A glorious morning for what was supposed to be a hurricane today. When I woke up, it was a bright, sunny day - as was a bit of yesterday. With just a few periods of intermittent sun, but mostly a long day of heavy, dark overcast with no rain, yesterday was the sort of day that one would expect from the far edge of a hurricane. And Beta was a beaut - out there in the Caribbean, tearing up the islands of Providencia and San Andreas, it gave the Colombian authorities something to worry about and spend money on in their furthermost possessions - islands claimed by Nicaragua but administered by Colombia.
This morning, with the sun coming up in a cloudless sky, one would be hard pressed to guess that less than two hundred miles away, a major hurricane is tearing up the countryside. I was interested in knowing just where Hurricane Beta had ended up during the night, so I checked it out on the Net, and sure enough, it had come ashore in Nicaragua as expected, just about the middle of the Nicaraguan coast, and headed straight for Managua. But it fell apart quite rapidly once it hit land, and by this morning, was covering Nicaragua but not much more. Once it hits the mountains east of Managua, it should be pretty much tamed down, But down here in the south, nothing. Light breeze, a few low clouds from the hurricane outliers, and not much else. During the day there were just a few light sprinkles now and again. Not to say that the Pacific coast of Nicaragua won't get plenty of rain - it will - but it is the region of the country that needs it the most.
Being a beautiful Sunday morning, it was not a surprise that a young boy came by with his fishing pole and a jar of worms, and wanted to go fishing in my pond. Sure, I said, admonishing him to stick to the shallow part, because the water at the west end of the pond is quite deep and dangerous. Don't worry, he assured me, his dad was with him.
When I took a walk down to see how they were doing, it turned out it was not just his dad, but a couple of other fellows from the town as well. They were having a grand time of it drowning worms, but not catching much. They had been fishing for about twenty minutes by the time I got there, and had caught five sardinas (a small sardine-like tetra fish known in the aquarium trade as a silverside tetra). I was glad to hear that, as the sardinas are an important forage fish for the guapote I am trying to establish there. One fellow caught a mujarra (a small cichlid of the genus Cichlisomaused as a forage fish). I asked them to return any guapote they found to the pond, but they could keep all the tilapia they could catch, and I encouraged them to catch lots. After a while, they gave up and left. The best results I have seen has been after the fisherman scatters cooked rice out on the water, and then they can pull in tilapia all day long as fast as they can. But I think they were really after my guapote.
Some time later, a group of four neighborhood kids came by, and asked if they could pick oranges over on the North Forty, a tree that is full of bright orange fruit at the moment. It is actually a mandarin orange, known locally as mandarinas, but they promised to give me a few and I was grateful to get them. On their return, they asked to pick some oranges from my fencepost orange trees, and I happily agreed, as they are falling on the ground and need to be picked to be less of a mess in the yard. They went out and started to climb one of the trees, but being scared that they could fall, I got them my fruit picker, and put them to work with it. In a half hour or so, they had managed to pick about a bushel and a half, and gave me a large grocery bag full of them. They were good kids, as most kids here are, and were exceedingly polite and deferential. The difference between kids in this country and the States never ceases to amaze me.
These oranges are "creole" oranges, full of seeds and a rather scarry rind, and mostly good for juice and cooking - they're a bit pulpy and seedy to eat fresh. I dearly love them in marmalade - they are rather acid and make some of the best marmalade there is, if one doesn't mind the green, scarry rinds. And the juice is wonderful too. I won't bother making marmalade, because I can buy the locally made stuff that is as good as I am capable of making it. I need to find an orange juicer somewhere, so I can properly juice the things, but I am sure looking forward to that fresh orange juice. It has been a while.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Not In The States: Yet another sordid chapter in the murky annals of Halliburton might well lead to the indictment of Dick Cheney by a French court on charges of bribery, money-laundering and misuse of corporate assets. At the heart of the matter is a $6 billion gas liquification factory built in Nigeria on behalf of oil mammoth Shell by Halliburton - the company Cheney headed before becoming Vice President - in partnership with a large French petroengineering company, Technip. According to accounts in the French press, Judge van Ruymbeke believes that some or all of $180 million in so-called secret "retrocommissions" paid by Halliburton and Technip were, in fact, bribes given to Nigerian officials and others to grease the wheels for the refinery's construction. In 2004, Nigeria was rated by the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International as the second-most corrupt country in the world, surpassed only by Bangladesh. This would also be a violation of U.S. law, which forbids U.S. citizens abroad from bribing corrupt foreign officials for business purposes, making him indictable in U.S. courts as well.
More on the Plamegate scandal that is now starting to look like Treasongate: If a report by Wayne Madsen is to be believed, Plamegate, the Franklin-Israeli spy case, and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee are all tied back to a Russian mafia scheme to sell Russian nuclear materials on the black market. The CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division agents were particularly worried about the materials for sale at the 70 square mile Russian nuclear weapons complex at Mayak, outside the town of Ozersk. In the late 1990s, black market high grade plutonium was being sold in buckets from warehouses in Mayak. For that reason, the CIA, using its Brewster Jennings Non Official Cover network as well as other contractors, purchased the black market materials from the nuclear "used car market," as a CIA source put it. The materials were transported to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado where they were dismantled and disabled. When the Mafia oligarchs discovered the CIA purchase program was driving up the prices of the Russian surplus nuclear materials making them unprofitable for organized crime, they used their connections inside the Bush White House ("Scooter" Libby) and Pentagon (David Wurmser) to expose the operation (which became the Franklin spy scandal) to eliminate the chief American interlocutors and give themselves a lucrative virtual monopoly by removing their competition and driving up the Mafia's resale price of the nuclear material even further. A CIA source said the Mafia established a nuclear "hedge fund" on the Russian nuclear materials. A CIA source confirmed that Libby and his former client Rich are connected to Russian Mafia figures involved in nuclear smuggling. Would someone please have Patrick Fitzgerald look into this?
An excellent post on the Huffington Post website offers some detailed insight into why there should not be any joy in the White House if Smirkey And Company were looking at things realistically, as I discussed in my lead item on Friday.
The Ringworm Children: On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten television screened a documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths of a generation. In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army. They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today. To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on "school trips" and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.
Saber rattling over North Korea again: The Bush administration is urging nations to deny overflight rights to aircraft the United States says are carrying weapons technology. The prohibitions are aimed at North Korean airliners, which U.S. officials claim carry North Korean military technology and spy cameras.
Reducing social spending so much that even business is complaining: Republicans have begun targeting key programs for budget cuts yesterday, from student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care. But the tough measures immediately drew staunch opposition from anti-poverty groups, businesses and moderate Republicans. Sixteen congressional committees began cobbling together one of the most comprehensive bills in years, touching issues such as trade policy, prescription drug reimbursements, agriculture price supports and the future of welfare. The rash of spending that followed Hurricane Katrina two months ago has emboldened conservatives to push for cuts far beyond what Congress could agree to in a budget blueprint in the spring. "Listen, we're broke. Let's face it," said Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which will try today to complete legislation saving $18.1 billion over five years from pension protection and student loan programs. Have they considered recinding some of the tax cuts for the rich that created this mess in the first place? I don't think so.
On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table. About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. The cuts would be part of $3.7 billion pared from Agriculture Department programs over five years as part of government-wide spending reductions
If you're siphoning out money from your home's equity to finance your current spending, as many Americans are, maybe you'd better rethink your strategy: Tom Barrack, arguably the world's greatest real estate investor, is methodically selling off his U.S. real estate holdings as prices drive the market to nosebleed levels. He likens the current real estate market to a game of polo. "I feel totally safe playing polo on a field full of pros," says the bronzed 58-year old. "But when amateurs are all over the field, someone can get killed. They have more guts than brains. They charge after every ball and don't know when to hold back." It's the same with U.S. real estate right now. "There's too much money chasing too few good deals, with too much debt and too few brains." The amateurs are going to get trampled, he explains, taking seasoned horsemen, who should get off the turf, down with them. Says Barrack: "That's why I'm getting out." The banks and credit companies are alarmed, too. The number of bankruptcy filings made before a tough new law went into effect on Oct. 17 caught even the credit card issuers who supported the law by surprise. Many are now openly worrying about the staggering level of U.S. consumer debt.
Fox News Channel's political agenda is coming to a local television station near you. GOP operative and Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, the architect of the right-wing dominance of cable news, is now remaking 35 local television stations - broadcasting to nearly 40 percent of America’s homes - in Fox News Channel’s image. According to a recent report in Variety, Ailes plans to replace local news with the biased infotainment that’s become a hallmark of Fox News Channel. He has moved oversight of the local station group to Fox News headquarters in New York. He has flown in local news personalities for retraining on how to deliver the news Fox-style.
The annual worldwide press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders shows the United States, which is supposedly spreading freedom and liberty throughout the world, is in a fast decline regarding the freedom of its own press. The report ranked the United States in 44th place, an atomic drop from a favorable position of 22nd held last year, and from a handsome 17th place in 2002. The organization mentioned that several journalists were expelled from the country since the terrorist attacks of 2001.
Those of you who have written to me asking for the link to the Government Accountability Office report which says, in very carefully coded language, that the 2004 election was stolen, well, here's the link, hot off the GAO website. The 100-plus page report makes for some disturbing reading. And it ought to be required reading for all the American people who still trust their political leadership. And it goes on. Monterey County, CA Registrar Tony Anchundo, admits the new touch-screen voting machines manufactured by Sequoia, are "faith-based!" He has asked voters to "trust him" on accuracy and reliability." After the abuses uncovered in Ohio and elsewhere by the GAO, should we be merely "trusting" registrars to do the right thing? I don't think so. I think it is time to start demanding publicly observed audits of the voting machines and the software that runs on them.
The ethically challenged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has called for Senate hearings on high energy prices. Of course, one has to question his motives, since this administration is basically of, by and for the oil companies. I suspect it is a purely P.R. effort designed to distract voters' attention from his own legal troubles. Meanwhile, the Senate should consider imposing a windfall profit tax on oil companies to help poor and elderly Americans pay home heating bills that are expected to be sharply higher this winter, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, said on Friday. As this runs directly contrary to the Republican philosophy of robbing the poor to subsidize the rich, don't look for him to get re-elected next year.
Wal-Mart is hugely concerned about the growing perception by the American people of the heavy-handedness of their corporate policies, and has begun a media counteroffensive after the recent spate of bad publicity, and in advance of a new anti-Wal-Mart movie due out soon. The new movie, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" is scheduled to be shown in a limited release on Nov. 4 in New York and Los Angeles and then go to a week of screenings across the country organized by Wal-Mart critics, including unions. The producer, Robert Greenwald, who also produced and directed "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," says none of the $1.8 million in private financing for the film came from organized labor.
Rats Deserting The U.S.S. Bush: Along with the rest of the rats, the free market fundamentalists are now jumping ship. In an article in Free Market News, Ilana Mercer, complaining about "bastardized conservatism," is writing that "Indeed, something is changing and it’s not George W. Bush. A rebellion appears to be brewing among conservatives. Not unpredictably, Bush has hit them where it hurts - the Supreme Court - and, thankfully, this has been 'the final straw,' the title of a column by the brave Bruce Bartlett."
It is also the moderate conservatives in the Republican party. Former Sen. John Danforth said Wednesday that the political influence of evangelical Christians, to which Smirkey has been openly pandering, is hurting the Republican Party and dividing the country. Danforth, a Missouri Republican and an Episcopal priest, commented after meeting with students at the Bill Clinton School of Public Service, a graduate branch of the University of Arkansas on the grounds of the Clinton presidential library.
Trickle-Down Trickling On You: The House Agriculture Committee approved budget cuts Friday that would take food stamps away from an estimated 300,000 people and could cut off school lunches and breakfasts for 40,000 children. The action came as the government reported that the number of people who are hungry because they can't afford to buy enough food rose to 38.2 million in 2004, an increase of 7 million in five years. The number represents nearly 12 percent of U.S. households. A higher percentage of Texas households were at risk of going hungry over the past three years than in any other state, according to the study. Between 2002 and 2004, more than 16 percent of Texas households at some point had trouble providing enough food for all their family members, the USDA report said, the highest rate in the nation.
It doesn't look like things are going to get better, either. Leading indicators for the American economy just don't look all that good. All indications are that finally, with the interest rates having gone up for 11 consecutive Fed adjustments, with another expected soon, the effects on the bond markets are finally being felt. Holders of bonds at lower rates find their bonds are worth less in a market where higher rate bonds are available, so the long-anticipated price break in the bond market has finally happened. So where to park your money? Equities don't benefit in a declining economy, and real estate is clearly overpriced. So smart investors are now doing what Warren Buffet did some time back - move cash into safer currencies than the U.S. dollar, and into gold and silver bullion. The evacuation of investment from the productive economy indicates that there are serious underlying problems in the U.S. economy.
Privatized Health Care Solves All Health Care Problems: As many as 1,000 Exxon Mobil employees and 14 residents of a senior citizens home were injected with fake flu vaccine, authorities said Friday, and the owner of a home health care company was arrested. Preliminary tests indicated the syringes were filled with purified water, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said. And no ill effects from the shots were reported. But Hermina Palacio, head of the Harris County health department, recommended that people who received the shots get tested for blood-borne pathogens such as the AIDS virus and hepatitis B and C. Exxon Mobil offered blood tests and counseling to the employees who received the shots at a health fair Oct. 19-20 at the oil company's complex of refineries and chemical plants in Baytown, just east of Houston. Iyad Abu El Hawa, 35, was arrested Thursday. El Hawa, owner of Comfort And Caring Home Health and two other home health centers in Houston, was charged with Medicare fraud in connection with shots given to 14 elderly people at a home in LaPorte on Oct. 21.
Now that it will soon be possible for the government to forcibly inject you with a vaccine regardless of its efficacy or safety, as reported last week in this space, we are now learning about one of the vaccines with which you may be forcibly injected. An anthrax vaccine under development by the U.S. government could cause serious and even fatal complications, according to a UPI report. Anthrax immune globulin is being developed as a possible response to a bioterror attack. Preliminary animal studies by the Centers for Disease control show that AIG can protect against anthrax before exposure. But they also found that AIG does not protect if it is given after infection -- and can be deadly itself if it is improperly formulated. Of course, if it injures or kills you, you'll have no recourse under the proposed law. Write your congressman to stop this outrage before it becomes law.
The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday it is unconstitutional to deny benefits to the same-sex partners of public employees, a victory for gay rights advocates in one of the first states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Overturning a lower court ruling, the state high court said barring benefits for state and city employees' same-sex partners violates the Alaska Constitution's equal protection clause.
Too Many Liberals? MSNBC host Keith Olbermann recently revealed that network bosses were upset when he had two liberal guests too close together on his show in September 2003. Speaking on October 25 to comedian and talk show host Al Franken, Olbermann said the following: You were good enough to come on this newscast with me late in the summer of 2003. It was August or September. And by coincidence, either the next day or the day before, Janeane Garofalo had been a guest on the newscast. And I got called into a vice president‘s office here and told, "Hey, we don't mind you interviewing these guys, but should you really have put liberals on, on consecutive nights?"
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Len Bahr, the official who has been advising the Louisiana Governor on restoring lost wetlands along the coast, told the BBC that his state was the poster child for global warming. Pointing to recent research linking more intense hurricanes with warmer sea water, he said it would be naive to see Katrina as just a fluke. But the US Undersecretary for Commerce, Oceans and Atmosphere, Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, has defended the administration's environment policy. "You have to remember that the United States has the most robust energy technology programs of the world, and climate science programs," he said. Yeah, right. Robust energy programs? I suspect most of those are improvements in oil drilling technology.
New From The Various Wars On This And That: Hundreds of new, top-of-the-line armored Humvees are parked in Texas and Kuwait and won’t be shipped to troops in Iraq even though those soldiers face daily roadside bombs, the Army acknowledged Thursday. The Army said it’s keeping the vehicles out of Iraq until the 3rd Infantry Division’s replacements, the 4th Infantry Division, arrive at the end of the year. But with reports that more than one in four U.S. soldiers’ deaths in Iraq have been caused by roadside bombs, members of Congress are incensed that 824 new Humvees won’t go straight to Iraq. The newer, so-called "uparmored" Humvees have better technology to absorb roadside blasts. "Let’s not have them in parking lots. Let’s move them up to Baghdad, let’s move them up with the 3rd ID or move them over to the Marines, who’ve taken 50 percent of the hits yet have roughly 6 to 7 percent of the" uparmored "Humvees," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who chairs the House Armed Services Committee.
Winning hearts and minds one family at a time: U.S. troops in Iraq are routinely requisitioning private homes of Iraqis, and using them for indefinite periods. "They broke into my house before Ramadan and they are still there," one Iraqi told The Associated Press by telephone from his brother's home in Baghdad. "We were not able to tolerate seeing them damage our house in front of our very eyes... I was afraid to ask them to leave. They were eating our food. They took all the food from the refrigerator, and used all our stored junk food too. The major gave me $20 so we could shop for ourselves and for them. It was not enough." Sometimes the Iraqis are allowed to stay in one room in their home; other times they have to move in with relatives or neighbors until the forces leave. "You see that place up there," one Marine said to his platoon leader during a recent offensive in Haditha, pointing to a two-story hilltop house with columns. "Yeah, that looks good. I've been looking at that," replied his captain, before trudging up the hill to explain to the owners that the platoon would be camping inside for several hours. It should be noted that such activities would be prohibited by the U.S. constitution's Bill of Rights if conducted on U.S. soil.
More than half the North Carolina military members surveyed in the latest Elon University poll don't like the way President Bush is handling his job and the war in Iraq. The survey results were released today. Of the 539 adults surveyed, nearly 53 percent of military members said they strongly disapproved or disapproved of Bush's handling of his job. And 56 percent of that same group said they strongly disapproved or disapproved of his handling of the Iraq war. Overall, slightly more than 53 percent of those surveyed did not approve of Bush's job performance, while 57 percent didn't approve of his handling of the Iraq war. The telephone poll was conducted between Monday and Thursday and has a margin of error for the entire sample of plus or minus four-point-three percentage points.
A defense lawyer for ousted Iraq president Saddam Hussein has written to UN chief Kofi Annan calling for the court trying Saddam on charges of crimes against humanity to be moved to The Hague and its Iraqi judges replaced by foreign ones. "We submit to you our request for your involvement and your good office in the present circumstances to call upon the US authority and the present government of Iraq to review the legal status of the present court and to reallocate the present court outside Iraq, i.e. The Hague, Netherlands," said the letter to Annan from defense lawyer Najib al-Nawimi.
Iraq's top Shiite cleric, long an ally of the new government and the most moderate of the major clerics in Iraq, is considering demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. and foreign troops after a democratically elected government takes office next year, according to associates of the Iranian-born cleric. If the Americans and their coalition partners do not comply, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would use peaceful means such as mass street protests to step up pressure for a pullout schedule, according to two associates of the cleric. The associates spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. They are in regular contact with al-Sistani and call routinely on the 76-year-old cleric at his home in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad.
US forces in Iraq have swelled to 161,000, their highest level since the US invasion in March 2003. The increase was due to overlapping troop rotations, according to Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman. We'll see. The previous high in US force levels was reached in January, when the number of US troops in the country rose to 159,000 during national elections.
Meanwhile, the recent warmongering over Syria has far less to do with Syria's intervention in Lebanon than it has to do with the fact that the Israelis are desperate to build a pipeline from Iraq to Israel, and the current regime in Syria is an obstacle to that plan. This is why the recent well-publicized U.N. report on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the late prime minister of Lebanon, was a con-job designed to sell a regime change in Syria to facilitate the construction of that pipeline. No one knows who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. We do know, however, that the main witness cited in the UN report, Zuhir Mohamed Said Saddik, “has been convicted of embezzlement and fraud among other crimes” (Der Spiegel) which casts grave doubt on the credibility of his testimony. If Mehlis was truly serious about finding out who the assassins really are, rather than carrying out a political vendetta for the United States, he would be devoting more energy to uncovering the details related to the white Mitsubishi Canter Van that carried the explosives. The history and origins of this van, which was stolen in Japan on Oct. 12, 2004, are critical to the investigation as journalist Robert Parry points out in his recent article “The Dangerously incomplete Hariri Report”. But, then, few who have been following the Hariri assassination have any misgivings about the real motives behind the Mehlis Report. The Hariri investigation is just the pretext for the forthcoming military action against Syria.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, on the eve of a trip to Washington, said he repeatedly tried to persuade U.S. President George W. Bush against invading Iraq. The Italian leader voiced his unease with the military operation to topple
Saddam Hussein during a television interview to be broadcast on Monday - the same day he meets Smirkey. Berlusconi is one of Washington's strongest allies but he did not send troops to join the invasion, preferring to dispatch troops only after the fall of Baghdad.
The United States on Friday invited three U.N. human rights investigators, including the one who examines torture allegations, to visit the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in a bid to show "we have nothing to hide." What is not on the table, however, is interviews with the detainees. That's the province of the Red Cross, officials say. Of course, what they're not saying is that the Red Cross, as a matter of policy, will not say what the prisoners tell them, since it would inhibit their access.
News Of The Hurricanes: Fifty-one members of the New Orleans Police Department - 45 officers and six civilian employees - were fired Friday for abandoning their posts before or after Hurricane Katrina. "They were terminated due to them abandoning the department prior to the storm," acting superintendent Warren Riley said. "They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm and we have never heard from them."
A company assigned the delicate duty of collecting Hurricane Katrina's dead in Louisiana wanted out of the federal job days later, complaining of a "bureaucratic quagmire" in its dealings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Kenyon International asked FEMA to find someone else to do the work in a Sept. 11 letter to Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the agency's response to Katrina. The disaster management company stayed on the job, however, and signed a contract with the state of Louisiana days later. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter Friday, a day after a Republican-dominated congressional committee released memos in which a FEMA official blamed state officials' inaction for delays in recovering bodies.
Scandals Du Jour: The prosecutor in the money-laundering case of Tom DeLay has subpoenaed the director of moveon.org, in response to the complaint by DeLay's defense team that the judge in the case had contributed money to Move On. We'll soon find out how much he has contributed and whether he has worked for the organization.
Yesterday longtime UPI intelligence reporter Richard Sale, posting via Patrick Lang's account, took issue with an October 25th New York Times article identifying Vice President Dick Cheney as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s original source for the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson. According to Sale's sources, “former senior and serving current intelligence officials,” "Libby's notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both." Sale insists that he has four sources who allege that “it was a telephone call from the Department of State that first gave Libby the name of Plame,” and that while no one is certain who placed the call, it “definitely came from the State Department office of John Bolton, then the arms control chief of the department.” Sale implicates two Bolton employees in the leak, David Wurmser, “a virulent pro-war hawk,” and Frederick Fleitz, “a CIA officer detailed to Bolton's office from the agency.” Sale reports that Wurmser learned about Valerie Plame from Fleitz.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: The Virginia political smear artist, Scott Howell, has backed away from standing by the truthfulness of the ads he has been running on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore. He backed away when challenged on their truthfulness by Max Blumenthal of The Nation magazine. Howell's circumspection was a startling inversion of his public persona. Notorious for his audacious, hyperemotional attack ads, he describes himself as "Little Lee Atwater" after the late fabled Republican negative campaign consultant who was his and Karl Rove's mentor. It appears that his backing away is the result of the fact that the ads are no longer working - in fact, they're proving to be counterproductive. The electorate, it seems, is finally beginning to wake up to conservative demagoguery.
It seems that all that increasing influence of conservative religion in America is having its effects - the number of births to unmarried women in the United States has set an all-time record. More than 1.4 million babies were born to unmarried women last year, accounting for fully 35.7 percent of all live births in the U.S. Both numbers are all-time records for the U.S.
News Of The Weird: Coffee, tea or me - Hooters, the restaurant chain noted for the, ahem, anatomy of its waitresses, has started a budget airline, and its maiden flight was beset with security problems. The first Hooters Air flight took off for Florida at 7 a.m. Thursday and arrived on time. Its return to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, however, was delayed several hours by a security concern. Upon arrival at Orlando International Airport at 10 a.m., security officials detained a passenger who had made an “inappropriate” comment to another passenger, said Rod Johnson, spokesman for the Orlando airport. A Northeastern Pennsylvania radio station was doing a promotional broadcast from the plane, and in the background picked up the passenger’s comment. “They treated it like a bomb scare when the plane got in,” Mark Peterson, Hooters Air president, said. The plane taxied away from the terminal building and was isolated while the passenger’s bags were removed from the plane. The passenger then was turned over to Orlando police for questioning. The identity and legal status of the passenger were not made available Thursday.
What gorgeous weather for the last two days. It has been like in the middle of the dry season - bright sunshine all day long, warm temperatures, and I have been running the fan in the office, because it has been a bit on the warm side for a change.
This is typical hurricane weather in Arenal. For some reason when the rest of the country is getting plastered well and truly by the edges of a hurricane, here in Arenal, the rain quits, the sun comes out, the wind dies down and we enjoy first class picnic weather. And the last two days have been no exception. Tropical storm Beta, which may well be up to hurricane strength as I write this, is brewing out there offshore in the Caribbean, and is predicted to go ashore roughly in the middle or somewhat north of the middle of the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast late tonight or tomorrow, dumping 15 inches of rain as it goes. It will then move across the north of that country and out into the Pacific over El Salvador. Just what those folks don't need after all that rain from Stan.
The cloudless skies last night afforded a wonderful view of Mars and Venus, and with the warm evening it was a wonderful night to be out. Tonight it is clouding over. Looks like it may be some outlying feeder bands from Beta, I don't know, but the hurricane is far enough away that I am not seeing any rain from it. But just the same, I am enjoying this hurricane weather.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: The first shoe has dropped. "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to the Vice President, has been handed a five-count indictment and in response, has resigned in disgrace. I am sure by now, if you have not been on another planet, you've heard the news. Now, here is some more background you probably hadn't heard about or thought of. The pundits closest to this administration are saying that this is actually the worst possible outcome for this administration. The fact that Smirkey and Karl Rove have both been smiling and laughing all day, indicates that they do not fully understand the nature of the trouble they are in. Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the case, has said that his investigation is not over, and he still wants to know why Valerie Plame's name "was all over the media" as he put it. Well, he knows as well as anyone, of course - it was an old-fashioned political vendetta. But by saying what he did about continuing the investigation, Fitzgerald is serving notice on the Bush administration that this, in the words of Winston Churchill, isn't the end. It isn't even the beginning of the end, but is perhaps the end of the beginning. Let's hope, for the sake of a country that for the last five years has been in the grip of a covert, hidden coup d' etat, that Fitzgerald is right, and he meant what he said. Few presidents in American history had been more deserving of going down in disgrace than this one, and only a scandal so severe and so long lasting that it thoroughly discredits and discourages Smirkey's remaining loyal supporters, can loosen this coup's iron grip on the levers of power.
Rats Deserting The U.S.S. Bush: The Washington Post, normally reliably on the side of the administration, has openly begun to editorialize against it. Calling Dick Cheney the "Vice President for Torture," it says that his advocacy of flaunting U.S. law and the international treaties to which the U.S. is a party, is unprecedented.
As reported here yesterday, suspicions have focused on Italy's role in the fabrication and propagation of the false Niger yellowcake documents. Italy has formally denied that role, while the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has been running daily articles since Monday alleging that Sismi intelligence officials helped pass-off forged documents that accused Iraq of trying to buy 500 tons of yellowcake (uranium oxide) from Niger. Some of the articles even implicate Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Newsweek is reporting that a secret draft CIA report raises new questions about a principal argument used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq: the claim that Saddam Hussein was "harboring" notorious terror leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi prior to the American invasion. The allegation that Zarqawi had visited Baghdad in May 2002 with Saddam's sanction - purportedly for medical treatment - was once a centerpiece of the administration's arguments about Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Zarqawi's alleged visit in his speech to the United Nations Security Council.
The courts are not buying the "war on terror" rhetoric: in a ruling hailed by privacy rights advocates, a federal judge this week reaffirmed his earlier finding that federal law enforcement officials must show probable cause before monitoring cell phone users. The New York District Court decision keeps in place an August ruling and adds backbone to a similar order recently issued by a federal court in Texas.
Life In America Just Gets Better And Better: The largest study of its kind ever done to look at the prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder in the United States has concluded that conclude that five percent of U.S. adults experienced MDD during the 12 months preceding the survey and 13 percent experienced MDD at any time during their lives. Notable is that the highest lifetime risk was among middle-aged adults, a shift from the younger adult population shown to be at highest risk by surveys conducted during the 1980s and 1990s. "This marks an important transformation in the distribution of MDD in the general population and specific risk for baby-boomers aged 45 to 64 years," remarked Dr. Deborah Hasin, one of the authors of the study.
Paging Dr. Ross: When American corporations come up against inconvenient science, say, a study showing that mercury in fish can damage a developing fetus, or that a blockbuster drug has nasty side effects, they call in the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Industry-funded ACSH is the most aggressive "debunker" of pesky research reports emanating from government and academia. Its medical/executive director's calm, soothing voice can be heard on television and radio, quelling public fears about the latest bad news about health and the environment. That man, Dr. Gilbert Ross, is a man with a past. Although the biography posted on the organization's website doesn't mention it, Ross actually had to abandon medicine on July 24, 1995, when his license to practice as a physician in New York was revoked by the unanimous vote of a state administrative review board for professional misconduct. Instead of tending to patients, Ross spent all of 1996 at a federal prison camp in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, having being sentenced to 46 months in prison for his participation in a scheme that ultimately defrauded New York's Medicaid program of approximately $8 million. The ACSH knew about his past when they hired him, but went ahead and hired him anyway - yet they continue to be called upon by the media to represent the "other" point of view.
A measure designed to restrict colleges, universities and research institutions from purchasing laboratory animals from some suppliers could have a "very serious" impact on health and agricultural research and on the U.S. economy, the American Association for the Advancement of Science said Tuesday in a letter to Congress. Under the proposed restriction, funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could no longer go to colleges, universities and other research institutions that lawfully purchase research animals from Class B dealers. Such dealers obtain or purchase animals, sometimes from pounds, and resell them to research labs.
Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange has been accused of caving in to animal rights activists, in its recent decision to postpone the listing of a company dealing in laboratory animals.
Undermining entirely the argument that socialism is inefficient and a welfare state is inherently hopelessly uncompetitive, thoroughly socialist Finland has been named as the most competitive country in the world, outdistancing the United States, which is now listed as number two. Today, this small Nordic nation boasts a thriving hi-tech economy ranked the most competitive in the world, the best educated citizenry of all the industrialized countries, and a welfare state that has created one of the globe's most egalitarian societies. Business, academic and government leaders are beating a path to Finland's door from all over the world to figure out how they did it in just sixty years since World War II. Part of it is Finland's egalitarianism. Tolerating poverty is a drag on any economy, because you simply can't sell something to someone who has no money.
Finland is not alone; Denmark has become the object of study in how to maintain high employment and productivity while maintaining a welfare state at the same time. The secret? Hire, fire and retrain: Employers are seldom restrained from firing at will, but Denmark spends a great deal of money on worker education and retraining, watching the job market for where the jobs are, and then quickly retraining surplus workers to fill those jobs. This enables Denmark to remain agile in a rapidly changing, globalized labor market. Meanwhile, while they are being retrained, workers maintain 90 percent unemployment benefits, so the workers don't much mind all this job turmoil.
Trickle-Down Trickles On You: Delphi, the auto parts maker that is one of the principal suppliers to General Motors, is preparing to save itself by putting its financial burdens on the back of its workers. It has told them to take salary reductions, leaving them with $9/hour salaries, as well as a ten-fold increase in their health-care costs, or they will find themselves pounding sand.
Meanwhile, General Motors, Delphi's principal customer, is facing troubles of its own; General Motors, the world's biggest carmaker, is having its accounts investigated by regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a subpoena, and the firm said it was co-operating fully. Regulators are looking into areas including how GM accounts for pension liabilities and transactions between itself and bankrupt supplier Delphi. And GM has other woes: it has announced a recall of 100,000 of its SUV's. Toyota says that by next year, its sales will exceed those of GM, making it the world's largest car maker.
Gas prices high enough yet? ConocoPhillips, the No. 3 U.S. oil company, said third-quarter profit jumped 89 percent to a record $3.8 billion as supply disruptions and rising demand lifted prices to unprecedented highs.
Vote Republican - Halliburton Isn't Rich Enough Yet: Last year Halliburton more than doubled its defense contracts from $3.9 billion to $8 billion. In the last quarter alone of last year revenue topped $3 billion, or $1 billion a month, considerably more than the company amassed in the five years prior to the Iraq war.
The U.S. dollar may weaken, along with stock and bond prices, if the investigation of the leak of a CIA agent's name results in indictments against White House insiders. "Any indication that the investigation is widening beyond the simple pointing of fingers as to who leaked Plame's name to the press is an extremely dangerous development -- so stay on your toes," John Hardy, market strategist at Danish-based Saxo Bank, said in a research note.
Scandals Du Jour: The ethically challenged former majority whip Tom DeLay has notified House officials that he failed to disclose all contributions to his legal defense fund as required by congressional rules. DeLay wrote House officials that he started an audit and it found that $20,850 contributed in 2000 and 2001 to the defense fund was not reported anywhere.An additional $17,300 was included in the defense fund's quarterly report but not in DeLay's 2000 annual financial disclosure report — a separate requirement. Other donations were understated as totaling $2,800 when the figure should have been $4,450.
A little-noted provision in the tax relief package to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina is shaping up as a windfall for charity and a drain on government coffers. It allows donors who make cash gifts to almost any charity by the end of this year to deduct an amount equal to virtually 100 percent of their adjusted gross incomes, double the normal limit of 50 percent of income. The tantalizing prospect has set off a financial scramble among some wealthy donors and charities vying for their dollars. "I just keep thinking there's got to be a catch, they can't really be doing this," said C. Kemmons Wilson Jr., a Memphis businessman whose father was the founder of Holiday Inns Inc.
The highest ranking scapegoat in the Abu Ghraib torture scandals has begun to speak out. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was commanding officer at the prison. She was demoted to colonel in May. She oversaw all military police in Iraq and was the first female ever to command soldiers in a combat zone. She has granted an exclusive interview to Amy Goodman, and the transcript is interesting reading. In it, she says, among other things, that she was instructed by higher officials to "treat them like dogs."
As reported here on Wednesday, lawyers for a prisoner being force-fed in Guantanamo have asked a federal judge to intervene to stop the feedings. A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. government to provide medical records on Guantanamo prisoners who are being force-fed while on a hunger strike and to notify their lawyers about forced feedings at least 24 hours in advance. U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler acted after lawyers representing about a dozen men held at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, expressed urgent concern over their deteriorating health amid a hunger strike launched in early August.
U.S. officials and members of Iraq's provisional government bungled the management of $24 million in reconstruction grants in early 2004, and some cases may have involved fraud, according to a report released on Wednesday. The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said his office had referred several cases of potential fraud in reconstruction grants for the South-Central region for further investigation. Those investigations were still ongoing, according to Bowen's report -- the latest in a series of detailed audits of over $30 billion in U.S. funds for Iraq reconstruction.
News From The Various Wars On This And That: United States should pull 20,000 troops from Iraq after parliamentary elections there in December, John Kerry said on Wednesday, arguing that it would weaken support for an insurgency fueled by resentment of the U.S. presence. He said in blistering speech at Georgetown University that the administration must change course in Iraq or there will be "the prospect of indefinite, and even endless conflict." Nice evidence of spine, John, but it is a year too late.
Several cases of corruption in the military ranks have revealed a dangerous vulnerability in the War on Drugs, ABC News is reporting. Dozens of active and former soldiers have abused their military uniforms and authority in a drug smuggling ring, government sources have told ABC News. A U.S. army sergeant fighting the war on drugs in Colombia was recently sentenced to six years in prison for using military aircraft to smuggle cocaine into the United States. In April, an Air National Guard pilot and a sergeant used a C-5 Galaxy military transport plane to sneak nearly 300,000 Ecstasy pills from Germany into New York. In another case, three U.S. airmen were arrested in March for stealing military-issue bulletproof vests from Moody Air Force Base in Georgia and selling them to drug dealers for $100 each.
Weather yesterday was a delight, with sunny skies most of the day. Rain during the night, pretty much as usual, but by dawn it had stopped and began, hesitatingly, to clear off. But it was not to be. It quickly closed back in and has been raining on and off all day.
This is apparently the result of the formation of a new tropical low just off of the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Panama. The National Hurricane Center in Miami is watching it closely - it is forming over very warm water, and there is almost no wind shear to inhibit formation into a tropical storm, and they are saying that it is slowly organizing itself. Watching the water vapor loop for the hurricane sector this morning, it is clearly growing in strength and organization, and it could be a tropical storm by the end of the day. If it formed into a hurricane, the models show it would move slowly to the northwest - over Nicaragua. Just what they need - a drought being broken by a hurricane of all things. Meanwhile, it is bringing warm temperatures and light rain to us here in Arenal. And wind, on and off all day, varying from dead calm to high winds out of the west, lasting for a few hours and dying back down again.
We're hunkering down here in Costa Rica. The Ministry of Public Works and Transport has only begun repairs from the heavy rains from the last two storms. And yesterday, a huge land slide occurred in Cartago state. It had been anticipated, and everyone in the path had been evacuated, so no one was killed. But yet more Costa Ricans are finding themselves without homes during this miserably intense rainy season.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: You might think you own your own genes, but if that is what you think, you are wrong. Universities and corporations have patented fully twenty percent of the human genome, a study published in Science, reviewed by the National Geographic Society has revealed. You may have thought that only inventions can be patented. That was once true, but no more. Under recent changes to the patent law in the United States, certain discoveries can be patented if they can be shown to have a practical application. Human genes are therefore patentable if they can be shown to be useful in research, medicine or industry. So the gold rush is on to take ownership of your genome away from you.
Once again, false information deliberately circulated by the White House has forced me to do a retraction: I have reported in this space that Smirkey had upbraided Karl Rove for leaking Valerie Plame's identity about two years ago. That was apparently simply disinformation. That report was apparently circulated to make Smirkey look like he really has a moral conscience, but it has actually had the opposite effect - if it were true, it simply ties him into the conspiracy to cover it up or to deny responsibility. True or untrue, the claim does not make him look good, which is what his rather shortsighted handlers had in mind.
Buyers' remorse: If last year's elections were being held today, a new CNN poll just released suggests that Smirkey would lose, garnering only 39 percent to Kerry's 55 percent. That assumes honest elections, of course, and based on the history of the last two presidential elections, that's pretty dangerous presumption.
Scott Ritter, the former U.N. arms inspector in Iraq, has given an interview on Democracy Now in which he lays out the manner in which Israeli intelligence, the neocons in Smirkey's administration, and Smirkey himself all conspired to undermine the U.N.'s WMD inspection program and force the United Nations Security Council to authorize the war on Iraq. The worst of it is that it was all done because George Bush Senior had characterized Saddam as a Hitler wannabe, and he and subsequent leaders were so committed to that dogma that they simply could not back down from that kind of allegation. The transcript of the interview makes for some really interesting reading about the background on how the Iraq war came to be.
The endless saber-rattling going on over Syria these days means that Iran has been getting short shrift by the saber-rattling department. So that omission has been corrected by a warning from America's proxy in the Middle East, Israel. Speaking at a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom said: "We believe that Iran is trying to buy time... so it can develop a nuclear bomb." He added that he believed "Iran is a clear and present danger". This comes after several statements reported here a few months ago that Israel will attack Iran alone if necessary, and that Israel is preparing to do so if needed.
The US has abandoned controversial plans to develop a nuclear "bunker-buster" warhead. Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the senate subcommittee that oversees the Department of Energy's budget, said the request for funding had been dropped at the request of the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons programs. The proposed nuclear "bunker-busters", also called mini-nukes, would have penetrated bunkers deep underground, including those tunneled into solid rock. The small nuclear charge would be buried in the explosion, and the fall-out contained. However, critics doubted whether the weapon could go deep enough to contain any significant amount of fall-out. "This is a true victory for a more rational nuclear policy," said Stephen Young, a senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear nonproliferation advocacy group. "The proposed weapon, more than 70 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, would have caused unparalleled collateral damage."
The hunger strike in Guantanamo goes on, garnering almost no attention in the news media. More than two hundred of the five hundred plus detainees are refusing food, and officials are force-feeding about 26 of them. One of them, a Kuwaiti detainee wants a judge to order the removal of his feeding tube so he can be allowed to die, his lawyer says. Fawzi al-Odah is ready to die "out of desperation" at his detention without charge, said his lawyer Tom Wilner.
Smirkey is discovering the limits to U.S. hegemony: a long-planned base to be built in Okinawa, which would have taken yet more private property from local residents, has been abandoned as the result of years of local protests, and will now be built on land already controlled by the U.S. military. "The US side, taking into consideration the importance of the Japan-US alliance... have accepted the most recent Japan Defence Agency proposal and plan," US Deputy Under-secretary of Defence Richard Lawless said.
Safe in the arms of Jesus indeed: Demonstrating the absurdity of the save-the-fetuses movement that's taking over America these days, the save-the-fetuses people in Britain came together last week to memorialize a dead and discarded fetus. Found in a back alley in the Anfield district of Liverpool, the tiny fetus was discovered by a member of the public, who called police. Merseyside police cordoned off the area, began an investigation, and soon, cards, teddy bears, candles and more than a dozen bunches of flowers appeared. One card read, "RIP little baby. Safe in the arms of Jesus. From someone who is a loving mother. xxx." When the results of the police investigation came back, it was the local newspaper who broke the awful truth to the good people of Liverpool: "Stop grieving," the paper said, "it's only a chicken."
The Talibaptists in Kansas seem to think that teenagers kissing each other on dates should be reported to authorities as victims or even perpetrators of child abuse. No, I am not making this up - under a revised interpretation of child-abuse reporting statutes proposed by Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline in 2003, any sexual activity, even counseling, involving people under age 16 constitutes child abuse, even if both parties are consenting minors. The interpretation even extends to kissing. "A vital and precious part of their [teen] development will be cordoned off from safe exploration with trusted professionals, and teens will be left to negotiate this terrain more alone than ever," said licensed clinical psychologist Beth McGilley, one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights. "Medicine and psychology have been strictly couched in the tradition of privacy, and that is key to most patients being able to get their health care questions answered and their needs met."
And the Talibaptists in Arizona are making it almost impossible to get emergency contraception in that state. In Tucson, a rape victim searched in vain for three days to find a pharmacy that had emergency contraceptives in stock, only to find the one in town that had it, employed a pharmacist who refused to dispense it on "religious" grounds. When she inquired at Planned Parenthood, she was told that they could provide it, but there was a $70 fee - which she could not afford. Apparently, she was not told about Planned Parenthood's sliding scale for fees in such emergency situations.
Austin, Texas city officials have granted permission for a Ku Klux Klan rally with a difference: Now that African Americans have become socially acceptable and respectable, the KKK is turning its hate towards the sole remaining minority group in America against whom discrimination is still socially acceptable: homosexuals. The KKK promises its speech will not be inflammatory, but will simply preach against gay marriage. The anti-gay rally will happen between 1 and 3 PM on Saturday, November 5 on the south plaza of the Austin City Hall. Anyone in attendance is hereby granted permission to print out my essay on gay marriage and pass out copies at the rally, provided that the essay is printed and distributed in full, unedited, and unabridged. I will be interested in knowing if anyone does - please write and let me know if you do, or if you see anyone else doing so.
Smirkey's staff are laying the groundwork to allow Harriet Miers to back out of the nomination for Supreme Court associate justice. As reported here on Monday, she simply doesn't have the votes to secure her confirmation, so the White House is looking for a graceful way out.
Rather than save the American textiles industry, what's left of it, the quota recently imposed on Chinese textile imports has created a boom - in India. Companies such as The Gap, Wal-Mart and Target have begun importing large amounts of textiles from India, resulting in a rush by manufacturers there, exempt from the quotas, to increase production.
Making the world safe for bingo: The Department of Homeland Security has actually awarded - no, I'm not making this up - a bingo-security grant. $36,300 went to the State of Kentucky, who will use it to provide five law enforcement officials with computers and commercial database access to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash. Your tax dollars at work.
Making the world safe for workers: It turns out that two of Smirkey's nominees for sensitive positions in the Labor department, Edwin G. Foulke to be assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, plus Richard Stickler for the parallel mine safety and health assistant secretary slot, have received little attention so far, but surfacing information appears to indicate that both men are beholden to corporate interests and are unlikely to be zealous in protecting workers from workplace safety issues.
Consumer confidence in the United States has seen yet another decline. The Conference Board's survey for October has revealed that it has declined by 2.5 points, to 85 from the 87.5 reported for September. September's huge drop was blamed primarily on the hurricanes, but October's numbers were expected to rebound. Instead, there was a significant decline. Sales would also have fallen, except for buyers repairing homes damaged in the hurricanes.
Speaking out of both sides of its mouth: It seems that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is somewhat belatedly claims to be developing a conscience about low wages, hopelessly inadequate health insurance, environmentally destructive policies and the like. Recognizing that if they are going to get construction permits for new big-box stores, they've got to give back to the communities from which they take so much, and so Wal-Mart has vowed to support higher minimum wage rates, better environmental practices, better health care for workers, etc. They've even built a demonstration "green" store in McKinney, Texas, to see what can be done. They're even working on better fuel economy for their delivery trucks. Will all this sudden consciousness bear fruit in the long term? Don't count on it. An article in the New York Times reveals a recently leaked memo that describes how to reduce health care costs by discouraging the employment of unhealthy job applicants.
As American broadcast radio becomes ever more homogenized, pasteurized and advertised, ad revenues for the number one American commercial broadcaster are down, and dramatically, as listeners tune out to something a bit more listenable - satellite subscription radio. Clear Channel Communications has seen its ad revenue drop 21 percent in the third quarter, so they are reducing ad content and spicing up programming, but it is not working. The desertion continues, and satellite radio receivers are expected to be this year's big Christmas gift gadget.
The anti-torture provision in the Senate version of the defense appropriations bill making its way through conference, is attracting the heat of a lot of constituents - and the White House on the other side. Expect the anti-torture provision to get tossed out of the conference report version - two of the players on the conference committee, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., who chair Congress' defense spending subcommittees, will be among the leaders of those talks in coming weeks. Both are advocates of torture.
Fired for being a peacelover: Tim Mahoney, a part-time copy editor with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, attended a peace rally in Washington, D.C. He traveled on one of three buses organized by St. Joan of Arc Church, a Catholic parish in Minneapolis where he is an active member. The demonstration, which attracted upward of 100,000 people to the nation's capitol, was one of the largest such gatherings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. When he returned, his editors at the Pi Press fired him. The decision has left Mahoney and many of his Pioneer Press colleagues flummoxed. "There is an issue of conscience, of religion," he says. "I'm not trying to put myself forth as any kind of pious person at all. I'm not. But it's a matter of personal belief. It seemed to me--and still does--completely harmless to the interests of the Pioneer Press."
Scandals Du Jour: Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame investigation, has widened the investigation to examine the source of the documents used by Smirkey to justify his warmongering claims about Saddam supposedly seeking uranium from Niger in West Africa. The provenance of the documents is highly questionable, and are proven forgeries, but the real question is whether or not Smirkey or his people knew they were forged when they were used as documentation for the State of the Union address claims. Now, they have been tied back to Israeli intelligence - through Larry Franklin, the Israeli spy that was caught and charged with espionage on behalf of Israel recently. Since Israel was desperate to see Saddam deposed, the obvious question was whether or not the Israelis actually participated in the forgery of the documents. An interview given to Democracy Now! by Melvin Goodman reveals just how those documents came to be, and how they came to be used in the State of the Union speech.
Senior Pentagon officials were warned not to let the USS Cole dock in Yemen two days before terrorists attacked the ship five years ago killing 17 sailors, according to Congressman Curt Weldon, who said the crucial intelligence was gleaned from the former secret defense operation, "Able Danger." Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, revealed the information in a House speech last Wednesday evening that blasted the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) attempts to discredit Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a DIA employee who worked as a liaison with the "Able Danger" team.
The ethically-challenged and now finally indicted Rep. Tom DeLay bid on a wicker waste-paper basket two weekends ago at the Needville Harvest Festival in Fort Bend County in his home state of Texas. And he won not just the basket, but the gadget inside it, too — a paper shredder. Of course, his Democratic opponent in next year's election is making hay from that one, lampooning that the shredder will be burned out soon enough, working overtime in his office and the office of his Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee.
The former GOP director of New Hampshire, Chuck McGee, and his boss, James Tobin, formerly regional director of the Northeast division of the GOP, are asking for the charges against them to be dropped. They are the ones who were convicted of conspiring to jam Democratic telephones on election day to prevent a get-out-the-vote drive by the Democratic party from being effective.
The defiant British member of parliament George Galloway has rejected claims he lied under oath to the US Senate committee which accused him of receiving oil cash from Saddam Hussein. After testifying defiantly, and accusing the members of the committee of malicious rumor-mongering, bad investigatory techniques and smearing enemies of the Bush administration, Galloway has been subjected to a smear campaign, claiming that he lied under oath to the Senate committee. He went on television yesterday morning demanding to be prosecuted for perjury, claiming that he can prove that the charges being made against him are baseless. He said his "bags are packed" and he'll be on the "next plane to the U.S." if and when charges are actually laid.
No Child Left Behind: The effectiveness of the fundamentalist Christian effort to undermine science education in the United States is finally becoming clear: For the first time in nearly a century, most Americans do not accept the facts of evolution. Instead, 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. No wonder that America is rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in the biological sciences.
News From The Various Wars: The American Civil Liberties Union has begun the release of thousands of documents they have received as the result of Freedom Of Information Act requests regarding detainee treatment in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. The documents paint a very disturbing picture of widespread detainee torture and abuse, including several deaths, that occurred during interrogations while in U.S. custody. It wasn't just the military, either, it was also "OGA's" - "other government agencies," a code phrase for the CIA.
Two thousand dead. That is the official number of Americans who have died as the result of combat activity in Iraq, but Smirkey's response was yet another flat "stay the course" speech, this one given yesterday to wives and mothers of American servicemen who have died there. Of course, they were all carefully vetted before being allowed into the venue. No Cindy Sheehans there.
An alleged terrorist, accused of plotting to kill Smirkey, is now on trial and the judge in the case has allowed the use of a "confession" obtained by torture at the hands of Saudi police. This is the first known case of an American judge allowing confessions obtained in foreign jails by torturing accused criminals into providing confessions of their own guilt. It certainly waters down the standards for evidence to be used in criminal trials in the United States.
Smirkey in the dock in Iraq? It would happen if the lawyers for Saddam Hussein have their way. Saddam Hussein's defense committee wants to put US President George W Bush in the dock to mirror the Baghdad trial of the former Iraqi leader over a Shi'ite massacre, a Jordanian lawyer said on Tuesday. "We shall contact international and Arab lawyer associations and will put forward the proof allowing for a trial of the criminal Bush at the same time as the fake trial takes place in Iraq," Saleh Armuti told a meeting of the Amman-based Saddam defense committee. Don't hold your breath.
The No-Bid News: Your tax dollars were wasted by Pentagon officials who spent more than $1 million buying seven lemon cars in Iraq. When the Pentagon went shopping for seven armored cars for senior Iraqi policemen, U.S. officials turned to an Iraqi supplier to provide them some hardened Mercedes-Benzes. After spending nearly $1 million, here's what they got: six vehicles with bad armor and run-down mechanics. They also were a little more than slightly used: The newest model was a 1996; the oldest, a 1994.
Minnesota Republicans Saving The Environment: Word from Minnesota is that a 3M plant there has been discharging a variety of perflourchemical compounds into streams near the plant, and the result has been contamination of fish in the Mississippi river downstream, making them unfit for human consumption. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) Coordinator for Emerging Contaminants Fardin Oliaei. put together a powerpoint presentation which was obtained and released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).The chemicals, which cause liver disease and bladder cancer, have been found in workers from the plant. After the company reported PFC contamination on facility grounds in 2002, Oliaei sought to investigate the matter further but was rebuffed in the efforts by her boss, Sheryl Corrigan, a former 3M executive. According to a whistleblower complaint filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration by Oliaei, the MPCA decision to end investigation into 3M contamination "resulted in an unnecessary extension of PFC contamination of residents’ drinking water" and further endangered Mississippi River wildlife.
House Republicans Saving The National Park Concept: In an effort to expedite final approval of an appropriations bill passed this spring, the US House of Representatives is set to consider today an energy bill bearing a trio of proposals to allow government sale of leases to energy companies wishing to explore and exploit resources in the nation’s national park system off the coast. Put forth by the ethically-challenged House Committee on Resources head Richard Pombo (R-California), the package includes proposals to open the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, offer states an "opt-out" on coastal offshore oil drilling prohibitions and allow the National Park Service to sell mineral rights and land to mining interests.
New York Repaying The Heros Of 9/11: Claiming that a 2003 pension board decision changing the rules for firefighters seeking 9/11-related disability payments may be "political," a group of 30 current and retired New York City firefighters is preparing a class-action lawsuit against the city fire department to force officials to either return workers to full status or allow them to retire with the original pension. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Uniformed Firefighters Association Local 94 members, is aimed at pulling those suffering from lung problems due to recovery and rescue work conducted after the September 11 terror attacks out of "career limbo," UFA Vice President James Slevin said.
News From The Hurricane Relief Efforts: It appears that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco has lifted the moratorium on tenant evictions in the aftermath of Katrina. Until now, landlords could not evict absent tenants who were in arrears on their rent, but beginning yesterday, they can, and the courts are expecting a flood of applications for permission to evict. Thousands of desperately needed apartments are still full of rotting, stinking furniture and other personal property ruined in the flood, and owned by tenants who have still not returned to New Orleans. The landlords are eager to begin refurbishing the apartments, and the space is desperately needed by construction workers flooding into the city.
Republicans Take Care Of Their Own: Disgraced former FEMA director Michael Brown, whose disastrous performance was a key factor in the decline of Smirkey's numbers after Katrina, got a consulting contract with the agency after his resignation. Now it has been revealed that he has managed to get his consulting contract extended. Due to expire on October 10, his contract was extended by four weeks, according to FEMA officials. What a surprise.
Katrina redux: in a replay of New Orleans, people in Ft. Lauderdale's suburbs are asking where FEMA is, and how it is they are expected to boil their water when there is no electricity with which to boil it, and no one seems to be worrying about that. Wilma went through Ft. Lauderdale and environs as a Category 2 storm and did a lot of damage, but this time, the press is absent - no one is learning about the fact that thousands have been left homeless, millions of dollars in damage has been done and FEMA seems to be nowhere in sight. And the liberal biased press is AWOL on this story too.
We Republicans Are More Moral Than You: Montana Republican Senator Conrad Burns' off-the-cuff remarks have gotten him in trouble in the past. He once called Arabs "rag heads," later apologizing for the comment. Another time, the Montana Republican commented on how challenging it is to live with so many blacks in Washington. Now, two Northwest Airlines flight attendants say Burns offended them recently when he told one of the women she could stay at home and be a mother if she lost her job to outsourcing. "He's still living in the '50s," said Karen McElvaney, who is raising two young children in Atlanta while working for Northwest. "If I could stay home, I certainly would love to stay with my kids." Burns, who is up for re-election next year, said Tuesday morning he did not recall the conversation. He later said through a spokesman that he remembered speaking to the flight attendants but never told one she could stay home with her children.
We had a break in the rain today. The convection off of Panama never did develop into anything and kinda fell apart, and both Wilma and Alpha are now well out of the area. Dryer air is moving into the Caribbean from North Africa, and this has led to a reduction in the rains. Yesterday the rains were lighter, with frequent breaks, and today, we had several hours of brilliant sunshine mid day, with only sprinkles the rest of the time. Circulation over the area continues out of the west, an extremely unusual condition - running directly contrary to the usual direction of the easterly trade winds that normally dominate our area. This has been an extremely unusual year that way - and it has also suppressed the usual thunderstorms that dominate our afternoon weather. It has been more than a week since we had a real thunderstorm - and that is more typical of the dry season than now.
Good thing, the rains have ended, too. The heavy rains of the last few days have washed out the road between Quepos and Dominical, which means that what was a one-hour trip has become a grueling eight hour slog over the Mountain of Death, through Cartago and San Jose, and back down the congested and scary San Ramon grade. This is a problem for the many trucks going down the InterAmerican, which normally use this route to avoid the San Jose metro area and its traffic, congestion and additional travel time between Nicaragua and Panama. It is going to add to the traffic on the already hugely overloaded InterAmerican Highway through the Central Valley. Forecast for the next few days is for lighter rains, more usual for this time of year. I am sure the already saturated Pacific coast will regard that as welcome news.
I cut down a new banano (bunch of bananas) yesterday, and after letting the raceme bleed out of its badly-staining sap, I got it hung up to ripen in the kitchen. This is a different variety of bananas than any I have tried before. It is an ornamental variety with short but very fat bananas, but the gardener says they are quite good, similar to the commercial variety with which everyone is so familar, so it is going to be interesting to see how they compare in terms of flavor. They were already starting to split open, though not yellow yet, so they're definitely ready even though they're green as grass. I also have a big bunch of platanos (plantains) that are getting close to be ready, as well as some quadrados (cooking bananas) that will be ready in a month or so. In addition, two other bunches I had cut down and hung up before my last Granada trip were ripe yesterday, so I got those peeled and frozen. I use those frozen bananas in banana betidos (milkshakes), of which I am quite fond. They actually freeze quite well, if you use them while still frozen. Add a tablespoon of Costa Rican cocoa powder, and you have a wonderful chocolate shake to enjoy with lunch.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: Twilight of the neo-con god of Free Markets At All Costs? Not quite, but close: The battle reported in this space several months ago between the neo-cons and the Texas oil interests has come to a resolution. When the neo-con sponsored plan of the Bush administration (in the form of flooding the world markets with cheap Iraqi crude oil) from before the invasion came into direct conflict with the oil companies' interests in maintaining stratospheric crude oil prices, guess which won? Well, it seems that an epiphany struck even Dick Cheney, who had been pushing the neo-con strategy of privatizing Iraq's oil fields and then turning the international oil companies loose to pump as much as they could manage (they had hoping for 6 million bpd. to cause the oil price to crash). It didn't happen for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the opposition by the Iraqis themselves (and the insurgency just kept blowing things up in the oil fields), but mostly because the Texas-based international oil companies, whose profits are at record levels these days, would have none of it. And even Halliburton, whose principal business is oil field services, was opposed. So after a remarkable series of epiphanies among all the neo-cons involved, Iraq is now back to happily selling its oil under the OPEC-imposed quota system through a state-owned oil production monopoly. Oh, about the American economy that has lost a third of its growth to high oil prices? The principal losers were heavy industries, unionized by unions dominated by Democratic party controlled leadership. So the Democrats were the big losers there. Nice little bonus. But it seems that the principal outcome was a lesson for Smirkey: Don't mess with Texas.
The next conservative scapegoat-du-jour is apparently going to be illegal immigrants. Smirkey is desperate to distract attention from all the scandals, mismanagement and incompetence in his administration, so he is doing what conservatives always do in such circumstances - find someone to blame. And it appears it is going to be all those dark-skinned folks who talk funny. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao testified this past week before the Senate Judiciary Committee using the rising hysteria over illegal immigration – which is being pumped into the press by their own minions of spin – to promote the Bush administration's agenda for battling the supposed threat to America's borders.
The next chairman of the Federal Reserve, to replace Alan Greenspan, will be Ben Bernake, a Harvard-trained economist who is head of the economics school at Princeton, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and a governor on the board of the Federal Reserve. By all accounts he is qualified, though some are raising objections to his lack of experience outside of academia. Nevertheless, his resume would indicate he is qualified for the job - a refreshing change from the long string of totally unqualified crony appointments we are used to. This guy may be a crony, but at least he is qualified. Insiders are saying that Smirkey didn't have the heart (or political capital, most likely) to fight for yet another crony. The markets were up on the news.
Two key elements of Smirkey's "base" are at war with each other: the military is desperate to see an end to the attempts to drill for oil in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, off of the Florida panhandle. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., cited memos from the military about the matter in a letter dated Wednesday to the ethically-challenged House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., who has been trying to craft legislation that would open the eastern gulf to oil and natural gas drilling. Given Pombo's rather shameless pandering to campaign contributors, he must surely be in a quandary at the moment as to whom he should pander.
Welcome To America - Here Is Your Prison Cell: The United States now has the largest prison population on the planet, surpassing even China and India. It is now at 2,270,000 people, an increase of 1.9 percent in 2004 alone, accounting for 0.7 percent of the U.S. population - 25 percent higher than any other nation. Women constitute the fastest-growing proportion of the prison population, accounting for 7 percent of the population, but nearly one in four new incarcerations. 3.6 percent of the American population is now in prison, on parole or has been in prison in the past. Federal incarceration is growing at the rate of 5.5 percent per year, and federal prisons are now at an average of 40 percent over-capacity. Tougher sentencing, reduced use of alternatives to incarceration, and three-strikes laws account for the bulging population. Drug offenses account for 12.5 percent of new incarcerations.
Rats Deserting The Sinking U.S.S. Bush:The Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court is now in serious trouble. Fairly united opposition from the Democrats, combined with defections from the Republican far right, mean that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is now confident in saying that "I think, if you were to hold the vote today, she would not get a majority, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor."
Turns out Miers has other problems, too: The U.K. Guardian is reporting that she was grossly overpaid on a Texas land deal resulting from an eminent domain proceeding back in 2000, and when the deal was revalued - downward - she failed to pay back the money. The family was paid $100,000 for land worth about a tenth of that.
The Canadians are beginning a modest little effort at prosecuting Smirkey on war crimes charges. A court case that has been on embargo for the last year has now been released to public information, and the case, going forward in the Supreme Court of the Province of British Columbia, is based on Smirkey's promotion of torture, suspension of habeas corpus and other abuses. Whether it will actually get anywhere remains to be seen, but the judges have ruled that the case is within their jurisdiction, and there is foundation to the charges (one of the Guantanamo detainees is a Canadian minor).
The rats are starting to desert Tony Blair's ship too: It seems that a senior British military officer in Iraq has resigned because of the lack of armored vehicles for his troops, which the Blair government has refused to supply. The lack of armored vehicles is killing his troops, and Lt. Col. Nick Henderson of the 1st. Btn. of Coldstream Guards no longer wants their deaths on his conscience. Would that American military leadership were so principled. Of course, such news is not slowing down Tony at all. Rumors are circulating that he could participate in a military invasion of Iran if the U.S. goes that far. Meanwhile, a report leaked to the press indicates that the British war on terror has also been a failure and has also been counterproductive.
Free Markets Are Good For The Economy: The cash-strapped General Motors Corporation is now preparing to start selling off the family silver - this time, it is the truck divisions in South Africa and Australia. They are in talks with Japan's Isuzu to transfer these assets to Isuzu. In addition, Isuzu will increase its current 8 percent stake in GM.
Liberal Biased Media Watch: The 2006 Project Censored Award is won by Greg Palast, again. This time, it is for his report on the fact that the Republican Party has actually generated "caged lists" of African Americans and other minorities, which it arrogantly will not allow to register and/or vote, as the result of their control of the electoral process in most of the United States. When the reports came to light, they were big news in Latin America and Europe, but got all of two newspaper articles in the United States, one in the San Francisco Chronicle and the other in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Jim Crow lives. Great democracy you have there, America.
Merlot Democrats, Dom Perinon Republicans: The Republican National Committee has released a statement accusing Democratic National Committee chairman of being a leader of the "Merlot Democrats." They write: "Howard Dean today, as leader of the Merlot Democrats, displayed a troubling unwillingness and inability to acknowledge the real progress occurring in Iraq..." What did Dean say that was so bad? He said: "We cannot have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy, and George Bush has a failed strategy for Iraq. When you don't tell the truth when you go into Iraq, it's unlikely it will be a successful program... The president has no plan. The third piece is we're clearly not going to stay there forever. The president seems to think the choices are only between cutting and running and staying forever. They're not." Somehow, with Republican's kids safely at home sipping their Dom Perinon with their moms and dads, and not trudging through the sands of Iraq in body armor they had to buy themselves, well, I'll just report. You can decide.
Free Markets Are Good For You: Roche, the company that makes Tamiflu, one of only two drugs effective against avian flu, and the preferred choice, stands to make big bucks on the upcoming pandemic. And for the heirs, the Oeri, Hoffman and Sacher families, avian flu could be good news. Over the next two years, the heirs of Fritz Hoffman, founder of Roche, one of the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies, and who already rank as among the world's richest families, could see their combined $18 billion fortune reach giddy heights. Twenty members of the founding family control Roche, which industry analysts estimate will benefit from the Tamiflu drug thought to relieve the symptoms of avian flu, with extra profits of $800 million this year and $1.6 billion next. All this has been just too much for Taiwan, which has announced that it is going to ignore the patent on Tamiflu, and manufacture their own version locally.
Scandals Du Jour: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings. Since 2001, the trustees have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. The letters included notice of the addition of HCA shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002. The trust agreements require the trustees to inform Frist and the Senate whenever assets are added or sold. The scandal is threatening his political career: he is saying that the probe will affect his decision to enter the 2008 presidential race.
Military intelligence: The Pentagon paid $20 apiece for plastic ice cube trays that once cost it 85 cents. It paid a supplier more than $81 apiece for coffeemakers that it bought for years for just $29 from the manufacturer. That's because instead of getting competitive bids or buying directly from manufacturers like it used to, the Pentagon is using middlemen who set their own prices. It's the equivalent of shopping for weekly groceries at a convenience store. And it's costing taxpayers 20 percent more than the old system, a Knight Ridder investigation found. The higher prices are the result of a Defense Department purchasing program called Prime Vendor, which favors a handful of firms. Run by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the program is based on a military procurement strategy to speed delivery of supplies such as bananas and bolts to troops in the field. How much you wanna bet that a lot of those "Prime Vendors" are Republican friends of administration officials?
News From The Various Wars:At least four deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq have been blamed on CIA misconduct, but apparently they are going to avoid any repercussions and prosecution for them.
The practice of issuing enemy body counts, a policy discarded since the phony-count scandals of the Vietnam War, seems to have been unofficially revived by an administration desperate to show some progress against the insurgency in Iraq. So far, the releases have tended to be associated either with major attacks that netted significant numbers of enemy fighters or with lengthy operations that have spanned days or weeks.
The drug-war business is good business: Apparently DynCorp, the company that contracts with the State Department to do aerial coca-crop eradication in Colombia, has made so much money that they now figure they're ready to go public. They have filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month to sell $450 million worth of stock in an initial public offering. Until February, DynCorp had been owned by Computer Sciences Corporation (!), which acquired the company in 2003. Listed among the directors of the company is retired U.S. Army general Barry McCaffrey who was SOUTHCOM’s commander from 1994 to 1996 and President Clinton’s anti-drug czar from 1996 to 2001.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Turns out that the models for sea level rise, based mostly on the thermal expansion of water in the oceans, may have left out a significant factor that means they'll actually rise much faster than predicted. A possibility, scientists say, is that the melting and collapse of floating ice shelves near the coasts of Greenland and Antarctica will continue and in the process destabilize the ice sheets behind them. This could cause a much more rapid flow of ice to the sea and lead to melting events that transcend those now anticipated due to global warming. Based on this, the researchers say that current projections of sea level rise should be considered a minimum to expect, and the levels could be much higher and happen more quickly. In one event about 14,600 years ago, Earth's sea level rose about 70 feet in less than 500 years -- 20 times faster than the current rate of sea level rise.
News From The Hurricane Disasters: Throwing away the elderly - about 60 percent of the nearly 500 dead bodies discovered floating in the flood waters of New Orleans, in homes or piles of debris identified so far were age 61 or older, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has reported. "The elderly were much more likely to be in hospitals and nursing homes as well as possibly homebound and not able to access transportation in order to evacuate from the storm," said agency spokesman Bob Johannessen. A majority of people killed by Hurricane Katrina were older residents unable or unwilling to evacuate in the rising floodwaters, according to a study of almost half the bodies recovered in Louisiana.
More military intelligence in the Bush administration: The predictable Republican reaction to the hurricane response chaos has been not to examine what works and works well in emergency response (such as, for example, how the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management fight wildfires ), but simply do what conservatives always do - impose more control, as if tighter control is the solution to all problems. So now they are looking at using the military to respond to these disasters. Get ready to abandon what remains of the Bill of Rights, while the disaster response gets even poorer.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: Right-wing Christian and professional homophobe Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, is apparently as ethically challenged as some of his acquaintances. Turns out the baby-faced candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia has been a close associate of indicted uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and had worked closely with him on access to key administration officials, looking for political plums for their clients. Now, Reed's relationship with Abramoff is being investigated as part of the investigations surrounding the numerous scandals Abramoff is currently involved in.
Republicans fighting for transparency in government: Ahnold's taking a trip to China. And to pay for it, the California "governator" is soliciting donations from businesses all over the state. Just who are those businesses, and how much are they contributing? And what are the quid-pro-quos? We don't know, except that $50,000 will apparently get you a seat on the plane and an invitation to meet with officials over there. The administration says the fundraising effort saves taxpayers money, but experts in public ethics question the governor's practice and the access it affords private interests, at the expense of the common public interest. When private money finances government activity, elected officials can be compromised, they said. And voters cannot hold officials accountable if they can't learn where all the money came from and what donors may receive in return, they added. Can we say "legalized bribery," boys and girls?
News Of The Weird: It appears that there may be a problem with long-term space missions that no one had thought of - that might make them difficult: sex. Yes, it appears that out-of-this-world sex might cause such serious problems that the whole design of long-duration space missions, such as Mars missions, may need to be reconsidered, according to a report by a panel of the National Academy of Science. "If there are instances of sexual conflict or infidelity, that may lead to a breakdown in crew functioning. Breakups can lead to violence and all kinds of things," agrees Carol Rinkleib Ellison, a psychologist specialising in sexuality and intimacy based in Oakland, California, who was not part of the NAS panel. "People are very primitive in their emotions around partnering and sex."
Rain, rain and more rain - it has been raining hard for the last two days, on and off all day. There were a couple of hours today when the rain let up a bit, and the gardener got the yard cleaned up, but that was about it. It closed back in and started raining hard again before he had even finished.
The rain from yesterday was the last of the feeder bands from Wilma as that storm finally moved out. No more feeder bands today, but lots of rain nonetheless. No longer had Wilma left the region than a huge area of convection bloomed up just south of Panama, and the circulation around a large new tropical storm, Alpha, out over the eastern Caribbean, began to draw that moisture in over land. That is now the new fear - that the convection south of Panama will develop into a tropical depression of its own, and be carried up the Pacific coast of Central America. That would be the worst of all possible scenarios - bringing us lots more rain just at a time when soils across Costa Rica are heavily saturated already. On the TV news tonight, the meteorological institute seemed to be concerned that the effects of Alpha could bring us some serious rain as the result of the circulation around it. But the Hurricane Center in Miami doesn't seem to be very impressed - they're predicting it will move quickly to the north, away from us, and barely even make hurricane status before it is overtaken and ripped apart by a cold front off the east coast of the U.S.
The gardener came today, rather than Friday. I asked about whether this Saturday thing was going to become permanent, but he assures me that it was only because he had to make a trip to Liberia yesterday to get some orthopedic shoes fitted for his daughter, and some glasses fitted for his wife. Back to normal Friday service next week, he assures me. We got a lot of wild heliconias and giant ginger cleared out of an area along the pond, and I am going to get the area cleaned up and plant some giant philodendrons and other aroids there once they're all cleaned out. The vivero (nursery) in Tilaran has some really nice ones, quite spectacular, and they assure me that they will do very well here. We even found some split-leaf ferns that had been planted there a long time ago, but which had been overgrown by the ginger and heliconias, and are going to try to nurse those back to health. He cut down some bamboo that was unwanted and sprouting where the big garbage fire was last dry season, and put the garbage on top of it to suppress the growth. We'll put some plastic over that, and then burn it when the dry season starts in March, and see if that will finally kill it. Once that area is cleaned out, we are going to plant some philodenderons there, too.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: This outrage may be the one that is so egregious that it sparks the start of the revolution once its full implications are understood by the public. A new bill quietly reported out of committee and now on the floor of the Senate (S-1873, "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005") is much more than just the usual Republican subsize-and-protect-the-corporations-from-their-victims bill. It is far, far worse - even the Nazis and the Bolsheviks didn't go this far. It would enable the government to secretly create a drug or vaccine, and then vaccinate or drug you with it, by force if necessary, or with any other vaccine or drug they may happen to desire, including vaccines and drugs that may be experimental, harmful, whose ingredients are a secret and whose efficacy is unproven, whose side effects are either unknown, or if they are known, are a state secret. The legislation proposes setting up a deliberately secret government agency that is totally exempt from the Freedom of Information Act or any other form of accountability, to work in direct collaboration with Big Pharma to develop these drugs. If you are injured or your health is ruined or you are even killed, you or your family will, by law, have absolutely no recourse whatsoever against either the government agency who developed it or the pharmaceutical company who made it - any and all damages are totally exempt from tort. In addition, even the very evidence of the injury or death becomes a state secret which you may not discuss with family or friends under penalty of law. If this sounds like something out of a World War II novel, it is much more sinister - rather than using just a handful of concentration-camp victims for medical experimentation as the Nazis and Bolsheviks did, these rabidly pro-business Republicans are talking about using the general American population for this experimentation and doing so with total control and impunity - if you object to the jab or the pill, you go to prison. You are about to become the pharmaceutical industry's guinea pig, whether you like it or not, and if the outcome is bad, you are, in a word, screwed. Consumers' Union is concerned about this as is the New York based Center for Justice And Democracy. So far, they seem to be the only ones who have even noticed what is in this bill. Welcome to the conservative Republican concept of accountability, responsibility, freedom, liberty and justice for all.
The Government Accountability Office has released a report that calls into serious question the security of electronic voting machines, and says that the worst fears of those opposing their use, have been realized. "[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes" it said, and that was just one of several chilling revelations in the 107 page report.
"Goodwill" envoy Karen Hughes, who is traveling the world trying hard to sell the manure of American foreign policy, is finding manure to be hard to sell, as one Egyptian diplomat anonymously put it. So she is getting increasingly strident - and unbelievable - in her attempts to sell the Iraq war. Now she is claiming that Saddam gassed "hundreds of thousands" of his own people - a claim that has no basis in fact, and the rest of the world knows it. Great going, Karen, you're showing what the conservative Bush administration is made of - lies and deceit.
The outgoing Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Conner has expressed her dissatisfaction with the administration's policy on both detainee access to family and counsel, and the lack of habeas corpus rights. She says that detainees are entitled to have clear rules on which their detention and trials, to the extent they receive any, are based. How about the American people, Sandra? Maybe, hopefully, she's having some second thoughts at stepping down when she is the only thing that stands between this administration and the complete abandonment of the Bill of Rights - the conservatives in Congress are certainly not defending it. In fact, to the contrary, they're working hard to effectively repeal it.
A millionaire senator apparently didn't figure he was rich enough, and so he fixed the problem with a Powerball lottery win. Matching five of the six numbers, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire called a press conference to announce that he had matched five of the six numbers, winning $853,492. According to his financial statement, he's already worth millions. Will he keep the money? Count on it. Will he be an inspiration for the construction worker hoping to make enough in a lottery win to feed his family? I doubt it.
A New York policeman was convicted a week ago Friday as the result of his shooting to death of an unarmed African immigrant. The judge who heard the retrial of Bryan Conroy acquitted him of the more serious charge of second-degree manslaughter. Conroy, 27, is to be sentenced Dec. 2 and could receive probation or up to four years in prison. The officer, who was working undercover, fatally shot Ousmane Zongo, 43, two years ago inside a storage warehouse during a police raid in which two suspected counterfeiters of CDs and DVDs were arrested. Why wasn't this a national sensation? Because no one was on hand to videotape it.
The executive editor at the New York Times has sent a somewhat wistful email to his troops, musing over what went wrong with their handling of the Judith Miller controversy. What is remarkable about it is not what it says, but what it doesn't say: nowhere in it is a direct reference to the fact that the New York Times' credibility is at question as a direct result of the fact that they have allowed a reporter, whose independence and objectivity is seriously questionable, to remain on their newsroom staff and continue to "report," when what she was actually doing was simply operating as a stenographer (whether paid or unpaid, we do not know) for the Bush administration. If the New York Times does not want to be viewed as simply a hack mouthpiece for a group of administrative incompetents and political extremists, they will need to make it darned clear to their newsroom staff that independence and objectivity comes first, and access to the White House and Defense Department "news" sources comes as a distant second. Until Bill Keller does that, the New York Times cannot reasonably be considered to be any different than any other politically campaigning newspaper.
Even The Rats Are Deserting The U.S.S. Bush: Those close to the Valerie Plame scandal investigation say that a second Cheney aide, David Wurmser, has agreed to provide the prosecution with evidence that the leak was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the Plame's husband.
In addition, Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Adviser to King George I, is now going public about his disgust for King George II's handling of foreign policy. A Republican and a former Air Force general, Scowcroft is a leading member of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and his critique of both of the style and the substance of the Bush White House, is slated to appear in Monday's editions of the New Yorker magazine.
Even worse, there is the very loud and very public defection of Larry Wilkerson. As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, to Powell's considerable annoyance, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time. He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore." He said that if you thought you saw governmental incompetence and unpreparedness during the Katrina relief effort, wait till you see what happens during the flu pandemic.
All the scandals and desertions have lead to a "death watch" mood at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, according to Doug Thompson, the editor of Capital Hill Blue, the most respected of the capital hill blogs. For all practical purposes, governing the nation has stopped as aides deal with an increasingly despondent President, mounting scandals and defecting dissidents from the Ship of State. With indictments expected against Libby or Rove or both any day now from the Valerie Plame scandal, the White House mood has a “Final Days” aura (“Final Days” was the title of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s book about the last days of the Nixon administration). Although no one expects President Bush to be impeached or resign, Internet blogs buzzed this week with talk of a possible resignation by Vice President Dick Cheney. John Dean, one of the men at the center of the Watergate scandal thirty years ago, says that in all his experience in Washington, nothing since Watergate has led to the level of tension and despair he is seeing in the White House these days. Even Iran-Contra during Reagan's last term, didn't equal this. But do