March 27, 2004

Because she's the only one really in a position to call Richard Clarke a liar.

But she'd have to do it under oath.

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Costco's Dilemma: Be Kind To Its Workers, or Wall Street?
By ANN ZIMMERMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 26, 2004; Page B1

When it comes to workers, companies can be accused of not paying enough -- or paying too much.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s parsimonious approach to employee compensation has made the world's largest retailer a frequent target of labor unions and even Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who has accused the Bentonville, Ark., chain of failing to offer its employees affordable health-care coverage.

In contrast, rival Costco Wholesale Corp. often is held up as a retailer that does it right, paying well and offering generous benefits.

But Costco's kind-hearted philosophy toward its 100,000 cashiers, shelf-stockers and other workers is drawing criticism from Wall Street. Some analysts and investors contend that the Issaquah, Wash., warehouse-club operator actually is too good to employees, with Costco shareholders suffering as a result.

"From the perspective of investors, Costco's benefits are overly generous," says Bill Dreher, retailing analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. "Public companies need to care for shareholders first. Costco runs its business like it is a private company."

Costco appears to pay a penalty for its largesse to workers. The company's shares trade at about 20 times projected per-share earnings for 2004, compared with about 24 for Wal-Mart. Mr. Dreher says the unusually high wages and benefits contribute to investor concerns that profit margins at Costco aren't as high as they should be.

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Prop. 209-Inspired Initiative Hits Snag In MI
By Melissa McRobbie | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES

(BCN) - The drive to gather signatures in Michigan for a ballot initiative modeled after California's Proposition 209 may have hit a bump in the road in the form of a court ruling Thursday, according to plaintiffs in the case.

In the ruling, an Ingham County Circuit Court judge ordered the Michigan State Board of Canvassers to rescind its approval of a petition being circulated by proponents of the ballot measure, titled the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).

The initiative would ban affirmative action at public universities and other public agencies in the state of Michigan.

University of California Regent Ward Connerly, long a foe of affirmative action, is among those spearheading the efforts to put the initiative on the ballot. In order to do so, proponents must gather more than 317,000 signatures by early July.

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No tolerance for racism

Snohomish County residents have responded with shock, anger and resolve to a cross-burning at the Arlington home of a black minister.

Another clear sentiment is embarrassment such thing still might happen. Thirteen years have passed since a Bothell family found the loathsome and unequivocally racist symbol in its yard.

The response has been swift. Arlington police teamed with the FBI to investigate this hate crime. The school district expressed its support to Pastor Jason Martin and his family, and Arlington High School is using the act as a teachable moment in classrooms.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon wants a newly forming Community Council to explore diversity issues.

The Interfaith Association of Snohomish County is organizing the most outward and visible sign of the community's repudiation of the cross-burning.

A show of solidarity and support is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. tomorrow at Martin's Jesus is Lord Life Tabernacle Church in Marysville. A spectrum of faith groups and leading civic organizations, including the United Way of Snohomish County and Providence Everett Medical Center, will be represented.

A powerful symbol was invoked out of ignorance or hatred. Residents are pulling together to say this is not who we are, and this racist trespass will not go unchallenged.

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This is both a show of how far things have come and how far they have to go. The fact that "Thirteen years have passed since a Bothell family found the loathsome and unequivocally racist symbol in its yard" means someone had a cross burned in their yard in 1991. On a societal timescale that's, like, yesterday.

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Crossfire:

NOVAK: Congressman, do you believe, you're a sophisticated guy, do you believe watching these hearings that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: Say that again?

NOVAK: Do you believe that Dick Clarke has a problem with this African-American woman Condoleezza Rice?

EMANUEL: No, no. Bob, give me a break. No. No.

I'm jealous of Bob Novak. You actually have to be brilliant to think of SO many stupid things to say (by which standard it's obvious Bush was quite well qualified for his Ivy League college admission).

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Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P By Xeni Jardin
04:00 PM Mar. 26, 2004 PT

Congress appears to be preparing assaults against peer-to-peer technology on multiple fronts.

A draft bill obtained by Wired News, recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee, would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof. The bill also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing.

In addition, on Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the Pirate Act.

The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy. The industries also are pushing to portray P2P networks as dens of terrorists, child pornographers and criminals -- a strategy that would make it more palatable for politicians to pass laws against products that are very popular with their constituents.

In defending the Pirate Act, Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography. With these "human shields," the P2P companies are trying to ransom the entertainment industries into accepting their networks as a distribution channel and source of revenue.

"Unfortunately, piracy and pornography could then become the cornerstones of a 'business model,'" Hatch said in a statement. The illicit activities of file sharers "then generate huge advertising revenues for the architects of piracy."

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America welcomed the Pirate Act.

"I commend Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch for their vision and leadership in combating the theft of America's creative works," said Jack Valenti, MPAA's chief executive.

"This legislation provides federal prosecutors with the flexibility and discretion to bring copyright infringement cases that best correspond to the nature of the crime," said RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol.

So far in 2004, Leahy has received $178,000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industries -- the second-biggest source of donations to Leahy behind lawyers. Hatch has received $152,360.

The draft bill obtained by Wired News circulated among intellectual property subcommittee members in the House of Representatives. The document, titled "Closing the P2P loophole in 17.U.S.C. Section 506," was drafted in coordination with the Justice Department in response to concerns that federal prosecutors lack sufficient legal powers to go after serious abusers, people close to the matter said. They also said they believe Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is willing to propose the bill if he can find co-sponsors.

If the draft becomes law, anyone sharing 2,500 or more pieces of content, such as songs or movies, could be fined or thrown in jail. In addition, anyone who distributes content that hasn't been released in wide distribution (for example, pre-release copies of an upcoming movie) also would face the penalties. Even a single file, determined by a judge to be worth more than $10,000, would land the file sharer in prison.

Whether the leaked draft will be put forth as legislation remains unclear, and Smith's press secretary Christopher Chichester declined to comment.

Smith has received almost $25,000 this year from the music, movies and TV industries.

"This was not put together by our staff," said House Judiciary Committee spokesman Jeff Lungren. "But the intellectual property subcommittee is working on text to address the problem of digital piracy prosecutions, and it looks like this was one suggested iteration."

In response, P2P United, an organization that represents software companies that run file-sharing networks, asked the subcommittee in a letter hand-delivered to Smith on Friday to put off enacting new laws aimed at punishing file sharers and instead explore ways in which copyright holders can be paid through P2P networks.

"It's unfortunate that the entertainment industry devotes so much energy to supporting punitive efforts at the federal and state level, instead of putting energy into licensing their content for P2P distribution so those same people could be turned into customers," said Philip Corwin, an attorney with Butera and Andrews in Washington D.C., and who represents Kazaa distributor Sharman Networks. "The Pirate Act effectively gives government the authority to use taxpayer dollars to bring civil actions against file sharers on behalf of copyright holders."

All these efforts by Congress to impose severe penalties are misguided, said P2P United Executive Director Adam Eisgrau.

"As the 40 percent increase in downloads over the last year makes alarmingly clear, like it or not file sharing is likely to (continue) on a massive scale no matter how many suits are brought and what the fine print of copyright or criminal law says," Eisgrau said. "Second, putting a tiny percentage of tens of millions of American file sharers behind bars or in the poorhouse won't put one new dime in the deserving pockets of artists and other copyright owners."

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FRANKLY SPEAKING

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

From the March 26, 2004 UnderCurrents column of the Berkeley Daily Planet http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com

Two black men were sitting in the dark on the brick wall across from our house the other night. It was late, in the middle of that odd, latewinter heat spell of a few weeks ago. A police officer rolled around the corner in his car, saw the men, was immediately suspicious. Normally there's nothing going on down our street that causes a police presence late at night, but lately the police have been hot-spottin' out here, checking through the area to make sure nothing's going on. The cop slowed down to a stop in front of the two men. One of the men turned and said in a low voice to the other, "Watch him shine his light over here." And so the cop did, pointing his piercing spotlight into the two black men's eyes, blinding them. They squirmed and squinted, ducking their heads a little and putting up their hands against the glare. They knew better than to look away. You want to really arouse a cop's suspicion? Try to get out of the way when he's shining a light in your eyes. That's a quick trip to the back of the police car.

I've often wondered why cops do that…shine their light directly in a suspect's eyes. Me knowing nothing about police work, I'd shine the light somewhere around mid-chest, where you could watch the movements of their hands, or pockets from which weapons might come. It's an old basketball trick. Don't worry about the head. It goes where the body goes.

Then again, the face might be the key. Back South, in the old days, there used to be a crime called eyeball rape, looking at a white woman with lust, for which many a black man was jailed or hung. "Getting sassy" was an offense, too, back then, though not one that ever made it on the books ("sassy" coming from the term "to ridicule" from the Mende folk in Sierra Leone, by way of Carolina, one of the many African words that made it, unacknowledged, into American English usage). I do remember in Carolina that there was a place on the traffic ticket marked "Attitude" with boxes for "Good," "Moderate," and "Poor" for officers to check and then judges to consider when giving out your fine. But, anyhow, those days are long gone…

I think, for cops, it may be a power thing, shining their lights in a suspect's eyes. Intimidation by blinding. Something like a pin in chest. If the suspect turns and flees, he's clearly done something wrong, and chased down and caught. If he stands and winces in the light, he's submitting to the cop's authority, acknowledging the cop's ability to hold him…without even touching him…until the cop decides to let him go. It's the perfect nonviolent assault, leaving no marks, and, therefore, no possibility of consequences to the cop. None of those brutality allegations.

[And if you don't think shining a bright light in someone's eyes is an assault, try walking down Telegraph or San Pablo Avenues one night, flashlight in hand, turning it on random people that you pass. See how long it is before you get yourself arrested. Or, more likely, assaulted. In the not-non-violent way.]

Anyhow, back to the night in front of my house.

Like a cobra staring down its prey, the cop held the two men in his bright glare for a moment. Then, without a word, the light clicked off, and the police car rolled away, slow, down the block towards Allen Temple. The police officer didn't say anything to the men. He'd made his point. He was watching them. If they were up to something, they needed to get their asses up and moving and not be there when he got back.

I don't know who the police officer was that night. We get a lot of that out here in the flats of far East Oakland, faceless, nameless cops, roaming through our streets. They come and go like wraiths. We never know who they are, or where they live, and we can only discern why they're out here by watching the news or reading the paper. They never stop and introduce themselves.

I don't know who the police officer was that night, but I do know who one of the men was, sitting on the brick wall across the street from our house. His name is Frank. His mother lives in the house over there; it's her brick wall on which the two men were sitting, talking, getting some cool night air in that recent heat spell.

I don't know how long Frank's family has been living in that house. 30 years? 40, maybe. They moved in sometime during the years I was gone. Frank doesn't live at the house across the street any more, but he's always over there. He's a Vietnam veteran, I think, though it's nothing we've ever talked about. Mostly, we talk sports. He's a Raider fanatic. He calls me a Raider Hater. We often meet in the street between the houses when I'm leaving for work or coming home. During football season we can be out there for a half-hour or more.

In the mornings, he comes over to cut his mother's lawn and pick up the trash that the passersby have left during the night. On Monday nights he puts out the garbage bins for his mother, and more often than not, he'll come across the street and put out ours, too. Once, when my mother had to be rushed to the hospital, he watched the house for us. It's that kind of neighborhood. He's that kind of person. I don't know who that cop was that night. But I know who Frank is.

If you're looking for a dramatic ending to this story, there isn't any. Frank didn't get shot, or put in jail. The policeman never came back. All you have is a cop rolling through our block, checking out suspicious black men, putting them in their place. A fairly typical day in our neighborhood, in Oakland, at the millenium's turn.

In a recent debate at Oakland City Council over his tenant eviction ordinance, Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid remarked that the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't live in East Oakland. Cut out the first word and the last, and the man is onto something.

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United States Wants International Ruling on American Indians Kept Secret
By Brenda Norrell, Indian Country Today, Oneida, N.Y. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 24 - PHOENIX, Ariz. – The United States is attempting to keep secret an international ruling that affects American Indians and property rights. The ruling, in the case of the Western Shoshone, calls for a review of all U.S. law and policy regarding indigenous peoples and in particular the right to property.

On Indigenous Peoples Day, Western Shoshone Carrie Dann said, "The U.S. was found to be in violation of international law – found to be violating our rights to property, to due process and to equality under the law.

"They have been told to remedy this situation and to review all law and policy relating to indigenous peoples in the United States."

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States issued its final report in the case of Dann v. U.S. It is the first judicial review of the United States law and policy regarding indigenous peoples within its borders.

Julie Fishel, attorney for the Western Shoshone Defense Project, said the United States does not want American Indians to learn about the ruling.

"They are nervous about this," Fishel said.

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HEALTH CARE 
Drug Cards Dissected

The government announced yesterday the names of the 28 private companies picked to provide prescription drug cards to Medicare recipients beginning this June. The prescription cards purport to provide seniors with discounts on their medications. However, no such discount is guaranteed, and the legislation may help pharmaceutical and insurance companies a lot more than the elderly. Little wonder: Remember, the legislation was crafted by the head of one of the companies chosen to provide the card, Bush crony and AdvancePCS chief David Halbert. The 28 private companies, also including such heavy hitters as United Healthcare, Caremark, Aetna, and Express Scripts along with Advance PCS, worked hard to ensure the law would be in their favor. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top groups donated well over $150,000 directly to President Bush and Congress since 2000 and Aetna, United Healthcare and Wellpoint alone have spent over $3.25 million to lobby for their interests. See this American Progress examination of how privatization threatens Medicare.

THE TRACK RECORD: So who are these companies the White House is entrusting with caring for the nation's seniors? One is Medco, a company which has faced lawsuits over market manipulation in the past for "failing to disclose the extent of their financial ties with manufacturers." AdvancePCS, a company in which President Bush himself was an original investor, was sued last year, accused of "not only 'illicitly diverting' seniors from its drug-discount plan, but of actually putting them at risk for potentially dangerous drug interactions." Both were listed in a federal lawsuit along with Caremark and Express Scripts for engaging in "anti-competitive practices" which harmed pharmacies, for entering into "secret deals with drug manufacturers...in return for 'kickbacks' and other 'undisclosed incentives.'"

AARP AWOL: So where has the AARP been during all of this? Although the AARP is ostensibly a group dedicated to protecting the rights of seniors, the group shocked its members when it supported the drug legislation last November. Now it turns out there may have been a financial windfall in play: AARP is affiliated with – and receives "marketing royalties" from - United Health Care, one of the major companies the Administration included in the drug card program.

THE SPLINTER EFFECT: The theory behind the discount cards is that companies "will have greater bargaining power with drug makers" the more they enroll Medicare beneficiaries. But why use a middle man? Bowing to pressure from the powerful pharmaceutical lobby, which feared for its bottom line, Congress specifically banned Medicare from using bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower prices. Instead, the Medicare population was splintered into these smaller groups run by private companies, thus giving them considerably less influence.

LOWER PRICE MYTH: The law does not require the drug card companies to pass the savings along to customers instead of keeping profits for themselves. They don't even have to guarantee a specific level of savings for seniors. And drug companies have gone out of their way this past year to ensure their profits will stay nice and fat: The WSJ reports companies jacked up prices for drugs most popular with the elderly "nearly 3½ times faster on average than overall inflation" in the past year since the cards were announced, already eroding any potential savings. Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) is trying to ensure seniors get some of the discount; he introduced a bill yesterday which would guarantee "beneficiaries receive at least 90% of any discounts."

THE OL' SWITCHEROO: Another massive problem with the cards: Seniors are locked into only one card. However, card companies have much more flexibility and aren't required to return the loyalty to clients. Right now, companies are allowed to change the list of drugs they offer every seven days, as well as the size of the discounts, and there is no oversight mechanism in place to stop that from happening. Ron Pollack, of the watchdog group Families USA, fears cards will offer giant savings on popular medicines, then, after seniors sign up, greatly reduce the savings or stop covering the drug altogether. "The potential for bait-and-switch is enormous."

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Straight from The Progress Report, no edits of filler:

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9/11 
Bush Admits Negligence

President Bush yesterday once again tried to fend off charges of gross negligence before 9/11, saying, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people." But with more evidence emerging this week that the White House received repeated warnings before 9/11 of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, the President's "had I known" defense raises two disturbing scenarios: Either a) the Administration is telling the truth, actually did not know of the threat despite receiving repeated warnings and was totally oblivious to a brewing national security crisis. Or b) the Administration is not telling the truth, actually knew about the threat from the warnings it received, and yet still failed to act with adequate urgency. See a list of warnings the Administration received before 9/11 and what they failed to do in response. Also see these internal government documents showing how the Administration downgraded and tried to slash funding for counterterrorism before 9/11.

DISHONEST – RICE REFUTES HERSELF: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice this week reiterated the President's "ignorance" defense, but in doing so repeated a lie that she had previously admitted was a lie. In 2002, she supported the President's "had I known" defense saying, "I don't think anybody could have predicted...that [terrorists] would try to use an airplane as a missile." But when presented this month with overwhelming evidence that the Administration had been warned about such a plot, she admitted privately to the 9/11 Commission that she had "misspoken." Yet, even after this admission, she proceeded to repeat the same dishonest claim, writing in a Washington Post op-ed this week that "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." As one widely-respected FBI terrorism expert said, the Administration's "ignorance" defense is "an outrageous lie. And documents prove it's a lie." See this new American Progress backgrounder analyzing Rice's dishonesty.

DISHONEST – BUSH ADMINISTRATION REFUTES RICE: Rice this week said the Administration had formulated a National Security Policy Directive (NSPD) before 9/11  "that called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership." But according to the 9/11 Commission, "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Bush Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was asked whether Rice's assertions were true, and responded, "No."

DISHONEST – RICE DISCREDITS HERSELF: Rice claimed this week that "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." But the 9/11 Commission reported, "On January 25th, 2001, Richard Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice."

NEW EVIDENCE – BEFORE 9/11, BUSH ADMIN SAYS BIN LADEN FOCUS WAS "MISTAKE": New evidence emerged yesterday that discredits the Bush Administration's claim that fighting terrorism was their "top priority" when they came to office. On 4/30/01 the Bush Administration released the government's annual report on terrorism, but unlike previous Administrations, it decided to specifically omit an "extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."  Similarly, AP reported in 2002 that the Bush Administration's "national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions."

NEW EVIDENCE – BEFORE 9/11, BUSH ADMIN REJECTED BIPARTISAN COMMISSION: President Bush yesterday claimed that "Prior to September the 11th, we thought oceans could protect us." That is a troubling statement from a President, considering that in January of 2001, the U.S. Government's Commission on National Security gave the White House a bipartisan report that warned of an attack on the homeland and urged the new Administration to implement its specific "recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism" (an intelligence warning of a domestic attack was also given to the White House in May of 2001).  Unfortunately, according to Sens. Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Gary Hart (D-CO), the Administration rejected the Commission's report, "preferring to put aside the recommendations." Instead, the White House said it would have Vice President Cheney head up a task force to analyze the threat himself. The Administration then waited five months to officially create the task force, and then failed to convene a single meeting of the task force in the four months before 9/11.

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March 26, 2004

Credit where due: I stole this from here.

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Rice Is Agreeable to Return for More of 9/11 Panel's Queries
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, March 25 — Under mounting pressure from Democrats about its response to the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House offered Thursday to have Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, answer more questions from the Sept. 11 panel. At the same time, President Bush forcefully denied accusations that he had ignored the severity of the threat from Al Qaeda.

The White House announced late Thursday that Ms. Rice was willing to appear before the panel again, but only in private and not under oath. Some Republicans said that Mr. Bush was being undercut by the perception that a senior White House official would not cooperate, while his aides were out pummeling Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief who has accused the Bush administration of not heeding warnings before Sept. 11.

The moves came as the White House also sought to deflect new criticism of Mr. Bush for his handling of counterterrorism issues in the months before the attacks and to contain the fallout of an investigation that Democrats and some Republicans said could cast a shadow over his re-election campaign.

The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, called on the White House to cease "character attacks" on Mr. Clarke.

"I have a simple request for the president today: Please ask the people around you to stop the character attacks they are waging against Richard Clarke," Mr. Daschle said. "Ask them to stop their attempts to conceal information and confuse facts. Ask them to stop the long effort that has made the 9/11 commission's work more difficult than it should be."

You remember the picture:

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Examining a Decade of Democracy
Moyiga Nduru

PRETORIA, Mar 25 (IPS) - Academics and political analysts from around the world have gathered in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, for a conference on the achievements of the first decade of democracy in the country.

The three-day event, which began Wednesday (Mar. 24), is entitled ”South Africa: Ten Years After Apartheid”. It has been organised by the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Pretoria, and has attracted about 200 delegates.

”Post-apartheid South Africa has taught all of us that even those who are made into the worst enemies, creating a relationship in which some are brutalised and dehumanised, can overcome the trauma of such a tragedy and the compulsion towards vengeance through a genuine process of reconciliation,” said Salim Ahmed Salim, formerly the prime minister of Tanzania and secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union).

”The mere fact that this nation could sustain and consolidate its democratic dispensation for 10 years...has not only reaffirmed the negation of the apartheid system, but it has also empowered and inspired the African people,” he added.

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When this reaches the American market, they should make a big donation to Project Gutenberg and port as many of their public domain texts at possible to a compatible format.

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Digital paper makes device debut
Soon you could be reading a book printed on electronic paper.

Sony, Philips and digital paper pioneer E-Ink have announced an electronic book reader that is due to go on sale in Japan in late April for $375 (£204).

Called Librié, the device will be the size of a paperback book and can hold 500 texts in its onboard memory.

The device will also have a PC connection built in to allow owners to download fresh reading material such as newspapers and comics.

Book here

The display has a resolution of 170 pixels per inch, which E-Ink says is comparable to the print quality of newspaper.

Unlike more familiar LCD displays, the screen can be read at almost any angle and in bright sunlight as it uses tiny charged beads to form letters and images.

Each pixel point on the display is a tiny pit containing a small number of black and white beads each one of which is about as wide as a human hair.

The white beads are positively charged and the black beads negatively charged.

Each pit is topped with a transparent electrode and has two other electrodes at its base.

Changing the charge on the base electrodes makes either white or black beads leap to the top of the pit forming either a blank or black spot on the larger display.

Making one base electrode positive and the other negative creates a grey spot.

The Librié has been under development since 2001 and brings together technology from four companies.

E-Ink and partner Toppan make the basic electronic paper technology, Philips is supplying the electronics to drive the display and Sony has handled the design of the outer case.

The Librié will weigh just over 300g including batteries and front cover and will run off four AAA batteries.

E-Ink says the display only draws on battery power when text is refreshed which means it will be able to display about 10,000 pages before the batteries need changing.

The device is 13mm thick and its screen measures 15cm diagonally.

It also includes a qwerty keyboard, USB 2.0 connector and a slot for Sony Memory Sticks.

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Nationmaster.com sounds like a web site for super villains but is a very accessible collection of statistics of just about any kind about just about any nation you can think of. You got kids that need references for reports and such? Or maybe just don't want to look like such an idiot while bloviating? Then bookmark it.

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U.S. to Ship Guns to Neighbouring Dominican Republic
Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Mar 24 (IPS) - Washington is poised to start shipping 20,000 M-16 rifles to the Dominican Republic, the nation that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, where well-armed rebels helped to force President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power Feb. 29.

Experts predict the new guns could cross the poorly guarded border between the countries, but the U.S. State Department says the agreement with the government in Santo Domingo prevents any transfer of weapons from the military.

The news comes just days after the commander of the U.S. Marines in Haiti apparently reversed a previous U.S. decision that troops in the multinational force would seek to disarm rebels and other groups in the country, which is awash in small arms.

On Saturday, interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue watched as rebel leaders in the town of Gonaives surrendered about 10 decrepit-looking guns as a show of "goodwill". He said the loose-knit group -- whose members include convicted murderers and other known and suspected human rights violators -- would disarm when the time was right.

Washington intends to ship the first group of 2,000-3,000 surplus M-16s within 90 days, a spokesman from the Pentagon's Defence Security Cooperation Agency confirmed Wednesday.

The deal was made in 2002 and Congress was informed of it, he added.

A State Department spokesman told IPS that checks are in place to prevent the weapons from getting into criminals' hands.

"If you're hinting that these are going to Haitian rebels, that's not the case. We specifically say that these are for the use of the Dominican Armed Forces and if you use them for anything else, you have to ask us first," added the spokesman, who requested anonymity.

"We're not in a position to make a 100 percent guarantee, but certainly the conditions under which we have agreed to transfer these weapons are that they are for the use of the Dominican Republic's Armed Forces and are not to be transferred. We do checks from time to time to make sure that's the case."

One expert says she is not sure where the thousands of guns now in Haiti came from, but that many probably entered via the Dominican Republic.

"It's pretty clear that a lot of those weapons are remnants from 1994 and have remained, not underground necessarily, but not as visible and destabilising. But I'm sure there are new weapons being brought in," said Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Centre for Defence Information in Washington.

"It's unclear to me how compliant the government or military is in that, but I think there's pretty good evidence that the weapons are flowing (across the border). It's a very weak border. Because other goods and services can move across that border relatively easily, there's no reason to think that guns wouldn't be able to as well," she added in an interview.

Washington led a military force into Haiti in 1994 to restore Aristide to power after a coup and a brutal three-year military regime. The former Catholic priest and champion of the country's poor was elected for a second time in 2000, but following Senate elections that some international bodies called "flawed", the political opposition refused to negotiate with him.

Earlier this year rebel leaders, who include former members of the Haitian army that Aristide disbanded after returning to power, as well as former police, took advantage of the political deadlock to cross into Haiti from the Dominican Republic. They terrorised towns in the northern part of the country, killing members of the country's small, poorly armed police force.

On Feb. 29, as rebels neared the capital Port-au-Prince, Aristide left on a U.S. jet. Now visiting in nearby Jamaica, the president says he was kidnapped in a U.S. and French-inspired plot, while those governments say he resigned to avoid further bloodshed. Roughly 200 people died in the violence preceding Aristide's ouster.

Days after the president's flight, rebel leader Guy Philippe, a former police chief of Delmas and Cap-Haitien who fled to the Dominican Republic after an aborted coup against Aristide in 2000, declared himself the country's new military chief.

U.S. officials swiftly rebuked Philippe, and declared the rebels would be disarmed and excluded from the political process.

On Mar. 2, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher told journalists, "The rebels have to lay down their arms and go home". Two days later, Philippe publicly agreed, a decision that U.S. ambassador James Foley took credit for. "We've made it unmistakably clear what has to happen," he told CNN. "The result is inevitable."

But on Sunday, the U.S. head of the United Nations-approved multinational force of about 3,000 soldiers told Reuters, "This is a country with a lot of weapons and disarmament is not our mission. Our mission is to stabilise the country".

"It seems there's been a flip," Jocelyn McCalla, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights, told IPS.

Previously, "the U.S. military commander was fortunately saying they were going to disarm, they were going to aggressively disarm people, they were not going to tolerate thugs running around ... and now they've switched sides and basically are saying 'we're not going to do any disarming'."

"And they make a very (fine) distinction between political stability and disarming. In my opinion," added McCalla, "you can't have political stability unless you disarm these guys".

He said the new strategy "questions the policy that Foley, (Secretary of State Colin) Powell and everyone else has over this issue. It also raises the question, what in fact is the U.N. going to be doing in Haiti?"

U.N. peacekeepers are scheduled to take over from the multinational force by May 29.

McCalla said the rebels have not slunk into the shadows waiting for U.N. troops to arrive, as some people predicted they would. "They're there for everybody to see; they are not going to relinquish power; they are exercising power ... they told the prime minister on Saturday, 'listen if you don't do it (our) way, we'll kick you out'."

Stohl, who raised the issue of the M-16 shipment in an article published Tuesday, said the powers now dominating Haiti risk repeating mistakes made after Aristide's restoration.

"You really can't have a stable Haiti or security for its people if you don't disarm the country ... there has to be some kind of disarmament of the rebel groups, the criminal gangs, those who are exploiting this opportunity to terrorise the Haitian population."

"People, as long as they don't feel secure, are going to want to hold onto their guns. That's what happened in 1994 -- there was no buy-in to the political and democratic environment. As a result, people turned in (weapons) that were completely unusable and then went out and bought better ones," she added.

Stohl believes Washington should at least delay shipping the M-16s to the Dominican Republic. The State Department disagrees. "We have seen no indications that weapons provided by the U.S. government are making their way across the border," said its spokesman.

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Quote of note:

Administration officials were so intent on mobilizing every possible argument that some of their points seemed contradictory. Collectively, they said Clarke was responsible for counterterrorism but out of the loop, claimed he was obsessed with which meetings he could attend but refused to go to some meetings, and argued both that his book was published too soon and too late.

Brad DeLong, in connection with a direct challenge to my judgement of Tom Toles' talents, lines up examples of the above.

If you're on dial-up, put on some hot water for a cup of tea. There's a lot to text in those examples.

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White House Fights Clarke Fire With Fire
Bush Aides Rush to Head Off Damage

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A01

As his advisers tell it, President Bush had tired of the White House playing defense on issue after issue. So this week, his aides turned the full power of the executive branch on Richard A. Clarke, formerly the administration's top counterterrorism official, who charges in his new book that Bush responded lackadaisically in 2001 to repeated warnings of an impending terrorist attack.

Bush's aides unleashed a two-pronged strategy that called for preemptive strikes on Clarke before most people could have seen his book, coupled with saturation media appearances by administration aides. They questioned the truthfulness of Clarke's claims, his competence as an employee, the motives behind the book's timing, and even the sincerity of the pleasantries in his resignation letter and farewell photo session with Bush.

The barrage was unusual for a White House that typically tries to ignore its critics, and it was driven by White House calculations that Clarke would appear credible to average viewers. Bush's advisers are concerned that Clarke's assertions are capable of inflicting political damage on a president who is staking his claim for reelection in large measure on his fight against terrorism.

James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said he was stunned by the ferocity of the White House campaign but said Clarke "is raising fundamental questions about the credibility of the president and his staff in regard to what they did to keep America safe."

"They are vulnerable, which is why they are attacking so hard," Thurber said. "You have to go back to Vietnam or Watergate to get the same feel about the structure of argument coming out of the White House against Clarke's statements."

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This picture of Dr. Rice amuses me.

Almost as much as this one.

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The Army is not wise.

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Army Misfires in 'Spy' Case
March 26, 2004

The Army used a megaphone to announce the arrest of Capt. James Yee as a spying suspect last October. It dismissed the criminal case with a whisper last Friday night, its timing designed to minimize the effect of the news. This week, foolishly digging itself a deeper hole, the Army issued a written reprimand to Yee, a Muslim chaplain who ministered to prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yee was chastised not for espionage but for dredged-up charges of adultery and downloading pornography. The Army should revoke the reprimand, apologize to the captain and wipe away some of the slime it has thrown. The Army claimed it dropped the charges because it feared exposing sensitive information required to prove a criminal case.

Military and civilian prosecutors have convicted spies many times by winning trials or getting guilty pleas without divulging classified material. Lawyers can be cleared to see classified material, and some hearings can be held behind closed doors. No, these charges were dismissed because the Army botched the case.

Prosecutors delivered classified materials to a defense lawyer not cleared to see them and dithered over just what documents were sensitive. The original suspicion of espionage evaporated quickly. Yee was charged with taking classified information home, not with transmitting it to anyone, and eventually even the allegations of mishandling classified material were dropped.

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Quote of note:

President Bush kept up the attack Thursday, declaring in New Hampshire that "had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government, to protect the American people." That simplistic contention evades the question asked by Clarke: Did the administration's focus on Iraq and Saddam Hussein detract from grasping and responding to the larger terror threat?

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Rice Blusters and Blunders
March 26, 2004

National security advisors are not above politics, even dirty politics. Henry Kissinger sought FBI wiretaps of his own National Security Council staff largely out of paranoia over a press report about secret U.S. bombing raids in Cambodia. Ronald Reagan's national security advisor, John Poindexter, lied to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair and destroyed documents about it. But fact-free spin stretches only so far.

For the last several days, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has been spearheading the campaign to disparage former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who has accused the administration of bungling the war on terror. But Rice's partisan and public attempts to subvert Clarke's credibility, as The Times reports today, are only putting her own reputation at risk.

Rice has hammered away at Clarke, calling his assertion that the administration was painfully slow to grasp the danger posed by Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001, "scurrilous." Such an overheated response to Clarke's measured language before the federal 9/11 commission Wednesday and in his new book suggests a lack of substantive response.

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Kerry celebrates status as leader of Democratic Party, pledges support for black press
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press
3/25/04 11:44 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- John Kerry celebrated his status as the leader of the Democratic Party on Thursday with shows of unity from former rivals, former presidents and others who are putting aside their differences to help him cast President Bush out of the White House.

Kerry and Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said the party, with $25 million and no debt, was better prepared than ever before to challenge the GOP and its incumbent president.

"The tools are in place," McAuliffe told the National Newspaper Publishers Association, leaders of black newspapers around the country. "Now we need to make sure to use these tools to make sure that John Kerry is elected president."

McAuliffe promised the publishers that the DNC would buy advertising in the black press, and Kerry said he embraced the commitment to advertise in black newspapers.

"I am determined that in this election, in this race, during the course of our campaign, we're going to reach out in an unprecedented fashion," Kerry said. "We are asking you to engage in an unprecedented way. We need to build the greatest grass-roots movement in the history of this country."

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African-American Coalition Launches Humanitarian Assistance Campaign for Haiti
Jenny Falcon
New York
23 Mar 2004, 23:15 UTC

A coalition of African-American churches, artists, social organizations and lawmakers has launched a new fund-raising campaign for humanitarian aid for Haiti. Members of the coalition met with reporters Tuesday in New York.
The Haiti Support Project has not set a monetary goal for its month-long campaign. But organizers say they hope donors will be generous.

As part of its appeal, the New York-based group, which has been involved in humanitarian assistance for Haiti since 1995, is broadcasting public service announcements, voiced by well-known African-Americans, about the plight of Haiti's people to help raise funds. The announcements will be heard on about 200 radio stations

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March 25, 2004

Pretend it's tomorrow.

For much of my life I've seen, heard, read all about the pathologies of the Black community. And I swear it's true, every time I see a new one I compare it to the advice given on the same problem at the turn of the century.

Knowing that the same solutions are being offered for 100+ year old problems is kind of frustrating.

I used to get drawn into discussions about why some specific shortcoming isn't a sign of some terminal flaw in Black people, Black culture until I realized those sorts of challenges are unending. We are not the public ideal. No one is…but point that out and you get "just because they're fucked up doesn't mean we have to be." Which I agree with, but I also notice that not being fucked up is a requirement for success that is unique to Black folks.

There's a LOT of things that are unique to Black folks.

Rah, rah, Talented Tenth, Black people already give more to charity than any other crew. And of course we should be taking class differences into account.

At the end of the day, I wonder as I examine the solution du jure exactly whose problem is being solved here. It's true a +10% Black unemployment rate is a problem for everyone, it's true a failing public school system is a problem to everyone but the nature of the problem differs depending on your situation. The problem of failing public schools, for instance, means something entirely different to those who need skilled workers and those who pay for the schooling. So when Gates says

To combat the problems, Gates has called for a new civil rights movement within the black community. For that to succeed, the "talented tenth" -- meaning college educated blacks -- must address and correct self-defeating behavior, in themselves and others.

I'd love to know what self-destructive behavior these college educated Black folks have that so desperately needs rooting out. Yes, put on the hair shirt Black folks…

I ain't really mad at him, though. See, he's kinda right.

Problem is, humans don't work like that: "Hey, let's all stop being as flawed as everyone else." If we could, those old-time rednecks were right…we would have taken over.

Yet because of our situation we can less afford such flaws.

And every exceptional requirement reminds me of something written about Mo Tse a couple of centuries ago:

That which sets itself apart from the common man must be regarded are far from the Way for the common man

But I'm not seeing a lot of choice.

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So you've seen this article, which has links to a three part interview with Dr. Gates in the Washington Post.

You should read them so you know what I'm reacting to tomorrow.

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Yesterday Louis at LatinoPundit brought to my attention a BusinessWeek article on the different experiences Black and Latino/Chicano folks have in the job market. The article put him on his guard against divide-and-conquer techniques, and justifiably so. You get line after line of things like this:

One reason for the disparity could be that Hispanics, especially undocumented workers, are often insecure about their education and embrace physical labor, according to Robert D. Lewis, owner of Canyon Fireplace in Anaheim, Calif. African Americans, on the other hand, come to the workplace with a bit more intellectual confidence.

In fact, blacks aspire to higher-level jobs because they tend to have more education. Only 57% of Hispanics age 25 or older have completed four years of high school, compared with 79% of blacks, according to U.S. Census data. And just 11% of Hispanics have at least four years of college, compared to 17% of blacks.

Economists say schools in the Latin American homelands of many of these workers are often inferior to the worst public schools in the U.S. And once people move here, immigrants generally prefer a paycheck -- which they often share with their families back home -- to a report card. Hence, many Hispanics don't develop the skills needed to land white-collar jobs.

and you could start thinking these correlations represent something real.

But if you think about this:

Certain Hispanic nationalities benefit from higher education and income, which usually translates into better workplace status. Though the overall unemployment rate for Hispanics hovered around 7% last year, Puerto Rican men had a 10.1% jobless rate -- nearly identical with that of black men, according to figures crunched by the Heldrich Center's Rodgers. Mexican women had an 11% jobless rate, higher than the 9.1% jobless rate of black women.

But Cuban men, who Rodgers says tend to be better educated, had a 5.9% rate, and Central and South American men claimed a 6.5% rate. The reality, says Jackson: "White Hispanics are handled differently than black Hispanics in this country."

you begin to get suspicious.

Well I do, anyway.

What this information says to me is race still trumps ethnicity in the USofA, but obviously:

Their lesser skills and willingness to work in low-wage jobs -- which tend to be the easiest to come by -- mean Hispanics don't stay unemployed for as long as either blacks or whites. And undereducated Hispanics are more willing than blacks to take what many Americans call "dropout" jobs, says William Spriggs, executive director of the National Urban League's Institute for Opportunity & Equality.

Latinos' thirst for labor and employers' eagerness to hire them "is so powerful that it offsets the education advantage blacks have," adds William M. Rodgers III, chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

there are those that will counter the "race card" with the "ethnicity card" to the benefit of no one but themselves. I can easily see the kind of divide between the conditions in which the "upper" and "lower" class Latinos live as exists in the Black community now…componded by race the way Black folks' relationships are compounded by colorism (yes, I am talking about your unlinked ass, lightskinnedpeople.com).

The patterns these comparisons form are real but not significant. And they shouldn't be seen as evidence of some sort of competition.

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However, if you really want to run on Bush's job creation record, be my guest.

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A GOP Strategy On Jobs
By Newt Gingrich

Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A23

The Democrats think they've found the perfect one-sided debate by presenting themselves as the party that opposes "outsourcing" of American jobs. They hope the Republican Party will be dumb enough to take the bait and be the side that favors outsourcing.

That kind of binary argument, in which the Republicans take the role of defending the loss of jobs overseas, would be a dead loser for the GOP. Republicans must set up a new, winning argument by focusing not on the loss of old jobs but on the creation of new ones.

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Senate Votes to Make Harming a Fetus a Crime
By Jim Abrams
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate voted Thursday to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during commission of a violent federal crime, a victory for those seeking to expand the legal rights of the unborn.

The 61-38 vote on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act sends the legislation, after a five-year battle in Congress, to President Bush for his signature. The White House said in a statement that it "strongly supports protection for unborn children." The House passed the bill last month.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said the bill was "powerful because this act is about simple humanity, about simple reality."

But abortion rights lawmakers contended that giving a fetus, from the point of conception, the same legal rights as its mother sets a precedent that could be used in future legal challenges to abortion rights.

It was the second big win for social conservatives, who last year pushed through protections for the unborn with enactment of the so-called partial birth abortion ban. That ban is now tied up in the courts.

The Senate cleared the way for passage with a 50-49 vote to defeat an amendment, backed by opponents of the bill, that would have increased penalties for harm to a pregnant woman but did not attempt to define when human life begins.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., President Bush's opponent this fall, interrupted his campaign schedule to vote yes on the amendment. He voted no on final passage.

The bill states that an assailant who attacks a pregnant woman while committing a violent federal crime can be prosecuted for separate offenses against both the woman and her unborn child. The legislation defines an "unborn child" as a child in utero, which it says "means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb."

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Quote of note:

The patents, of course, are believed to be necessary to give inventors a fixed monopoly time in a marketplace to recoup costs on research and development (R&D). Yet, again, data demonstrate that such costs are recouped well in advance of the 20-year patents that the US Trade Representative is pushing on poor countries through bilateral and regional trade agreements [12].

And the R&D claim ignores the fact that most AIDS drugs were produced through public financing (even through the clinical trials stages), and 85% of the basic and applied research for the top five selling drugs on the market were produced through taxpayer funding [13].

Go to the linked page to get the endnoted references.

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US AIDS CZAR UNDERMINES WHO INITIATIVE
Sanjay Basu
In May 2003, at its annual World Health Assembly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced a modest proposal: that it would provide the technical and organisational support to provide 3 million people in poor countries with antiretroviral treatment by the year 2005.

This "3-by-5 initiative" was minor in one sense, in that it would provide treatment to only about 5 percent of those in need. But in another sense, it was a major step forward, particularly because the WHO proposed a novel manner of delivering the anti-HIV medicines: combining the drugs into a "fixed-dose regimen", a combination pill containing three drugs in one capsule, allowing an infected person to take only one pill twice per day for a complete HIV-treatment regimen. Fixed-dose combinations are cheaper and easier to take than the existing HIV treatment protocol; taking two fixed-dose combination pills a day for a year costs $140 per patient, compared to about $600 per year for the normal regimen of six pills per day [1].

Previous excuses used to deny patients in poor countries access to antiretrovirals centred around two common arguments: that poor persons could not adhere to complex medication regimens and would therefore improperly take the drugs leading to drug-resistant forms of HIV, and that the infrastructure in poor countries is insufficient to support complex HIV care [2, 3].

Yet those who continue to state these excuses are almost universally unfamiliar with the public health and biomedical data accumulated over the last several years, which definitively demonstrates that in the most resource-poor settings - including the poorest place in the western hemisphere (the central plateau of Haiti) and the slums of southern Africa (such as the Khayelitsha township in South Africa) - antiretroviral treatment has been delivered with higher adherence, extraordinary success rates and no evidence of drug resistance [4-9]. The success of these interventions has resulted in the exportation of these models throughout the world - and physicians everywhere are now waiting for the necessary medications to arrive.

The WHO's generic combination pill would have improved and simplified treatment to the point where these models would have been even easier to adopt in most resource-poor settings.

Why had a combination pill not been designed before? Because HIV treatment requires a number of different types of medications, and these types are patented by different companies in the US and UK. Ideal combination pills could not be produced when one company owned the patent to a necessary chemical and another company owned the patent to a secondary component.

The patents, of course, are believed to be necessary to give inventors a fixed monopoly time in a marketplace to recoup costs on research and development (R&D). Yet, again, data demonstrate that such costs are recouped well in advance of the 20-year patents that the US Trade Representative is pushing on poor countries through bilateral and regional trade agreements [12].

And the R&D claim ignores the fact that most AIDS drugs were produced through public financing (even through the clinical trials stages), and 85% of the basic and applied research for the top five selling drugs on the market were produced through taxpayer funding [13].

According to the industry's own tax records (obtained from the Securities and Exchange Commission), Merck last year spent 13% of its revenue on marketing and only
5% on R&D, Pfizer spent 35% on marketing and only 15% on R&D, and the industry overall spent 27% on marketing and 11% on R&D [14].

Meanwhile, all of sub-Saharan Africa constitutes only 1.3% of the pharmaceutical market, so as one former pharmaceutical executive put it, allowing generics to enter this market would result in a profit loss to the patent-based industry equivalent to "about three days fluctuation in exchange rates" [15, 16].

But the drug industry's fight for monopoly patent rights in this market and middle-income country markets is serious, as the growing inequality in poor countries under the context of neoliberalism increases the market-share for more expensive patent-based drugs among the elite [17].

With all of this data accumulating, it would seem self-evident that the WHO's move to make a generic combination pill would not face much opposition. In reality, the new US AIDS "Czar", Randall Tobias, the former CEO of Eli Lilly, has almost totally undermined the WHO plan.

While he and the White House initially pledged to support the initiative, no monies have flowed to date, and Tobias appears to be waiting until the program completely collapses from financial instability [18].

Ironically, when President Bush claimed to pledge $15 billion to global AIDS efforts during the State of the Union Address last year (none of which has actually been apportioned to date), he quoted the price of the WHO generic pill as a basis for claiming that the US would support drug treatment for HIV-infected persons, since such treatment has become more affordable [19]. It now appears that the US will only pay if US patent-based pharmaceutical manufacturers are given the money - an effective subsidy of an already heavily-subsidized industry that is taxed at only one-third of the rate of other equivalent industries [13, 18].

While the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying the White House throughout this week to undermine the WHO initiative, Tobias has publicly stated that his concerns are not about the industry's interests, but about the safety of generics and the prospect that cheaper AIDS drugs would be smuggled illegally into Northern countries. "We need to have principles," he told the US Congress this week, "standards by which the purchase decisions can be made" [1].

The WHO has taken care of the safety standards concern by inspecting and making a list of "approved" generics whose safety standards meet international guidelines [20]. But the US Department of Health and Human Sciences has now convened a conference in Botswana on March 29 that will question the WHO's approval process, drawing in "experts" from the patent-based industry to claim that the process every major academic public health expert in the field has supported is somehow inadequate and unsafe [18].

The smuggling claim is more complex; while the company GlaxoSmithKline did have a shipment of AIDS drugs diverted from Sierra Leone early last year, it was later found that the shipment was partly still in Europe and simply mis-warehoused by GSK, and that the smuggling of the rest of the drugs took over a year for GSK to discover [21].

Indian generic manufacturers have been shipping drugs for over two decades without a single case of "diversion", and the fact that generics create new formulations and new pill shapes, colours and boxes makes it easier for customs officials to detect any form of diversion, as they would for any other type of illegal smuggling [22]. The EU has passed a customs regulation to assist in preventing any future diversion; while the US could do the same. Taking care of the problem this way would ironically undermine Mr. Tobias' own arguments.

It appears clear that Randall Tobias' agenda is not driven by data or rational thought, but by the industry whose combined soft- and hard-money campaign donations top the list of contributors in the US election cycle [23].
Shining a light on the Czar's activity may begin to expose his practices to scrutiny and - as was done when he and the US Trade Representative tried to undermine a WTO accord for generic drug procurement earlier this year - may prevent disintegration of an important public health initiative [24].

* Sanjay Basu is at the Yale University School of Medicine.
http://omega.med.yale.edu/~sb493/ Please send comments to [email protected]

* Visit the Advocacy and Campaigns section of Pambazuka News to read more about the March 29 meeting in Botswana where activists fear that generic medicine treatment will be discredited.

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Got some interesting experiments I'm running here. I figure the political world can stand a couple fewer rants. I should be back to my normal rate of posting tomorrow.

Maybe. I have to admit, though I've been busy and creative in other ways, Juliette's comment about my not having been particularly original in this space lately struck a nerve. It was a stub-your-toe nerve, not an I-need-a-root-canal nerve.

When I started blogging the idea was to get in one substantive post per day. Recently I've been piling stuff onto my plate like it's my last chance to eat. This happens periodically. When I recognize it I try to get some focus, pare things back a bit…but this time there's not many things I'm willing to give up. And there's but so much new stuff you can squeeze out of one head in a given amount of time…even so big a head as my own.

But new stuff there shall be. And I will try to do some more thoughtful posts. I don't know how that will impact my blogging volume though. I guess we will see.

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March 24, 2004

I think I figured out what's going on with Gadafy.

I think Gadafy is angling to be the West's reliable friend in Africa as the continent is absorbed into the world economy.

Blair to offer Libya military training
Tom Happold, Matthew Tempest and agencies
Wednesday March 24, 2004

Tony Blair is to offer British military training for Libyan troops when he meets Muammar Gadafy tomorrow.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said that the proposals were to show that Libya could defend itself without weapons of mass destruction.

Late last year Col Gadafy agreed to abandon his programmes to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and allow in international inspectors.

'Bringing Libya into the international mainstream'

A senior British official travelling with Mr Blair said the visit would seek to "continue the process of bringing Libya into the international mainstream and to make clear that we will be trying to get Libya's relationship with the EU developed in the months ahead".

Asked whether it was premature, he said: "Part of our agreement with Libya was that we and the US would act quickly to bring them back and show them the rewards of cooperation with the international institutions."

Commenting on the economic aspect of the trip, he said: "A number of British companies are interested in trade with Libya and it's possible that Shell will be able to sign a heads of agreement with Libya in the days ahead." "Shell are negotiating a heads of agreement for gas exploration off the Libyan coast," he added, and British Aerospace are in "advanced negotiations" with Libya.

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Bush, Kerry, and green differences
In a tight race the environment could swing undecideds.
By Brad Knickerbocker

As George Bush and John Kerry circle each other warily in the early days of the presidential campaign, focusing mainly on war and economic recovery, there's another issue that could make the key difference in a close race.

It's the environment. There are dramatic differences in tone and approach between the presumptive candidates here. As a result, the issue is more politically significant than it has been since former Interior Secretary James Watt's pyrotechnic presence early in the Reagan administration 20 years ago.

While the environment is seldom at the top of voters' concerns, it can significantly change the balance in a tight race - as Ralph Nader and the Green Party showed four years ago. And while national security and the economy are twin gorillas in the campaign, both sides know that environmental protection ranks high among American values from the grass roots on up - including among most Republicans, according to public opinion surveys.

In a confidential memo to elected Republican leaders last year, GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned that environmental issues are the Republicans' weak spot.As a result, wrote Mr. Luntz, "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." That Mr. Bush and Vice president Dick Cheney are both former oilmen does not help the administration's image here.

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More retirees in the red, not the pink
By Marilyn Gardner

For many Americans, retirement isn't as rosy as they might have expected. The best-laid plans must be postponed or scaled back when budgets turn from black ink to red.

Just ask Morni Ramirez of Loveland, Colo., who is in her late 60s but hasn't retired. She and her family were already living modestly when, one difficult week last spring, a series of medical emergencies involving her husband and two stepchildren saddled them with $3,000 in bills not covered by their health insurance. It was a setback for a couple already working hard to pay off $19,000 in old credit-card debts they brought to their marriage several years ago. Still, with two incomes and her Social Security check, they soldiered on, continuing to whittle down their balances.

That changed last Nov. 14. Mrs. Ramirez was laid off from her customer service job at Office Max. With only her husband's paycheck - he works for a grocery chain - they are struggling to keep up regular payments. Despite an intensive job search, Ramirez is still looking for work to help pay off the family's debts.

Their financial plight mirrors the challenges other older Americans are facing. A sobering new report by Demos, a public policy group in New York, finds that between 1992 and 2001, the average credit-card debt among Americans over age 65 nearly doubled to $4,041.

Those between 65 and 69, many of them recent retirees, reported a stunning 217 percent increase in credit-card debt to $5,884. That's up from $1,842 in 1992. Among those between 55 and 64, credit-card debt jumped nearly 50 percent to $4,088. (The average American family saw an increase of 53 percent, to $4,196.)

All this red ink is giving older Americans a dubious distinction: They're now the fastest-growing age group headed into bankruptcy court.

No wonder Demos calls its report "Retiring in the Red." And no wonder AARP is warning that this is "a national issue of deep importance."

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For a Day, Terrorism Transcends Politics as Panel Reviews Failures
By TODD S. PURDUM

WASHINGTON, March 23 — The setting was a nondescript Senate hearing room, but the scene was as singular as democracy itself: successive secretaries of state and defense with more than 14 years' combined service across Democratic and Republican presidencies being questioned by a bipartisan citizens' commission of familiar faces.

Yes, election-year politics crackled in the air. Yes, Republican panel members prodded and scolded Bill Clinton's cabinet members, and Democrats did the same to President Bush's. But the secretaries themselves often agreed with one other, regardless of party, and their public presence was a powerful sign that terrorism transcends politics — and that blame abounds for failing to fully face the threat in time.

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Today is my father's birthday, so I took my parents to lunch. This means I only saw his response to the first three interrogators.

He handled himself flawlessly. I'll get his book, not to read because there'll be no surprises for me in there but as an acknowledgement of sorts.

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Urban League Paints Dismal Portrait of Black America

Posted March 24, 2004 -- Fifty years after the Brown decision and 40 years after the Civil Rights Act, the quality of life for Black Americans, by most social and economic indicators, is far worse than that of White Americans, the National Urban League says in a new study.

African Americans are poorer, unhealthier, less educated, more discriminated against when it comes to housing and the criminal justice system, and they are less likely to seek remedy through the nation's political system, the League says in its annual report on the State of Black America.

One of the starkest contrasts between Blacks and Whites, the Urban League found, pertained to the wealth gap. When it comes to homeownership and family income, Black Americans are suffering.

According to Samuel Myers, Jr., one of the report's co-authors, as the overall U.S. economy prospered, between 1990 to 2000, so did the economic condition of Black America. Household incomes rose and the wage gap between Blacks and Whites narrowed; the poverty gap also slimmed. In recent years, however, the racial chasm has widened notably, the report says.

"Although the boom brought increased incomes, higher levels of employment, and falling poverty rates for many African Americans, few were able to translate these income gains into permanent assets," writes Myers. "Debt among [B]lacks remains high-much higher than it is among [W]hites. There is a paucity of financial assets, with [B]lacks holding much of their wealth in their homes.

Mortgage interest rates fell to unprecedented levels, but fewer and fewer African Americans applied for these conventional loans. Home ownership increased during the boom, but by the end of the decade, the gap in home ownership persisted within different income ranges."

Slightly more than two-thirds of all Americans and three-quarters of Whites Americans own their home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, In contrast, Census says, fewer than half of Blacks and Latinos (48 percent) and 54 percent of Asian Americans own their homes. A persistent problem, according to the Urban League, is that Blacks are denied mortgages and home improvement loans at a rate twice that of Whites.

The education gap is also disturbingly wide, the report says. While the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision guaranteed equal access to schools for Black children, the achievement of African American students lags behind that of their White counterparts.

There are numerous obstacles to learning that that many Black children uniquely are forced to cope with, Dr. Edmund Gordon, a professor of education, concludes in the report.

Among the most challenging hurdles, he says, are high family and community poverty rates; lower levels of education among parents; the high turnover and lack of skills among those teaching Black children; and low academic expectations and damaging effects of "ingrained negative stereotypes of them," Gordon says.

"Taken together, these and other sources of academic disparities continue to produce the ubiquitous under-representation of minorities among top academic achieving students," he says.

Health is also a major concern among Black Americans, according to the report. Not only do Blacks have higher rates of illness and death than Whites exist, but - in more ways than one - racism has a direct effect on the overall health of African Americans.

Says Dr. David R. Williams, who penned the health section of the report, "[R]acism adversely affects the health of African Americans in multiple ways that include the physical, such as the impact of residential segregation, and the psychological and physiological, such as the stress created by the subjective experience of discrimination."

Those racial differences also include the access that Blacks have to medical care, Williams says. The fact that African Americans have greater need for medical care due to higher levels of illness, they are more likely to be denied quality attention, he writes.

"There are systematic racial differences in the quality of care," he says. "For virtually every type of therapeutic procedure, ranging from high technology interventions to the most basic diagnostic and treatment procedures, Blacks and other minorities are less likely to receive medical procedures and to experience poorer quality medical care than Whites."

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that African Americans are still under-represented among health professionals, he says. "There has been only a relatively small increase in the proportion of African American physicians in medicine in the last thirty years," he says.

Williams urges that policies are established to address "fundamental non-medical" inequalities, because "improved medical care alone is unlikely to eliminate racial inequalities…."1

"America's large and persisting racial differences in health fly in the face of cherished American principles of equality. In fact, however, the health of black Americans can be viewed as the visible tip of an iceberg that reflects conditions increasing health risks throughout the population as a whole."

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People are trying to hang the blame for inaction on the Clinton crew. Sandy was like, we had a preliminary judgment and I've seen too many preliminary judgments come up wrong. He gave the Oklahoma City bombing as an example. He said the time to act was when the final word came down, and that didn't happen on Clinton's watch.

Everyone is waffling too much though. And there are constant shots at Clarke's book.

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There's more out there if you want them.

• BlackBox Voting: Ballot - Tampering in the 21st CenturyCommunity news site
• Bev Harris' activist site
• A Very American Coup - Scoop, the site from which Bev Harris launched her Black Box Voting campaign, collects articles about electronic voting.
• The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of an open voting system for use in public elections.
• Kathy Dopp's Article on Electronic Voting From her Truth is Better web site
• Bob Kibrick's site: American Democracy at Risk.
• UC Santa Cruz Scientist David Dill's site VerifiedVoting.org -- demand that election results be verfiable.
Electionline.org
• The OVC has created a Wiki for discussion of technical issues related to EVM2003 development.

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Silicon Valley Computer Scientists Team Up To Demonstrate Free Voting Machine

Scientists and engineers from the Silicon Valley have started a project aimed at developing a PC based voting machine they claim will be easier to use, more tamper-resistant, and cheaper than commercially available voting machines.

Computerized voting offers many advantages over traditional systems, including,

* The ability to easily handle multiple languages
* Meeting the needs of voters with disabilities
* Eliminates problems such as overvoting and other voter intent issues.

High quality refurbished PC's that are only one generation old exist in great abundance and have more than enough power to make great voting machines. More than 25 million such PCs are retired annually in the United States alone. Less than 10 percent of these PCs would be needed for all the voting booths in the U.S.

The concept has already been demonstrated in Australia where, in 2001, the Australian Capital Territory government commissioned the development of open source software to run on trailing-edge PCs set up in polling places as voting machines.

The current open source software development project, known as EVM, includes participants from around the United States as well as developers from overseas. EVM will differ from the Australian system in several ways. Most importantly, the machine will include a printer from which a completed paper ballot will be produced. It will work with either a touch screen PC monitor or a regular PC monitor and mouse.

The project developer, Alan Dechert, got EVM going with help from Stanford computer scientist David Dill, who referred several people to him. Arthur Keller, a UC Santa Cruz computer science professor, recruited one of his former students, Adrianne Yu Wang of San Jose, to be the Team Lead. Along with Ed Cherlin of Cupertino and Jack Walther of Santa Cruz, they chose to use the Python computer language for development of the demonstration system. Douglas W. Jones, a University of Iowa computer science professor and world-renowned expert on voting technology, is taking a very active role as advisor and mentor.

Other volunteers include Developer Lead David Mertz of Massachusetts, a well-known writer on computer programming issues. Additional key people include Matt Shomphe of Los Angeles, and Anand Pillai of Bangalore, India. Van Lindberg (Utah), Skip Montanaro (Illinois), Dennis Paull (California), and Matteo Giacomazzi (Italy) are all contributing their expertise to the project.

Jay Tefertiller, Ben Strednak, and Steve Gardner of ISIS Technology (Oklahoma City) are developing the non-proprietary hardware design, and working on establishing a trade association, tentatively called the "Open Voting Consortium," that will establish and maintain high standards for the open voting hardware.

The EVM project is using the services offered at SourceForge.net, the world's largest Open Source software development web site, to store source code and documentation, track issues, and manage the project. Developers want to demonstrate a voting system where all components are open for public inspection and debate. Consistent with this idea, all aspects of the development of the software are open to the public also. The direct URL for the project is at,

http://sourceforge.net/projects/evm2003

The demonstration standalone voting machines will be set up at strategic locations, for example, in the Silicon Valley area and Sacramento. A web based version will also be available so that anyone with Internet access can try out the look and feel of the system.

EVM project proponents hope that this successful demonstration project will lead to a very large well-funded academic study that will capitalize on other efforts to bring about a modern, reliable, affordable, uniform, and fully auditable voting system. While designed to be certified in the United States first, it will be built from the ground up as an international voting machine. The larger study will include not only the development of voting machine software, but all software necessary for election administration, and an Election Rules Database that will document all election rules in effect in all jurisdictions in the United States.
More background information can be found at the Open Voting Consortium
If you want to help with the EVM project, contact,

Alan Dechert
916-791-0456
4700 Allegretto Way
Granite Bay, CA 95746

To receive updates about EVM via email, write to

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If he'd have been playing the dozens with us, we'd have had to kick his ass, because the boy's humor is both relentless and on point.

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Quote of note:

Powell testified that the current administration had prepared a plan to go on the offensive against Osama bin Laden. "We wanted to destroy Al Qaeda," he said. But what Powell and other officials don't want to concede is that in its essentials, the plan for targeting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that landed on Bush's desk Sept.10, 2001, was much like the diplomatic strategy the Clinton administration had pursued, and that reinventing it delayed action.

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Harsh Light on 9/11 Errors
March 24, 2004

Top national security officials of two consecutive administrations agreed Tuesday before the 9/11 commission headed by former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean that they weren't responsible for the failure to disrupt Al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. Witnesses from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to her successor, Colin L. Powell, from former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to his successor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, offered spin control. Their words contrasted weakly with allegations about Bush administration inaction on terrorism in Richard Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies."

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who made complaints similar to Clarke's, was dismissed by critics as a crank. Clarke is undoubtedly doing his best to promote his book, and administration officials have questioned his motives and veracity, but as counterterrorism chief under presidents Clinton and Bush, he holds strong credentials. In the book, he denounces the Iraq war as a diversion from terrorism, a sideshow that he says is creating "the next generation of Al Qaedas." Clarke also traces a bipartisan decade of bungling in identifying and targeting Al Qaeda — much as the 9/11 commission does in its preliminary finding, released Tuesday.

Clinton, Clarke says, was willing to authorize military action against Al Qaeda but the government bureaucracy, including the military, balked. The 9/11 commission reaches the same conclusion in its new report, stating that the CIA and FBI "tended to be careful in discussing the attribution for terrorist attacks. The time lag between terrorist act and any definitive attribution grew to months, then years."

Powell testified that the current administration had prepared a plan to go on the offensive against Osama bin Laden. "We wanted to destroy Al Qaeda," he said. But what Powell and other officials don't want to concede is that in its essentials, the plan for targeting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that landed on Bush's desk Sept.10, 2001, was much like the diplomatic strategy the Clinton administration had pursued, and that reinventing it delayed action.

It's likely that, as Rumsfeld suggested Tuesday, killing Bin Laden would have done little to stop the airplane attacks, already planned for years. But that doesn't settle the question, bluntly raised by Clarke and backed with examples from his service in the administration, of whether Bush and his subordinates, in their determination to go after Saddam Hussein, actually increased the international terrorist threat. "There have been far more major terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and its regional clones … since Sept. 11," Clarke says.

As the 9/11 commission reconvenes today, with Clarke scheduled to testify, it will not provide the final word on the terror threat before and after Sept. 11. But it and Clarke's book have provided new information for an urgent debate, not fully engaged before the war in Iraq, over the effectiveness of the current administration's approach to terrorism.

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When l'il Georgie waselected (note: that's not a typo) the fact that he surrounded himself with an extremely experienced crew was seen as sufficient offset for his total lack of experience in foreign affairs.

Well, one set of his subordinates use their experience to spin things rather than explain them, and the other becomes whistle blowers.

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The Professionals' Revolt
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A21

… But Clarke did receive a huge if unspoken acknowledgment on the morning of Sept. 11: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice declined to run the so-called principals meeting in the White House Situation Room, choosing Clarke instead to coordinate the urgent information-gathering and to formulate the security responses to put before the president. Rice repaired, with Dick Cheney, to the White House basement's bomb shelter. A hijacked plane over Pennsylvania was headed toward Washington, and the rest of the White House evacuated at full sprint -- with the exception of Clarke and a handful of security professionals, who remained in the West Wing to continue their work.

But the security professionals who stayed at their station on Sept. 11 soon found they had philosophical differences with the neos in the shelter. They were empiricists: They took in as much information as they could and derived their conclusions on that basis. And, as Clarke and many of his fellow professionals were soon to discover, this has been a tough administration for empiricists.

Step back a minute and look at who has left this administration or blown the whistle on it, and why. Clarke enumerates a half-dozen counterterrorism staffers, three of whom were with him in the Situation Room on Sept. 11, who left because they felt the White House was placing too much emphasis on the enemy who didn't attack us, Iraq, and far too little on the enemy who did.

But that only begins the list. There's Paul O'Neill, whose recent memoir recounts his ongoing and unavailing battle to get the president to take the skyrocketing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. There's Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. There's Richard Foster, the Medicare accountant, who was forbidden by his superiors from giving Congress an accurate assessment of the cost of the administration's new program. All but Foster are now gone, and Foster's sole insurance policy is that Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress were burnt by his muzzling.

In the Bush administration, you're an empiricist at your own peril. Plainly, this has placed any number of conscientious civil servants -- from Foster, who totaled the costs on Medicare, to Clarke, who charted the al Qaeda leads before Sept. 11 -- at risk. In a White House where ideology trumps information time and again, you run the numbers at your own risk. Nothing so attests to the fundamental radicalism of this administration as the disaffection of professionals such as Foster and Clarke, each of whom had served presidents of both parties.

The revolt of the professionals poses a huge problem for the Bush presidency precisely because it is not coming from its ideological antagonists. Clarke concludes his book making a qualified case for establishing a security sub-agency within the FBI that would be much like Britain's MI5 -- a suggestion clearly not on the ACLU's wish list. O'Neill wants a return to traditional Republican budget-balancing. The common indictment that these critics are leveling at the administration is that it is impervious to facts. That's a more devastating election year charge than anything John Kerry could come up with.

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Kerry's '350 Tax Increases'
By Michael Kinsley

Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A21

President Bush seems to be running his reelection campaign on the basis of the Powell doctrine: Go in with overwhelming force from the start and strike a blow from which the enemy can never recover. Like the United States in Iraq, the Bush campaign has superior firepower and far more money. The lesson of Vietnam, articulated by Colin Powell, is: Use your superiority -- don't fritter it away in gradual escalation.

One of the weapons in Bush's arsenal is an old family heirloom. Bush fired it himself during his big Florida rally over the weekend. He asserted that John Kerry had voted for higher taxes 350 times during his 20 years in the Senate. Vice President Cheney and other presidential surrogates have been using this statistoid for several weeks, and it has been picked up and repeated in the conservative media echo chamber. In 1992, Bush's father charged that Bill Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, had raised taxes 128 times. This shabby and deeply disingenuous allegation became an embarrassment to the elder Bush, but it took weeks and months of pounding by the media and the opposition to make it this way. I'm hoping to spare us all that with a Powell doctrine-like strike early on.

The purpose of a phony statistic such as this one isn't to convince people of its own accuracy. The purpose is to trap your opponent in a discussion he doesn't want to have (in this case about his past votes on taxes), bog down the discussion in silly details that few people will follow, and leave a general impression that where there's smoke there must be fire. And certainly, if what matters to you above all else is paying fewer taxes, you'd be a fool to choose Kerry over Bush. But this isn't about taxes; it's about honesty. Honesty means more than factual accuracy, It means avoiding disingenuousness: not talking rot when you know it's rot. If that matters to you above all, you may be out of luck with either candidate this election. But if you wish to measure comparative rot, this 350-tax-increases business may be hard for Kerry to top. [P6: emphasis added]

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The Washington Post has an editorial titled The Clinton Mindset wherein one Peter D. Feaver takes the next rational Republican step: elect Bush because Clinton would have handled 9/11 badly.

Moreover, because the uniformed military themselves opposed a military role, the law enforcement mind-set was reinforced by Clinton's pathological civil-military relations.

Oh, yeah, let's blame the military too.

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March 23, 2004

Get the people who will be annoyed by this (and there will be a number of them) to vote Democratic…or at all.

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Air America Will Displace Black Talk On WLIB
By Karen Juanita Carrillo

NEW YORK (NNPA) - New York's radio station WLIB-1190 AM has been loyally "serving New York's Black community" - as its logo states - for decades now. In the early '90s WLIB was lauded as a resource for "Afrocentric" programming and became known for featuring Imhotep Gary Byrd's "Global Black Experience" show.

The station was in many ways a Black activist outlet.

But by the end of this month, WLIB will be taking on a different hue, as it joins the launch of Progress Media's "Air America Radio," the new, predominately White, liberal talk-radio network. Air America has reportedly partnered with Inner City Broadcasting Corporation (ICBC), which owns WLIB.

"We are excited about the diverse and important voices Air America Radio is bringing to the airwaves, both on our own WLIB signal and others," said ICBC Chairman Pierre Sutton. "This strategic partnership allows both companies to combine our resources and deliver relevant messages to a broad and diverse audience."

Sutton added, "That's what you call 'high-class B.S.!'" one former WLIB staffer said when told that Sutton said the station's changes were necessary because African-Americans had just stopped listening to WLIB. The former staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, insisted that if WLIB's talk shows were promoted the way conservative talk shows are - and the way Air America's shows will be - the station would have made money.

Air America Radio plans on using what it terms a roundup of "progressive activists" and "celebrities" as part of the activist left's efforts to counter the national popularity of White, Right-wing conservative talk shows and radio personalities. The network will begin broadcasting shows from across the country on March 31 over WLIB and radio stations WNTD in Chicago and Los Angeles' KBLA.

"I don't get it. I mean, I do not get it," local activist Elombe Brath said about Air America Radio's takeover at WLIB. Reports are that WLIB's 40th floor station has been remodeled for Air America, and that the 30th and 39th floors are also being re-built to suit the needs of the new network.

Brath, who hosts and produces the show "Afrikaleidoscope" on WBAI-FM, and who played a part in the Afrocentric reorganization of WLIB's programming back in the early 1980s, complained that if listenership was down at WLIB, the station should have restructured from within as it did in the 1980s.

"All of the talk should be organic, from within the Black community," Brath insisted. "How can they think about coming into New York with a package program like this? We have people here already who know radio, who can do shows. And they want to come in with a program from other people trying to talk to Black people in New York City? [WLIB] is just a station that has been stripped of what it's supposed to be!"

In its heyday, WLIB and shows like "Night Talk with Bob Law" on WWRL-AM, Samori Marksman's "Worldview" on WBAI-FM, Bob Slade's "Open Line" on WKRS-FM, and WWRL's "Drive Time Dialogue" formed part of its own advocacy radio network. They highlighted Black community health concerns, cultural awareness and political activities. Many have even claimed that WLIB's efforts helped to get out the vote for David Dinkins as he ran to become New York City's first Black mayor.

But now as WLIB joins with Air America Radio, plans are to keep only a few of the station's leading Black radio personalities. Mark Riley will be a co-host on "Uprising," Air America's 6-9 a.m. show, while Dahved Levy, Ann Tripp and news director Wayne Gilman will also remain with the station.

Air America Radio's featured on-air personality will be Al Franken, a comedian who helped create NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and who recently wrote the book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," a scathing anti-FOX News, anti-Bill O'Reilly book that became a best-seller.

Alongside Franken, Air America Radio will feature comedienne Janeane Garofalo; environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; author and activist Laura Flanders; Lizz Winstead, a co-creator of "The Daily Show"; radio personalities Mark Riley and Randi Rhodes; and political humorist Sam Seder. Chuck D, lead rapper for the group Public Enemy, was initially announced as part of the Air America Radio staff, but sources now say that the hip-hop icon is backing away from that commitment.

"I don't know how Air America is going to broaden the reaches of 'LIB," said one radio personality who chose to speak anonymously about the situation. "How is this going to impact the Black community? As far as I've heard, they've got a couple of Whites who just really want to go after Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and all the others. You can't convince me that that's going to be something good for Black and Hispanic people."

Brath agreed with that analysis: "You've got people here in New York who believe in Black culture, so I don't see why they're ... they're like outsourcing in a sense. In reality what the station needs is to have some people who know the community and can speak to its needs."

This story comes special to the NNPA from the Amsterdam News.

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HungryBlues, Searching the life and times of my father, Paul Greenberg

Benjamin T. is writing about his research into his father's life. Paul Greenberg, in this case, isn't the one that writes for Townhall but is the one who served as special assistant to the president of the SCLC. That being the case he's got a lot of Freedom of Information Act queries going.

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I'm willing to bet I'm the only one on the list not actively working in the arts or arts education. The introductions showed a broad, international membership, and it looks like there'll be announcements of different performance art things going on.

I do like this sort of thing: performance art, spoken word, hip-hop theater and the like. I don't know if I could go to, say, the launch party for PetiteMort's launch party for its webzine without being The Old Guy in the Club (not really old, just a little too old to be in the club) but it's interesting to consider.

You are invited to join the PIMAtalk yahoo group, a group devoted to discussion of the technology, theory, creation, and production of experimental artworks presented in a performance setting.

Emphasis is on collaborative, multi-disciplinary work, bringing together some or all: theater, dance, digital video and imaging, electronic music, sound design, and interactive technologies.

This group was created by the students of the Performance and Interactive Media Arts program at Brooklyn College in New York City.

Performance and Interactive Media Arts is a graduate program in collaborative, experimental, transdisciplinary artistic production created cooperatively by the Brooklyn College departments of Art, Computer and Information Science, Film, Television and Radio, Theater, and the Conservatory of Music.

For more information, visit: http://www.interactivearts.org

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Sistani says Iraq constitution a 'dead end'
Iraq's top Shiite leader threatens not to cooperate if UN endorses interim constitution.
by Matthew Clark

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has intensified his opposition to the country's interim constitution. Mr. Sistani sent a letter to the UN envoy in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, saying that flaws in the constitution "will lead to a dead end and bring the country into an unstable situation and perhaps lead to its partition and division."

In the letter, Sistani said he will not participate in meetings with UN officials if the Security Council endorses the US-backed interim constitution, MSNBC reports. The Shiite leader also said he would boycott the UN mission "unless the United Nations takes a clear stance that the constitution does not bind the National Assembly and is not mentioned in any new Security Council resolution concerning Iraq."

Among Sistani's main concerns is the consitution's heavy emphasis on ethnic and religious differences. "This constitution that gives the presidency in Iraq to a three-member council, a Kurd, a Sunni Arab and a Shiite Arab, enshrines sectarianism and ethnicity in the future political system in the country," his letter said.

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Aretha Franklin Hospitalized For Undisclosed Illness
03.23.2004 11:54 AM EST

Legendary soul singer Aretha Franklin was hospitalized for an undisclosed illness Saturday and remains in stable condition, according to her publicist.

Franklin's rep offered no estimate of how long the singer might remain in the hospital, the location of which has not been released. There have been no reports in recent years indicating that Franklin has had potentially serious health concerns.

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Welcome back, Serena! Williams returns to court
STEVEN WINE, AP Sports Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

(03-23) 13:44 PST KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. (AP) --

Sidelined by knee surgery, Serena Williams spent most of the past eight months designing dresses and dabbling in acting.

Now that she's ready to get back on a tennis court, it's as if she never left: Williams will be seeded No. 1 at the Nasdaq-100 Open, which begins Wednesday.

"I really, really am excited about getting back," said Williams, the two-time defending champion at Key Biscayne. "I've been in a lot of pain watching a lot of players play when I really want to be out there."

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The book is Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference., by Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser.

I read a reaction to a review in The Economist by Robert Tagorda at Priorities and Frivolities. The review opens with this:

An important new book traces the links between politics, racial diversity and the generosity of the state NOTHING better encapsulates the different attitudes of America and Europe to the poor than a table towards the end of Alberto Alesina's and Edward Glaeser's remarkable book*, due to be published later this month. It compares the prevalence of three beliefs: that the poor are trapped in poverty; that luck determines income; and that the poor are lazy. The first is held by only 29% of Americans but by 60% of citizens of the European Union; the second, by 30% of Americans and 54% of Europeans; and the third, by contrast, by 60% of Americans and 24% of Europeans.

Mr Alesina and Mr Glaeser, both Harvard economists, are doing what the best in their profession do well these days: seeking to explain society not merely with conventional economic tools but with analysis of institutions, geography and social behaviour. They begin with the observation that America and Europe differ strikingly in their willingness to allow government to redistribute income from rich to poor. Government spending in the United States is about 30% of GDP; in continental Europe, where it includes most health-care spending, it is about 45%. Almost two-thirds of this spending is on welfare. Americans, by contrast, are much more likely to give money privately. They appear to have given $691 per head in charitable donations in 2000, compared with contributions of $141 in Britain and a mere $57 in Europe as a whole.

What explains the difference in welfare systems?

Toward the end of the review, The Economist says:

The other half of the explanation lies in America's racial diversity. In spite of 20 years of unprecedented immigration, European countries, particularly smaller ones like Portugal and those of Scandinavia, are still highly racially homogenous. America, by contrast, has great diversity, which is especially wide in some states. In addition, the poor in America are disproportionately non-white. Non-Hispanic whites are 71% of America's population but only 46% of the poor.

Racial diversity in individual states is correlated with the generosity of welfare. For instance, the authors find that in 1990 Aid to Families with Dependent Children ranged from over $800 per family per month in mainly white Alaska to less than $150 in Alabama and Mississippi, where almost one-third of the population is black. Even after adjustment for inter-state differences in average incomes, the correlation with race remained strong. Across countries, too, racial diversity goes with low government spending on poverty relief.

The reason, argue the authors, is that “race matters”, and they marshal statistical evidence, much of it from opinion surveys, to back this up. People are likely to support welfare if they live close to recipients of their own race; but are antipathetic if they live near recipients from another race. The divergent attitudes of Europeans and Americans to the poor are underwritten by the fact that the poor in Europe tend to be ethnically the same as most other folk. In America, their skin is often a different colour.

The authors say that “political entrepreneurs”, eager to use race as an excuse to turn the poor against redistribution, shape attitudes to race and to poverty. At different times, America has had its share. Is Europe immune? Look at the successes of the likes of Jörg Haider and Pim Fortuyn, and wonder. The recent evolution of Europe as a destination of mass migration, much more ethnically diverse than America's in most of the past century, will test the durability of the European welfare state.

Mr. Tagorda isn't happy with this suggestion, but it doesn't surprise me. Diversity as an end unto itself is not a solution for racism. In fact ending racism, that irrational visceral distaste for a segment of humanity will not resolve all the problems caused by race.

See, there's an emotional reaction to racism that causes physical friction damage. Then there's the economic damage of being less wealthy as a community as a specific result of government action. And there's the two cultures that formed under the influence of racism, neither of which is what it could have been had not the specific decisions that created the legal and social structures underpinning slavery been created.

But. back to the subject at hand. Mr. Tagorda gave some links to a couple of academic papers that lend some support to the book's thesis but reserves judgment until reading the whole book, which is wise. But the premise makes sense, matches my own observations. Makes sense to a couple of other folks as well.

Too bad we're still not really ready to come clean on this race thing.

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Jackson confident in his bid for paper
Published March 23, 2004

All eyes at the Chicago Sun-Times are on Yusef Jackson, son of Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Yusef is better known these days for running Anheuser-Busch beer distributor River North Sales & Service. But with a chance, albeit remote, that someone from the newsmaking Jackson family eventually could own the city's No. 2 newspaper, Yusef's name has garnered significant interest at 401 N. Wabash Ave., at least among the reporter ranks.

It's one thing as a reporter or columnist to work for a newspaper owned by cost-cutting corporate suits. It's another to work at a paper owned by someone whose family includes a controversial civil-rights crusader and a congressman.

A source close to the Jacksons said that the family is well aware of the implications from a journalistic standpoint. They've even heard rumors that some key columnists or reporters, fearing a conflict of interest, are considering their options if the Jacksons get the paper.

But Yusef, who along with billionaire family friend Ron Burkle, made a bid estimated at more than $850 million for all of Hollinger International Inc.'s Chicago properties six weeks ago, has no plans to back away from his offer. On the contrary, he is said to be "feeling good" about his prospects of winning.

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As a side observation, the Chicago Sun-Times has a pretty extensive downloads section for a newspaper.

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OKLAHOMA: JUDGE DISMISSES RACE-RIOT SUIT Survivors of a race riot that destroyed Greenwood, a black neighborhood in Tulsa, 83 years ago cannot seek reparations in court because of the long-expired statute of limitations, Judge James Ellison of United States District Court ruled. The judge dismissed a suit filed last year against the city and the state by 150 survivors and about 300 descendants of those who lost property or were killed in the 1921 riot. His decision, issued Friday, was entered into the court's record system yesterday. (AP)

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Crosswinds

I wonder: would gays be willing to give up the right to marry if conservatives gave up the right to divorce? 'Cause most of those leading the fight for "family values" have had more than one family, and apparently believe so deeply in the "sanctity of marriage" that they've gone back for more sanctity, if you catch my drift. I've also sometimes wondered if women would give up the right to abortion if those opposed to abortion would give up the right to reproduce. It seems like a place to start negotiating, anyway.

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This started at Boing Boing.

This is not a satire on how white folks take Black culture and go over the top with it. You can actually buy disco lights for your teeth. MUCH cheaper than platinum.

This company. Gadget Stuff, has some really wild stuff for sale, like an inflatable sumo costume and various micro cameras.

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U.S. school progress reports defy common sense
Mon Mar 22, 7:44 AM ETBy Patrick Welsh

At a faculty meeting recently, we teachers at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., received coffee mugs with the school name and the words "Fully Accredited" emblazoned in big, red letters. The principal's gift was a tongue-in-cheek award to recognize the fact that the school finally had reached the 70% passing benchmark on Virginia's Standards of Learning (SOL) exams and now was deemed worthy of full accreditation by the state board of education.

Even though I believe Virginia's high-stakes tests are dumbing down education, I couldn't help but be delighted that we'd hit the mark. I was tired of seeing the school publicly disparaged by the state for the past four years.

But my delight was tempered when I heard that even though we are in the state's good graces, we are on the federal government's blacklist for not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of President Bush (news - web sites)'s No Child Left Behind Act.

Like most of my colleagues who were focused on getting students to pass the state SOLs, I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the federal law. But when I took a close look to find out where my school fell short, I didn't feel so bad.

The federal progress requirements defy common sense. Thousands of schools across the country that passed their states' exam benchmarks failed to meet NCLB's standards. Eighty-four percent of Florida's schools, for example, didn't make it; 78% of the Florida schools that attained an A rating under the state's standards fell short of the federal mark.

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Is Bin Laden for Bush?
An uncomfortable possibility for the GOP.
By Mickey Kaus
Posted Monday, March 22, 2004, at 1:17 AM PT

Robert Novak cites a private intelligence expert, George Friedman, for the proposition that the election-changing Madrid bombing shows Al Qaeda wants to defeat Bush.

But Friedman believes the ultimate target is Bush himself, predicting an attempted use of terror to defeat him in November.

... The foreigner whose approbation Kerry surely disdains is Osama bin Laden, but counterterrorism experts say the U.S. election has become an al-Qaida priority. ...

Hmm. Doesn't it seem likely that Novak's take is 180 degrees wrong, an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable possibility that Al Qaeda and its allies may actually prefer Bush's reelection? For one thing, that's what the "group that claimed responsibility for the bombings" appears to have explicitly said:

"The Spanish people ... chose peace by choosing the party that was against the alliance with America," said a statement attributed to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which says it is affiliated with al-Qaida.

The statement said it supported Bush in his re-election campaign, saying it is not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.

"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization." [Seattle Times, March 20]

Perhaps the alleged Al-Masri Brigades statement is bogus. But it's Novak himself who treats it as authoritative. If one part of the statement is to be believed, why not the other part? And the underlying theory--that Bush's reelection will 'heighten the contradictions' and create more terrorists, ultimately producing an apocalyptic East-West clash--is an entirely plausible rendition of Al-Qaeda-ish ideology, no? Bin Laden, in this reading, would intend to use terror to split dovish Europe from hawkish America rather than to replace America's hawks.

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I don't think the death of a single individual will stop a people so dedicated to their cause they will face down heavily armed troops armed themselves with no more than rocks.

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Killing of Yassin a turning point
Israel's disengagement strategy aims to disable Hamas before pulling out of Gaza.
By Ilene R. Prusher and Ben Lynfield

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP - The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin Monday as he left morning prayers marks a turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and the end rhetorically and practically to the peace process.

The death of the wheelchair-bound cleric, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement, is also likely to lead to a dramatic upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian violence, analysts say.

"The [peace] process has been dead for a long time, but talk about it continued by the Americans, Egyptians, Palestinians, Israelis, and Jordanians. Now even the talk about the peace process will be put to rest for a period of time," says Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah.

More than 200,000 Palestinians gathered Monday for funeral procession of the 67-year old sheikh. "Everyone here is like another Sheikh Yassin," says Iyad Hamdi, a stern-faced university student spray painting a message of revenge near the place where thousands of chairs were assembled for mourners. "Of course there will be more martyrdom operations. Because of this, another million people will will come out to take his place."

His friend, Mohammed Abdel Latif, says the assassination will only encourage more Palestinians to sacrifice themselves for the "cause," as Yassin did. "Hamas will not die with Sheikh Yassin," he declares.

Some Israeli strategists apparently hoped that, at the very least, it would be severely weakened. As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues to float his "disengagement plan," which would entail a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from most of the Gaza Strip - including the 17 Jewish settlements there - and some of the West Bank, the Israeli military has grown concerned with the threat of Hamas capitalizing on the moment of retreat to declare a victory. The worry that Hamas would "win" in the withdrawal from Gaza - similar to the way Hizbullah scored a self-declared victory when Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in the spring of 2000 - has unleashed an Israeli military drive to truncate the power of Hamas.

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One Patrick Chisholm, in his editorial titled An Anti-Semitic left hook in the Christian Science Monitor, takes a running start and jumps into the middle of absurdity.

Anti-Semitism traditionally has been associated with the extreme right. Now, it is becoming more common among the extreme left.

Or maybe not. Maybe the flaws in his editorial are due to a lack of appropriate terminology on his part. Although he makes this true and reasonable observation:

Contrary to what one would think, left- and right-wing extremists are, in major respects, ideological soul mates. Don't be fooled by labels; applying the simplistic terms of "right" and "left" to complex political realities naturally begets confusion.

While ultra-rightists are generally thought of as racist and ultra-leftists as nonracist, the latter are by no means immune to such decrepitude.

he consistently conflates Leftists with the likes of Robert Mugabe and the Third Reich (yes, he went all Godwin) rather than Nelson Mandela and Switzerland. Those of us that have gone through the Political Compass exercise will recognize the commonality Chisholm sees is authoritarianism, not Leftism.

I also want to note that Chisholm is a Semitic Supremacist.

Palestinian hatred of Israelis, I suspect, is based on more than just land disputes and the policies of the state of Israel. Much of it likely derives from envy. Jews as a whole are among the most able, hard-working, and intelligent people ever to inhabit the earth. Wherever they go they succeed. They turned Israel into an economic powerhouse for its size, and "made the desert bloom." Success breeds envy. Envy breeds hatred.

Taking my shit breed hatred too. So does destroying my tools and then blaming me for being unable to build anything. And surrender as a precondition to negotiation is simply a non-starter.

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Target Peace, Not Sheikhs

Israel killed off more than just the second-most popular Palestinian leader with a missile strike on Monday.
It also finally finished off President Bush's already tattered road map for creating a Palestinian state, a plan that was essential to his vision of a terror-free Middle East.

And by assassinating - rather than simply arresting and trying the Islamic leader of the group Hamas - Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Israel further erodes its role as a model of democratic and civil principles to the Arab world.

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Let's say you're in a war. And let's you and your opponent identify with your respective sides of the struggle based on your religion. And let's say after some fifty years you've decided you're serious about negotiating a peace settlement.

'Troubled'

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the attack, saying it was against international law and did nothing to further the Middle East peace process.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the killing was "unjustified" and "very unlikely to achieve its objective".

France also joined in the condemnation, and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said it was "very, very bad news" for the peace process.

In the United States, the Bush administration has said it was "deeply troubled" by the killing, and US officials have denied any advance knowledge of Israeli plans to target the Hamas leader.

But the Americans refused to condemn the killing outright, appealing instead for calm and restraint.

Sheikh Yassin was leaving a mosque in Gaza's Sabra district in his wheelchair with an entourage when they were attacked by Israeli helicopter gunships at dawn on Monday.

Would you kill one of the leaders of the side you're supposed to be making peace with on the doorstep of one of their temples?

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March 22, 2004

A response to Unfair, by Juliette at Baldilocks:

(Your comments aren't working.) Glad to see you back in the comment mode rather than just posting articles. I would take your "outside their specific domain" comment personally, but since I know that--along with my rants--I've submitted posts using valid premises and cogent reasoning, I just can't. (Now whether you, using the same tools, would come to different conclusions is a separate issue.)

Should I chalk this oversight on your part up to your polemicist and rhetorical tendencies? Don't know, since I don't you and have rarely visited your site (not because of what you saw, but because you've rarely had anything to say of your own lately).

Traditionally, most of the action around here takes place is the comments. The articles are both starting points for discussion and opportunities for me to goad folks a bit with the titles I choose. We get intense over economics sometimes, Libertarian vs Progressive vs Conservative some times, and things ebb and flow as all things do. It would be easy for you to miss. I should probably add a few threads to the "Best of" box. There were several very interesting discussions on pharmaceutical pricing.

I do know that you and Walter are operating from a set of assumptions and that I'm operating from another. Please be so kind as to remember and respect that before you attempt to belittle my opinion and my way of expressing it.

Sorry you're troubled.

Speaking for myself, I'm operating from observations. I don't believe you are. I believe "set of assumptions" is a very accurate description of your starting point, as far as politics go. And for absolute clarity, I don't belittle your way of expressing yourself at all. You're quite good. I think very, very little of the particular opinion you've expressed in the post Walter commented on, though.

And I post what I post.

You as a person have my respect, and you (as well as the entire Black Republican cohort- see the comments again!) always will. But there are certain opinions you express that I will never respect. And as you may recall from our first discussion I never say anything I'll need to back away from later.

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In 1920 The Nation published an article by James Weldon Johnson titled Self-Determining Haiti: The American Occupation . That article is up on Africana.com, with an introduction by Professor Kim Pearson.

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If you're in Chicago you might find this interesting.

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The Annual Leon F. Forrest Lectureship

April 15, 2004
4:30PM
Abbott Auditorium of the Pancoe-Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Life Sciences
Pavilion 2200 Campus Drive, Evanston

Samuel R. Delany
Professor of English, Temple University
Author of Dhalgren, The Einstein Intersection, The Motion of Light in Water, Silent Interviews, and Times Square, Red Square

April 16, 2004
2-6 PM
Harris Hall 107
1881 Sheridan Road, Evanston

The Politics of the Paraliterary: A Symposium on Afro-Diasporic Speculative Fiction and Theory

Speakers:

Kodwo Eshun
Author of More Brilliant than the Sun, a treatise on futurism in Black popular music.

Alondra Nelson
Assistant Professor, Yale University. Co-editor of Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life. Founder and moderator of the Internet discussion group, AfroFuturism.

Greg Tate
Staff Writer at The Village Voice. Author of Flyboy in the Buttermilk and Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience.

Sheree R. Thomas
Editor of two anthologies: Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones.

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After 9/11, U.S. policy built on world bases
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, March 21, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Government officials have been searching for suitable memorials to the thousands killed in the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, but the most telling monument, which best illustrates the historic turn America's approach to global problems has taken since the attacks, may turn out to be an obscure American air base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

The Bush administration honored the memory of Chief Peter J. Ganci Jr., the most senior New York City Fire Department official killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center, by naming the new military base there for him.

It was a fitting choice because the facility is just one in a string of new overseas military deployments, beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, that have become a defining characteristic of President Bush's tough style of foreign engagement.

One year after U.S. tanks rolled through Iraq and more than two years after the United States bombed the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan, the administration has instituted what some experts describe as the most militarized foreign policy machine in modern history.

The policy has involved not just resorting to military action, or the threat of action, but constructing an arc of new facilities in such places as Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Qatar and Djibouti that the Pentagon calls "lily pads." They are seen not merely as a means of defending the host countries -- the traditional Cold War role of such installations -- but as jumping-off points for future "preventive wars" and military missions.

In a major policy statement issued in September 2002 and titled the National Security Strategy, the president declared, "It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength," and he detailed two significant new uses of that might: pre-emptively attacking would-be enemies, as in Iraq, and preventing rivals from even considering matching U.S. strength. It was a new assertion of U.S. primacy, not through diplomacy or economics but through unquestioned military domination.

This sharp turn in U.S. policy has ignited a passionate debate -- well beyond the dispute over the wisdom of the war in Iraq -- over the proper role of U.S. power and whether the focus on the projection of military force has taken attention away from such other critical issues as economics and trade, the stunning rise of China as an economic power and the need to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Why does that surprise me?

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Everyday Life, Doubts Return
Jane Regan

GONAIVES, Mar 22 (IPS) - The flies hovering over the stinking, shining green open sewers here do not appear to notice any change. Nor do the naked children, their distended bellies and orange hair sure signs of malnutrition, worms or worse.

Still, life is different here, in Haiti's fourth-largest city, halfway up the coast, where some 200,000 people try to eke out a living fishing or buying and selling produce and other goods.

It is not just that Jean-Bertrand Aristide is no longer president and that Gerard Latortue, a native of this dusty and dilapidated port town, has taken over with a largely technocrat cabinet.

Nor is it the presence of 150 or so French Legionnaires, whose sorties turn into parades when they are inevitably followed by scores of men, women and children on foot and bicycle.

The real change is that after months under virtual siege, life in Gonaives is getting back to normal.

Businesses and schools are open. The streets hustle and bustle with street merchants hawking piles of eggplant, tomatoes, used blue jeans and shoes, toothpaste and tomato paste from the United States.

The dozens of huge barricades of refrigerators, car hulks and garbage that blocked ”National Highway Number 1”, a two-lane road that in many places is more a riverbed than a highway, have been cleared away. Buses and trucks roll through town on their way north or south, careening wildly, barely missing the motor scooter taxis, students and travellers clogging the narrow route.

And the heavily armed street gang-turned-rebel army that patrolled the streets after taking over the city Feb. 5 have put down their guns, at least for now.

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Ezra at Pandagon:

Wow. I mean, just wow. I don't even know what to say, but, really, wow. "One nation, under God" is just a recognition that people who founded the country believed in some sort of higher being? Wouldn't that then read "One nation, by peole who believed in God"? But no. Under God. As a historical marker. A link to a religious history. Kind of like how we have "One nation, at war" to show how we've fought wars throughout history. Except we don't. Maybe soon we'll have "One nation, over Negroes" just to remind children that slavery was bad. Or "One nation, extra cheese" cause we're fat. How about "One nation, under Republicans, Democrats, Tories and Whigs" since different parties have ruled? Maybe "One nation, under white people" because our founding fathers we're undeniably light skinned.

I mean wow, guys. Really. Wow.

Well guy, that's what you get for expecting reason under the current circumstances.

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Eric Alterman handles him well.

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The Campaign Desk at The Columbia Journalism Review:

…So what prompted the intrepid reporter to dig into Kerry's record? Just for fun, take a look at the headline to this March 9, 2004 Republican National Committee research report: "Even Fellow Democrats Warned Kerry About His Dangerous Cuts" (Italics ours).

The "fellow democrats" phrase could just be a coincidence. But that seemed less likely after Campaign Desk noticed Solomon has quotes from two Democrats, one from Sen Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and the other from Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz), which are identical to those in the RNC research.

While Solomon does add to the RNC's work with a statement from Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., expressing support for Kerry, his report is a clear demonstration of the influence opposition research is already having on coverage of the campaign.

via Oliver Willis

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As much respect as I have for the Harvard University Civil Rights Project (how much respect? they're permanent residents in the Reality Checks link box), the last line in this extract is wrong. We never tried "separate but equal." We only had "separate."

The fact is, had we done the "equal" part, no one would have ever complained.

The problem is not that integration is being undone. It's that no one can conceive of equal education for all people under any other circumstances.

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Public School's Racial Balance Fading, Study Says
Date: Monday, March 22, 2004
By: Associated Press

America's public schools, after decades of struggle to achieve racial and ethnic balance, are tilting back toward separate institutions.

And children of color today are much more likely to be in mostly minority schools than they were a decade ago.

With little fanfare and scant publicity, federal judges and school policy-makers have abandoned hundreds of desegregation plans written in the 1960s and 1970s.

The public largely is unaware of the change, according to a recent national poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University. Sixty percent of Americans say it is "very important" that "students of different races attend classes together." Most incorrectly assume that their local schools are integrated.

A study of U.S. Department of Education records conducted by Scripps Howard News Service found that racial isolation - the percentage of children of color enrolled in schools that are 90 percent minority or more - has risen in at least 36 states between 1991 and 2001, the most recent year for which reliable data are available.

In all, 6.6 million of the nation's 18.9 million black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian children in 2001 were enrolled in public schools that were 90 percent minority or more. That means 35 percent are racially isolated in their classrooms.

"These patterns are not the result of current illegal practices by school districts," said Rod Paige, U.S. secretary of education. "The reasons are complex, and sociologists and demographers can help us figure it out. Some of the causes involve housing patterns and economic factors."

But several prominent experts on race in public schools are quick to blame the nation's political and judicial leaders for making a quiet policy change.

"We're in a major process of re-segregation," said Gary Orfield, co-director of Harvard University's Civil Rights Project, which tracks school segregation patterns by school districts. "There is a cowardice about this issue. People are afraid to talk about it because it is so sensitive. So we are slipping back into separate-but-equal schools, a policy we tried once without success."

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Your got your politicals and your polemicists, your reasoners and your rhetoriticians.

Predictably, someone is huffing and puffing because the little prince is being criticized. Juliette at baldilocks seems to think that former White House terrorism official Richard Clarke’s claim last night on 60 Minutes are just more nitpicking by the Bush Haters League. Of course, her argument makes no sense, but let’s have a go at it for some late night fun.

In each pair the latter half is pretty helpless outside their specific domain so I tend not to mess with them. But it's always fun to watch someone else (like Walter at Idols of the Marketplace) do it well.

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1. It's kind of old, kind of late in the day, and has (at best) only symbolic value
2. Get thier old, jive, moldy ancient decrepit asses up on the goddamn gallows like they did to Mr. Till

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The Ghost of Emmett Till
Mississippi is reliving a horrific murder that brought the state worldwide attention in the 1950's and served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. If the Justice Department acts on what appears to be new evidence — and reopens the investigation into this unsolved killing — the country could yet learn the truth about the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy who was brutally murdered for supposedly whistling at a white woman in 1955.

Emmett, who was visiting from Chicago, was abducted from a relative's house at gunpoint by two white men. His mutilated body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Mississippi officials ordered the coffin sealed and tried to bury it quickly to keep pictures of the battered corpse out of the press. But Emmett's mother held an open-coffin funeral that drew international attention.

The two white men charged with abducting Emmett at gunpoint were predictably acquitted by an all-white jury. The trail had long since grown cold when a young documentarian named Keith Beauchamp started to make a film about the case in the mid-1990's. Mr. Beauchamp interviewed several potential witnesses, including one who was jailed in another city at the time of the trial to keep investigators from calling him to the stand. Backed by Emmett's relatives, Mr. Beauchamp now asserts that there were actually 10 people — several of them still alive — present at the murder. Family members and members of Congress are urging the federal government to investigate this case, just as it has several other civil rights murders that were committed decades ago but solved only recently.

Given the historical importance of this crime, the Justice Department should move forward to investigate even if the new evidence is less than a road map to sure conviction. There are still millions of people who are eager to know what happened to Emmett Till on that terrible night in Mississippi almost 50 years ago.

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Would Republicans even be concerned about harsh rhetoric if they weren't getting as good as they give?

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Worries About Campaign's Tone Are Voiced on Both Sides
By NAT IVES

The harsh tone of the presidential campaign is threatening to alienate voters and undermine the perceived legitimacy of the winner, prominent members of both parties said today.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, appearing on "Fox News Sunday," said that the ferocity of the attacks flying between Mr. Bush and his rival, Senator John Kerry, could hold down voter turnout on Election Day.

"Already I'm hearing from people here that are saying, `Look, I'm not even going to vote if this is the way the campaign is going to be conducted,' " Mr. McCain said.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut and a former candidate for the presidential nomination, said on "Fox News Sunday," "The nation is almost evenly divided politically, and there are strategists in both parties who are urging both candidates to go for victory by whipping up into a frenzy the partisan ideological base of both parties."

The worries on both sides follow a rancorous week marking the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and television commercials for Mr. Bush repeatedly called Mr. Kerry a security threat if elected. Mr. Kerry, meanwhile, described the current foreign policy as "arrogant" and said the president had left United States troops bogged down in Iraq "with the target squarely on their backs."

Another prominent Republican, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said today that a divisive campaign could also hurt United States efforts abroad.

"Kerry and Bush must conduct themselves in a way that when Nov. 2 comes, whoever wins, they are going to have to have legitimacy and the authority to govern this country and keep this coalition together for another four years," Mr. Hagel said on the ABC News program "This Week."

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Except those occasions where the crook is a cop.

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Telltale Words on a 1996 Tape Are Recalled in a Police Inquiry
By JIM DWYER and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

Except for one extraordinary twist, the raid on Apartment 10B in March 1996 would have vanished long ago into the dense annals of New York crime-fighting. A team of police officers and federal agents, hunting for evidence against a drug gang, broke into the apartment, on upper Madison Avenue. They pulled open drawers, looked in closets and upended cushions. They left behind their search warrant, on which they noted that they had not found the very first item they had come looking for: "monies."

Yet a fluke event — "once in a hundred years," as a lawyer later said — provided a candid glimpse of the search and raised troublesome questions.

During the commotion, someone turned on a telephone answering machine's recorder, apparently without realizing it. For the next 30 minutes, the machine captured the clamor and chatter of the search: an exclamation, "My God, that's a lot of money;" a wisecrack about the Constitution; a crude racial remark about the apartment's residents, who were not home.

Seven minutes into the tape, a man can be heard quietly counting. "Six hundred," he says. "Eight hundred. Nine hundred." Twenty-nine seconds later, the sound of a zipper is heard.

Annette Brown, who lived in the apartment and played a minor role in her son's drug business, later told authorities that $900 in cash had disappeared from a zippered portfolio. The police and federal agents all denied seeing money. At least three official investigations of Ms. Brown's claim and tape led to no charges.

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The economy has actually created a few McJobs, yes. They are exactly the sort of jobs that can't be outsourced…they can't manufacture a hamburger in China and still get it to you warm.

Despite the Sluggish Economy, Welfare Rolls Actually Shrank
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, March 21 — In a trend that has surprised many experts, the federal welfare rolls have declined over the last three years, even as unemployment, poverty and the number of food stamp recipients have surged in a weak economy.

After Congress overhauled the nation's welfare system in 1996, the number of families receiving benefits dropped much faster than federal and state officials had expected. Even more remarkable, officials say, the rolls did not grow during the recession of 2001 or the sluggish economy since.

In fact, in the last three years, the number of families on welfare has declined slightly, to two million, which is less than half the number receiving public assistance when President Bill Clinton signed the welfare law in August 1996.

Experts suggest many reasons. People work harder to find jobs before seeking public assistance. Welfare recipients have learned job skills and a work ethic. States provide child care and other noncash help so they can keep jobs after leaving welfare. And, some experts say, new rules and requirements may intimidate poor people from seeking welfare.

Mark H. Greenberg, a lawyer at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a research and advocacy group, said, "One of the great mysteries of social policy in the last few years is why welfare caseloads have stayed essentially flat or declined in much of the country, despite the economic downturn."

In past recessions, newly hired welfare recipients and other low-skilled workers were among the first to lose their jobs. But that was apparently not the case with the most recent recession.

"Former welfare recipients were entrenched in the work force," said Marva Arnold, a senior official at the Human Services Department in Illinois, where the number of families on welfare has plunged 45 percent since January 2001, to 38,276. "They have gained real work experience, including the skills needed to maintain employment."

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The San Francisco Comic Strip:

It was this Bush joke or a Jayson Blair joke.

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Quote of note:

Kerry said he was troubled by the scope of the monitoring documented in the papers.

"I'm surprised by [the] extent of it," he said in an interview. "I'm offended by the intrusiveness of it. And I'm disturbed that it was all conducted absent of some showing of any legitimate probable cause. It's an offense to the Constitution. It's out of order."

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FBI Shadowed Kerry During Activist Era
Records show agents and informants found no evidence of illegal activity. The extent of monitoring in the 1970s troubles the candidate.
By John M. Glionna
Times Staff Writer

March 22, 2004

As a high-profile activist who crossed the country criticizing the Nixon administration's role in the Vietnam War, John F. Kerry was closely monitored by FBI agents for more than a year, according to intelligence documents reviewed by The Times.

In 1971, in the months after the Navy veteran and decorated war hero argued before Congress against continued U.S. involvement in the conflict, the FBI stepped up its infiltration of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the protest group Kerry helped direct, the files show.

The FBI documents indicate that wherever Kerry went, agents and informants were following — including appearances at VVAW-sponsored antiwar events in Washington; Kansas City, Mo.; Oklahoma City; and Urbana, Ill. The FBI recorded the content of his speeches and took photographs of him and fellow activists, and the dispatches were filed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Nixon.

The files contain no information or suggestion that Kerry broke any laws. And a 1972 memorandum on the FBI's decision to end its surveillance of him said the agency had discovered "nothing whatsoever to link the subject with any violent activity."

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Read Condoleeza Rice's Washington Post editorial if you want to.

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what number are you?

this quiz by orsa

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March 21, 2004

Humans are visually oriented, so maybe this will work.

This is the universe. The red thing in the middle is you.

Now. What shape is the red thing?

What shape is everything except the red thing?

No word for it, is there? And it's even worse when you consider the gray thing actually should have no boundary.

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I usually wonder why folks who are NOT of the extremist bent go to Free Republic. I guess I understand, but I'm glad it's other folk and not me.

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Orcinus:

The scene in Fresno this weekend may well have given us a preview of the shape of this summer's presidential campaign:

Arrest mars Fresno anti-war rally: Organizer is accused of interfering with a police officer

What the headline doesn't explain -- nor does the story until you get down deep into it -- was that the rally was targeted by members of the Free Republic (whose role as far-right "transmitters" I have discussed previously), which is based in Fresno.

And cops, instead of properly dealing with the instigators, arrested the rally's organizer on the thinnest of pretexts.

…I've preserved them here because they encapsulate the right-wing mentality that's floating about out there, stirred up by two years' worth of drum-beating about liberals being traitors and not real Americans, an "evil," as Sean Hannity describes it, on an equal footing with terrorism. The product is a growing eliminationism directed at liberals. The campaign I saw getting its test run in Montana is all primed and ready to go for this summer's presidential campaign.

Last year, in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, we saw an early version of this strategy: Not content merely to hold their own pro-war demonstrations, right-wing radio hosts began inviting their listeners to invade peace rallies, disrupt them, and shout them down. They succeeded in doing so on several occasions. At other times, they did not. Accompanying the campaign was a steady patter of eliminationism and death threats directed at war protesters.

So expect to see a lot more of these kinds of open provocations this coming year: Bush supporters invading and disrupting Kerry rallies; threats of violence directed at anyone supporting the "traitors" and "appeasers"; and eventually, the eruption of actual violence. It's hard to say which side will shoot first (the right-wingers are more likely, since they have the guns, but you never know how these things will play out), but it's looking increasingly like someone's going to get hurt.

Worst of all, it's also looking like law enforcement is going to be part of the problem.

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Understand that Richard Clarke worked for George No-Dubya and Bill Clinton, as well as Dubya. Way too much current experience to disregard.

Quote of note:

"I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years."

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Did Bush Press For Iraq-9/11 Link?
March 21, 2004

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism adviser to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one.

The charge comes from the advisor, Richard Clarke, in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.

The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that the conversation about an Iraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place.

Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House officials were tepid in their response when he urged them months before Sept. 11 to meet to discuss what he saw as a severe threat from al Qaeda.

"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

The No. 2 man on the president's National Security Council, Stephen Hadley, vehemently disagrees. He says Mr. Bush has taken the fight to the terrorists, and is making the U.S. homeland safer.

Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.

Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking.

Clarke is due to testify next week before the special panel probing whether the attacks were preventable

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Ah, the wonders of technology…

The Report

The Iraq on the Record report (pdf), prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

The Database

The Iraq on the Record database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.

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This is from John Robb's Weblog.

Business Week takes a position that I find annoyingly facile: that just because a corporation CAN pay higher wages due to productivity increases that it WILL. We have see no evidence of that here in the USofA…what makes anyone think that's how it will work elsewhere?

Business Week. Excellent article about outsourcing. The central idea is that comparative advantage is now giving way to absolute advantage. Those factors that drove the US comparative advantage -- labor (educated and hard working), capital (investment at favorable rates), and technology (infrastructure and new tech) -- is now available in China (and to a lesser extent India). Other contributing factors: security, climate, and geography are also now non-issues. This change provides an absolute refutation of Ricardo's theories and yields:

It's not really about trade but about labor arbitrage. Companies producing for U.S. markets are substituting cheap labor for expensive U.S. labor. The U.S. loses jobs and also the capital and technology that move offshore to employ the cheaper foreign labor. Economists argue that this loss of capital does not result in unemployment but rather a reduction in wages. The remaining capital is spread more thinly among workers, while the foreign workers whose country gains the money become more productive and are better paid.

Bing! What does this mean for the US? Global equalization of incomes (a rapid decline for the US and a slow rise for the rest of the world). A rapidly increasing trade deficit. Climbing budget deficits. AWOL multinationals. Radical intrastate income inequality. Political unrest. Protectionism. Domestic terrorism. The list goes on....

There is no silver lining for Americans. Unfortunately, our economists will continue to believe the world is flat. The invisible hand and comparative advantage will provide, they will intone. Time for some new thinking.

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via Blogcritics

Predatory Lending OK For National Banks?
Posted by Dan Hoffman on March 21, 2004 10:21 AM
Filed under: Et Cetera

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) passed a new rule that makes national banking conglomerates exempt from state consumer protection and lending laws. These state laws, including banking, advertising, privacy, and insurance laws, are enacted to protect consumers from predatory lending and other abusive practices. On Feb 12, 2004, the OCC decided that consumers did not need to be protected from large national banks that have federal charters.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR), along with other consumer groups and several US representatives, oppose this rule since it can harm consumers and small businesses. Local lending and real estate companies still have to comply with the entire body of state regulations, creating an unfair competitive advantage for the national institutions. This new rule has already been the subject of a congressional hearing and a budget amendment, with even more hearings scheduled.

I have to question that if these state laws do protect the consumer's interests, why would the OCC, who gets its funding from national bank fees, exempt the national banks from these regulations? Hmmm.

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New York Hospital Is Ordered to Release Abortion Records
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered New York-Presbyterian Hospital to turn over to the Justice Department records on abortions performed there, saying the disclosure would not unduly harm the hospital or the privacy of its patients.

The ruling, issued on Thursday by Judge Richard Conway Casey of Federal District Court, conflicts with the interpretations of judges in other jurisdictions and creates further uncertainty about the limits of patients' medical privacy.

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Terror of Childbirth
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

N'DJAMENA, Chad

Zara Fatimé, a 15-year-old girl, was in labor for four days before her family loaded her onto public transportation — the back of a truck — and took her to the dilapidated National General Reference Hospital here on Tuesday. Her blood pressure was high, 170/80, and she soon lapsed into a coma. The baby arrived stillborn. Zara needed oxygen, but the hospital had none to spare.

"We have the knowledge to save these people," Dr. Grace Kodindo, Chad's first female obstetrician, said with a sigh. "But we lose them because of a lack of tiny amounts of money." When she started, Dr. Kodindo was one of only 2 obstetricians serving a country of nine million people; now there are 15.

Each year, 500,000 women die, almost one per minute, in pregnancy or childbirth in the third world. Childbirth is terrifying for most of the world's people. As a local proverb here in Chad puts it: A woman who is pregnant has one foot in the grave.

The world needs a war on maternal mortality, and the U.S. could lead that effort. Yet maternal care rarely gets the priority or attention it deserves. Partly that's because the victims tend to be faceless, illiterate village women who carry little weight in their own families, let alone on the national or world agenda.

…Instead of providing leadership in the struggle against maternal mortality, the U.S. has recently retreated.

President Bush has cut off the entire American contribution, $34 million a year, to the United Nations Population Fund, which organizes programs like training for midwives. That's crucial because untrained midwives sometimes do more harm than good: in eastern Chad, they deal with a breech delivery by finding two strong men to hold the woman upside down and shake her to encourage the fetus to move around.

Then there's the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium, which helps young mothers in countries like Sierra Leone, Angola and Mozambique. The Bush administration cut off all funds to the consortium last year.

In both cases, the administration cut the funds because those groups supposedly cooperated with China's repressive family-planning program. Mr. Bush is right to complain about coercive abortions in China, but why take it out on African women?

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We Don't Want to Be Alone
By ANTONIO MUNOZ MOLINA

MADRID

It has been an uneasy week for the citizens of Madrid. Not because we are new to the fears and destruction of terrorism. We have long known how fragile human life is and how easily disaster can be sowed in the places that seem safest. And yet, we have often felt alone. Many times, it seemed as if the world had more sympathy for our longtime scourges, the Basque separatists of ETA, than for the victims of their terrorist attacks.

But this time, our dead are on the front pages of the world's newspapers. Our election last Sunday, which would have normally been a global footnote, suddenly took on international relevance. With this came scrutiny by those who fail to understand Spain, yet seek to judge us.

A friend called me from New York and told me that perhaps the electoral defeat of Prime Minister José María Aznar's Popular Party, which supported President Bush and the war in Iraq, was a triumph for Al Qaeda and terrorism. I think that Spanish voters were not bowing to Al Qaeda but instead punishing the Aznar government's arrogance in ignoring their wishes — as well as its subordination to the rude, inept and bellicose leadership of President Bush.

They were also punishing the government for its contempt for the common spaces of international sovereignty. We are members of the European Union and the United Nations, and we are proud of that status, especially after decades of isolation under Francisco Franco. The March 11 attacks did not frighten us into voting out the Popular Party, but they did reawaken our desire, long repressed by the Aznar government, to stand with the international community.

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Concerns Raised Over Consultants to Pension Funds
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

A small but growing part of the $2 trillion in state and local pension funds is being steered into high-risk investments by pension consultants and others who often have business dealings with the very money managers they recommend. After making such investments, a few of these pension funds have come up short, forcing the governments to draw on tax dollars.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is so concerned that it has begun an inquiry into the practices of pension consultants, who serve as gatekeepers for thousands of money managers.

The regulators will find not just financial consultants but a web of intermediaries — marketing agents, lobbyists, brokers and world leaders — between pension funds and the investments they choose.

Some play surprising roles. Former President Bill Clinton meets with pension trustees on behalf of the Yucaipa Companies, a private firm that seeks financial returns through social investing. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, persuaded the Pennsylvania teachers' pension fund to commit $125 million to SCP Private Equity Partners, a firm that invests in Israeli military technology. New York's former state comptroller, H. Carl McCall, encouraged the Illinois teachers' pension fund to place $20 million in Healthpoint, a private firm that invests in orthopedic devices companies.

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Zimbabwe's White Farmers Start Anew in Zambia
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

CHISAMBA, Zambia — Douglas Watt is part of a most curious diaspora in Southern Africa: prosperous white farmers, vilified as greedy racists and driven out of Zimbabwe, looking for a home.

Mr. Watt left the country of his birth about a year ago after what has become a common sort of encounter there. The husband of a worker in the office of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe politely told Mr. Watt that he was taking over his farm and that Mr. Watt had 90 days to get out.

Today Mr. Watt is one of about 140 white Zimbabwean farmers who have relocated to neighboring Zambia hoping, many say, for a mix of racial harmony and political stability that will enable them to prosper and contribute to black Africa.

For the farmers and for the Zambian government, the migration amounts to a new experiment on an issue central to the whole region: how do whites fit in?

While Zimbabwe has been uprooting its white farmers in an aggressive effort to redistribute colonial era landholdings, Zambian officials, if a trifle warily, have rolled out the welcome mat. They are hoping that farmers like Mr. Watt will breathe new life into the nation's moribund farming economy, which has been mired at the rake-and-hoe level since the mid-1970's.

For their part, some transplanted farmers say they have learned from their experience in Zimbabwe that they need to integrate, not just prosper, if they want to be accepted.

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At Florida Rally, Bush Attacks Kerry on Economy
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: March 21, 2004

ORLANDO, Fla., March 20 — President Bush on Saturday came to the state that delivered him the White House in 2000 for his first full-scale campaign rally of 2004 and opened a new line of attack on Senator John Kerry, saying his Democratic rival would raise taxes and choke off the economic recovery.

…"Given Senator Kerry's record of supporting tax increases, it's pretty clear how he's going to fill the tax gap," Mr. Bush said. "He's going to tax all of you. Fortunately, you're not going to give him that chance. Higher taxes right now would undermine growth and destroy jobs just as our economy is getting stronger."

Mr. Kerry voted against the two big tax cuts Mr. Bush pushed through Congress, in 2001 and 2003, which between them contained all the provisions that the president said Mr. Kerry opposed. [P6: First repealing Bush's tax cuts is a tax increase. Then allowing them to expire as Bush said they would is a tax increase. Now opposing Bush's tax cuts is a tax increase.]

Mr. Kerry has said that as president he would support repealing Mr. Bush's tax cuts for people earning more than $200,000 a year. But he has indicated that he would vote to extend a variety of tax reductions that are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, like the latest increase in the child credit, the break for married couples and the expansion of the 10 percent income bracket.

In 1993, Mr. Kerry voted for President Bill Clinton's deficit reduction package, which as Mr. Bush noted on Saturday amounted to the largest tax increase in American history. The package also succeeded in the view of many economists in helping to bring down the deficit, which Democrats say paved the way for the economic boom of the 1990's.

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