

The court ruled that the decision by the council of ministers - the decision-making body that represents national governments - to sign the agreement had lacked an adequate legal basis.

"Consequently, the court annulled the council decision approving the conclusion of the agreement and did not consider it necessary to consider the other pleas relied on by parliament," a court statement said.

The US and European airlines said the ruling would have no immediate impact on transatlantic air travel and left time to find an agreed solution to the data transfer issue.

US and commission officials said they were confident a fresh agreement could be reached. Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary of state for the Department of Homeland Security, said he expected "a solution that will keep the data flowing and the planes flying".

Franco Frattini, the commissioner with responsibility for security, said the US and EU needed "continuity".

European airlines played down the impact of the ruling, saying there should be no short-term effect on travellers.

US officials insisted that the transfer of personal details was essential in the fight against terror following September 11.

They had warned that failure to agree a deal on passenger data would mean prolonged delays for air passengers from Europe because more processing would be required on their arrival in the US.

The judges today said the agreement had to be annulled because existing EU data protection law only covers commercial data and not that used for security purposes.

Graham Watson, the Liberal Democrat leader in the European parliament, led the campaign against the legislation and welcomed the result.

"Today's judgment vindicates the four-year campaign that I and my colleagues led in the European parliament to protect the privacy of airline passengers," he said.

Stewart Room, the head of data protection at Rowe Cohen solicitors, said there was no authority within EU law for the original deal.

"The starting point is that the European directive on data protection does not extend to matters of public security," he said.

"Consequently, it is unlawful for the commission, or anyone else in the EU, to make the passenger records available to a government under that directive. It had to fail because the commission does not have the legal authority."

Mr Room said bilateral agreements between European governments and the US could be one way to circumnavigate the EU rules - something the Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said MEPs would be alert to.

However, he questioned whether the data would be useful and whether there was still the political will to push through more information collection projects.

"Law and order agencies are sucking in more data than they can process," he said. "There may be some quality data within the information, but you end up in a situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees.

"There has to be a real question as to whether the government still has the will to carry this forward in the light of the controversy over other massive data collection projects, such as the introduction of identity cards."

The deal on "processing and transfer of personal data" on transatlantic flights was backed by EU governments and the European commission.

It meant complying with US anti-terrorist legislation requiring that all airlines operating flights to, from or across US territory provide the authorities with electronic access to all passenger data in their reservation and departure control systems.

The verdict could pose a major problem for individual European airlines. They may face the threat of sanctions from Washington if they refuse to cooperate with the US electronic passenger information requirements, or sanctions from their national data protection authorities if they do.

2006-05-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

Eli Pariser: Desperate Telcos: When the Going Gets Tough, the Absurd Rumors Get Going

Opponents of Internet freedom seem shocked that Google, MoveOn, the Christian Coalition, and 700 other diverse organizations are fighting on the same side to preserve the Internet that has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation, and free speech.

Telecom companies and their multi-million dollar lobbyists are so befuddled that their plan to put tollbooths on the Internet is losing support that they've taken to spreading absurd rumors.

Internet freedom opponents told one right-wing tabloid that "Google has become the single largest private corporate underwriter of MoveOn." That's news to us since MoveOn has never received a cent from Google - or any other big business. We're funded by the small dollar contributions of 3.3 million members.

Equally absurd, "sources" told the tabloid that "Some of that money has gone to an online petition drive and a letter-writing campaign." That may be AT&T's fantasy world - but right now, online activities that allow regular citizens to be participants in their democracy cost advocacy groups almost nothing. And that's a good thing.

Rounding out a trifecta of errors, the tabloid says MoveOn is funneling Google "Net Neutrality money" into a Senate race in Pennsylvania. That rumor isn't just paranoid - it doesn't even point at the right organization. MoveOn.org Civic Action, which is pushing Net Neutrality, is a separate organization from MoveOn.org Political Action, which does more political work

Unfortunately, these aren't the most egregious rumors going around.

Internet freedom opponents also try to fool Congress and the public with rumors that Net Neutrality means "regulating the Internet." They know full well that Net Neutrality has been in place since the Internet began, but the FCC recently put it on the path to elimination unless Congress steps in and pro-actively keeps the rules the same.

Telecom companies also like to paper Congress with propaganda implying that Internet freedom is somehow a left-wing issue. Tell that to the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Instapundit, the business executives, and the many libertarians who are fighting right along with MoveOn, the inventors of the Internet, thousands of bloggers, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition in support of Net Neutrality.

As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners says, when the left and right agree on an issue like Internet freedom, "it's been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American." On the proposal to destroy Net Neutrality, most Americans would probably agree.

Original Story

2006-05-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

Remember Remember the 5th of November

“There is something terribly wrong with this country isn’t there?”

Are you one of the many people who saw the movie V for Vendetta?
Were you disturbed how many parallels you saw between the Fascist Government portrayed in the movie and our current political situation? Have you wanted to express your opinion about what’s going on? Have you wanted to make the media wake up and take notice?

It’s time to take action in a way that will demand people notice.

While there won’t be another Presidential election for 2 more years, 2006 is still an important election year where many Congress seats for both House and Senate are up for grabs. Enough to change the balance of power in this country.

The Election is scheduled for the 7th of November

Our goal is to stage country wide protests inspired by the spirit of freedom portrayed by V. On November 5th let us don capes and Guy Fawkes masks! Let us take to the streets in masses. Let us show the Burgeoning Fascist regime that the idea of Freedom is not dead

If you see this as a powerful symbol, help spread the word, help organize “V Protests” in your home town. Tell your friends, your neighbors. Anyone who wants to make a stand for freedom!

V for Vendetta costumes should be easily available due to Halloween. Get one, dress up and make yourself seen.

Let’s give them a 5th of November that shall never, ever be forgot!

But please….don’t blow anything up

When in the course of human events . . .

Lords debate airline liquids ban

Exploding Marmite threat revealed

Scientist says tests back Russia Arctic claim

Tax the Rich, End the War

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The NationPosted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 15, 2007http://www.alternet.org/story/46521/

Ellison's winning platform

Bush Urges Nation To Be Quiet For A Minute While He Tries To Think

New Foley Instant Messages; Had Internet Sex While Awaiting House Vote

Sherwood Ross: George Bush vs. Gospel of Matthew

George Bush vs. the Gospel of Matthew

Help defeat the Public Expression of Religion Act

Reports of al Qaeda in Pakistan

ABC'S Report

Busted for wearing a peace T-shirt; has this country gone completely insane?

National guard attempts to confiscate banned weapons from right-wing tax protest group

GOP Halts Extension of Voting Rights Act

Demanding rights for great apes

Berkeley Considers First Ballot Initiative to Call for Presidential Impeachment

Teacher gives Wal-Mart a lesson in civic activism

By Tom Lochner

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Saving American

Violent Crime Surges for First Time in 5 Years

Dead detainee 'was to be freed'

The low-income consumer is finally succumbing to gas prices.

Eli Pariser: Desperate Telcos: When the Going Gets Tough, the Absurd Rumors Get Going

Remember Remember the 5th of November

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on January 12, 2007, Printed on January 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46521/