Back In Town, Back In Business
I am resuming blogging today, after being off-line for a week for a trip to Granada, Nicaragua. The trip was successful. My apologies to those of you who have been loyal readers of this blog for so long. Hopefully, this should be the last of these trips, and the blog should be reliable from now on.
The weather yesterday was bright and sunny, all the way from Granada, down the Pacific coast to Canas, and inland to Arenal, and I can attest to that from having been there. Temperatures have been moderate, 73 overnight and 83 here today. Granada is experiencing one of its driest rainy seasons in recent memory, as is much of Guanacaste in Costa Rica and including Arenal. The lake level still hasn't recovered, and unless the weather changes, which is unlikely, it won't rise significantly. Bad news for Costa Rica, as low water levels mean low electricity production - and Costa Rica and the region generally are growing increasingly short of power.
The trip to Granada was a good one, with only one hitch. When I arrived in Liberia, Costa Rica, I went to my usual hotel to get a room for the night, and was refused, even though I have been a regular customer, and have never caused them a problem. I was told that the hotel was booked up - which I do not for a minute believe. The hotel depends primarily on the backpacker tourist trade, and right now, the tourist season is at its lowest ebb. Just why I was refused, I do not know, but I harbor some private theories. In any event, the next day, I got on a bus and headed for Granada.
The border crossing was one of the fastest I have experienced. The bus was the first to the border in the morning, so the formalities went quickly - I walked right up to the immigration clerk, and was stamped out. On the Nicaraguan side, things were equally fast, and the customs inspection, which normally takes the longest, was handled in about twenty minutes for the whole bus. I arrived in Granada well before noon. The hotel there was glad to see me and gave me a room with a view of the cathedral across the street. Normally, I would have stayed on the other side as it is a bit quieter, but that part of the hotel was undergoing renovation of the roof.
It was an interesting process - the roof is a layer of cane, with some zinc roof sheets over that, and then a layer of clay roof tiles, of the colonial style, just lain on top, with no wire to hold them. A crew of four men pitched them off of the roof one at a time, caught them, piled them on the lawn. They then replaced the cane, sprayed the new cane underlayment with insecticide, and put down new roof sheets. And finally, the tiles were pitched back up, one at a time, and put them back in place. The whole process took three days for about 200 square meters of roof. Very labor intensive, and it makes for a hugely heavy roof, but one that is reasonably durable, handsome, looks very traditional, and requires no skilled labor to install. They're also quite durable - I am told this one should last thirty to fifty years. They're seen all over Granada.
The return trip on Friday morning was uneventful, and went smoothly. We arrived at the border at about 7 AM, and were done with formalities by 9:30, and I was off the bus in Canas and waiting for a local bus by 11:30. I caught a bus at noon, which connected directly to a bus to Arenal, and was home by 1:30 in the afternoon - the quickest return trip I have done. The house was in good shape, and does not appear to have been entered during my absence. I didn't do much after getting home, other than to retrieve my things from the secured storage and put the house back together - and promptly collapse into a long night's sleep.
While in Granada this week, I observed that the power cuts across Nicaragua are less frequent and shorter-lived than when I was there in July. It appears that President Balanos' promise to allow Union Fenosa a 30% rate increase has had the desired effect. The bad news is that Nicaraguans are already paying 21.4 cents U.S. per kilowatt-hour for notoriously unreliable service, one of the highest rates in the hemisphere. Most people in Nicaragua are already paying around $200 per month for their electricity, even without air conditioning, which in that climate, is badly needed. If I were to live there, I would get solar panels, a gas stove, fridge and air conditioner, and go off-grid for sure.
Not to suggest that things aren't going to get tough in Costa Rica over the next few years, either. There are several disturbing trends here that have me concerned. For years, power consumption in Costa Rica has been rising much faster than production, and at the end of this year, the trend lines will cross. Already, ICE is buying surplus power from Panama, and Panama's available surplus is also diminishing. Second, ICE is going to be privatized when CAFTA goes into effect, and that means that it will be forced by market forces to do what Fenosa has already done in Nicaragua - build oil-fired plants because they're the fastest and cheapest to build. That means that Costa Rica's already stretched foreign exchange reserves are going to be further strained to buy oil to generate power - by much more than they need to be, given Costa Rica's abundant resources of wind, hydro and geothermal reserves. Listening to the free-market neo-liberal B.S. coming out of Washington is going to come at a very high price to Costa Rica, just as it already has to Nicaragua and El Salvador.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional authorization for President George W. Bush's warrantless domestic spying program but subject it to new rules. With a court battle waging over the program's legality, the House, controlled by Bush's fellow Republicans, approved the measure on a largely party-line vote of 232-191, and sent it to the Senate for needed concurrence. The Senate, however, has been unable to agree on such legislation, preventing Bush from getting a final measure to sign into law before members of Congress go home to campaign for the November 7 elections. That had been a top Republican goal. With both parties bickering over who can best protect America, the bill outlines when and how a president can order warrantless surveillance. The president would be permitted to do so, for example, after an "armed attack," "terrorist attack" or when the president deems there is an "imminent threat." Largely along party lines, the House passed the bill (H.R.6166) yesterday which would give both the president and government interrogators greater leeway in their handling of suspected terrorists. The passage follows weeks of negotiations (mostly between GOP senators and the Bush Administration) concerning the rights of detainees in the U.S. War on Terror. The Senate is likely to consider the bill soon, and all indications are that it is headed for passage. Last week, the bill looked as good as dead after three GOP senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee - John Warner (R-Va.), John McCain, (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) "refused to go along with President Bush’s wishes. Bush had sought to re-define the government’s interpretation of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which bans "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." Doing so, he argued, would provide U.S. officers greater leeway, in terms of the methods it could use to interrogate "enemy combatants." The administration also requested the right to withhold evidence from suspects, as well as the freedom to hold defendants in custody without an explanation for why detention was necessary (denying them habeas corpus protection). One of its effects would be to provide impunity to administration officials for their part in authorizing torture. Additionally, "hidden in the fine print are provisions which grant the administration authority to maintain permanent records on innocent U.S. citizens, granting the administration new authority to demand personal records without court review, and terminating any and all legal challenges to unlawful wiretapping," said Rep. John Conyers, top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, seen on Hannity and Colmes, defended the human rights abuses in the legislation. He said, "The American people will get it. We don't want (enemy combatants) to have everyday rights of American civilians right here."
"Checks and balances" has a nice ring. But it's a currency that doesn't go a long way in Washington today. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, of MCA, passed by the House and Senate in a 263-158 party-line vote, is a wholesale assault on the idea of a limited government under law. It will be taken by the Bush Administration as a blank check to torture, to detain indefinitely without just cause, and to trample the values that win America respect in the world. From tomorrow, counter-terrorism is the "land of do as you please" for the President and the wise men of the Defense Department -- those savants who brought you Iraq, the gift that keeps on giving (at least if you're a jihadist). The MCA comprehensively assaults two ideas: The idea of checking executive power by laws. And the idea of a separate branch of government ensuring those limits are respected. These are the basic tools of accountability. The MCA frontally attacks both of these -- although only time will tell whether it succeeds. How does the Military Commissions Act assail checks and balances? Consider the key issues of detention and torture. Here's how the Addington play for detention power will work. The opening definition of the Act describes elaborately what an "unlawful enemy combatant" is. Why? The term is a neologism. The laws of war do not use or define this term. Indeed, it is a mutation of a phrase used in a subordinate clause of a 1942 Supreme Court opinion. Nothing else in the Act directly turns on this definition--although only an "alien unlawful enemy combatant" can be subject to trial by military commission. So why bother with the elaborate definition? And why extend the definition to U.S. citizens as well as non-citizens? Back in 2004, the Supreme Court, in the now well-known Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision, stated that an "enemy combatant" captured in hostilities could be held for the duration of those hostilities. The Court made very clear it was talking about only the limited context of the ground war in Afghanistan, not some amorphous and unending "war on terror." But Addington et al. will, however, take Hamdi's sanction of detention--and extend it far, far beyond Hamdi. It will be a detention power that applies anywhere and anytime. The second way is -- if it's even possible -- more dangerous: You are designated an enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- the Potemkin proceedings jerry-rigged at Guantánamo -- or you are designated by "another competent tribunal" created by the Defense Secretary. It's the latter that catches in the throat, because the MCA does not define what Rumsfeld's "competent tribunal" must look like. Rummy himself with the always-fair-and-impartial Addington? Five Syrian torturers (like the ones to whom the U.S. sent the hapless Canadian Maher Arar)? A bunch of guys who flip coins for your liberty? Sure, why not? The MCA doesn't stop the executive from using any of these, provided Rumsfeld gave them power and hence made them "competent."
On September 26, 2006, attorneys for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) determined that what appears to be the final version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could allow the government to detain the attorneys themselves as 'enemy combatants.' CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said: "This ominously broad definition of enemy combatants would mean that almost anyone who actively opposes the President or the government could be locked up indefinitely. This bill makes a mockery of the rule of law." The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) so broadly that it could include anyone who organizes a march against the war in Iraq. The bill defines a UEC as "a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or anyone who "has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense of the United States." The definition makes no reference to citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of individuals, including: * CCR attorneys and other habeas counsel, Federal Public Defenders and military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay. * Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who may be a member of the Taliban.
Could Karl Rove's promised pre-election October surprise come in the form of Osama bin Laden's dead carcass and a propaganda coup for the universally abhorrent war on terror? Recent indications suggest the final nail in the coffin for this CIA poster child might be just around the corner. In late 2002, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones was told by a source close to the Bush family that bin Laden was already dead and that the body had been handed over after an agreement with the bin Laden family. The source said bin Laden was on ice and his death would be announced only right before the 2004 election. Perhaps fearing fallout at the brazen transparency of this PR trick, Rove settled for a mere campaign endorsement from bin Laden's videotape release and it was enough to give Bush the four point swing he needed to reclaim the Oval Office. John Kerry blamed the late intervention for his defeat, Walter Kronkite accused Karl Rove of personally orchestrating it. George W. Bush later attributed his victory to the tape. We are already witnessing the wheels of propaganda begin to turn in anticipation of a major announcement of Bin Laden's death. Newsmax columnist Ronald Kessler cited Republican insiders as the source of the leak that Rove intends on pulling a rabbit out of the hat to guarantee another Republican sweep this November. Rove didn't predict an October surprise - he "promised" one. News reports over the weekend have strongly introduced the premise into the minds of the public that bin Laden may now have bitten the dust. A leaked secret French foreign intelligence document concluded that the Saudis thought bin Laden was dead, a claim later denied. Reuters reports today that the Taliban say bin Laden is "alive and well."
Tom Ridge, the former and first head of the federal Department of Homeland Security, took after Democratic Senate candidate Jon Tester on Wednesday, saying his call to repeal the federal Patriot Act is "ludicrous." Ridge, who said he was asked by former Republican Montana Gov. Marc Racicot to share his views with Montana reporters, said Tester's recent call to repeal the Patriot Act is "unfathomable, almost inexplicable." Tester, a Big Sandy farmer and current president of the Montana Senate, is challenging U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont. In a debate with Burns in Butte on Saturday, Tester said he wants to repeal the act, which he said puts in jeopardy the individual freedoms that make America unique. If those freedoms are sacrificed, then the terrorists will have won, he said.
In New Mexico, public-private prison hybrids - paid for by the state and run by corporations - are making a few people rich and a lot of people unhappy. While New Mexico's landscape may make the state the Land of Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been utterly disenchanting. What's worse, New Mexico is at the top of the nation's list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state's prisons and jails are run by corporations. According to Edwin Bender, executive director of the Institute on Money in State Politics, private prison companies strongly favor giving to states with the toughest sentencing laws - in essence, the ones that are more likely to come up with the bodies to fill prison beds. Those states, adds Bender, are also the ones most likely to have passed "three-strikes" laws. Those laws, first passed by Washington state voters in 1993 and then California voters in 1994, quickly swept the nation. They were largely based on "cookie-cutter legislation" pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), some of whose members come from the ranks of private prison companies. Florida leads the pack in terms of private prison dollars, with its candidates and political parties receiving almost 20 percent of their total contributions from private prison companies and their affiliates. Florida already has five privately owned and operated prisons, with a sixth on the way. It's also privatized the bulk of its juvenile detention system. Texas and New Jersey are close behind.
Veteran US journalist Bob Woodward has claimed that the true extent of insurgent attacks in Iraq has been hidden by the administration. He makes the claim in a book, State of Denial, due to be released on Monday. Mr Woodward has had better access to policymakers in the Bush White House than any other writer. In a preview interview he also revealed that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has become a frequent adviser to President Bush. State of Denial is a follow up to earlier volumes on the Bush White House which have contained a vivid detail of who said what to whom but have been largely uncritical of the President. Indeed, they have been recommended as essential reading by Bush supporters. This book appears to be much more challenging, with Bob Woodward making at least one eye-catching and politically damaging claim that the true extent of the violence in Iraq is being hidden. "Now, there's public and then there's private, but what do they do with the private - they stamp it secret. No-one's supposed to know," Mr Woodward said. He added that the insurgents knew how effective they were - but the US public did not. So the only reason to keep it a secret is to deceive the American public.
A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday. "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan." Rice made the comments in response to claims made Sunday by former President Bill Clinton, who argued that his administration had done more than the current one to address the al Qaeda problem before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. She stopped short of calling the former president a liar. However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Despite his much-publicized pronouncements about not supporting dictators and hosting them in the White House, Smirkey has praised his guest and Kazakh counterpart, Nursultan Nazarbayev, for transforming the former Soviet republic into a 'free nation'. After talks between the two leaders in Washington, Mr Bush thanked his guest for backing US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and combating "extremism". But economic ties between the US and oil-rich Kazakhstan topped the agenda. US concerns over Kazakhstan's human rights record did not come up when the two leaders appeared before reporters. In Kazakhstan, the media is controlled by the state and since the country achieved independence in December 1991 no election has been seen as free or fair. The BBC's Jonathan Beale in Washington says the US has been willing to overlook complaints about Mr Nazarbayev's autocratic rule and human rights abuses.
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war. The warning is described in "State of Denial," scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq. As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: "I don't want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don't think we are there yet." Vice President Cheney is described as a man so obsessed with finding proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate, that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds.
Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have forced large companies to provide health coverage to their employees. Schwarzenegger said the bill was a misguided way to solve the state’s healthcare problems. The Fair Share Health Care bill would have required businesses with 10,000 or more employees in the state to spend 8 percent of their payroll on healthcare coverage for workers, or contribute to a state healthcare fund instead. Schwarzenegger argued the bill would "do little more than lead to expensive legal challenges." His decision follows a July court decision that struck down a similar bill in Maryland. Advocates argued the bill would have helped recapture some of the cost of healthcare for low-wage workers whose employers provide no coverage, and who cannot afford it themselves.
"We all knew it would come to this, didn't we?" a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial asks, of a new offer by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to pay Nevada to accept nuclear waste at the controversial Yucca Mountain storage facility. NEI's offer is $25 million per year, which would double "once the first waste shipment arrives." After calling Yucca Mountain a "boondoggle," with "audit after audit" revealing "glaring flaws in the scientific models created to demonstrate the project's long-term viability," the newspaper slams NEI's offer as too low. "The standard for paying off a state's population was set by the Alaska Permanent Fund, which collects fees and taxes from oil and mineral exploration and production and offers qualifying residents an annual dividend," it states. This year, Alaska residents received more than $1,100 each; NEI's offer translates to a measly $10 per Nevada resident. In other news, a new poll paid for by NEI and conducted by a former NEI employee found that "nearly seven of 10 Americans favor nuclear energy and 68 percent support building a new reactor at the existing nuclear power plant closest to where they live."
The New York Times is editorializing strongly against the interrogation bill described above. "There is not enough time to fix these bills, they say, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it. We don't blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they'll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won't remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They'll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts."
Billionaire financier George Soros said on Thursday the war in Iraq has undermined U.S. leadership in the world, mocking the concept that peace and democracy could be achieved through war. "The idea that you can introduce democracy via military force is a non-starter," Soros told a gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We have lost the moral high ground." The currency arbitrageur-turned-philanthropist donated millions of dollars to Democrats in the 2004 presidential election in an unsuccessful effort to defeat President George W. Bush. More generally, he has used his influence and money to speak out on key political issues. Soros, who is promoting a book lambasting U.S. Middle East policy, said the resentment generated in the Arab world by the bloody conflict in Iraq more than offsets any possible benefits gleaned from efforts to open the country's political process.
A watchdog group is accusing Wal-Mart of declaring war against organic farmers. A report released by The Cornucopia Institute, an organic farming watchdog, claims that Wal-Mart is cheapening the value of the organic label by sourcing products from giant factory-farms and Third World countries, such as China. "The Institute's white paper, 'Wal-Mart Rolls Out Organic Products - Market Expansion or Market Delusion?,' concludes that Wal-Mart is poised to drive down the price of organic food by inventing a 'new' organic - food from corporate agribusiness, factory farms, and cheap imports of questionable quality," states a press release issued by Cornucopia.
Why I Am Embarrassed To Present My Passport: Human rights activists in Morocco are demanding that the government acknowledge the existence of secret US detention centers on Moroccan soil. It is believed the US has interrogated suspects in a number of countries via the practice known as renditions. Earlier this month President Bush admitted that such prisons did exist but gave no further details. In a recent press conference, Justice Minister Mohamed Bouzoubaa denied any knowledge of such jails in Morocco. In a forest a few miles outside Rabat is a place called Temara, a complex of buildings that belong to the Moroccan intelligence services. But it is here that human rights organizations say prisoners who have nothing to do with crimes in Morocco are subjected to torture. The Moroccan government has so far refused to acknowledge that it houses such a detention centre. Morocco is on a list of eight countries, most of whom are European, accused of accommodating the CIA-run interrogation centers. Morocco has declared itself an ally of the United States in its so-called war on terror but in doing so it risks being alienated from other African countries as well as alienating a large proportion of its own people.
A British lawyer who represents detainees at Guantanamo Bay yesterday claimed he was threatened with internment at the notorious camp by a US military officer. Clive Stafford-Smith told the Guardian that the US military claimed he had incited inmates to commit suicide and go on hunger strike. Mr Stafford-Smith says the US has been repeatedly interrogating one of his clients to try to get him to implicate him in three suicides. Mr Stafford-Smith has made at least eight visits to the camp, situated on Cuban land occupied by the US, to consult with several detainees he represents. He said the alleged intimidation reached a peak last summer during a mass hunger strike. In August 2005, he said, "a military lawyer took me into a cell and said it would be for me, as he alleged I was behind the hunger strike. They have been making stuff up about the clients and now they are making it up about me." A revolt among prisoners led to three killing themselves this summer, which human rights groups described as an act of desperation. But Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the detention facilities, described the suicides as an act of "asymmetric warfare" designed to tarnish America's image. Mr Stafford-Smith vowed to return to the base: "I'm planning to go back to Guantanamo. I can't stop representing my clients based on these threats."
The US Senate has overwhelmingly endorsed the building of a fence along part of the border with Mexico, in an effort to curb illegal immigration. The bill was approved by a vote of 80-19 - with leading Democrats such as Hillary Clinton joining the Republican majority that had proposed the measure. The bill must be reconciled with a similar move passed in the House of Representatives last week. Mexico has said the fence will badly affect relations with the US.
The Belgian-based consortium known as SWIFT, which handles money transfers among banks, violated European privacy regulations when it turned over confidential transaction information to the Central Intelligence Agency and other American agencies, Belgium's privacy protection commission concluded today. "It has to be seen as a gross miscalculation by Swift that it has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law," the commission wrote today in its report. Swift, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, has come under scrutiny for secretly cooperating with a Bush administration program meant to trace the flows of money among suspected terrorists and their supporters. American analysts were permitted to sift through confidential data on millions of transactions without obtaining specific warrants or subpoenas. Administration officials have defended the secret program, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington. But critics in Europe have argued that it improperly put American security interests ahead of European civil liberties.
Canadian officials on the Great Lakes are worried about a plan to arm U.S. Coast Guard vessels and allow live-fire training exercises, a report says. Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, told the Windsor Star there has been no threat of Canadian invasion of the United States since the War of 1812 ended, and there has never been a hint that the Great Lakes might be used by terrorists. Bradley also finds the Coast Guard's use of the term "safety zone" for a live-fire area ironic. "They'll have dozens of safety zones where guns will be fired on a regular basis across the waters of the Great Lakes," Bradley said. "They're using terrorism as an excuse." Joe Comartin, who represents the Windsor area in Parliament, said the United States can arm its Coast Guard as it wishes -- but does not have the right to discharge those weapons on lakes it shares with Canada. Comartin and Bradley worry about the risk to recreational boaters and commercial shipping and the environmental effect, the report said. Lead is already a problem in the lakes. Local boaters say the U.S. Coast Guard must do a better job sharing information about a proposal to create machine-gun ranges on the Great Lakes, including one about 10 miles north of the mouth of Irondequoit Bay. For starters, the Coast Guard should schedule a public hearing in Rochester, said Sam Zucco, president of the Genesee Charter Boat Association. "I'd like to see a meeting here because we have a lot of concerns that are justified," Zucco said. "We know so little about it."
The United States has denied a visa to prominent Swiss Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, saying Tuesday that the man had contributed to a terrorist group. "He was denied a visa... for providing material support to a terrorist organization," US State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack told reporters, referring to US immigration law. McCormack refused to give details. Ramadan has charged that he was excluded for "ideological" reasons, according to The New York Times. McCormack however denied that was the reason for the rejection. Ramadan, 44, had applied for a work visa in 2004 after he was hired to teach at the Catholic University of University of Notre Dame in the US state of Indiana. He had to withdraw from the post after the US first granted, then denied him the visa because of "new information" that "came to light" at the time, McCormack said.
What Your Aid-To-Israel Tax Dollars Are Paying For: Israel has modified plans to assassinate Hezbollah's chief Hassan Nasrallah and plans to complete its withdrawal from south Lebanon by the end of next week. Daily Maariv reported Friday that the Israeli government has pressed for Nasrallah's assassination for several weeks, a move opposed by the military intelligence department. At present, the government has agreed to refrain from assassinating Nasrallah "at least in the next months," the paper added. The decision to postpone Nasrallah's possible slaying for the time being was advised by military intelligence after the cessation of hostilities in line with Security Council Resolution 1701, on the grounds that the international community will not accept or tolerate such an act. Intelligence projections estimated that Nasrallah's assassination would renew the war, and that renewed hostilities would be more brutal than those seen during the 34-day war which began July 12. Nevertheless, the Israeli government ordered security agencies to continue preparations for assassinating Nasrallah, and only reversed its order last Friday, the paper said.
It could take between eight to 14 months to fix a Gaza Strip power plant destroyed in an Israel Air Force strike in late June, and to restore full electrical power to the region. Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has accused the Israel Defense Forces of war crimes for bombing the plant, which has left many areas of the Gaza Strip without full electrical power the last three months. Electricity in many areas is cut off for half of the day, severely hampering hospitals, the water supply and sewage systems, B'Tselem said in a report. An IAF aircraft struck the power plant on June 28. The attack came at the start of a major IDF offensive in Gaza following the abduction of an IDF soldier and the killing of two others by Palestinian militants linked to Hamas. "B'Tselem determines that the bombing of the power plant was illegal and defined as a war crimes in International Humanitarian Law, as the attack was aimed at a purely civilian object," according to the report. "There was no apparent military basis for the action and it seems that its intention was to satisfy a desire for revenge." Israel could have, instead of taking such drastic military action, cut off the electric supply to Gaza through the Israel Electric Corporation although this would have been illegal as well, the group said. B'Tselem demanded that the government open an investigation into the bombing of the plant.
U.N. Human Rights director Jan Egeland (et. al.) writing in Le Figaro: "Gaza constitutes a time bomb. Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run, and no space to hide. Virtually without external access since June, Gaza is experiencing a rise in poverty, unemployment, penury, and despair. Sadly, that which Gaza most needs today is precisely what it lacks the most: hope... Since the Israeli operation "Summer Rain" began end-June in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli Defense Forces soldier, one Israeli soldier has been killed. During the same period, 235 Palestinians have been killed, including 46 children. Every loss of human life must be deplored. But there is no doubt that the response, measured in terms of civilian victims, is disproportionate. For the Palestinians, as for the Israelis, the consequences of the confrontations of the summer are devastating, just as they are pernicious to the perspectives for peace in this troubled region. Access by air, sea, and land has been virtually cut off for Gaza. The movements of goods and peoples have practically ceased. Supplies of electricity and water, interrupted by Israeli Defense Forces attacks on electric power stations, is irregular and insignificant. Civilian infrastructures have been affected. Gaza today remains dependent on outside sources for its food and commercial supplies. Hygienic conditions are deteriorating, while access to potable water is inadequate. With a Palestinian economy in continuous freefall, we must expect a more severe deterioration in sanitary conditions."
Bill Of Rights Death Watch: A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003. Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government's use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Justice Department officials did not respond to telephone messages yesterday seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Ashcroft also did not respond to requests for comment. Robin Goldfaden, one of Kidd's attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the case "could be the launching point for more fully documenting how the government is misusing the material witness statute."
Questions are being raised about the arrest, detention, and treatment of a long-term Ukrainian legal resident alien in Florida. Bella Maryanovsky, a thirty-year legal resident of the United States, was arrested last week on Tuesday, September 19, when she entered immigration offices for a routine update of her green card papers. It appears she was arrested under a new immigration program called "Operation Return to Sender." According to Michael Chertoff in a June 2006 press release, "'Operation Return to Sender' is another example of a new and tough interior enforcement strategy that seeks to catch and deport criminal aliens, increase worksite enforcement, and crack down hard on the criminal infrastructure that perpetuates illegal immigration." "The fugitives captured in this operation," claimed Chertoff, "threatened public safety in hundreds of neighborhoods and communities around the country. This department has no tolerance for their criminal behavior." However, Maryanovsky, according to her family and friends, has long been an upstanding member of society. She is currently employed placing engineers in jobs nationwide with salaries ranging from $75,000 to $250,000.
Catapulting The Propaganda: The proof that media consultants abuse their clients, according to Doug Bailey, founder of The Hotline political news service and former Republican consultant, is the sheer volume of airtime they advise candidates to purchase now. The number of times each political ad airs has risen exponentially over the years - a phenomenon other consultants confirm - and in Bailey's mind, for no valid strategic reason. He's convinced that bloated ad buys flow directly from the consultants' pecuniary interests. A study by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the 2003-2004 presidential election cycle, candidates for national office, party committees and independent "527" political groups spent more than $1.78 billion on campaign consultants, 67 percent of which went to media consultants who handle ads. The silver-haired Bailey says that with each passing year, he sees an escalation in volume of political advertising, which is measured and priced in the television business according to "rating points." "In the seventies, a campaign that bought 500 gross rating points a week in a market was considered to be either on the verge or having crossed the line [of] too much," he says during an interview in the third-floor lunchroom down the hall from his office at the Watergate. "And yet today, in the closing weeks of any contested campaign, it's not unusual for campaigns to be buying 3,000 gross rating points. Which is just a massive, massive buy." And why? "Because consultants earn more money, the more ads that are bought," he says. To put the numbers in perspective, a 500-point buy means the entire viewing audience will see a commercial - on average - five times in one week. A 3,000-point buy means viewers - in theory - will see it an average of 30 times.
Al-Qaida's second-in-command has branded George Bush a "lying failure" and urged Christians to convert to Islam in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's recent remarks about the Islamic faith. In a video message released yesterday, the Egyptian-born doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri asked: "Bush, oh failure and liar, why can't you be courageous for once and confront your people and tell them the truth about your losses in Iraq and Afghanistan? "Why don't you tell them how many million of citizens of America and its allies you intend to kill in search of the imaginary victory and in breathless pursuit of the mirage towards which you are driving your people's sons in order to increase your profits?" Zawahiri also taunts Mr Bush for failing to dismantle al-Qaida after the arrests of key members of the group such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the US. "Bush you are a lying failure and a charlatan. It has been three-and-a-half years [since the arrests] ... What happened to us? We have gained more strength and we are more insistent on martyrdom," the Egyptian militant leader said. The consequences of the US invasion of Iraq are currently the subject of intense public debate.
Faced with the results of decades of disastrous foreign policies, including invasions, interventions and constant meddling, the U.S. State Department, which has been widely criticized for ineffectual public diplomacy, recently announced its new "Global Cultural Initiative." It's a joint effort "to educate Americans and participating nations about other cultures," reports PR Week. U.S. PR czar Karen Hughes explained, "Public diplomacy isn't just the work of government... Every American who travels abroad or welcomes a foreign visitor can be an ambassador for America." As part of the initiative, the Kennedy Center will send U.S. performance artists overseas, including to Pakistan. The American Film Institute will showcase U.S. and foreign filmmakers at festivals. The National Endowment for the Arts will organize literary exchanges between the U.S. and Pakistan, Russia and other countries. The National Endowment for the Humanities will recruit foreign teachers for U.S. seminars. The State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which leads the new initiative, has seen its budget triple since 2001, to $4.5 million for 2006.
Liberal-Biased Media Watch: The United States edition of the October 2, 2006 issue of Newsweek features a radically different cover story from its International counterparts. The cover of International editions, aimed at Europe, Asia, and Latin America, displays in large letters the title "LOSING AFGHANISTAN," along with an arresting photograph of an armed jihadi. The cover of the United States edition, in contrast, is dedicated to celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and is demurely captioned "My Life in Pictures." The International cover story begins: "You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents..." The United States cover story begins: "Annie Leibovitz is tired and nursing a cold, and she' s just flown back to New York on the red-eye from Los Angeles, where she spent two days shooting Angelina Jolie for Vogue. Like so many of her photo sessions, there was nothing simple about it. 'I talked with Angelina before the shoot,' says Leibovitz, who's famous for her preparation. 'She felt like she was coming back from having the baby and she felt very sexy and ready to go.'... There were 50 people on the set, and racks of clothes from the New York spring collections to be tried and styled."
Diebold Watch: Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files to Georgia’s electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting, Atlanta Progressive News has learned. Former Diebold official Chris Hood told his story concerning the secret "patch" to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Kennedy's second article on electronic voting in this week’s Rolling Stone Magazine. Hood's claims corroborate a second whistleblower who spoke with Black Box Voting and Wired News in 2003. "With the primaries looming, [Chief of Diebold’s Election Division] Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program," Rolling Stone Magazine reported. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood told Rolling Stone. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told Rolling Stone. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level," Hood told Rolling Stone. The "patch" was applied to about 5,000 polling places in Fulton and DeKalb Counties in 2002, Rolling Stone reported. Hood did not immediately return a text message from Atlanta Progressive News and his voicemail was not operational. The second whistleblower, Rob Behler, was contracted to work with Diebold in the lead up to the 2002 Elections. Two patches were applied in June and July 2002 respectively while Behler worked in the Diebold warehouse; another patch was applied in August 2002 after Behler left the warehouse, Wired News reported. "Behler said Diebold programmers posted patches to a file-transfer-protocol site for him and his colleagues to apply to the machines," Wired News reported.
The United States Of America, A Third-World Nation: Most fresh spinach in the United States is "as safe as it was" before a nationwide E. coli outbreak, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said, revising a two-week-old consumer warning. The warning now covers only specific brands packaged on certain dates. Consumers should continue avoiding spinach recalled earlier this month by Natural Selection Foods LLC of San Juan Bautista and four companies that it supplied, said Kevin Reilly, deputy director of prevention services for the California health department. A week ago, the FDA had said it was safe to eat spinach grown anywhere outside of three Salinas Valley counties, and some stores began restocking. Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said Friday that only spinach that had already been recalled shouldn't be eaten. Other spinach "is as safe as it was before this event," Acheson said.
A US doctors' group sued seven leading fast-food chains including McDonald's and Burger King over their use of a "dangerous carcinogenic" in grilled chicken. The Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed suit in California "to compel the restaurants to warn unsuspecting consumers" through in-store posters and menu messages. The group said every sample of grilled chicken products from the seven national chains "tested positive for a dangerous carcinogenic compound called PhIP" during analysis at an independent laboratory. PhIP is one of a group of carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that are found in grilled meats. In 2005, the US government officially added HCAs to its list of cancer-causing agents, the doctors' group said. "Grilled chicken can cause cancer, and consumers deserve to know that this supposedly healthy product is actually just as bad for them as high-fat fried chicken," PCRM president Neal Barnard said in a statement.
Conservatives Believe In Freedom Of Religion: The American Civil Liberties Union has sued a Tennessee school, claiming that it has crossed the line by allowing "Praying Parents" to proselytize. In legal papers, the ACLU says Lakeview Elementary School in Mount Juliet also marked National Day of Prayer by getting students to design posters and pick prayer buddies, and gave stickers that said "I prayed" to those who participated, the Nashville Tennessean reported. Non-praying students were left feeling "disfavored and isolated," the suit said. The ACLU filed its suit representing the parents of a boy who attended kindergarten at the school last year. The group says the school not only endorses Christianity but a particular variety of Christianity. Many parents appear to support the school. Parent Cindy Davison told the Tennessean that her family moved to Mount Juliet partly because of the school. "As far as the curriculum and the environment and the staff, it's as close to a private school as you can get," she said. "I believe that goes along with the Christian theme they have."
Conservative Rule Builds A Strong America: The typical double-income family is worse off financially than ever, a study released Thursday said, warning that few Americans have saved enough to brace for financial setbacks. Middle-class families are struggling to pay for a home, health insurance, transportation and their children's college with wages that have not kept pace with higher prices, according to the study by a think tank headed by a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. The middle class's financial condition has been a key issue ahead of the November elections, as Democrats warn that this group is fast losing economic ground amid skyrocketing prices and tax cuts that offer them little benefit.
Dan DiMicco, chief executive officer of U.S. steel maker Nucor Corp., railed against U.S. trade policy during a speech at the Union Club in Cleveland on Thursday, saying the time is now to reverse a trend that has aided other countries, namely China, while hurting U.S. manufacturers. He said the concept of free trade practiced by the United States is a myth because we allow other countries to manage trade to their advantage, creating an uneven playing field. "We are a slave to theory in the face of reality," DiMicco said. "...In short, we have lost our minds." His speech was the first in a series titled "Perspectives on American Manufacturing" to be sponsored by nonprofit WIRE-Net, a support group for West Side manufacturers, and the Northeast Ohio Campaign for American Manufacturing. The erosion of manufacturers is hurting Nucor's customer base. DiMicco touched on several instances in which he believes the U.S. government has failed its own manufacturers. One glaring example is the lack of forceful action as China manipulates its currency, making Chinese goods at least 25 percent cheaper than U.S. goods as a result.
Trickle-Down Economics Trickling On You: Battered U.S. consumers, faced with weak income growth and rising inflation, trimmed their spending in August by the largest amount in nearly a year. The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumer spending, after adjusting for inflation, dropped by 0.1 per cent last month, the first decline since a 0.3 per cent fall in September 2005, a month when business activity was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. Incomes, reflecting lacklustre gains in employment, rose by just 0.3 per cent in August, the weakest performance in nine months. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food, was up a worrisome 2.5 per cent, compared with a year ago, the biggest year-over-year increase in more than a decade. The new report underscored how much the economy is slowing this year as consumers have been battered by record-high gasoline prices and a cooling housing market. Falling home prices are making Americans more cautious about spending money because they feel less wealthy. The overall economy grew at an annual rate of just 2.6 per cent in the April-June quarter, the government reported Thursday, and the new report on consumer spending indicates that growth will likely slow even more in the current quarter.
News From Smirkey's Wars: There's a second damning Iraq report floating around the intelligence community. At least, that's according to Rep. Jane Harman (CA), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. At an event this morning, Harman disclosed the existence of a classified intelligence community report that gives a grim assessment of the situation in Iraq, and called for it to be shared with the American public - before the November elections. The report has not been shared with Congress, although sources say a draft version may have circulated earlier this summer. It is a separate report from the one revealed by major news outlets Sunday, which is said to conclude that the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less secure from terrorist threats.
A new WPO poll of the Iraqi public finds that seven in ten Iraqis want US-led forces to commit to withdraw within a year. An overwhelming majority believes that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing and there is growing confidence in the Iraqi army. If the US made a commitment to withdraw, a majority believes that this would strengthen the Iraqi government. Support for attacks on US-led forces has grown to a majority position - now six in ten. Support appears to be related to a widespread perception, held by all ethnic groups, that the US government plans to have permanent military bases in Iraq. The poll was conducted for WorldPublicOpinion.org by conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and was fielded by KA Research Ltd. / D3 Systems, Inc. Polling was conducted September 1-4 with a nationwide representative sample of 1,150 Iraqi adults. A large majority of Iraqis - 71% - say they would like the Iraqi government to ask for US-led forces to be withdrawn from Iraq within a year or less. Given four options, 37 percent take the position that they would like US-led forces withdrawn - within six months - while another 34 percent opt for "gradually withdraw[ing] US-led forces according to a one-year timeline." Twenty percent favor a two-year timeline and just 9 percent favor "only reduc[ing] US-led forces as the security situation improves in Iraq."
A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week, or $12 million an hour. That's nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year - as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases to support the extended deployment and scrambles to fix or replace equipment damaged in combat. The upsurge occurs as the total cost of military operations at home and abroad since 2001, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will top half a trillion dollars, according to an internal assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service completed last week. The spike in operating costs - including a 20 percent increase over last year in Afghanistan, where the mission now costs about $370 million a week - comes even though troop levels in both countries have remained stable. The reports attribute the rising costs in part to a higher pace of fighting in both countries, where insurgents and terrorists have increased their attacks on US and coalition troops and civilians.
"Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein's penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year," reports Paul von Zielbauer. "Three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried ... for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. ... On Sept. 7, the police sealed the offices of Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news channel, for what the government said was inflammatory reporting. And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive. ... In May, a court in ... Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, sentenced two journalists ... to six-month suspended jail terms for an article claiming that a Kurdish official had two telephone company employees fired after they cut his phone service for failing to pay his bill."
"Everyone is kind of groping around in the dark," says New York Times Baghdad correspondent Dexter Filkins on his return from reporting in Iraq. Despite employing 70 Iraqi staffers, the civil war there (Filkins doesn't hedge - "Yeah, sure" it's a civil war) has meant the Times cannot safely access stories. Its own five correspondents primarily spend their time pasting together reports by the Iraqi staff, protected by a small army of 45 security guards, armored cars, and belt-fed rooftop machine guns. "Nobody trusts anybody anymore. There's no law, and the worst people with guns are in charge." The Iraqi reporters know that if their association with the Times is revealed they may pay with their lives, Filkins told the Committee to Protect Journalists at a September 14, 2006, talk in Manhattan where he is preparing to serve a U.S. fellowship. His advice to other reporters thinking about covering Iraq: "Don't go." Filkins said that the U.S. military is similarly hamstrung in getting quality information: soldiers rarely leave their bases and don't interact much with average Iraqis. Ninety-eight percent of Iraq, including Baghdad, is too dangerous for reporters to cover, he said.
The U.S. Congress on Friday moved to block the Bush administration from building permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq or controlling the country's oil sector, as it approved $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The restrictions included in a record $447 billion military funding bill were a slap at the administration, and Republicans have stripped them out of legislation in the past. Democrats and many Republicans say the Iraqi insurgency has been fueled by perceptions the United States has ambitions for a permanent presence in the country. The administration has downplayed prospects for permanent military bases in Iraq, but lawmakers have called on Smirkey to make a definitive statement that the United States has no such plans.
News From The Talibaptist Jihad: A judge who struck down a Dover, Penn., school board's decision to teach intelligent design in public schools said he was stunned by the reaction, which included death threats and a week of protection from federal marshals. Pennsylvania U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III told an audience in Lawrence Tuesday that the case illustrated why judges must issue rulings free of political whims or hopes of receiving a favor. In a 139-page decision last year, Jones ruled that the Dover school board intended to promote religion when it instituted a policy requiring students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. He ruled that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.
From the American Prospect magazine website: "President Bush's speech yesterday got tons of attention for its attack on Dems, but there was another key moment that's passed unnoticed. Bush again used the phrase "just a comma" to describe the Iraq war. From the speech: "We're going to help the Iraqi people. Remember, 12 million of them voted in elections last December. That probably seems like a decade ago to you, but when the history is finally written, it will be just a comma. Twelve million people stood up in the face of assassins and car bombers and said, we want to be free." Bush's repetition of the phrase suggests that it is a calculated one, and we may be hearing it again and again between now and November. But what does it mean? As this blog noted the other day, Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher did some digging and found that Bush was likely alluding to comedienne Gracie Allen's famous quip, "never place a period where God has placed a comma." Why would Bush quote this line from a comedienne? Because the phrase has become a widely quoted part of current Christian teaching. As best as I can determine from reading a bunch of religious web sites, the phrase "never place a period where God has placed a comma" appears to mean that God is in control, that even if humans want to control events, or say something conclusive about them, or have the last word about them, it won't matter, because God is 'still speaking.'"
A Rhode Island lesbian couple won approval from a judge to marry in Massachusetts, paving the way for the first legal wedding of a same-sex couple from outside the only U.S. state where gay marriage is allowed. Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Connolly ruled that the wedding of Wendy Becker and Mary Norton, of Providence, Rhode Island, could go forward because their home state has no laws specifically banning same-sex marriages. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, has sought to prevent out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts. Conservative Christian groups have expressed concern that such marriages would turn the liberal New England state into America's gay-marriage capital, a Las Vegas for same-sex weddings.
If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away: Scientists have uncovered evidence that levels of the greenhouse gas methane will rise sharply in the next few years, warming the planet faster than previously expected. The new data from an international team of scientists has revealed that while methane levels began to level off in the 1990s, emissions from human activity started to climb again before the end of the last century. Phillipe Bousquet at the Laboratory of Sciences of Climate and the Environment in Paris joined scientists from the US, Australia, the Netherlands and South Africa to examine methane levels in the atmosphere from the early 1980s using a network of 68 ground-based tracking stations around the world. The upturn in man-made emissions was masked by a drop in the methane released naturally from wetlands, caused by unusually dry weather. Writing in the journal Nature today, the scientists raise fears that inevitably wetter weather will return the wetlands to their normal state in the next three to five years, boosting the amount of methane in the atmosphere by 10m tonnes a year. Although methane levels are 200 times lower than the most widespread greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, molecule for molecule, it is 20 times more effective at retaining heat in the atmosphere. They discovered that methane levels fell from nearly 12 parts per billion in the 1980s to four parts per billion in the 1990s. But their calculations show that the slowing of emissions was only partly to do with strict limits imposed on industry. Since 1999, levels of methane from human activity have been rising in Asia, consistent with a surge in coal usage in China. "The bad news is that the slowdown in global methane emissions in the past few decades was only temporary," said Jos Lelieveld, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.
From the AP: "The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday." As ThinkProgress points out, this is the third time in less than a week we’ve heard such accusations. AP: "The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - part of the Commerce Department - in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes." The Bush administration has no plans to ease its opposition to national limits on greenhouse gas output despite talk that a change may be under consideration, a White House spokeswoman said on Thursday. "The president has said continually said that one of reasons he doesn't like a mandated cap is because it has the potential to move jobs overseas and hurt the economy," said Kristin Hellmer, spokeswoman for James Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Growing concerns about global warming have prompted California, Arizona and seven Northeastern states to take steps to bypass President George W. Bush and set their own greenhouse limits. Bush pulled out of the 163-nation Kyoto Protocol on global warming in 2001, saying it would hurt the economy and unfairly left rapidly developing countries like China and India without limits on emissions. A national cap on emissions would mean heavy industries in the United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, might have to make big decisions, like investing in alternative energy or clean-burning natural gas. Hellmer said Bush is sticking with his 2002 plan calling for voluntary reductions, with an eye to trimming greenhouse emissions intensity -- or emissions per unit of economic output of the U.S. economy -- by 18 percent by 2012. "If we're not meeting (the emissions intensity) goal, (Bush) has always said he will look at new policies and new ideas," Hellmer said. "But now we are on track to meet that goal." Critics of Bush's voluntary greenhouse plan say it is too lenient to industry, especially as overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have risen 13 percent since 1990. A source who has worked in the energy profession for decades told Reuters he was approached in New York last month by a team containing White House staff that was exploring the use of national regulations on greenhouse emissions. The source, who declined to be named, said the team, led by an official at the Department of Energy, was weighing the benefits of three ways to regulate several sources of greenhouse emissions. "It's certainly nothing to do with Kyoto," the source said.
Scandals Du Jour: In a scandal guaranteed to anger parents, a prominent House Republican has resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who is single, apologized Friday for letting down his family and constituents. Foley has long marketed himself as a protector of children from sexual predation. In 2003, he became an outspoken critic of a summer nudist camp for children. An amendment by Foley to change federal sex offender laws became part of the Adam Walsh Child Safety and Protection Act of 2006. Once his resignation letter was read to the House late Friday afternoon, Republicans spent the night trying to explain - six weeks before congressional elections - how this could have happened on their watch. Near midnight, they engineered a vote to let the House ethics committee decide whether an investigation is needed. Among the Republican explanations during the night: * The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., said he was asked by the youth's parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it. * Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y. Reynolds' spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents' wishes. * Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers. * The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005. Just as Shimkus' explanation was released, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct. Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.
Contrary to Smirkey's claim that the White House had little contact with Jack Abramoff, the House Government Reform Committee has released hundreds of new emails from Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm pertaining to his and his associates' contacts with Administration officials. In an email exchange subject-lined "were you able to whack mccain's wife yet?" Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff discuss derailing the nomination of a woman named Angela Williams to an Interior post. Williams was up for head of the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior, which has authority over decisions affecting the Northern Mariana Islands, an Abramoff client. With the White House's help, Abramoff's effort was successful. Ralph Reed emailed Abramoff, "talked to rove about this and I think I killed it." On MSNBC's Countdown, Lawrence O'Donnell provided early analysis of the Abramoff report. Keith Olbermann asked O'Donnell how this report may affect public opinion prior to November's midterm elections, and O'Donnell concluded: "Abramoff is now the way you spell the word 'scandal' in Washington, DC. The public doesn't know a great deal about Abramoff but they know he's bad. They know he's a criminal. They're certainly aware that he's, in effect, pleading guilty and is going to end up in jail. And now, this is a picture that says, not only did he have access -- which I think the public was vaguely aware that he had presidential access, White House access -- he had the run of the place.
House leaders have suspended a multimillion-dollar wireless communications license that federal prosecutors say was corruptly awarded to a Dulles telecommunications firm by Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) in exchange for gifts from lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The award of the license was one of a series of acts that Ney said he performed for Abramoff in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and sports tickets. Ney agreed this month to plead guilty to corruption charges and is set to enter his plea Oct. 13. The license to install antennas for cellular and wireless telephones in House office buildings was awarded in 2002 to MobileAccess, formerly known as Foxcom Wireless, which was based in Israel. The company, now based in Vienna, Va., later paid Abramoff $280,000 in lobbying fees and donated $50,000 to a charity operated by Abramoff that paid for a golf junket to Scotland for Ney.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire busted an aide to Rep. Charles Bass (R-N.H.) who was trolling on such blogs as Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive and others. Bass' office admitted culpability to HOH and said the staffer would be "appropriately disciplined." The unnamed aide to Bass - who, like many others in his party, faces a tough re-election fight - was routinely trolling liberal New Hampshire political blogs calling himself "IndyNH" and more commonly "IndieNH," pretending to be a progressive. Finally, after noticing that lots of things he said just didn't add up, a couple of the bloggers traced IndieNH's IP address to the House of Representatives. And they thought, "How many offices in the U.S. House would be interested in one race in New Hampshire?" The answer: Very few. Probably only one. Laura Clawson, who runs the Blue Granite blog and writes as "Miss Laura," told HOH that she and another blogger easily traced IndieNH’s IP address to the House server. They could even see the searches Mr. or Ms. IndieNH was doing to gather opposition research on Bass' challenger, Paul Hodes (D).
A Catholic priest in the US is under arrest and another is on the run after being accused of stealing millions of dollars from their parishioners. Monsignor John Skehan, 79, was charged with grand theft, as Florida police searched for Father Francis Guinan. The two men are suspected of stealing a total of $8.6 million from their Palm Beach church and funding a lavish life of property, holidays and gambling. A lawyer for Monsignor Skehan said the figures were "over-sensationalised". Court documents contained few details about where the $8.6m went, Associated Press news agency reported. Monsignor Skehan served at St Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church for about 40 years and was succeeded at the church three years ago by Father Guinan. Monsignor Skehan used funds skimmed from the congregation to buy property, Florida law department officials said.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), who famously suggested the U.S. wouldn't have "all these problems" had Strom Thurmond been elected President, said today that the religious differences among Iraqis makes the conflict very difficult for him to understand: "It's hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people," he said. "Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me." Speaking shortly after a meeting with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Lott added that Iraq wasn’t among the White House's priorities. No, none of that," Lott told reporters after the session when asked if the Iraq war was discussed. "You’re [the media] the only ones who obsess on that. We don't and the real people out in the real world don’t for the most part."
Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), the lead sponsor of the constitutional ban on gay marriage in the House, spoke this weekend at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Musgrave declared that gay marriage "is the most important issue that we face today." She told the audience that "when you’re in a cultural war like this, you have to respond with equal and hopefully greater force if you want to win," and warned that the future is grim "if gay marriage is not banned." You can watch the video here if you can stand the unbridled hate.
Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, who has gotten into hot water before for comments seen as disparaging various groups, remarked Thursday on the number of Italian-Americans at the Federal Aviation Administration. The Montana senator, facing a tough re-election fight against Democrat Jon Tester, was heading an aviation subcommittee hearing of the Commerce Committee when two FAA officials, Michael Cirillo and Nicholas Sabatini, introduced themselves as witnesses. "I'm wondering if that's all they're hiring," Burns said of the federal agency. Burns campaign spokesman Jason Klindt said the senator was just kidding around with the two Italian-Americans.
Republican Representative Russell Pearce is not known for being soft-spoken on the illegal immigration issue. But his latest interview on a Phoenix radio station has really turned some heads. During an interview on "Morning Edition" on KJZZ, 91.5 FM, Pearce said he would support bringing back a controversial program dubbed "Operation Wetback." The program called for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants in the mid 1950s. Hispanic community leader Roberto Reveles called the comments "outrageous" and says Pearce's support of such a policy shows his fear and loathing of illegal immigrants. Pearce defended his comments, accusing immigration activists of supporting "lawbreakers. In reference to using the term "wetback," Pearce says he was saying it in a historical context.
Once again, this blog will be going on hiatus. I am traveling and will not be able to access the blog to continue during that time. I regret the inconvenience, but promise to resume as soon as I return in about a week. If you are an RSS user, you can put the RSS feed in your reader and be alerted automatically as soon as I resume.
Weather has been mixed - reminding me very much of a rainy season about to peter out - three months ahead of normal. The days have been brilliant and sunny with some spectacular sunsets, though not as warm as one might expect, but for the last several nights there has been intermittent rain on and off all night. So if you're going to have a rainy season, this is the way to have it - bright sunny days that allow you to get things done outside, but rainy nights that keep the vegetation watered. Temperatures have been about ideal, too, running 71 at night and 83 in the day. Couldn't ask for nicer. Wish it were like this all year.
Today is the second day of the annual horse ride around Lake Arenal. Hundreds of horsemen from all over Costa Rica (and a few from neighboring countries) have been in town this weekend, partying and having a great time, as Arenal is one stop on the circuit of the lake. It's just a friendly ride, not really a race, and that is why it takes two days to complete. I have studiously avoided the commotion, as I am not a big fan of partying, and so have stayed home and endured some of the noise from the parties in town, though they haven't been particularly bad this time.
I heard this morning from a friend that one of the bars that is among the worst offenders for loud disco music is being pursued by a neighbor - and that might cool their jets a bit. Won't break my heart any - at least for the few weeks I have left living in this house. Just wish it had happened two years ago.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: In focusing solely on Hugo Chavez's characterization of Bush as the devil, the mainstream media have succeeded in aiming attention away from the Venezuelan President's most salient point made during his UN speech - CIA control of terror cells around the world and their protection of plane bomber Luis Posada. According to documents released by the George Washington University's National Security Archive, and verified by the BBC, Luis Posada Carriles was a CIA agent and on the payroll from the 1960s until mid-1976. Posada was part of an anti-Cuban terror cell called Commanders of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), led by another CIA operative Orlando Bosch. From the mid-1970's Posada and Bosch instigated a reign of terror that spanned seven countries, carrying out over 50 bombings and political assassinations - including the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane as it took off from Barbados, killing 73 innocent people on board. All at the behest of the current President's father and then CIA Director George H.W. Bush. Posada and Bosch were arrested and jailed in Venezuela but promptly escaped in 1985 when money from Miami, funneled in by fellow terrorist Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, was used to bribe prison guards. The two were then transported by terrorist handler and Cuban expatriate Felix Rodriguez to El Salvador to link up with Oliver North and the Iran-Contra conspiracy, supplying Contras against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Two years later Senator Tom Harkin stated the American people "deserve a full accounting of [then Vice President] Bush and the vice president's office and its knowledge of Luis Posada's role in the secret contra supply operation."
Congressional Democrats were skeptical on Friday of a deal negotiated by three hold-out Republican senators to rein in President George W. Bush's program to interrogate and try terrorism suspects. As Bush's fellow Republicans prepared to move the agreement through Congress next week, lawmakers checked the fine print of a compromise bill that would allow aggressive CIA interrogations of foreign suspects but require that they comply with Geneva Conventions, which ensures humane treatment of prisoners of war. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the deal "a substantial improvement" over Bush's plan, but said it still had "a number of problems." But Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, derided it for using "legal mumbo jumbo to obscure the fact that the CIA will continue to be allowed to use torture and will actually be insulated from legal liability for previous acts of torture."
A recently retired key CIA analyst has some harsh words for the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East. Dr. Emile Nakhleh spent 15 years in the CIA and retired in June as the Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, "the intelligence community's premier group dedicated to the issue of political Islam." Harper’s Ken Silverstein scored the first interview with Nakhleh since leaving the CIA. Some key excerpts: On Iraq: "I have come to believe that our presence is part of the problem and that we should begin to seriously devise an exit strategy. There's a civil war in Iraq and our presence is contributing to the violence. We’ve become a lightning rod - we’re not restricting the violence, we’re contributing to it. Iraq has galvanized jihadists; our presence is what is attracting them. We need to get out of there." On Bush's campaign for democracy: "We’ve lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world. The President’s democratization and reform program for the Middle East has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric. Because of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses we have lost on the concepts of justice, fairness and the rule of law, and that’s the heart of the American idea." On what to do in Iran: "I think it would be detrimental to our long-term interests to ignore the Iranian reality and let ourselves be blinded by our dislike for the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The growing influence of Hezbollah, and its leader Hasan Nasrallah, across the region and within the Sunni street, and the growing regional influence and reach of Iran, are two new realities that we should recognize and engage. Iran’s nuclear issue is as much a failure of the nonproliferation approach as it is one of belligerence. Here too, I think, creative policies of engagement are called for and are possible."
The aroma of fruit has soured for farmers and growers in California who have to toss out their crops because of too few pickers. Enhanced border enforcement kept many illegal Mexican migrant workers out of California this season, straining the states' decreasing seasonal farm labor pool, The New York Times said Friday. Seasonal worker shortages also have been reported in Washington and New York. Growers are frustrated with government leaders, the Times said, whether at the statehouse or in Congress. They are angered at Congress' inability to pass guest-worker legislation, which would create a new temporary-resident status for seasonal farm workers with the opportunity to become permanent residents. California growers last week rallied in front of the Capitol in Sacramento, expressing their anger by carrying baskets of fruit. Stepped-up border enforcement is one factor in the reduced seasonal labor pool, the Times said. Another factor is the availability of better-paying, more stable jobs for workers who choose not to re-enter Mexico between seasons.
The U.S. government approved new air pollution standards Thursday, promising "cleaner air to all Americans," but health and environmental groups said the revised rules are too weak to protect against lung disease and other pollution-related ailments. Meanwhile, groups that represents U.S. electric power companies -- one key source of the particle pollution addressed by the standards -- said the new rules were too stringent. Stephen Johnson, who heads the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters: "Today EPA is issuing the most health-protective national air quality standards in our nation's history." The new standards will reduce premature deaths, heart attacks and hospital stays for people with heart and lung disease and bring health benefits valued at between $20 billion and $160 billion a year, Johnson said. Daily standards for the amount of particles in the air were strengthened by nearly 50 percent, he said. Previously, U.S. law allowed 65 micrograms of soot particles per cubic meter of air; the new rules call for a limit of 35 micrograms. That reduction was less than what was sought by a broad coalition of environmental and health organizations, and a panel of EPA's own scientific advisers. EPA's decision to keep annual standards for soot particles at the same levels they have been since 1997 -- 15 micrograms per cubic meter of air -- drew the ire of environmentalists, who had sought to have these strengthened. "EPA's action is truly breath-taking in ignoring the dangerous impact of particulate pollution on Americans' hearts and lungs," Dr. John Balbus, health program director of the group Environmental Defense, said in a statement.
The Census Bureau collects the most personal information about Americans, from how much money they earn and where they spend it to how they live and die. It's all confidential - as long as no one steals it. Lost or stolen from the Census Bureau since 2003 are 217 laptop computers, 46 portable data storage devices and 15 handheld devices used by survey takers. Although the number of people affected isn't known, the Commerce Department reports that passwords, encryptions and other safeguards were in place. Nothing so far indicates a misuse of any information. "The department takes very seriously these high instances of missing laptops, as well as potential breaches of personal identity data," Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said Thursday in response to an internal review of Commerce Department computers. "All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information," he said in a statement. "The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low."
The political party affiliation of dozens of Riverside and San Bernardino County (CA) voters was switched to Republican without their knowledge during recent GOP-funded registration drives already under scrutiny for producing incomplete and other suspicious voter-registration cards, a new review of the records found. An analysis of voter records by The Press-Enterprise reveals problems with registration cards collected in late 2005 and early 2006. The unauthorized party changes, which number at least 37, are greater than the handful identified by county election offices in recent months. Meanwhile, the months-long investigations by the state and the San Bernardino County district attorney's office into suspicious voter registrations have yet to produce any criminal charges. Last week, the office of San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos gave its investigation results to the secretary of state's office. Officials declined to say if the district attorney's six-month inquiry uncovered any suspected fraud.
"An analysis by the Department of Homeland Security found 272 chemical plants nationwide at which an attack or accident could affect at least 50,000 people and an additional 3,400 plants at which more than 1,000 people were at risk," reports the New York Times. Moreover, "the Bush administration, the chemical industry, Democrats, Republicans and environmentalists" agree that "voluntary measures put into place by the industry after the 2001 terrorist attacks are not enough." So why is there a "fierce struggle" in Congress over industry oversight language for the Homeland Security budget bill? Strong lobbying by the chemical industry, which is claiming "that Democrats and environmentalists are trying to hijack what had been an antiterrorism matter and use it to advance their own agenda," which they say includes reducing use of highly toxic chemicals. The Hill profiles lobbyists on chemical security issues, including from such industry mainstays as the American Chemistry Council and American Petroleum Institute.
Maybe If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, It Will Drown The Bush Compound: The Natural Resources Council of Maine this week released "one of the most complete depictions ever done of the potential impacts on Maine's coastline from rising sea levels due to global warming." Using the latest available science, NRCM's analysis shows that coastal businesses, homes, wildlife habitat, transportation systems, and some of the state's most treasured places are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise. One "treasured place" in extreme risk is the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport.
The United States Of America, A Third-World Nation: U.S. officials searching for the source of an E. coli outbreak that may have killed three people said on Friday they had found "situations of concern" at farms and food processing plants in California but cleared spinach grown elsewhere in the country. The investigation centers on nine farms in three California counties, and the outbreak may signal a need for tighter regulation -- especially in California's crop-rich Salinas Valley, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said Thursday. The Food and Drug Administration said 166 people in 25 states had been sickened in the outbreak, with one death. State health officials reported a 2-year-old boy from Idaho and an 86-year-old woman from Maryland had died and said they suspected E. coli from spinach was to blame. FDA officials could not confirm that link. Federal and state officials were inspecting nine farms in California's Salinas Valley, where the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 is suspected to have originated. "There are some situations of concern, may I say, that would warrant some possible correction in the near future," Mark Roh, acting regional food and drug director for the FDA's Pacific Region, told reporters, but declined to give details. Roh and Dr. David Acheson of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition said inspectors were looking at 10 fields representing six growers in California's Salinas Valley, looking for evidence of contaminated water, equipment or other signs of poor hygiene. "All the farms that we have been visiting have been linked somehow to the illnesses," Roh said.
While many communities are disarming residents, if a proposed ordinance passes in Greenleaf, Idaho that would be a violation of city code. The rural Canyon County town of Greenleaf is considering an ordinance that would recommend every head of household own a gun and ammunition and be trained to use them.
Rats Fleeing The U.S.S. Bush: A trend of local, below-the-radar party-switches is undercutting Republicans as they face the sternest challenge in a decade to one-party control of Congress and several state legislatures. Such party-switching by elected officials often indicates that the label they are shedding has lost appeal and foreshadows poor performance at the polls. Some recent switchers are exiting GOP ranks with a bang. Distorted priorities, the federal deficit and the Iraq war are common themes in their announcements. And in a direct swipe at the far-right ideology that has become a governing credo in the Bush years, they cite intolerance in the party as the chief reason for leaving. "The moderate Republican has been pushed aside for the extreme right wing," Oklahoma state Senator Nancy Riley told the Associated Press in August, when she became a Democrat. Riley represents a district in suburban Tulsa and has served as minority whip in a chamber that her former party was looking to take over in the fall election. She announced her defection after years of what she described as "abhorrent" treatment by Republican leaders who suffer a "lack of compassion for people."
Religious conservatives voiced frustration on Friday with Republican Party leaders and their failure to push key social initiatives through the U.S. Congress and said it could hurt voter turnout in November's elections. At a "Values Voters Summit" sponsored by leading religious conservative groups, some activists said President George W. Bush and Republican leaders showed too much pragmatism and too little concern for issues like abortion, immigration and banning gay marriage.
Republicans Believe In Equal Enforcement Of The Law: First of all, where's the IRS? If they're going to investigate a Pastor that gives an anti-war sermon that's in conflict with all the good little Jerry Falwells - then they should look into the Family Research Council and it's voter registration drive? Secondly, The GOP and their pundits can no longer claim that Ann Coulter does not speak for them. From the FRC's publicity: "Tony Snow is confirmed to speak on Friday, September 22 from 2:35 p.m. to 2:55 p.m. in the Regency Ballroom. FRC Action President Tony Perkins and co-sponsors Dr. James C. Dobson, Gary Bauer and Don Wildmon will also be joined by Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Governor Mitt Romney, Sens. George Allen and Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee, Reps. Mike Pence and Marilyn Musgrave and many more."
News From Smirkey's Wars: A United Nations official who recently called for NATO forces in Afghanistan to help combat the sharply expanding opium trade says the country is becoming increasingly unstable. VOA's Dan Robinson reports on remarks to U.S. lawmakers by Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. The comments to the House International Relations Committee come less than one week before Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai meets with President Bush at the White House. Noting Karzai's warning last year that either Afghanistan destroys opium or opium will destroy Afghanistan, Costa says the country is dangerously close to the second option. "Foreign pressures are making Afghanistan the turf for proxy wars," said Antonio Maria Costa. "The country is being destabilized by an inflow of insurgents, and weapons and money and intelligence. There is collusion from neighboring countries and this is a problem in itself." Calling counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics two fronts in the same war, Costa repeats his call for NATO to be actively engaged in the fight against the opium trade.
Grim new milestone: U.S. combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan now equal the 2,973 lives lost during the Sept. 11 attacks. Also, the number of civilians slain in Iraq in the last month reached an unprecedented level: 6,599 dead. And, oh yeah: Not only are U.S. troop levels in Iraq unlikely to decrease any time soon, but U.S. commanders say even more troops are needed.
We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You: The Bush administration's top housing official temporarily blocked a federal contract with a Massachusetts firm because of its political affiliation and for personal reasons, senior U.S. Housing and Urban Development aides told investigators. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, a member of President George W. Bush's Cabinet, also urged aides to favor friends of Bush when awarding contracts, a report by the agency's inspector general said. The report cited the sworn testimony of Jackson's aides including his chief of staff, Camille Pierce, a lawyer who has worked for Jackson on and off since the 1980s.
In what may have been a violation of ethics rules, Congressman Charlie Norwood (R-GA) issued a press release yesterday slamming pro-immigrant groups and their supporters in Congress, RAW STORY has learned. In a letter dated yesterday and on official House of Representatives letterhead, Norwood went so far as to call on voters to elect out of office any member of congress who failed to support a bill that would empower different law enforcement groups to work in concert to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. But House Administration rules prohibit congressmen and senators from using their legislative offices to conduct electioneering activities. Members of the House Administration committee did not immediately respond to an email and call for comment. The National Council of La Raza, (NCLR) the main group targeted by Norwood, issued a rejoinder demanding an apology and requesting that he reimburse the U.S. Treasury for any misused funds.
Republican leaders are calling on Congressman Bob Ney to resign immediately, reports Thursday's Roll Call. "With three weeks still left before Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) officially pleads guilty to a pair of federal charges, House Republican leaders on Wednesday stepped up their public calls for the embattled lawmaker to resign from the chamber immediately," writes Susan Davis. "While House Majority Leader John Boehner (R) remained reluctant to pressure his fellow Ohioan to step down from his post - and Democrats so far have stopped short of pushing an expulsion resolution on the House floor - Boehner’s fellow leaders were far more definitive in their statements," the article continues.
California Versus Pura Vida Driving
The dryest rainy season in years continues in Arenal. Other than a brief but intense thunderstorm this afternoon, the weather was hot, dry, and mostly sunny all day long. Last night was a different story, however, as a long, steady rain pelted the area through most of the night. The rain was welcome - it was rain that was needed, as there has been too little lately to keep everything adequately watered. The bright sunny weather brought with it some moderate temperatures, though, with an afternoon high of only 83, in spite of all the sun, and an overnight low of 70.
But it wasn't bright and sunny all over the country, however. My newly arrived friend made a quick trip this morning to the embassy in San Jose to get some documents legalized, and by the time he was on his way back a few hours later, the area near San Ramon had suffered a horrendous thunderstorm. He indicated that there were no fewer than five landslides onto the pavement, which had traffic reduced to a single lane on the Interamerican Highway - the busiest route in the country. He said he waited in line for as long as an hour in some places. One tree, a huge old forest tree, had slid down the slope entirely upright, and remained there, in the middle of the highway, fully upright as if it had been growing there all along.
When he got to San Ramon, he visited a ferreteria (hardware store) for a couple of items he had forgotten when we were in town on Wednesday, and was taken to the basement for checking the selection for what he needed - only to find workers in the basement bailing water off the floor. It was four inches deep. Well, he got what he needed, and resumed the journey, only to find heavy, pea-soup fog when going over the Continental Divide, through the town of Los Angeles Sur - the town where I lived for my first six months in the country. Now he can understand why the locals call that place "La Penitencia" - and why I was so very glad to move out of there.
In spite of the adventurous trip, he made it back to Arenal in remarkably good time - which tells me he drove rather fast as I have seen him do so often. During my trip with him on Wednesday, I tried to tactfully (and sometimes not-so-tactfully) warn him that his California freeway driving habits will likely get him killed here - as he almost got us killed when he approached a traffic-choked one-lane bridge Wednesday evening at dusk, at a high rate of speed. He skidded to a stop in just a nick of time, barely avoiding a collision with the right-hand bridge rail as well as oncoming traffic by skidding to a complete stop only about ten feet in front of it. But like most newbies, he won't listen, he knows better, he figures he's a "great" driver - and like most California drivers, he follows too closely, passes everything in sight whether he needs to or not, and does sixty or more down these narrow, potholed, often traffic-choked secondary roads with single-lane bridges, blind curves, and yawning, gaping potholes that are often not visible from more than a few car lengths away - and cause drivers he's following to suddenly brake violently or swerve unpredictably.
Love the man dearly - but I can only hope he survives his adjustment to Pura Vida driving. I'll keep you posted.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: Do you ever hear or read something that seems so unlikely that you think to yourself, "It must be my medication?" And then you realize it's true and it's not your medication? And then once you actually sort through the data, you conclude that it's likely time to go on medication? House Republicans are quietly attempting to take a first legislative step to make evangelical Christianity our first state religion. The critical $500 billion defense budget has stalled in the House because the Republicans managed to slip in a "mischievous" little amendment that they thought no one would notice. In direct violation of the Constitution, House Republicans drafted legislative language that would elevate Christian evangelical preachers to the status of official government chaplains above all other religions, including non-evangelical Christians. This obscure little amendment is intended to give evangelical chaplains the exclusive right to preside over all secular military ceremonies. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon and ecumenical chaplain groups objected to this amendment, but the controlling Republicans nonetheless wrote it into the budget and have been stubbornly defending it. Their view is that our troops should be led by the one true faith at the exclusion of all others. Theocracy in action - and your public servants at work.
Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide. Reports from Iraq indicate that torture "is totally out of hand," he said. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein." Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine." Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing "very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers." "You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the U.N.'s European headquarters. "It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias," he said. A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women. Iraq's government, set up in 2006, is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq" such as police and security forces and the legal system, the U.N. report said, noting that torture was a major concern.
The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention center at Guantanamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the program. The former officials said the CIA interrogators' refusal was a factor in forcing the Bush administration to act earlier than it might have wished. When Mr Bush announced the suspension of the secret prison program in a speech before the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, some analysts thought he was trying to gain political momentum before the November midterm congressional elections. The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush's hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going. Senior officials and Mr Bush himself have come close to admitting this by saying CIA interrogators sought legal clarity. But no official has confirmed on the record how and when the secret program actually came to an end.
According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an "October surprise" before the midterm elections. "In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an 'October surprise' to help win the November congressional elections," reports Ronald Kessler for Newsmax. A few weeks ago, another conservative publication, The American Spectator, reported that White House staffers had "been talking up the possibilities of an 'October Surprise' or two leading into the mid-term elections." "They say the President feels confident he can still play a role in the election, that he intends to campaign hard for Republicans, and that on the policy front, there are a couple of issues that can be used as wedges along the way," according to a column written by "The Prowler." Rove is not saying what the October surprise will be. Asked if he would elaborate and give his thinking about the coming elections, Rove told NewsMax that his take largely parallels what RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said in a Sept. 5 NewsMax story. As for the October Surprise, Rove said, "I'd rather let the balance [of plans for the elections] unroll on its own."
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton joined a chorus of critics of Bush administration proposals for treating suspected terrorists, saying it would be unnecessary and wrong to give broad approval to torture. In an interview with National Public Radio aired on Thursday, Clinton said any decision to use harsh treatment in interrogating suspects should be subject to court review. "You don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture," Clinton said. Clinton was president during the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and on the USS Cole, all linked to al Qaeda. Critics accused him of doing too little to contain a growing threat of terrorism. Clinton's successor, President George W. Bush, wants Congress to narrowly define prisoner protections under the Geneva Conventions and allow a program of CIA interrogations and detentions that critics have said amount to torture. The White House denies the program involves torture. The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down Bush's original plan. Clinton warned against circumventing international standards on prisoner treatment, citing U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
A liberal church that has been threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status over an anti-war sermon delivered just days before the 2004 presidential election said Thursday it will fight an IRS order to turn over documents on the matter. "We're going to put it in their court and in a court of law so that we can get an adjudication to some very fundamental issue here that we see as an intolerable infringement of rights," Bob Long, senior warden of All Saints Church, told The Associated Press. He said the church's 26-member vestry voted unanimously to resist IRS demands for documents and an interview with the congregation's rector by the end of the month. The church's action sets up a high-profile confrontation between the church and the IRS, which now must decide whether to ask for a hearing before a judge, who would then decide on the validity of the agency's demands.
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. a Republican, has been named in yet another voting rights lawsuit, this time over allegations that his office has denied thousands of low-income residents their right to register to vote or to change their registration addresses. The National Voting Rights Institute filed the suit in federal court Thursday on behalf of two low-income residents and the anti-poverty group ACORN. The suit also names Barbara Riley, director of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services (DJFS). Plaintiffs allege that Blackwell and Riley violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Also known as the Motor Voter Act, the federal law requires states to provide voter-registration opportunities at departments of motor vehicles, as well as at all public-assistance offices and offices that serve people with disabilities. Federal and state law requires such offers to be written and explicit. Plaintiff Carrie Harkless, a 28-year-old mother of one and resident of Lorain, visited the Ohio DJFS numerous times since 2004, but said she was never offered the opportunity to register to vote or to change her voter-registration address, which the 1993 Act requires. Likewise, Cleveland resident Tameca Mardis, a mother of three, has been using DJFS offices since 2001, shortly after she became eligible to vote. She also alleges no one informed her she could register to vote.
Aerospace and defense giant Boeing Co. has won a multibillion-dollar contract to revamp how the United States guards about 6,000 miles of border in an attempt to curb illegal immigration, congressional sources said yesterday. Boeing's proposal relied heavily on a network of 1,800 towers, most of which would need to be erected along the borders with Mexico and Canada. Each tower would be equipped with a variety of sensors, including cameras and heat and motion detectors. The company's efforts would be the basis of the government's latest attempt to control U.S. borders after a series of failures. The contract, part of the Secure Border Initiative and known as SBInet, will again test the ability of technology to solve a problem that lawmakers have called a critical national security concern. This time, the private sector is being given an unusually large say in how to do it. "The administration has spent $429 million of the taxpayer's money to try and secure our borders with two already-abandoned border security programs," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss). He expressed concern that the same thing will happen to SBInet.
Many initial estimates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the cost of repairing thousands of water-logged buildings, cracked pipes and crumbling streets in hurricane-staggered Louisiana were way too low - and some reconstruction projects are being held up because of it. Some local governments say they cannot legally or financially hire contractors and get on with the work, because they fear they will be saddled with repair costs that won't be reimbursed by Washington. The FEMA estimates were made as part of a federal program under which local governments make repairs at their own expense, then ask for reimbursement from the federal government. The low-ball estimates were done by sometimes-inexperienced estimators hurriedly hired and trained by FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which struck last summer and fall. Often, the estimates were based on the much-cheaper, pre-storm costs of labor and equipment. "We want our fair share," said Cary Grant, New Orleans' assistant chief administrative officer for budget. "We're grossly underfunded." Statewide, local and state officials have identified 17,000 projects that could be eligible for federal reimbursement. State officials said many of the initial estimates on those projects are way off. In many cases, the disparities are staggering. At one recreation center in New Orleans, for example, FEMA estimated repairs would cost $312,000; the city says it actually will cost more like $1.4 million. The few bids St. Bernard Parish have received for repair work have come back two or three times higher than FEMA's estimates, said Chris Merkl, the parish's public works director.
An academic has claimed that a decline in reported rape of 85% in the past 25 years can be tied to an increase in pornography consumption. In a study for Northwestern University's Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series titled "Porn Up Rape Down," Anthony D'Amato, a Leighton Professor of Law at Northwestern University, argues that the proliferation of pornography has lead to a sharp decline in rape across the United States. According to a 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey, the national rate of rape decreased from 2.5 to 0.5 for every thousand people over a 30-year span from 1973 to 2003. The explanations offered include less lawlessness associated with crack cocaine, women being taught to avoid unsafe situations, that more potential rapists are already in prison for other crimes, and sex education classes telling boys that "no means no." In "Porn Up Rape Down," D'Amato compiled data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In 2001, the four states with the lowest per capita access to the Internet were Arkansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, and West Virginia. The four with the highest per capita Internet access were Alaska, Colorado, New Jersey, and Washington. When compared to Disaster Center's figures for forcible rape for the years 1980 and 2000, the four states with the lowest Internet access showed a 53% aggregate per capita increase in rape, while the four states with the highest Internet access showed a 27% decrease in incidence of rape.
At a news conference after his spirited address to the United Nations on Wednesday, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela expressed one regret: not having met that icon of the American left, the linguist Noam Chomsky, before his death. Yesterday, a call to Mr. Chomsky's house found him very m