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Another pot scare story, another faulty study
Reuters
(5/13/08)

Marijuana may up heart attack, stroke risk: study

"Heavy marijuana use can boost blood levels of a particular protein, perhaps raising a person's risk of a heart attack or stroke, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.
Dr. Jean Lud Cadet of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, said the findings point to another example of long-term harm from marijuana. But marijuana activists expressed doubt about the findings ...
A US group supporting legal sales and regulation of marijuana disputed the findings. Marijuana Policy Project spokesman (and past This is Hell! guest) Bruce Mirken said, for example, the study involved people who were extremely heavy users.
'I think the low end was 78 joints a week. That's 10 or 11 joints a day,' Mirken said in a telephone interview.
'We're talking about people who are stoned all the time. We're talking about the marijuana equivalent of the guy in the alley clutching a bottle of cheap wine. If you do anything to that level of excess, it might well have some untoward effects, whether it's marijuana or wine or broccoli,' Mirken added.
Cadet's team said the findings suggest long-term harm from marijuana beyond issues such as impaired learning, poor memory retention and retrieval and perceptual abnormalities.
But Mirken said: 'Even if you take this finding at face value, it's not at all clear that it has any relevance to the real world because there is still no data showing higher rates of mortality among marijuana smokers. If this was a significant cause of cardiovascular disease, where are the bodies?'"

Barack Obama's presidential campaign faces racism on the campaign trail
The Washington Post
(5/13/08)

Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause

"Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into 'a horrible response,' as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, I'll never vote for a black person,' recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. 'People just weren't receptive.'
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: 'It wasn't pretty.' She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: 'Hang that darky from a tree!'
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across 'a lot of racism' when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: 'White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.'
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: 'After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest.'"

Will America's racism end any chance of an Obama presidency?
The New Republic
(4/28/08)

The Big Race

"Many social scientists had long rejected the possibility that humans might harbor unconscious attitudes different from their conscious behavior. But, in trying to explain the persistence of racial prejudice, political psychologists were forced to hypothesize different levels of awareness and motivation. On the highest level was public moral reflection guided by social norms--which led to Trent Lott being pilloried when he famously said in 2002 that, if Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond had been elected president, the country could have avoided 'all these problems.' Beneath this, however, was a realm of knee-jerk opinion that might contradict a person's moral reflections; and still beneath that were unconscious attitudes, which, like a person's knee-jerk opinions, were often at odds with his or her public moral reflections. If racial prejudice persisted, it was on these deeper levels.
Political psychologists devised new tests to uncover these sentiments. First, they crafted survey questions aimed at unearthing what they called 'symbolic racism,' 'modern racism,' and, most recently, 'racial resentments,' which ascribe to blacks as a group certain negative attributes or undeserved advantages. For example, researchers asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with statements such as 'It's really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites" or "Over the past few years, blacks have gotten more economically than they deserve.'
Experimenters then inserted questions like these into the American National Election Studies (ANES), extensive biennial surveys funded by the National Science Foundation. The answers revealed a degree of racial resentment that wasn't apparent from more explicit questions about racial bias. In 1986, for instance, 59 percent of respondents agreed that blacks were not trying hard enough (only 27 percent disagreed), while 67 percent thought blacks should work 'their way up ... without any special favors.' Psychologists David Sears and Donald Kinder, as well as others, found that this racial resentment was the single most important factor--more important than even conservative ideology or political partisanship--in explaining strong opposition to a host of government programs that either directly or indirectly benefited minorities. Of course, that doesn't mean there couldn't be principled conservative opposition to government-guaranteed equal employment or urban aid. But, according to the political psychologists, racial resentment played the largest role in fueling public skepticism.
The answers also revealed which groups within society continued to harbor racial resentment. With the help of Harvard doctoral student Scott Winship, I looked at the levels of racial resentment in ANES data from 1988, 1992, and 2000 (the questions were omitted in 1996). What Winship and I found was that resentment was highest among males rather than females, the middle class rather than the wealthy or poor, those lacking a college degree, those who worked in skilled or semi-skilled blue collar jobs or as laborers, and residents of small towns in the Midwest and South. Does that profile sound familiar? It's more or less a description of the white working-class voters who have spurned Obama and with whom John Kerry and Al Gore had trouble. The only groups that didn't evince racial animosity toward blacks were voters with post-graduate degrees and, of course, African Americans. Hispanics were nearly as prejudiced as whites, and a group labeled 'other' that includes Asian Americans was even more so--a partial explanation, perhaps, for why Obama fared so poorly among these groups in California. Clearly, racial resentment persisted--just in a more nuanced form."

Pentagon is America's biggest polluter
Counterpunch
(5/12/08)

The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Past This is Hell guest Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank write "The nation’s biggest polluter isn’t a corporation. It’s the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste -- more than the top three chemical companies combined.
Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon’s partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way. For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children's growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development.
Perchlorate, which are salts derived from perchloric acid, has been leaking from literally hundreds of defense plants and military installations across the country. The EPA has reported that perchlorate is present in drinking and groundwater supplies in 35 states. Center for Disease Control and independent studies have also overwhelmingly shown that perchlorate is existent in our food supplies, cow’s milk, human breast milk. As a result virtually every American has some level of perchlorate in their body.
Currently only two states, California and Massachusetts, have set a maximum allowable contaminant level for perchlorate in drinking water. But the EPA won’t follow these states’ lead. In the Colorado River, which provides water for over 20 million people, perchlorate levels are high. Perchlorate is most prevalent in the Southwest and California as a result of the large number of military operations and defense contractors in the region."

Mexican farmers fight back against NAFTA, 'green revolution'
The New York Times
(5/13/08)

Ways of Ancient Mexico Reviving Barren Lands

"Jesús León Santos is a Mixtec Indian farmer who will soon plant corn on a small plot next to his house in time for the summer rains. He plows with oxen and harvests by hand.
Under conventional economic logic, Mr. León is uncompetitive. His yields are just a fraction of what mechanized agriculture churns out from the vast expanses of the Great Plains.
But to him, that is beside the point.
The Mixteca highlands here in the state of Oaxaca are burdened with some of the most barren earth in Mexico, the work of more than five centuries of erosion that began even before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, their goats and their cattle. The scuffed hillsides look as though some ancient giant had hacked at them, opening gashes in the white and yellow rock.
Over the past two decades, Mr. León and other farmers have worked to reforest and reclaim this parched land, hoping to find a way for people to stay and work their farms instead of leaving for jobs in cities and in the United States ...
Viewed against the backdrop of rising food prices in a global marketplace, Mr. León’s fight to keep farmers from abandoning their land is much more than a refusal to give up a millennial way of life.
As Mexico imports more corn from the United States, the country’s reliance on outside supplies is drawing protests among nationalists, farmers’ groups and leftist critics of Mexico’s free trade economy. Earlier this year, as the last tariffs to corn imports were lifted under the North American Free Trade Agreement, farmers’ groups marched against the accord in Mexico, asking for more aid.
Mr. León and the farmers’ group he helped found, the Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca, or Cedicam, have reached into the past to revive pre-Hispanic practices. To arrest erosion, Cedicam has planted trees, mostly native ocote pines, a million in the past five years, raised in the group’s own nurseries.
Working communally, the villagers built stone walls to terrace the hillside, and they dug long ditches along the slopes to halt the wash of rainwater that dragged the soil from the mountains. Trapped in canals, the water seeps down to recharge the water table and restore dried-up springs.
As the land has begun to produce again, Mr. León has reintroduced the traditional milpa, a plot where corn, climbing beans and squash grow together. The pre-Hispanic farming practice fixes nutrients in the soil and creates natural barriers to pests and disease.
Along the way, the farmers have modernized the ancient techniques. Mr. León has encouraged farmers to use natural compost as fertilizer, introduced crop rotation, and improved on traditional seed selection.
Mr. León plows with oxen by choice. A tractor would pack down the soil too firmly.
In the eight villages in the region where Cedicam has worked, yields have risen about three or fourfold, to about 100 to 150 bushels an acre, Mr. Leon said. Unlike the monocultures of mechanized farming, these practices help preserve genetic diversity ...
Over the past two decades, the Mexican government has steadily dismantled most support for poor farmers, arguing that they are inefficient. About two-thirds of all Mexican corn farmers, some two million people, are small-scale producers, farming less than 12 acres, but they harvest less than a quarter of the country’s production.
Rising demand for animal feed has spurred soaring imports of subsidized corn from the United States. Mexico now buys about 40 percent of its corn from the United States.
Increased subsistence farming is not the answer to the global food crisis. But people skeptical about the idea that free trade is the best way to reduce hunger point to small-scale projects like Cedicam’s as alternatives to industrialized farming, which is based on costly energy use, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
'The Green Revolution displaced our local resources,' said Mr. León, referring to modern agricultural practices with hybrid crops and chemical fertilizers. 'Our dependence on the outside, that led to our ruin.'
Mixtec farmers typically grow enough corn to feed their families and sell the excess in local markets. But the price they get has been distorted by subsidized American imports and the dominance of just a handful of large buyers. It does not cover the increase in the cost of fertilizer, which has more than doubled in the past year."

US anti-terror sting operation sets up, stops former general's plot to overthrow Cambodian government
New York Times Magazine
(5/11/08)

Gen. Vang Pao’s Last War

"The wars of the 20th century destroyed many millions of people who once lived in the hillsides and valleys of remote rural worlds. Few were hit as hard as the Hmong, an ancient tribe whose members hewed out rough lives upcountry in Laos, west of Vietnam. Half a century ago, Laos became a cockpit of the cold war. The Hmong, led by a charismatic soldier named Vang Pao, sided with the United States in the fight against Communism in Southeast Asia. They lost everything — their land, their way of life, their country.
Now the war on terror has engulfed Vang Pao in his land of exile, California. It has given him cause to question his faith in America. Last year, the United States indicted the 78-year-old general as a terrorist, accusing him of plotting to overthrow the Communist government of Laos. His prosecutors painted him as a Laotian bin Laden; they said he conspired 'to murder thousands and thousands of people.' In open court, they called the case a conspiracy as immense as the attacks of Sept. 11. Few former friends of American foreign interests have fallen further from favor in Washington’s eyes.
The case against Vang Pao grew out of a sting operation, a crime created in part by the government itself. What evidence there is rests largely on secretly recorded conversations led by an undercover federal agent, and while the transcripts implicating some of the co-defendants in the case seem damning, the agent barely met Vang Pao. The talk between them was brief; though Vang Pao may have dreamed aloud of a glorious revolution in Laos in years gone by, his role in the conspiracy charged by the government may be hard to prove. The government presents the case as a clear-cut gunrunning conspiracy in violation of the Neutrality Act, which outlaws military expeditions against nations with which the United States is at peace. But the old general’s defenders contend that the case against him is the consequence of a misguided post-9/11 zeal. If convicted in a trial, the former American ally could face the rest of his life in prison. And already his indictment has apparently emboldened Laotian and Thai authorities to crack down on the beleaguered Hmong who remain in refugee camps or in hiding in the jungles of Laos.
The government has a checkered record of late in its sting operations against people subsequently charged with planning acts of political terror. In 2006, to take one example, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that a joint terrorism task force had broken up a plot to 'levy war' and to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago. In that case, as two trials have shown, an F.B.I. informant known to the defendants as Brother Mohammed created some of the key evidence — leading the group in an oath of loyalty to Al Qaeda, for instance. He provided them with plans and plots and gave them military gear like combat boots. The defendants never had contact with actual terrorists, never obtained weapons or explosives. Two juries have failed to see the logic of the case; a federal judge has had to declare two mistrials. (The government plans to try the case a third time.)
The sting operation against Vang Pao exhibits some similar traits."

The Republican dilemma: how can we pander to both the Latinos and the anti-immigration conservatives?
The Progressive
(5/8/08)

McCain’s bilingual blues

"... almost two years ago, (Republican presidential candidate and Republican Arizona Senator John) McCain voted for an amendment to declare English as the official national language. And last March, he skipped a vote on an amendment that sought to block lawsuits by employees challenging English-only workplace rules.
Like most Republican politicians, McCain faces a dilemma when it comes to pursuing the Latino vote. If he courts them too strongly by maintaining a moderate stance on immigration, he may be seen as not being a “true” conservative. But if he neglects them, he may have trouble in certain key states.
The Latino vote, particularly in Florida, was crucial to President Bush’s victories in 2000 and 2004. But it was also a barometer of flagging support for Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections. This drop-off was due in part to the hard line taken by the anti-illegal-immigration wing of the party, which called for massive arrests and deportation.
That wing keeps flapping about the need to make English the official language, even though the vast majority of Spanish speakers in the United States are US citizens, born or naturalized.
What’s more, there is nothing in the Constitution that mentions the need for an official language, and there is nothing inherent in democracy that requires the use of English. The availability of government services in different languages is justified by the 14th Amendment, which requires that citizens not be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

The end of another Republican era, but will the Democrats in-fighting screw this up, too?
Harper's Magazine
(5/13/08)

Six Questions for Sidney Blumenthal, Author of The Strange Death of Republican America

Past This is Hell! guest Scott Horton interviews another past This is Hell! guest Sidney Blumenthal who says, "John McCain’s emergence is testimony to the shattering of Bush’s presidency. Without the fracturing of conservatism, McCain would never have become the Republican nominee. It is not an accident, as the Marxists might say, that McCain was Bush’s rival in 2000, a bitterly fought contest that resulted in wounds that are still fresh to McCain. Regardless of McCain’s need to consolidate and conciliate the Republican base–and despite some Democrats’ insistence that McCain is little more than a party line reactionary–he remains an utterly singular figure in the individualistic tradition of Goldwater but lacking Goldwater’s early (at least) extremism. Ironically, at the end of the current Republican era, McCain is the last important Republican whose career stretches back to the Reagan period–and even to the Nixon years as an icon of the Vietnam War. McCain represents continuity and a break with it. His reliance on neoconservatives for foreign policy advice is his most important connection to the Bush legacy ...
Since the beginning of the Republican ascendancy, with the downfall of Lyndon Johnson and resurrection of Richard Nixon, the Democratic Party has held power for longer periods in the Congress than the White House. Whatever the flaws and errors of the Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the congressional Democrats enormously intensified their difficulties. The congressional party in effect waged war on the executive, constantly asserting narrow interests over national agendas and demonstrating contempt for the damage it inflicted on the political standing of the president. In dealing with Carter, Congressional Democrats displayed that they had learned almost nothing from the Nixon landslide of 1972 and the gathering advantages of the Republicans, perhaps because it was followed so swiftly by the Watergate scandal overthrowing him. By 1979, the congressional Democrats considered Carter the enemy. Senator Edward Kennedy’s candidacy was really mounted by the congressional Democrats against an incumbent president of their own party. After all, they reasoned, wouldn’t the congressional party always hold power even if the president were to lose? And wouldn’t the congressional party be even more influential operating with a Republican president? That very condescension greeted Bill Clinton when he arrived in Washington in 1993. Certainly, he made many mistakes during his first two years in offices, but the self-destructive parochialism of the congressional party is not given its due in the wreckage of his universal health care initiative and the rest of his program or in the subsequent political disaster. The election of the first Republican Congress in 40 years was as much a reaction against the arrogance of congressional Democratic power as it was to the turmoil fostered by an ambitious Democratic president who could not control the whirlwind."

• Horton hears a Sidney in this pretty interesting interview: Blumenthal gives props to Rove and also dashes the hopes of a "post-partisan" young generation that will sweep Obama into power and then change the country with it. But the most interesting part is his take on the petty individualism of the Democratic congresses from the 1970s onwards - it's their fault Clinton and Carter failed! This, frankly, is news to me - maybe he's right? Or maybe he's still attached to Clintonismo a la 1990s. Your thoughts? KH

Pentagon opposes cutting veterans' minimum time served to earn free college education
The Associated Press
(5/13/08)

Pentagon biggest obstacle to Democrats' GI bill

"Veterans groups say it's time to expand college aid for GIs, and Democrats want to use an election year to do it. Their biggest obstacle? The Pentagon.
The Defense Department is lobbying against legislation proposed by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would guarantee a full-ride scholarship for service members to any in-state public university. According to defense officials, the plan would hurt its ability to retain service members because the new GI education bill would require only three years before the full benefit kicks in. The Defense Department wants the commitment to be extended to at least six years.
'We have no issue with the fact that Sen. Webb wishes to provide a more generous education benefit to troops,' said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. 'But we are certainly concerned that this would be eligible to them' so soon.
The Pentagon's opposition to Webb's bill underscores the difficulty the military has had in recruiting and retaining an all-volunteer force at a time when it is engaged in a war that is deeply unpopular with the American public."

• Does anybody else in Chicago remember Geoff Morrell? He was a below average on-the-scene reporter and part-time anchor on WMAQ CBS2 and WLS ABC7 news from 1996 to 2001. Or, you may remember him playing a reporter in the Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson masterpiece, "The Negotiator." I remember calling him a "dope" during an on-air tirade on media coverage, but I can't remember why. CM

While anti-mining activist lectures in Chicago, her husband is beaten back home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
WNMU
(5/9/08)

Husband of environmentalist allegedly attacked in Big Bay

"Robert Pryor of Big Bay is married to Cynthia Pryor, executive director of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, which opposes plans for a sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains.
Cynthia Pryor says her husband was approached Monday at their home by three men, who asked if he was—quote—‘One of those anti-mining guys.’ When he responded and asked them to leave, the three attacked him, knocked him unconscious, and left him on the ground. He suffered multiple cuts and scrapes, and one eye was injured."

Republican National Convention chief - handpicked by Senator McCain's staff - steps down after links to ExxonMobil, Myanmar revealed
Agence France Presse
(5/11/08)

Republican convention chief quits after Myanmar ties revealed

"The coordinator of the Republicans' 2008 presidential convention has resigned after revelations that he was paid to bolster the dismal US image of Myanmar's military junta.
Corporate lobbyist Doug Goodyear had been picked by the campaign of Republican nominee-elect John McCain to oversee the September convention in Minneapolis. But Goodyear announced his resignation Saturday shortly after Newsweek magazine reported that his lobbying firm took 348,000 dollars in 2002 to represent the Myanmar regime."

Ron Paul-maniacs poised to overturn Republican Party presidential nomination convention
Los Angeles Times
(5/12/08)

Ron Paul's forces quietly plot GOP convention revolt against McCain

"In the last three months, Paul's forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.
Paul, for instance, favors a drastically reduced federal government, abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending the Iraq war immediately and withdrawing U.S. troops from abroad.
They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a long-term revolution for control of the Republican Party.
So eager are they to follow their leader's words, that Paul's supporters have driven his new book, 'The Revolution: A Manifesto,' to the top of several bestseller lists."

Are New York City cops targeting minorities in 'collars for dollars' anti-pot campaign?
AlterNet
(5/9/08)

NYC's Staggering Arrest Rate for Pot Achieved By Police Deception and Scams

"New York City has been the pot-bust capital of the world for a decade, since Rudolph Giuliani's decision to make public toking a top police priority. A new study sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union says the city's cannabis crackdown is both racist and fraudulent ...
New York State decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That reduced possession of less than 25 grams is a violation, carrying a $100 fine and no criminal record. But smoking or possession in public is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to three months in jail. So in order to get around the constitutional restrictions on searches and find a valid reason to make an arrest, police have to use deception.
A typical ruse is for police to stop someone near a suspected marijuana-sales site and tell them something along the lines of 'We saw you coming out of the weed spot. If you have anything on you that you're not supposed to have, give it to me and all I'll give you is a ticket.' If the suspect falls for the ruse and hands over his marijuana, he is then arrested for displaying it in public view.
Though most people charged with misdemeanor pot possession do not receive jail sentences, they often have to spend up to 24 hours in jail before arraignment, and they acquire a permanent arrest record.
Police and defenders of the crackdown say that making large numbers of arrests for minor offenses has reduced major crimes. Other benefits include that it's an easy way for police supervisors to show their precincts' productivity, it's an easy way for individual officers to get overtime-rookie New York cops get paid only $25,000 a year, so 'collars for dollars' augment that -- and it keeps a reserve of officers occupied.
Peterson-Small states bluntly that the crackdown is 'racist,' a legacy of the Giuliani principles that 'we will tame New York by bringing the black and brown people under control' and 'no offense is too petty.' Of the people arrested for misdemeanor pot possession from 1997 through 2006, five out of six were black or Latino, in a city that is almost half white and Asian. Nine out of ten were male, and most were aged 16 to 25.
And over the years, the focus has shifted from Midtown Manhattan and Greenwich Village to outlying black and Latino areas. The police precincts in upper Manhattan's Washington Heights, the west Bronx, Jamaica and St. Albans in southeastern Queens, and the 'Black Brooklyn' neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and East New York regularly turn in more than 1,000 petty pot busts a year each. Though there is no evidence that black New Yorkers smoke more pot than white ones -- nationally, the rate of use among young adults is slightly higher for whites, at least according to government surveys -- the city's marijuana-arrest rate for blacks is more than five times what it is for whites."

Myanmar junta exports rice while feeding its own cyclone victims rotting food
Los Angeles Times
(5/10/08)

Myanmar exports rice as cyclone victims struggle

"While Myanmar's military regime Friday restricted the rush of international aid offered to help hungry and homeless cyclone survivors, the government was exporting tons of rice through its main port.
Four of the five berths at the port of Thilawa for oceangoing container vessels were empty, but a crane was loading large white sacks into the hold of a freighter. The sacks were filled with rice destined for Bangladesh, said the drivers of at least 10 transport trucks waiting to deliver several tons more of rice to the docks.
The regime has a monopoly on rice exports and said this week that it planned to meet commitments to sell rice, whose price has reached record highs on the world market, to countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, even though Myanmar's main rice-producing region suffered the worst damage from the cyclone, which hit a week ago.
The storm caused massive destruction in the Irrawaddy River delta, where farmers are now desperate for food."

Being a child soldier builds character!
NPR
(8/5/08)

Mozambique Study Sees Hope for Ex-Child Soldiers

"Amnesty International estimates that as many as 300,000 children worldwide are ensnared in deadly conflicts. Advocates for child welfare worry about the long-term effects of war on child soldiers, but a recent study in Mozambique concludes that former child soldiers are doing remarkably well."

• We've always assumed that forced conscription of children was a bad thing. Turns out, it builds good citizens who are politically active. Of course, considering their military training, that 'more politically active' thing may end up being not so good. The study included only boys. No mention of whether girls used as sex slaves became productive members of society. MM

So what of the 501 Guantanamo detainees who've been released?
Andy Worthington’s Blog (AlterNet)
(5/9/08)

Who Are the Gitmo Prisoners Released With Sami al-Haj?

Past This is Hell! guest Andy Worthington writes, "Late last Thursday evening, I joined in the widespread celebrations -- at least in those parts of the world that care about the injustice of holding people in prison without charge or trial -- that attended the repatriation of al-Jazeera journalist Sami al-Haj from Guantánamo, his home for the last six years, to Sudan.
Although a few news outlets have briefly mentioned some of the other men released with Sami -- two of his compatriots, a Moroccan and five Afghans -- their stories remain largely unknown. However, as a result of the research I undertook for my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, I'm able to shine some light on their stories, which otherwise are unlikely to receive much coverage -- if at all -- outside their home countries."
And here's part two: Who Are the Five Afghans Released From Guantánamo?

Uzbekistan silencing witnesses to a massacre
BBC News
(5/12/08)

Andijan eyewitnesses 'silenced'

"The campaign group Human Rights Watch says the Uzbek government continues to persecute people connected to unrest in Andijan three years ago.
Officials are using threats and torture to silence witnesses to the killings, the New York-based organisation says.
According to survivors, hundreds of people died when armed forced fired at largely peaceful protesters.
The Uzbek government has denied there was a massacre of civilians, saying it thwarted an Islamic uprising.
The BBC's Monica Whitlock, who reported on the events in Andijan in May 2005 says the report fills in some of the silence that followed the killings.
It details what it says is an attempt by the Uzbek government to intimidate witnesses.
Many have been tortured, threatened with rape and subjected to repeated humiliation, including being forced to crawl like a dog during police interrogation, the report says.
All are under constant surveillance by the secret police, it adds."

China-supporting Nepal cracks down on pro-Tibet activists
CNN
(5/11/08)

Nepal arrests hundreds of Tibetan women

"Police in Nepal arrested more than 500 Tibetan protesters, nearly all of them women, on Sunday before what was to be the first all-female rally against China's actions in Tibet.
A senior police officer said the protesters were arrested for carrying the Tibetan flag and wearing head bands that read "Free Tibet."
Activists said the protesters were arrested from around the royal palace in Kathmandu while they were gathering for a peaceful rally.
The protesters were expected to be released in the evening. In general, protesters arrested in Nepal in recent weeks have been released that evening.
Nepal strictly controls any anti-China activities on its soil and maintains that Tibet is part of China ...
The United Nations and international rights groups have criticized Nepal for using what they say is excessive force to stop the protests, AP reported. Police have beaten people with batons and dragged them through the streets while detaining them."

Until recently, Ireland observed Whitmonday as a national bank holiday. The UK replaced observing Whitmonday with a 'Spring Bank Holiday' on the last Monday of every May,
However, Matt steadfastly celebrates the day after Pentecost.
Freak.

Cops go back to college
The Associated Press
(5/7/08)

Feds penetrated drug culture easily at San Diego State

"Undercover agents who posed as college students to bust more than 100 suspected drug dealers at San Diego State University never had to crack a book to gain acceptance on campus. All it took was cash.
The federal agents went to one or two parties but never actually went to class or lived in the dorms. Instead, they merely arranged meetings with suspected dealers and asked about buying cocaine, Ecstasy, methamphetamine, marijuana and other drugs, authorities said Wednesday.
'All it took was saying, Hey, I go to State, can you hook me up?' said San Diego County prosecutor Damon Mosler. 'And then it was off to the races.'
The day after the drug sweep landed members of three fraternities in jail and led to the suspension of six frats, investigators revealed how easy it was to penetrate the university's drug culture.
Students who had gotten caught for fighting, drinking, minor drug offenses or other crimes quickly turned informants and used text messages to introduce their drug dealers to undercover agents. Dealers made handoffs in front of dorms, in parking lots or behind frat houses, sometimes in broad daylight in full view of surveillance cameras.
They apparently made little effort to launder their spoils. One fraternity brother arrested Tuesday drove his Lexus directly from a $400 cocaine sale on campus to a nearby bank, where he deposited the cash, according to court papers.
That came as a surprise to agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, who were used to being thoroughly screened by dealers scared of being arrested.
'They never gave any thought that we could be doing an operation there,' said Eileen Zeidler, a spokeswoman for the DEA office in San Diego.
At least 75 people arrested during the five-month sting were San Diego State students, and 13 of them were from seven fraternities. All together, there were 128 arrests, 61 on Tuesday. Theta Chi had the highest number of students arrested, with five.
Campus police started the probe a year ago after the cocaine overdose death of a freshman sorority member, but they soon called in federal agents to provide fresh faces on campus and supply the money needed to make drug buys.
That was a major departure from the arms'-length relationship that has existed between colleges and police since the 1960s. For decades, police in many communities have largely turned a blind eye to drugs on campus."

Rumors of immigration agents nearby send Oakland neighborhood into panic
New America Media
(5/7/08)

Immigration Raids Startle Communities in Oakland and Berkeley

"Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.
He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.
Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7:30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley ...
At about the same time, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) officials were receiving similar calls from concerned parents and community members that ICE agency vehicles had been spotted near four Oakland schools, including Esperanza Elementary, where parents say they saw agents parked on International Blvd, 98th, 95th, and San Leandro Boulevard, a four block radius surrounding the school ...
As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.
Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the 'the ugly side of government.'
He labeled the ICE actions 'inappropriate and unnecessary' and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. 'There should be no raids in Oakland,' he said.
'As a sanctuary city,' Dellums said, 'we're all in unison. We don't want this type of intimidation. Immigrants are human beings, and need to be dealt with respect.'
Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid, who also showed up at the school, said there was no warning about the ICE raids. 'ICE just rolls in and tells our police department after the fact," he said. 'The students are upset and crying. The school's administration said some of the kids are very shook up.'
ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the agency is mindful of the sensitivities associated with schools. She said there was no truth to the reports that ICE was targeting schools on this day, and that the two ICE fugitive operations teams based in the Bay Area go out virtually ever day seeking immigrant fugitives."

Acquittal of cop may lead New York City to reform
The Associated Press
(5/8/08)

Protesters who snarled traffic arrested in New York City

"A day after his carefully orchestrated protests briefly blocked rush-hour traffic, the Rev. Al Sharpton on Thursday promised to stage another mass protest over three police detectives' acquittals in the 50-bullet killing of an unarmed man.
The next protest is planned somewhere in New York City within seven to 10 days, said Charlie King, acting national director of Sharpton's National Action Network. He said no other details would be released until next week.
'Yesterday was the beginning of a long and sustained campaign of civil disobedience,' King said ...
The protests were aimed at getting the U.S. attorney's office to pursue civil rights charges against the undercover detectives, who were acquitted of wrongdoing in the shooting last month in state court. Federal prosecutors are reviewing the case but declined to comment Thursday.
Sharpton and relatives of the slain man, Sean Bell, planned to meet privately Thursday with Gov. David Paterson to press for a state law requiring independent prosecutors to investigate police shootings, King said.
Bell was gunned down as he and two friends left his bachelor party at a Queens strip club on his wedding day in November 2006. The shooting stirred outrage and complaints about police conduct. One officer fired 31 bullets, emptying and reloading his gun.
The officers said they believed Bell and his friends were about to get a gun; no firearm was found. Bell's friends, who were seriously wounded, say the police shot without warning, which the officers deny.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said his department is considering disciplinary action against the detectives."

The world's going to hell and it's time to make some big decisions
Spectrezine
(5/7/08)

Globalisation and War

In an address to the international congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in New Delhi, past This is Hell! guest Susan George said, "Corporate-led, finance-driven globalisation has successfully transferred wealth from labour to capital. This has resulted in inequality and exclusion on a massive scale which, combined with the pressure on water and other environmental resources, is likely to fuel new conflicts ...
We face the oldest moral question in the world, whether for religions or for secular political bodies as well as for social movements and civil society organisations. What do the rich owe to the poor, the fortunate to the less fortunate, the educated to the uneducated; the healthy to the ill? Do these obligations, if there are any, apply only to the people in our own societies, to our own countries, or to everyone, everywhere? The kind of globalisation we choose-and I assure you that it is a choice, not a fate to which we must submit-will determine whether there is peace or war. In my mind, there can be no peace without justice.
The other big question concerns the laws and regulations we should demand, in our own interests, so as to keep the market under control and to protect the planet from further destruction. How can we make sure such laws are put in place, particularly in the international arena where there is no democratic machinery? If we do not have enforceable laws and binding rules, the vile maxim of 'All for ourselves and nothing for other people' will continue to prevail, nationally and internationally. We especially need rules which oblige societies to share because, if we are to believe Adam Smith, this is not going to happen spontaneously. This means that we need taxes, including international taxes, in order to promote individual welfare, social cohesion and-the subject that has brought all of us here ... "

New US trafficking legislation redefines sex workers as victims rather than criminals
AlterNet
(5/8/08)

Satisfied Sex Worker or Domestic Trafficking Victim?

Past This is Hell! guest Kari Lydersen writes, "Public and governmental attention has been increasingly focused on victims of international sex trafficking over the past few years, with immigration visas and social services offered to victims. By current legal and social definitions, the girl described above has not been trafficked. But advocates argue the DePaul study shows U.S.-born prostitutes working in the United States should, in many cases, be defined as trafficking victims, exploited and trapped in situations beyond their control. The House version of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA, also HR 3887), passed overwhelming in December 2007, redefines trafficking to include many domestic prostitutes. If a similar bill is passed in the Senate and becomes law, it will mean that women -- and some men -- in this situation would be treated as crime victims deserving of resources and institutional support, rather than as criminals. And their pimps and traffickers would face increased criminal penalties.
Among other things, the legislation widens the US Department of Justice's definition of trafficking, which currently hinges on the presence of "force, fraud or coercion." The House bill designates trafficking involving force, fraud or coercion as "aggravated trafficking" and expands simple trafficking to include other forms of deceit, manipulation and control including threats, verbal abuse and withholding of support. It also makes sexual tourism to foreign countries a crime akin to importing people to the US for sexual servitude ...
The DePaul study found that, in general, the vast majority of young women in prostitution are controlled by pimps and suffer worse conditions in terms of violence, number of clients and lack of autonomy the longer they stay in the trade. Sixty-four percent of women reported wanting to leave sex work, but 43 percent reported they could not leave without physical harm. Sixty-four percent of women also have a romantic relationship (usually an abusive one) with their pimp, adding extra layers of emotional vulnerability and manipulation to the situation.
The study found that 58 percent of women were transported to different locations for prostitution (26 percent out of state), 53 percent could not keep any of the money they made, and many were watched or guarded when not working -- hallmarks of trafficking situations.
'This is a highly organized sex trade,' said Jody Raphael, co-author of the DePaul study. 'They take these women to where they know there is demand" -- including Las Vegas or the state capitol when the legislature is in session. 'To me, transportation and control equals trafficking.'
The study also confirmed that a majority (57 percent) of women were deceived as to the conditions or terms of their work when they were recruited into prostitution.
For example: 'He told me I would never get hurt. I get hurt on a regular basis.' And, 'He promised we would get rich, and we didn't. He promised no violence; there is violence' ...
The Young Women's Empowerment Project, a Chicago group of youth in sex work, said their experiences with police -- who often demand sexual favors -- and the court system give them no faith that abuses can be addressed through the justice system.
'Making more laws and hoops to jump through will not change this situation,' the group said in a collective statement. 'If adults really want to support young women who trade sex for money, they will keep us away from the criminal legal system -- away from cops and courts and social workers. They will ensure that we have the documentation and the skills that we need to achieve our goals, and they will offer us concrete assistance (jobs, housing, transportation -- where we set the terms of the assistance) rather than roping us in to a larger system that hurts us.'
Raphael said that while she supports the expanded legislation, she doesn't think law enforcement is the key to ending domestic trafficking.
'Communities themselves have to say this is not acceptable,' she said. 'This has been normalized in many communities; that needs to change. Change has to come from the bottom up.'"

America's best, brightest and non-deployable all fighting in Iraq
USA Today
(5/8/08)

43,000 deployed unfit for combat

"More than 43,000 US troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show.
This reliance on troops found medically non-deployable is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million servicemembers to the war zones, soldier advocacy groups say.
'It is a consequence of the consistent churning of our troops,' said Bobby Muller, president of Veterans For America. 'They are repeatedly exposed to high-intensity combat with insufficient time at home to rest and heal before redeploying' ...
According to those statistics, the number of troops who doctors found non-deployable but who were still sent to Iraq or Afghanistan fluctuated from 10,854 in 2003, down to 5,397 in 2005, and back up to 9,140 in 2007 ...
This is the first war in which this health screening process has been used, the Pentagon said."

Colombian describes life in President Uribe's intimidation nation
Inter Press Service
(5/8/08)

"Mark Him on the Ballot - The One Wearing Glasses"

"The woman agreed to talk to IPS on the condition that she be asked neither her name (we will call her "L.") nor the name of her village.
The main city in the fertile region of Magdalena Medio is Barrancabermeja, an oil port on the Magdalena River, which runs across Colombia from south to north before emptying into the Caribbean Sea.
What convinced the villagers to vote for Uribe? "Because the region where we live is poor, very poor, it’s so difficult to find work, and when I heard him say I am going to work for the poor, I am going to help them, I thought this is a good president.'
When the rightwing president’s first four-year term came to an end in 2006, most of the villagers decided again to vote for him, reasoning that he just needed more time to reduce poverty.
The odd thing was that in both the 2002 and 2006 elections, despite the fact that the villagers had already decided to vote for Uribe, the far-right paramilitaries, who had committed a number of murders since 1998, when they appeared in the region that was previously dominated by the leftwing guerrillas, pressured the local residents to vote for Uribe anyway.
The paramilitaries did not kill people to pressure the rest to vote for Uribe, as they did in other communities, but merely used 'threats,' said L.
'If you don't vote for Uribe, you know what the consequences will be,' the villagers were told ominously.
And on election day, they breathed down voters’ necks: 'This is the candidate you’re going to vote for. You’re going to put your mark by this one. The one wearing glasses,' they would say, pointing to Uribe’s photo on the ballot, L. recalled.
'One (of the paramilitaries) was on the precinct board, another one was standing next to the table, and another was a little way off, all of them watching to see if you voted for Uribe,' she added, referring to the less than subtle way that the death squads commanded by drug traffickers and allies of the army ensured that L.’s village voted en masse for the current president in both elections.
'We form part of a municipality where there is corruption, from the mayor to town councillors, the police, the army and the justice officials -- in a word, everyone. They are just one single corrupt mass. So what are you supposed to do?' said L., who added that the paramilitaries 'control everything' ...
'Instead of creating jobs for us, what they did was to make us lose the ones we already had,' she said ...
Analysts say that what is collapsing in Colombia today is the legitimacy of the executive branch and the ruling alliance.
The governing parties have set forth several proposals, such as the creation of a special 'institutional adjustment' commission, named by the very legislators who are under scrutiny for their ties to the paramilitaries.
The commission would be an alternative to a proposed referendum in which voters would be able to recall the current members of Congress, and perhaps even the president, or to a referendum on whether or not to convene a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution."

The fight over Pemex, Mexico's state-run oil company, is gonna get ugly
Inter Press Service
(5/7/08)

Pemex Oozes Corruption

"Funds belonging to the Mexican state oil monopoly, Pemex, have paid in recent years for liposuction treatment for the wife of the company’s chief executive, a presidential candidate’s campaign, contracts with firms facing legal action, and the whims of trade union leaders who are not required to account for their expenses ...
The 70-year-old Pemex, the biggest company in Latin America, which employs 154,761 people, 125,523 of whom belong to the powerful oil workers union, is facing severe financial difficulties and is in dire need of upgrading its technology infrastructure. Moreover, Mexico’s proven oil reserves are expected to run out in nine years.
Billions of dollars are lost to corruption which, according to observers, is deeply rooted in an opaque administration choked with red tape, and in political and economic vested interests.
In April, the conservative government of Felipe Calderón proposed reforms of the company, which would include the creation of an audit committee in charge of ensuring transparency, and would give Pemex greater freedom with respect to making decisions on managing its budget, making purchases, reinvesting earnings in production and exploration and contracting out to private companies.
However, the leftwing opposition parties are fighting the reforms, which they consider privatisation in disguise.
According to a prominent Mexican nongovernmental organisation, Fundar - Centro de Análisis e Investigación (Centre for Analysis and Research), the government’s proposed reforms would "encourage opacity and corruption."

Bush administration, Pentagon cool with rocket fuel in drinking water
The Associated Press
(5/7/08)

EPA Might Not Act To Limit Rocket Fuel in Drinking Water

"An EPA official said Tuesday there's a 'distinct possibility' the agency won't take action to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has contaminated public water supplies around the country.
Democratic senators called that unacceptable. They argued that states and local communities shouldn't have to bear the expense of cleansing their drinking water of perchlorate, which has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states - or the risk of not doing so.
The toxin interferes with thyroid function and poses developmental health risks, particularly to fetuses."

In Malaysia, blogging about a royal family member's link to murder can get you jailed
Asia Sentinel
(5/6/08)

Malaysian Political Blogger Charged with Sedition

"Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the editor of a popular Malaysian website called Malaysia Today, was ordered jailed Tuesday on sedition charges after a flame-throwing article last month that linked Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to the murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu and accused Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of withholding evidence about the case.
Altantuya was executed on October 20, 2006, allegedly by two of Najib’s bodyguards at the request of political analyst Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib’s closest friends. She had flown to Malaysia to confront Abdul Razak, who had jilted her, and to ask for money for support when she was killed with two bullets to the head and her body blown up with plastic explosives in a patch of jungle near the suburban city of Shah Alam. She was last seen being bundled into a car and driven away from Abdul Razak’s house.
The article, titled 'Let’s Send the Murderers of Altantuya to Hell,' highlighted a series of controversies and irregularities in the trial of Abdul Razak and the two bodyguards, and questioned whether Najib is immune from Malaysia’s laws. The murder trial has been droning on for nearly a year, raising questions of whether it is being deliberately delayed because of the closeness of the three to top political figures ...
The police showed up at Raja Petra’s door last Friday to question him about the matter. He refused to cooperate. On Tuesday, he refused to pay RM5,000 in bail Tuesday in protest of what he called 'political harassment' after being charged, and elected to go to jail instead. There was no indication when he would be released.
'Is it seditious to influence people against corrupt leaders? There is nothing seditious,' he told reporters outside the court where he was charged.
The sedition charge is unusual to say the least, since such charges are laid for conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state. Although scathing, his questions over allegations that the deputy prime minister was connected to the case hardly appear to constitute inciting rebellion. Some legal authorities in Kuala Lumpur had expected Najib to file suit for defamation, although others pointed out that a civil suit for defamation would expose the deputy premier to motions for discovery and questioning over his relationship, if any, to the dead woman.
The leadership’s depth of irritation over Raja Petra is evidenced by the fact that he has been charged although he is a member of the royal family of Selangor. It is extremely rare for royalty to be charged for any criminal offenses. Some members of royalty have literally got away with murder. However, as a continuing thorn in the side of Malaysian government leaders, he has been arrested and questioned before."

• Think Najib Tun Razak as a kind of Freddy Quimby from "The Simpsons". CM

And here's more from an article with the catchy title, "Let’s Send the Murderers of Altantuya to Hell."
"It is time for Malaysians to push this issue and not allow the murderers who walk in the corridors of power to get away with this vile and evil deed unscathed. It is time to ‘storm the Bastille’. It is time we sent these sorry excuses for human beings to hell where they deserve to be."

Saginaw has the highest amount of dioxin ever found in the US ... and Dow Chemical has friends in DC
Chicago Tribune
(5/2/08)

EPA official ousted while fighting Dow

"The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the US Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.
The call came as the Tribune was preparing to publish a story about the dioxin issue and Gade's crusade.
Jonathan Shradar, an EPA spokesman in Washington, said Gade has been placed on administrative leave until June 1. He declined further comment, saying the agency does not publicly discuss personnel matters.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.
Many local residents see Dow as a lifeline in region plagued by plant closings and layoffs. But all along the two wide streams that cut through this old industrial town, signs warn people to keep off dioxin-contaminated riverbanks and to avoid eating fish pulled from the fast-moving waters. Officials have taken the swings down in one riverside park to discourage kids from playing there. Men in rubber boots and thick gloves occasionally knock on doors, asking residents whether they can dig up a little soil in the yard.
Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.
She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the US
Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.
On Thursday, Gade said of her resignation: 'There's no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did.'"

Nothing's happening in the Bush administration
The Washington Post
(5/6/08)

It's About Nothing

"Eight months before the end of his second term, President Bush is forgotten but not gone. Power has shifted to Congress, attention has moved to the campaign trail, and the White House seems at times to be just going through the motions. For many reporters who remain on the White House beat, it has become a time to phone it in -- literally."

Taiwanese 'chequebook diplomacy' scandal
BBC News
(5/6/08)

Taiwanese officials in $30m row

"Two top Taiwanese officials have quit over the loss of $30m (£15m) of public money during a failed attempt to secure diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea.
Vice Premier Chiou I-jen and Foreign Minister James Huang said they had resigned to take blame for the scandal.
The money was given to two men to broker a deal with PNG in 2006. They are suspected of embezzlement.
China regards Taiwan as part of its territory, and the island often courts small nations in a bid for recognition.
The resignation offers of both Mr Chiou and Mr Huang have reportedly been accepted.
Mr Chiou said at a news conference that he was standing down while the investigation took place, AFP news agency reports.
He added that the inquiry would prove his innocence."

Ecuador finally sending 'Yanqui' home
Miami Herald
(5/5/08)

U.S. base is no longer welcome in Ecuador

"Mayor Jorge Zambrano pulled up to the Manta City Hall in his black Ford Explorer, expecting to find a rally in support of the American military outpost that runs drug-surveillance flights from this gritty port city.
He left an hour later behind a wall of riot shields and a cloud of Mace, as police fended off banner-waving protesters who crashed the event in March.
With 18 months left on its decade-long contract, the US Forward Operating Location in Manta has few friends in this South American nation -- and fewer still who believe that the agreement has any hope of being extended.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has vowed not to renew the base's contract beyond its November 2009 expiration. And politicians drafting a new constitution have proposed banning the base or any other foreign military presence in the country.
If the Manta base closes, it would leave the United States shopping for a new airstrip for the radar-mounted AWAC E3s, and P-3 spy planes that ply the Eastern Pacific, looking for drug runners.
It would also be another dark turn for rapidly deteriorating U.S.-Ecuadorean relations.
The United States sees the Manta compound -- with its manicured lawns and staff of about 150 pilots and crew members -- as part of a multinational effort that helped block $4.2 billion worth of narcotics last year.
But in Ecuador, the Base de Manta is viewed largely as an affront to national sovereignty that threatens to drag the country into the regional drug war."

Video surveillance by British police showing few positive results
The Guardian
(5/6/08)

CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police

"Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence."

Wait are you telling me Iran may not actually be involved in Iraq?
Time
(5/5/08)

Doubting the Evidence Against Iran

"American circles in Baghdad and Washington are probably not pleased with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's plan for a special panel to investigate allegations of Iranian interference in Iraq. Many U.S. officials are already convinced of the worst and, for years, US officials have aired accusations against Iran, insisting that Tehran is stoking Iraq's violence by keeping up a flow of money, weapons and trained fighters into the country. The Iraqi government, however, remains unconvinced — with good reason.
Despite having been initiated by the Iraqi government, the offensive by Iraqi security forces against...
'We want to find really good evidence and not evidence made on speculations,' Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday. Last week an Iraqi government delegation went to Tehran to discuss the allegations of Iranian involvement in the Iraqi militias, the government said. Details of the evidence presented in Tehran remains hazy, but at the same time American officials in Baghdad and Washington have never offered a convincing case publicly to support their allegations. [In the meantime, Tehran announced that it would not hold a new round of talks — the third of their kind with American representatives — regarding security in Iraq unless the US ceased its operations against Iraqi Shi'ites. American forces have been working with the Iraqi Army against Shi'ite militias in Baghdad's sprawling slum, Sadr City.]
Indeed, the US allegations appear to be based on speculation, spurred by the appearance about a year ago of a new breed of roadside bomb in Iraq ...
Instead, the Americans argued their case publicly with deductive reasoning ...
Taken altogether, the US evidence offered publicly about Iran's supposedly nefarious activities in Iraq is far from a slam-dunk case, a fact Dabbagh was at pains to make when speaking to reporters in Baghdad. 'If it turns out there is hard evidence, the government will deal with it,' Dabbagh said.
The Americans in Iraq, for now, seem content to wait for the Iraqi government to change its view on Iran, a country that al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders largely see as a friend rather than a foe. 'It looks like now that the government of Iraq wants to set up an official process to discuss Iranian interference with the Iranians, between official representatives of the Iraq government and the official Iranian government and when they do that, they'll gather whatever evidence they find and discuss that in dialogue with the Iranians,' said Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, a US military spokesman in Baghdad. 'We've made the case. Now I think it's proper for the Iraqi government to make their case based on their interpretation of the facts, and have a dialogue with the government of Iran.'"

Brazil's case of the murdered nun takes yet another turn
The Associated Press
(5/6/08)

Man in Brazil contradicts testimony about gun in nun case

"The confessed killer of American nun Dorothy Stang contradicted earlier testimony, claiming Monday the gun he used did not come from the rancher accused of ordering her murder.
Rayfran Neves Sales confessed to firing six shots at the 73-year-old nun at close range but denied he had received the gun from co-defendant Vitalmiro Moura, said court spokeswomen Gloria Lima by telephone from Belem, the capital of the Amazon state of Para. Sales said the gun was his own ....
Over the course of three trials and pretrial depositions, Sales has repeatedly changed his testimony, sometimes implicating Moura and at other times seeking to clear him. At his first trial in 2005, Sales stated that he shot Stang after mistaking a Bible she was pulling out of her bag for a gun.
Prosecutors say Sales was offered US$25,000 (euro16,200) to kill the nun because of a dispute over a patch of jungle that she wanted to preserve and ranchers wanted cut down for development. At his last trial, Sales claimed he was acting in self defense.
An accomplice, a middleman and a rancher also have been convicted in connection with the killing ...
Human rights defenders say the prosecutions are a key measure of whether those behind land-related killings can be held accountable in Para state, which is plagued by land-related violence.
Land ownership is hard to trace in the Amazon, and powerful ranchers often resort to forged deeds and violence to drive poor settlers away.
The trial before the seven-member jury is expected to end late Tuesday."

PETA at the races; Euthanized Derby horse should have prize revoked, jockey suspended
The Associated Press
(5/4/08)

PETA wants Eight Belles jockey suspended after filly's death

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is seeking the suspension of Eight Belles' jockey after the filly had to be euthanized following her second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.
Gabriel Saez was riding Eight Belles when she broke both front ankles while galloping out a quarter of a mile past the wire. She was euthanized on the track.
PETA faxed a letter Sunday to Kentucky's racing authority claiming the filly was 'doubtlessly injured before the finish' and asked that Saez be suspended while Eight Belles' death is investigated.
'What we really want to know, did he feel anything along the way?' PETA spokeswoman Kathy Guillermo said. 'If he didn't then we can probably blame the fact that they're allowed to whip the horses mercilessly.'
Eight Belles trainer Larry Jones said the filly was clearly happy when she crossed the finish line.
'I don't know how in the heck they can even come close to saying that,' Jones told The Associated Press on Sunday. 'She has her ears up, clearly galloping out.'"

• It is fine to genetically engineer ("breed") them, drug them to the gills, feed them weird food, and gift them with a fancy au naturale life of running in circles a lot - but don't you dare shoot them when they break their legs! Is this like the JFK assassination for PETA nerds?
  What did the jockey feel and when?! ED

President Bush's latest judicial nominee connected to dead convict
AlterNet
(5/5/08)

Meet Gus Puryear: Bush's Latest Villainous Nominee for a Lifetime Judgeship

"In 2004, Estelle Richardson's lifeless and battered body was found on the floor of a Corrections Corp. of America prison cell. Four years later, that unsolved homicide has come back to haunt Republican stalwart 'Gus' Puryear, the nation's top private prison litigator and Bush nominee for U.S. District Court. This is Part I of an AlterNet exclusive, two-part investigative feature by Silja J.A. Talvi ...
It took one year and three months for the four male guards to be charged with reckless homicide. (The female guard was not charged.) During that time period, all four guards were on paid administrative leave. After they were arrested, each posted bail and were quickly released from custody. While the prosecution moved forward, the Richardson family filed the $60 million lawsuit against CCA for being responsible for her murder by failing to provide adequate training and supervision of its guards.
Under Puryear's direction, a bevy of outside lawyers was already hard at work so as to minimize the damage to CCA. Medical experts were brought in to challenge chief medical examiner Dr. Bruce Levy's original autopsy conclusions about the injuries indicating that she had been murdered, who reported that her fatal injuries were several days old and thus could have been self-inflicted or caused by earlier fights with prisoners. CCA's hired pathologist, Dr. William McCormick, went so far as to postulate that the 'cause of the rib and liver injuries is almost certainly the resuscitative attempts made on Ms. Richardson.'
In the process, Puryear and his legal team, while emphasizing their empathy for the family's "tragic loss" and their desire to comply with the investigation, alleged that her death could have been the result of earlier injuries sustained from fights with other prisoners, a seizure or a self-inflicted injury. 'My understanding of the medical experts' opinions is that this raises the possibility that Ms. Richardson could have unintentionally struck her own head against an object or concrete floor (as in the case of a seizure or fall),' Puryear wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
CCA's interpretation of the injuries leading to Richardson's death and a lack of videotaped evidence, provided the necessary level of doubt to help Puryear lessen the PR and financial damage to CCA. Puryear's legal strategy worked. His timing was good: Not only had the medical findings cast doubt on the circumstances surrounding Richardson's death -- something that would making a court victory much harder to obtain -- but severe infighting between economically struggling family members had worn them down. Buie's mother lost custody of Richardson's children. As a result, they were shut out of the lawsuit, although the two of them had always been in the children's lives (and had assumed the primary responsibility of raising the kids when Richardson left for Tennessee), Buie and her mother aren't related to Richardson by blood; they were her mother and sister by adoption.
On February 22, 2006, Puryear personally represented CCA in the final mediation between the company and Richardson's family members. CCA settled with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum after plaintiffs dropped all civil actions against the four guards. Citing lack of definitive proof that the four guards caused her death, the Davidson County D.A.'s office dropped all charges against them, while acknowledging that she had, indeed, been killed. Richardson's murder remains unsolved to this day. A story like this isn't particularly unusual within the American prison system. It's not unusual for correctional employees accused of abuses behind prison walls to have charges dropped once enough time has passed -- that is, if charges got filed in the first place. It's certainly not unusual for public and private prison systems to settle lawsuits away from the public eye, reassured by the knowledge that strict nondisclosure clauses can keep aggrieved parties from speaking out.
It's not unusual that Richardson entered the CCA jail as a nonviolent offender with a drug problem, or that she was abused in the confines of an out-of-sight segregation unit. What is unusual is that a woman with so little power in her day-to-day life, particularly in the eyes of the people who arrested, sentenced, and imprisoned her, would heavily influence Puryear's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this past February. Much of the reason why Richardson's murder popped back up to haunt Puryear's appointment as a federal court judge is attributable to a former CCA prisoner, Alex Friedmann. It can be said with a fair amount of certainty that Puryear couldn't possibly have seen Friedmann's agitation against his confirmation coming his way. And he certainly couldn't have expected that Estelle Richardson's unsolved murder didn't just go away with a few handshakes, a confidentiality agreement, and a $2 million settlement check."

• And check out this tease for part two: "Puryear battles his opposition with a few unlikely allies, including the lead attorney on the lawsuit against CCA, Thurgood Marshall, Jr., US senators, and bipartisan Tennessee attorneys. What most of them have in common is the company that Puryear has spent over a half-decade defending, the GOP, and a bunch of well-placed campaign donations." CM

Pentagon propagandists double-dipping with military contractors
Center for Media and Democracy
(5/2/08)

What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side: Propaganda Meets Corporate Lobbying

"The Pentagon launched its covert media analyst program in 2002, to sell the Iraq war. Later, it was used to sell an image of progress in Afghanistan, whitewash the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and defend the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping, as David Barstow reported in his New York Times expose.
But the pundits weren't just selling government talking points. As Robert Bevelacqua, William Cowan and Carlton Sherwood enjoyed high-level Pentagon access through the analyst program, their WVC3 Group sought 'contracts worth tens of millions to supply body armor and counterintelligence services in Iraq,' reported Barstow. Cowan admitted to 'push[ing] hard' on a WVC3 contract, during a Pentagon-funded trip to Iraq.
Then there's Pentagon pundit Robert H. Scales Jr. The military firm he co-founded in 2003, Colgen, has an interesting range of clients, from the Central Intelligence Agency and US Special Operations Command, to Pfizer and Syracuse University, to Fox News and National Public Radio.
Of the 27 Pentagon pundits named publicly to date, six are registered as federal lobbyists. That's in addition to the less formal -- and less transparent -- boardroom to war-room influence peddling described above. (There are 'more than 75 retired officers' who took part in the Pentagon program overall, according to Barstow.)
The Pentagon pundits' lobbying disclosure forms help chart what can only be called a military-industrial-media complex. They also make clear that war is very good for at least some kinds of business ...
Increasingly, news audiences are realizing the many ways in which interested parties skew media coverage. Media outlets need to wake up to that reality and work to strengthen their safeguards in defense of the public interest. Their only alternative is to start composing their next weak and belated mea culpa, in a desperate attempt to protect their ever-dwindling credibility."

Mining boom threatens western US freshwater supply
Environmental Working Group press release
(5/5/08)

Mining Surge Near Colorado River Threatens Drinking Water For 25 Million

"Mining claims near the Colorado River have doubled in the last five years, raising fears that the West's most important waterway - a source of drinking water to 25 million people - could become contaminated by toxic heavy metals, including radioactive uranium waste.
The Colorado, which provides drinking water to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and other cities, and irrigation water for agriculture in California's Imperial Valley - one of the nation's most important sources of food - is under assault by multinational corporations rushing to cash in on record prices for uranium, gold and other metals. Yet under the antiquated 1872 Mining Law, federal officials are virtually powerless to prevent mining even if it would affect the West's most precious commodity.
An investigation by Environmental Working Group (EWG) of Bureau of Land Management records found that hardrock mining claims within 10 miles of the 1,450-mile-long Colorado have increased from 2,568 in January 2003 to 5,545 in January 2008. In that period, claims within 5 miles of the river more than doubled, from 395 to 1,195."

Follow Barack Obama's money all the way back to Wall Street
Counterpunch
(5/5/08)

Obama's Money Cartel

"Wall Street, known variously as a barren wasteland for diversity or the last plantation in America, has defied courts