May 08, 2004

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Progressive Pipes, Juggling 33 progressive mailinglist subscriptions so you don't have to.

And converts then to RSS feeds.

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Truth Teller
Spc. Joseph Darby, Iraq Prison Whistle-Blower, Followed His Conscience
By Peter Jennings
ABCNEWS.com

May 7, 2004— Army Spc. Joseph Darby, 24, is the man who sounded the first alarm about the abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison — by people in his own 372nd Military Police Company.

The New Yorker magazine was the first to report that after seeing the pictures we are all so familiar with now, Darby put an anonymous note under the door of his commander. He described the incidents and the photographs he had seen.
Darby is quoted by a criminal investigator as feeling very badly about something he thought was very wrong.

"It was really hard on him," said Margaret Blank, Darby's mother. "He didn't want to go against ... his troops. It cut him in half, but he said he could not stand the atrocities that he had stumbled upon. He said he kept thinking, 'What if that was my mom, my grandmother, my brother or my wife?' "

Darby later came forward and identified himself as the person who had sent the note.

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A Family in Baghdad:

Thursday 5/6

Good morning….
Baghdad is quite. There was less traffic since the publishing of the torture photos from Abu Gharib. It feels like the whole city sank into sadness and disbelief. People used to talk about such incidents but as they had no proof, it was nothing but gossip. Then the pictures were published and it turned into a fact.

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I want to stop for a moment at the incident of killing 4 Americans at Falluja. Now we know that they weren't civilian contractors. They were working for a private security firm; a firm that trains men to perform assassinations and engage in fighting and similar actions. I remember now a comment made by my neighbor that I didn't believe at the time. Now it surfaces into my brain again. After the Falluja incident I called her and we talked about different things. She works for the ministry of health and I know that those working at government offices know some secrets the regular citizen finds about much later. I told her how amazed I was and that I refuse such acts of killing and burning people in the streets. She said: Don't be amazed Um-Raed, they were involved in torturing and mistreating Iraqis in prisons.

I said: what prisons?

She said: You didn't hear about it?

I told her I didn't and then changed the subject because I didn't believe her.

via Buzzmachine

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Mathew Yglesias and Kevin Drum are wondering why Bush, obviously not even close to the most qualified candidate available, was ever nominated to run for the Presidency.

That's easy. The fact is, George W. Bush is the best filled their need, and that need was for a symbol.

I don't know if you remember but he had barely warmed the chair in Austin before they started hyping him as a possible candidate. He was George H. W. Bush's son; voting for him was a symbolic slap at Clinton. His campaign echoed Reagan's, complete with Bob Jones University visit. He's a true, earnest believer. And his flaws are the type that his constituents like in a person.

You must remember…the goal was to take back the White House, Congress and Supreme Court. And it wasn't Dubya that created the plan. He was recruited into it.

He should have become Commissioner of Baseball.

Anyway, they needed a symbol. They already had Cheney to run things, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, certain Supreme Court justices that shall go unnamed and an entire right wing think tank industry to provide analysis. They were missing only one thing: a person more likeable than Clinton. Presidential ability wasn't deemed necessary,

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One of the things I do when I have nothing to do is check out the Google pages that people reach P6 through. I found out I'm Google's number one response for "chaos deity"…as well I should be.

Then I went to this page, finding a bag of sites that I cannot for the life of me figure out what we all have in common that we should turn up in the same search…unless it's all heavy, seemingly random link content. Among the sites that turned up is The Blank of the Day…freebies, deals. Tuesday was especially interesting, because of the

WHAT THE F-CK?!?! of the Day

Airline Passenger Finds Frog in Her Salad WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Australian carrier Qantas said Tuesday it has changed its lettuce supplier after a passenger on a flight from Melbourne to Wellington found a live frog in her greens. The one-inch Australian whistling tree frog didn't get a chance to hop away. The woman plunked the lid back on her meal preventing any escape.

I guess they don't wash the lettuce.

and

Game of the Day

Wrath

Ever wonder what it would be like to be god and hit people with lightning bolts? Wonder no more.

It comes in a Shockwave version and an Windows executable. If it's really cool, maybe I'll make it a post.

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David Neiwert at Orcinus has a hella long post up that I'm not even trying to excerpt. But the Shorter™ version would read like:

Let's drop all the rhetoric and bullshit, and get back to fact-checking their asses

Yeah.

Only I (personally) have to prepare for the post-election world. This election is not going to be about the needs of minorities. To me it's only about removing a a group of people whose plans are disruptive to real conservatives and real libertarians as much as real progressives.

I am convinced that minorities will make no progress while the Bushista philosophy reigns…not even so much out of racism as out of the fact that the continuation of their influence requires the continuation of the current state of affairs. I am convinced the bottom 95% of the economic pile will make little to no progress for the same reason. Add to this that minorities defines minority issues as "issues of concern to minorities" while the mainstream defines it as "issues we have with minorities" and you'll understand why I will drop all this electioneering crap as soon as I feel the election process has moved from the free will phase to the destiny phase.

There will be plenty facts for me to check, and lots of asses presenting them.

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A Giddy Heartland Gives Bush Warmth Missing in the Beltway
By JIM RUTENBERG

DUBUQUE, Iowa, May 7 — Tears were flowing on "Live With Regis & Kelly" on Friday as a woman was introduced to the man whose life her dead son's heart had saved.

But the emotional moment was abruptly halted on Channel 9 here by breaking news. It was not for Donald H. Rumsfeld's Congressional appearance (that would come later) or the severe storms brewing to the southwest.

It was, rather, for Air Force One's approach, which the news camera followed as if it was that of the space shuttle.

"You can see a smooth landing at the Dubuque Regional Airport," the anchorman, Scott Sanborn, said in a slightly hushed tone. "There is a lot of anticipation in Dubuque for the president's visit today."

That was putting it mildly. On local television and radio and in the main newspaper here, Mr. Bush's stop in this Mississippi River town, part of his three-day bus tour, has scored blanket coverage for days, much of it downright giddy.

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Quote of note:

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system.

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Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.
By FOX BUTTERFIELD

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.

The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.[P6: Texas, hm? Somehow that makes perfect sense]

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U.S. Town Sees GIs as Real Victims in Iraq Abuse
Sat May 8, 2004 07:33 AM ET
By Cyrille Cartier

CUMBERLAND, Md. (Reuters) - For many in the sleepy town of Cumberland, home of the military company at the heart of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, the U.S. soldiers are the real victims and the Iraqis had it coming.

In bars, shops and throughout the town of 21,000 people, residents gathered on Friday to watch Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testify to Congress about the abuses that involved soldiers from their local 372nd Military Policy company.

For some, shock mingled with embarrassment over their hometown's sudden and unwelcome notoriety. For many others, sympathy for the soldiers far outweighed their concerns.

"Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill.

"People are trying to kill you. You got to protect yourself," he said, adding the abuse by the soldiers was "half what they (Iraqis) have done to us."

Jamey Hill, a local postal worker, said the photos of naked prisoners in sexual positions, in a pile or on a leash, were nothing compared to the images of murdered Americans dangling from a bridge in the town of Falluja in March.

"I'm not happy about it (the prison abuse). I'm not very happy about having the pictures of us on the bridge either," Hill said.

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"Pictures of us on the bridge."
"Half what they have done to us."

How long will these folks hate Iraqis because of this one lynching? Feel their pain.

Then multiply it by the number of Black lynchings that took place. Start to understand why Black people are still angry, still damaged.

Back to foreign wars.

What have Iraqis done to us? Remember, we invaded and occupied them. We dominate their lives.

What have they done to us? Those contractors weren't "us."

And now. Thousands more pictures.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters yesterday that "the American people need to understand that we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience." He did not elaborate.

That's a Republican talking, so don't give me any of that "too liberal" bullshit.

That's "half of what they've done to us," is it? That's what people are defending reflexively because they identify with the perpetrators.

How do you claim this shit is atypical of Americans in the face of such a volume of evidence? Especially if you look at how the citizens at home are reacting.

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Wall Street Gets Its Wish -- Now What?
Sat May 8, 2004 07:21 AM ET
By Dick Satran

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street got what it wished for this week -- powerful job growth. But now it's starting to get careful.

For months investors have worried that a jobless recovery would crimp the economy and were looking for real signs that employment was increasing.

But they reacted to a strong April payrolls report by dumping stocks on fears the Federal Reserve will boost interest rates. Analysts agree an early rate rise is likely, but say it won't throw the economy or the stock market into reverse.

The downturn Friday carried the Dow Jones industrials 400 points below its April high. The pullback began last month with another surprisingly strong jobs report. Friday's report that nearly 300,000 jobs were created last month added to the pressure on the market because it all but confirmed the first Fed rate rise since 2000.

"The market always gets scared in the middle of a policy shift," said James Glassman, senior economist for J.P. Morgan Chase. "It tends to freeze for a while. But as the process gets under way, that's usually the green light for the equity market."

The tightening probably won't take place until next month's Fed meeting, analysts said. But the 'fast money' held by hedge funds and other professional investors has been acting for more than a month as if a rate cut had already taken place.

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You know Reuters has RSS feeds now, right? If you have broadband, check the television feeds.

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May 07, 2004

Everywhere but Wall Street

When hiring increases and unemployment drops, investors worry that the Fed will move faster to raise interest rates to choke off any hint of inflation. Stocks, in turn, tend to decline when investors think interest rates will rise because increased borrowing costs cut into corporate earnings, making stocks seem more expensive.

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Outsourcing Delivers Hope to India
Young College Graduates See More Options for Better Life

By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 8, 2004; Page A01

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Because Americans basically don't give a damn about India.

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I just got back from Dr. Maha El Said's lecture, "American Pop Culture in Cairo". It almost has me ready to shift from Black Partisan to People of Color Partisan. Almost.

The "high concept" was that Globalization, Americanization and Consumerism are all pretty much one and the same at this point. But as she talked about how Egyptian culture has morphed from a Muslim culture to what it is today, I kept hearing echoes of American Black history.

I still have some digestion of the concepts to do…not a simple task when one of the things one must digest is the concept of a McFalafel. But this I can say right now:

They don't hate us for our freedom. If they hate us, it's because (thanks to American pop culture) they haven't a fuggin' clue in life who we are. They think of all America as Disneyland…we're all rich, we all have apartments like those people in "Friends,"and the only Black people in the country are Colin Powell, Condi Rice and the crew on MTV.

Maha called it a shift from colonization to "cool-onization," and the result is a schizophrenic society where they watch "Baywatch" while wearing veils.

Sounds REAL familiar. So familiar I only needed to make mental note of where the Egyptian experience of American pop culture differs from the Black American one.

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TOMPAINE.com:

In the May 3 issue of SI, Reilly, in his regular back-page column "The Life of Reilly," wrote a piece under the headline "The Hero and the Unknown Soldier." The hero in Reilly's column was Pat Tillman, the former star football player who was killed in Afghanistan. After 9/11, Tillman had given up a multimillion-dollar contract to volunteer for the Army Rangers. He was lionized throughout the country for his sacrifice.

The Unknown Soldier was Todd Bates. Bates drowned in Iraq. His death went virtually unnoticed except to his family and friends. The man who raised Bates, Charles Jones, refused to go to the funeral, refused to eat or relate to others; he died just four weeks after the funeral. "He died of a broken heart," Bates' grandmother, Shirley, who also raised him, told Reilly. "There was no reason for my boy to die. There is no reason for this war. All we have now is a Vietnam. My Toddie's life was wasted over there. All this war is a waste. Look at all these boys going home in coffins. What's the good in it?" Reilly, in barely controlled rage, concludes his piece about Tillman and Bates:

"Both did their duty for their country, but I wonder if their country did its duty for them. Tillman died in Afghanistan, a war with no end in sight and not enough troops to finish the job. Bates died in Iraq, a war that began with no just cause and continues with no just reason.

Be proud that sports produce men like this.

But I, for one, am furious that these wars keep taking them."

Reilly, in his eloquence, was expressing opinions already delivered in places like The Nation and op-ed pages around the country. But that's the point. With all due respect, The Nation,—of which I am a subscriber and supporter—and its ilk will not change the course of history because they speak to the already converted.

What's important here is that Reilly's audience is not the typical Nation reader. He speaks to the so-called NASCAR dads, the Sunday golfers, the Monday-morning quarterbacks and the couch-potato referees. He speaks, SI estimates, to 31 million people (3.1 million subscribe to the magazine, 21 million adults read the magazine as it is passed around the family and 10 million more see the column on SI's website). It's a sizable audience—of Cronkite-like size—which can fairly be described as generally mainstream, and, on the whole, slightly more conservative than the average America.

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The Quote of Note actually comes from another post on the same blog:

It’s beyond depressing and humiliating... my blood boils at the thought of what must be happening to the female prisoners.

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River at Baghdad Burning

I don't understand the 'shock' Americans claim to feel at the lurid pictures. You've seen the troops break down doors and terrify women and children… curse, scream, push, pull and throw people to the ground with a boot over their head. You've seen troops shoot civilians in cold blood. You've seen them bomb cities and towns. You've seen them burn cars and humans using tanks and helicopters. Is this latest debacle so very shocking or appalling?

The number of killings in the south has also risen. The Americans and British are saying that they are 'insurgents' and people who are a part of Al-Sadir's militia, but people from Najaf are claiming that innocent civilians are being killed on a daily basis. Today the troops entered Najaf and there was fighting in the streets. This is going to cause a commotion because Najaf is considered a holy city and is especially valuable to Shi'a all over the world. The current situation in the south makes one wonder who, now, is going to implement a no-fly zone over areas like Falloojeh and Najaf to 'protect' the people this time around?

I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today's lesson: don't rape, don't torture, don't kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice... Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We’ll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.

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I don't want to see any more news today.

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Quote of note:

This is exciting news
Professor Alan Riley,
University of Central Lancashire

I'm sure.

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Patch 'boosts women's sex drive'
Women may soon be able to use a stick-on patch to boost their sex drive.
The patch is worn on the stomach for two weeks at a time and delivers the hormone testosterone, which has been linked to female sexual desire.

A trial involving 562 women who had had hysterectomies found the patch led to a 74% increase in satisfying sex.

Manufacturers Procter & Gamble are hoping to launch the patch in the US shortly and in the UK within the next two years.

The patch will be aimed at women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) - a lack of sexual desire that causes them distress.

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We now have all the elements in place for a white male supremacy world domination thing. Again. Still.

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*gasp*

Andrew Sullivan's joint????

Looking at Technorati's NewsTalk I saw he linked to The Misunderestimated Man - How Bush chose stupidity. By Jacob Weisberg and had to see why, given his worship of Dubya.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1992 Democratic convention. Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, 'I don't know and, who cares.' His new answer was, 'Wait a second while I check with Jesus.'" - Jake Weisberg, in old, vicious form (it's the Jake I remember when we were fellow interns at TNR), in Slate.

Yeah, Andy. Vicious.

But undeserved? Or even simply denied?

Not even YOU went there…

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REPRESENTING

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

[From the May 7, 2004 UnderCurrents column published in the Berkeley Daily Planet, http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com. UnderCurrents is archived at http://www.safero.org/undercurrents.html. ]

There is videotape of the beatings by the six guards, available on the Internet for download. Soft and grainy and shot from a distance, still, what is happening is unmistakable. Two prisoners are lying sprawled on the floor, face down, unresisting. An L.A. Times news article graphically describes the scene: "[One of the guards] sits astride [one of the prisoners and] begins punching him with alternating fists, landing a total of 28 blows. At one point, [the guard] can be seen lifting [the prisoner's] head by the hair in what looks like an effort to get a better angle for his punch. A few feet away, the tape shows [a second guard] slugging [the other prisoner] and using his right knee to pummel him in the neck area as the [prisoner] lies motionless. One [guard] is seen shooting the [prisoners] with a gun that fires balls of pepper spray, while another sprays their faces with mace."

The video also shows one of the guards giving a kick to the head of one of the prisoners with the toe of his boot.

No, the videotape is not of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. So far as I know, no such videos exist. The video of which I speak documents the beating of two United States citizens-juvenile prisoners under the control of the State of California-by guards of the California Youth Authority at the Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility in Stockton, California. Chaderjian. Abu Ghraib. It is easy to get them confused, I suppose.

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No further comment on this one

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Macedonia admits staging raid, killing innocents

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, authorities said Friday.

Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told reporters that six people, including three former police commanders, two special police officers and a businessman, have been charged by police with murder.

If convicted, they could be sentenced from 10 years to life in prison.

"That was an act of a sick mind," Konteska said after a two-year investigation. "They ... ordered the brutal murder of the seven Pakistani men."

She described a meticulous plan to promote Macedonia as a player in the fight against global terrorism that involved smuggling the Pakistanis into Macedonia from Bulgaria, housing them, and then coldly gunning them down.

The killings, she added, were part of an attempt to "present themselves as participants in the war against terrorism and demonstrate Macedonia's commitment to the war on terror."

Since breaking away from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia has been eager to win U.S. political and economic support in its search for acceptance into the Western camp of nations.

Macedonia has been a close U.S. ally in the Balkans. It has staunchly supported the U.S.-led war on terrorism and sent troops to Iraq.

The so-called "Rastanski Lozja" action was carried out in March 2002 by special Macedonian police who claimed to have eliminated a terrorist group allegedly plotting to attack international embassies and representatives in Macedonia.

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Quote of note:

The Ministry of Defence confirmed the man had approached military police to discuss the claims.

…because the Mirror looks vaguely tabloid-ish, and

I hope no-one has forgotten that last year a soldier from the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was arrested while trying to develop pictures he had taken of Iraqi prisoners being abused. The fact is that British soldiers have abused prisoners in Iraq. Whether the Mirror pictures are genuine or fake is not the most important question here. Even if they're fake, there's no reason to believe that the abuse suddenly stopped after the one case that came to light last year.
Jim, Cambridge

from the comments the BBC received on this story. Thought if they are correct about the published comments representing the balance of all comments received, the British are truly our natural allies because they are as much in denial about this as were.

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New 'Iraq abuse witness' quizzed
The Royal Military Police have interviewed a soldier who has made fresh allegations that British troops have been abusing Iraqi prisoners.

The soldier is the third linked with the Queen's Lancashire Regiment to have made allegations to the Mirror.

Editor Piers Morgan said the soldier's dossier of claims included "appalling beatings" by a small "rogue element".

Mr Morgan said a handful of soldiers, including corporals and sergeants, were thought to be to blame.

In an interview with the BBC, he said the soldier had detailed four separate incidents of beatings, and could name the people he believed were responsible.

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The Face of War
Psychological Experts Say Under Stress of Battle, Potential for Abuse Could Surface in Anyone
Daniel K. Hoh
ABCNEWS.com

May 7— Were the abuses of Iraqi prisoners the action of a few "bad apples" in the U.S. military, or the behavior of ordinary soldiers under the extraordinary stresses of war?

The specifics of the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq remain to be sorted out. But the answer seems apparent for experts in the psychology of war and other mental health professionals contacted by ABCNEWS — such behavior is not uncommon in a time of military conflict and the potential to abuse others may lie in all of us.
"In war, things do happen, often from emotion of the moment, exhaustion, frustration — a buddy killed, a unit hurt," maintains Samuel Watson, a former infantry officer in the Vietnam War who is now associate professor of public health at University of Pittsburgh.

Agrees Garret Evans, associate professor of psychology at University of Florida in Gainesville, "It is not far-fetched to say there is abuse on some level in any war."

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So how do you explain the abuse in Brooklyn?

The fact is, all the talk about people without souls and the direct, immanent, non-existing threats have sanctioned such behavior in many people's minds.

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An excerpt from…something else I wrote years ago.

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I will explain the reason, and initiate the process, by reviewing some of my own experience as a human.
In my larval stage I was employed by several banks sequentially. I learned to maneuver one step upward in each of their hierarchies. With no degree and no mentors I had to learn from watching and understanding what was said, what was done, and the patterns that existed between them.

On occasion a significant person in the hierarchy needed me to hold up one or another end of a project. To enable me to do so, they would answer some questions and explain some things. I learned quickly to examine what they said closely, as they were explaining for their own benefit, not necessarily mine.

One of those hierarchically significant people, I'll call him George (because that was his name) explained to me the purpose of rules. Prior to the conversation I thought rules were intended as a guide, or to insure a rational environment. This gentleman, being a maker of rules as opposed to a follower of them, had a different perspective.

George explained to me that no one looks at what you do as long as nothing goes wrong, and even if they do check they still have no way of knowing what truly happened. All they know is what you recorded and if that's enough to explain the situation at hand, you don't have to say another word. No one can question your judgment…as long as you can document that you followed the rules…no matter how screwed the result. More, a set of rules or laws broad enough to govern a social situation as complex as a workplace will have a sufficient number of rules to insure you can find one to support any personnel decision you'd care to make. In other words, George said, rules are used, not necessarily followed, by people in decision making positions. This accorded with my observation that the main outward sign of power is that a person can decide a situation falls outside the rules and act independently of them.

George explained it very concisely: "Fuck the rules. They're only there to cover our asses. If I want to do it, I will."

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A President Beyond the Law
By ANTHONY LEWIS

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

The question tears at all of us, regardless of party or ideology: How could American men and women treat Iraqi prisoners with such cruelty — and laugh at their humiliation? We are told that there was a failure of military leadership. Officers in the field were lax. Pentagon officials didn't care. So the worst in human nature was allowed to flourish.

But something much more profound underlies this terrible episode. It is a culture of low regard for the law, of respecting the law only when it is convenient.

Again and again, over these last years, President Bush has made clear his view that law must bend to what he regards as necessity. National security as he defines it trumps our commitments to international law. The Constitution must yield to novel infringements on American freedom.

One clear example is the treatment of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Third Geneva Convention requires that any dispute about a prisoner's status be decided by a "competent tribunal." American forces provided many such tribunals for prisoners taken in the Persian Gulf war in 1991. But Mr. Bush has refused to comply with the Geneva Convention. He decided that all the Guantánamo prisoners were "unlawful combatants" — that is, not regular soldiers but spies, terrorists or the like.

The Supreme Court is now considering whether the prisoners can use American courts to challenge their designation as unlawful. The administration's brief could not be blunter in its argument that the president is the law on this issue: "The president, in his capacity as commander in chief, has conclusively determined that the Guantánamo detainees . . . are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention."

The violation of the Geneva Convention and that refusal to let the courts consider the issue have cost the United States dearly in the world legal community — the judges and lawyers in societies that, historically, have looked to the United States as the exemplar of a country committed to law. Lord Steyn, a judge on Britain's highest court, condemned the administration's position on Guantánamo in an address last fall — pointing out that American courts would refuse even to hear claims of torture from prisoners. At the time, the idea of torture at Guantánamo seemed far-fetched to me. After the disclosures of the last 10 days, can we be sure?

Instead of a country committed to law, the United States is now seen as a country that proclaims high legal ideals and then says that they should apply to all others but not to itself. That view has been worsened by the Bush administration's determination that Americans not be subject to the new International Criminal Court, which is supposed to punish genocide and war crimes.

Fear of terrorism — a quite understandable fear after 9/11 — has led to harsh departures from normal legal practice at home. Aliens swept off the streets by the Justice Department as possible terrorists after 9/11 were subjected to physical abuse and humiliation by prison guards, the department's inspector general found. Attorney General John Ashcroft did not apologize — a posture that sent a message.

Inside the United States, the most radical departure from law as we have known it is President Bush's claim that he can designate any American citizen an "enemy combatant" — and thereupon detain that person in solitary confinement indefinitely, without charges, without a trial, without a right to counsel. Again, the president's lawyers have argued determinedly that he must have the last word, with little or no scrutiny from lawyers and judges.

There was a stunning moment in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address when he said that more than 3,000 suspected terrorists "have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States."

In all these matters, there is a pervasive attitude: that to follow the law is to be weak in the face of terrorism. But commitment to law is not a weakness. It has been the great strength of the United States from the beginning. Our leaders depart from that commitment at their peril, and ours, for a reason that Justice Louis D. Brandeis memorably expressed 75 years ago.

"Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher," he wrote. "For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself."

Anthony Lewis is a former Times columnist.

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U.S. Rules Morning-After Pill Can't Be Sold Over the Counter
By GARDINER HARRIS

Federal drug regulators yesterday rejected a drug maker's application to sell a morning-after pill over the counter because of concerns about whether young girls would be able to use it safely.

The Food and Drug Administration told the pill's maker, Barr Pharmaceuticals, that before the drug could be sold without a prescription the company must either find a way to prevent young teenagers from getting it from store shelves or prove, in a new study, that young girls can understand how to use it without the help of a doctor. Company executives expressed confidence that they could clear those hurdles, although it was unclear how long that would take. The decision was a surprise because in December, a panel of independent experts assembled by the Food and Drug Administration voted 23 to 4 to recommend that the drug be sold over the counter. The majority concluded that the drug was not only effective but that women could be trusted to use it correctly without a doctor. The Food and Drug Administration normally follows the recommendation of its advisory panels.

The drug, called Plan B, is presently available only by prescription. But Barr's application to sell the medicine without a prescription has been embroiled in a controversy that has now spilled into the presidential campaign. Advocates say that making the pill more broadly available will prevent unwanted pregnancies while opponents say it will encourage promiscuity and risky sex.

"By overruling a recommendation by an independent F.D.A. review board, the White House is putting its own political interests ahead of sound medical policies that have broad support," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign. "This White House is more interested in appealing to its electoral base than it is in protecting women's health."

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I don't mind somewhat sympathetic pieces on the individual grunts involved in this mess because I'm becoming more convinced by the day that though they deserve blame they are not the responsible parties.

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From a Picture of Pride to a Symbol of Abuse in Iraq
By JAMES DAO

Published: May 7, 2004

FORT ASHBY, W.Va., May 6 — For weeks, the Mineral County courthouse has proudly displayed the photographs of local soldiers stationed in Iraq along the stairway at its front entrance. "We're hometown proud," the banner said.

But in the last few days, one photograph was taken down, that of Pfc. Lynndie R. England, whose face has become famous for a painfully different reason.

Private England is perhaps the most prominently displayed person in a series of photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad that show members of the 372nd Military Police Company abusing prisoners.

In one image, Private England is clenching a cigarette between her teeth while giving a thumbs-up in front of naked Iraqi prisoners. In another that became public on Thursday, she is holding a leash attached to a naked prisoner's neck.

The photographs have left her family and friends aghast and searching for answers. They are convinced that she would never have thought up anything so cruel on her own and that she must have been following orders.

If that is the case, the family and friends then have to reconcile how the tough, bold and independent young woman they know followed an order that seemed so obviously wrong.

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That's an easy question to answer.

White folks are seriously collective, and they are, across the board, rewarded for unquestioned obedience and punished for any delay or variance in following orders.

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Server problems.

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Yes, I'm taking credit for reminding the Times about the abuse of Muslim prisoners in Brooklyn. So what if I have no proof? It meets the Bushista standard of proof. Though The Times isn't who should be paying attention…

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Abuse Suit Focuses on a Guard Involved in Earlier Scandal
By NINA BERNSTEIN

Seven years ago, Raymond L. Cotton was a central figure in a federal prison scandal so big it had a cinematic name: Operation Badfellas. He was one of 12 guards accused by the government of turning a federal jail in Brooklyn into a Mafia social club where, in exchange for bribes, mob inmates could dine on smuggled-in manicotti while plotting crimes with their associates.

Unlike all the other guards arrested in the scandal, Mr. Cotton, then president of his union local, never lost his job. (The bribery charges against him were dropped after the government's chief witness was accused in an unrelated drug case.)

Now once again, he is a central figure in a ballooning prison scandal at the same place, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. But while he was accused before of supplying Absolut vodka, pasta and garlic to criminals, now he is accused in a lawsuit of denying food, phone calls and medical care to abused Muslim detainees, and of physically humiliating them in ways that resemble the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers facing court-martial.

Once again, despite a blistering Justice Department report about widespread physical abuse at the Brooklyn detention center, Mr. Cotton remains on the job. Yesterday morning, he answered the phone at his office, where, as "Counselor Cotton," he is the chief liaison between detainees and the outside world.

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Since we got two 'nothers we get two quotes of note.

#1

Until earlier this year prisoners would arrive at Abu Ghraib with broken bones, suggesting they had been roughed up, he said, but the practice ended in January or February.

#2

"We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support ... also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression," said MP Dave Bischell. "It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed."

Let's see if straight-up brutality gets the same attention as sexual humiliation.

If it's really this bad…and I believe it is…then all the statements about how the situation at Abu Ghraib is atypical will simply not be believed in the Middle East.

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Soldiers Back in U.S. Tell of More Iraqi Abuses
Thu May 6, 2004 10:40 PM ET

By Adam Tanner
ANTIOCH, California (Reuters) - Three U.S. military policemen who served at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice against Iraqis was commonplace.

"It is a common thing to abuse prisoners," said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. "I saw beatings all the time.

"A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression."

U.S. treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib has stirred wide international condemnation after the publication of photos in recent days showing Americans sexually humiliating prisoners. Six soldiers in Iraq have been charged in the case and President Bush apologized publicly on Thursday.

Although public attention has focused on the dehumanizing photos, some members of the 870th MP unit say the faces in those images were far from the only ones engaged in cruel behavior.

"It was not just these six people," Sindar, who shaves his head and wears a large tattoo on his forearm, told Reuters. "Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time."

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Red Cross Says Repeatedly Warned U.S. on Iraq Jail
Thu May 6, 2004 04:02 PM ET

By Richard Waddington
GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at a Baghdad jail at the center of a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

The Geneva-based humanitarian agency, mandated under international treaties to visit detainees, has had regular access to Abu Ghraib prison since U.S.-led forces began using it last year, said chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari.

"The ICRC, aware of the situation, and based on its findings, has repeatedly asked the U.S. authorities to take corrective action," she told Reuters.

Notari declined to give details of what the ICRC had seen during the visits, which take place every five to six weeks, or about its reports to the U.S. authorities.

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May 06, 2004

Powell aides go public on rift with Bush
Chief of staff says secretary of state is fed up with apologising for the administration and is disdainful of 'ideological' hawks

Gary Younge in New York
Thursday May 6, 2004
The Guardian

Colin Powell's key aide has described US sanctions policy against countries such as Pakistan and Cuba as "the dumbest policy on the face of the Earth".
In an article in GQ magazine Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff of the United States secretary of state, bemoans Mr Powell's firefighting role in President George Bush's cabinet.

"He has spent as much time doing damage control and, shall we say, apologising around the world for some less-than-graceful actions as he has anything else."

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Don't tempt me. I really don't have the money to waste.

Nice idea though...

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Hal at Hellblazer spotted this article on thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them..

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via BOP:

Paul Merriman at CBS Marketwatch has the money quote of the day:

"What's really galling is that the Pentagon had information about widespread torturing for months, and yet even today both the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chief of Staff are telling us they have not read the report.

Remember how lightning-quick "official" Washington read Paul O'Neil's 523-page book, Bob Woodward's 480-pager and Richard Clark's 320-pager, then instantly launched massive television counterattacks defending their ill-conceived war ideology while destroying the credibility of their critics?

Meanwhile, they have the gall to tell us they had not read that short 53-page two-month-old report on torture by the American military intelligence in Iraqi prisons? And now, after the information is circulated worldwide, they still want us to believe they haven't read it?

My God, how stupid do they think we are?"

Source:
Inept politicians a financial threat
Commentary: Optimism tested when leaders can't be trusted
By Paul B. Farrell, CBS.MarketWatch.com

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Tiny robot walker made from DNA
Scientists have created a microscopic walking robot using only the building blocks of life: DNA.
The tiny walker is only 10 nanometres long and has been described as a major step forward in nanotechnology.

A New York University team created the robot using DNA legs that move along a footpath, which is also based on DNA.

The legs move by detaching themselves from the footpath, moving along it and then reattaching themselves, New Scientist reports.

DNA is an ideal material to build the robot from, because DNA chains easily pair up.

By re-ordering the sequence of base pairs that make up the DNA strand, the scientists were able to control where each strand attached.

"What we've done is to build a sidewalk to accommodate one step and we've demonstrated quantitatively that [the robot] can take a second step," Professor Nadrian Seeman of New York University told BBC News Online.

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For the Viewer, No Escape Hatch in a Digital 3-D Film
By ERIC A. TAUB

NLESS you are burdened with a bad case of tunnel vision, life unfolds not just in front of you, but above and to the sides as well. That is one reason 3-D movies never quite look real: while that bullet might appear to be heading straight for you, it is easy to look away from the screen and be reassured that the end of your time on earth has not yet come.

Viewers of a new short "Star Trek'' film that opened in the Las Vegas Hilton last month might find that sort of critical distance a bit more difficult to summon. A digital effects company in Santa Monica, Calif., has created a 3-D movie that not only gives the illusion of a world in front of you, but all around.

The visual technique created by the company, Threshold Digital Research Labs, surrounds the viewer with images in the same way that Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio gives listeners a sense that they are enveloped by voices and effects: it's surround sound for the eyes.

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Greenspan Issues Warning of Deficit's Impact on Economy
By TERENCE NEILAN

The head of the Federal Reserve voiced a note of concern today about the effects of America's soaring national budget deficit on the country's long-term economic stability.

"We in the United States have been incurring ever larger deficits," the Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, said. He added that "we have lurched" from a budget surplus in 2000 to a deficit that is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to amount to 4.25 percent of gross domestic product this year, or about $500 billion.

The "yawning" budget deficit, he told a banking conference, was a bigger concern to him than the equally growing trade deficit or high household debt.

"Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances," Mr. Greenspan said.

He added that one issue that worries most analysts is the inadequate national saving rate, which he described as "meager."

Another concern, in the face of the widening budget gap, is the commitment made by the United States to senior citizens, he said.

"We have legislated commitments to our senior citizens that, given the inevitable retirement of baby-boomer generation, will create significant fiscal challenges in the years ahead," he said, his words transmitted by satellite from Washington to the conference in Chicago.

"Has something fundamental happened to the U.S. economy and, by extension, U.S. banking that enables us to disregard all the time-tested criteria of imbalance and economic danger?" he asked.

Then, answering his own question, he said: "Regrettably, the answer is no. The free lunch has still to be invented."

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And it still sounds like Iraq.

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Quote of note:

"The most important thing is that this is a regime that came into power through a coup, led by a well-known criminal element. The prime minister had the audacity to describe this criminal element as freedom fighters.

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Black Caucus Meets Haitian Prime Minister; Critics Bristle
Date: Thursday, May 06, 2004
By: CHRISTINA ROYSTER-HEMBY, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus held a morning meeting with interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue Wednesday. Afterward they met with Secretary of State Colin Powell to discuss rebuilding Haiti, the crisis in Iraq and upcoming G-8 and NATO summits.

CBC Chairman Elijah Cummings told Powell that caucus members "are concerned about the humanitarian problems and efforts currently ongoing in Haiti," Paul Brathwaite, CBC executive director told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

"Sixty percent of the people in Haiti do not have more than one meal a day," said Brathwaite. "Mr. Cummings believes that we have to address that issue immediately. And the prime minister shared with members of the caucus that if they don’t get money in 30 to 60 days, Haiti will be on the brink of catastrophe.

…also asked Latortue to work on re-establishing a constructive working relationship with Haiti's CARICOM neighbors, and stressed the importance of ensuring fair and free elections in Haiti next year.

Bill Fletcher Jr., president of TransAfrica Forum, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public on the economic, political and moral ramifications of the United States as it affects Africa and the Caribbean, said that the caucus should not have recognized Latortue.

Chalabi's Latortue's administration is "an illegal puppet regime,” said Fletcher. “It has no international credibility. It’s completely illegitimate. According to the Haitian constitution, you have to have been living Haiti to have an office of that level.

"I don’t believe that the prime minister has lived in Haiti in years."

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Isn't it a human tendency to lionize those who die in support of our causes?

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I love DVDs. Especially when you see the end of an episode and you know you'd go crazy if you had to wait a week for the second part. I hate second parts.

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LIMBAUGH SAYS THOSE INVOLVED IN ABUSE JUST HAVING A GOOD TIME: MediaMatters.org reports conservative Rush Limbaugh equated the abuses chronicled in the army's report on abuse in Iraq to a lighthearted prank. "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of [the] need to blow some steam off?"

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SECRECY NEWS is a email publication of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. It provides informal coverage of new developments in secrecy, security and intelligence policies, as well as links to new acquisitions on our web site. It is published 2 to 3 times a week, or as events warrant.

Subscribe to SECRECY NEWS:
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you can just email [email protected] with your request.

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It's not OUR fault you can't survive on the salary.

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4-Hour Trek Across New York for 4 Hours of Work, and $28
By JOSEPH BERGER

…Sure, there are suburban commuters from, say, Dutchess County or the Poconos who endure four-hour commuting, but usually they are drawn by Wall Street jobs with large bonuses or less glamorous blue collar jobs with good wages and benefits. Still, some workers in all corners of the city are willing to travel breathtaking distances — sometimes for as many hours as they work — for few dollars and virtually no benefits. They do this because whatever small amount they make is essential.

Ms. Museitef commutes four hours each workday to work just four hours at $7 an hour.

More than 18,000 household workers — nannies, cleaners, home health aides — endure daily trips of 90 minutes or more for jobs paying less than $25,000 a year, according to an analysis of 2000 Census data. Most are immigrant women from the West Indies and South America and elsewhere. (Illegal immigrants, leery of government officials, are often not counted.) These are workers who may travel from eastern Queens across the city to New Jersey, or even from New Jersey through Manhattan and the Bronx to Westchester County, almost always by several trains and buses.

Sociologists say that these workers often have no choice, because they live in the city's poorer precincts while the jobs they need are scattered around the region. In the 1950's, unskilled immigrants could rely on manufacturing jobs clustered in a central place like the Garment District, said Daniel Cornfield, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University who specializes in labor. But manufacturing jobs have since evaporated while much of the low-wage job growth has been in areas like household work.

"A service industry like home health care is decentralized because it's in people's homes," Professor Cornfield said.

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$25b sought for Iraq, Afghanistan
By Stephen J. Glain, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration told Congress yesterday it would seek an additional $25 billion to finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, breaking its pledge to resist such a move before the November presidential election.

The request could have political consequences for President Bush, who is already under fire for underestimating the costs of war; the White House's record $423 billion defense budget request for 2005 conspicuously omitted provisions for Iraq while inserting $12 billion in unfunded mandates, including $2 billion to pay for such measures as reinforcing Army Humvees with additional armor.

"Having submitted the largest defense budget in history and now a third supplemental spending bill, it's clear the planning for the aftermath is a disaster," said Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Lowell Democrat and member of the House Armed Services Committee. "We're paying for mistakes made a year ago."

The new supplemental funding bill would be the latest about-face for an administration that has pulled a number of policy reversals since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Some generals from the former Iraqi Army, which was disbanded last year, have been brought back to help with security, and the United States has requested a special United Nations envoy to help create a caretaker government.

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This quote contains every occurrence of the word "blog" in the entire article. "Web log" is gratuitously tossed in once…and even that event is quoted here.

I hate buzz words.

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The Blog Generation Takes Up Its Trowels
By HILLARY ROSNER

AS the manager of an indie-rock band fronted by an accordion player, Camille Acey, 23, is used to uphill battles. So when Ms. Acey and the band, Movers and Shakers, decided to build a "rock garden" on the roof of a loft building in Long Island City, Queens, they solved the obvious problem with 175 pounds of neutral-tone buttons from a company that donates surplus materials to artists.

Ms. Acey was a contestant in a "gardening challenge" sponsored by ReadyMade, a Berkeley-based do-it-yourself magazine for those who are young, hip and inclined to turn their soda empties into camp stoves. The participants, chosen by the editors, had to remake a 100-square-foot space, relying on found objects and the landscape's existing features, all within a $200 budget provided by the magazine.

"Creative reuse was the central thing for us," said Ms. Acey, who writes a Web log and has sought gardening advice online from other bloggers. "I'm not a high-end person who's going to go spend $200 at Home Depot."

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Quote of note:

Switching to another system would cost the counties $27 million, and elections officials would have to scramble to get equipment prepared in time for November, said Karen Keene, legislative representative for the California State Association of Counties.

"Rather than having this blanket decertification, there should be an opportunity to come up with a more moderate approach," Keene said. "It seems like there's potential here for middle ground."

In this case, "middle ground" is like pulling the knife half-way out.

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Senate committee approves bill to ban all e-voting machines in November
ANNA OBERTHUR, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

A proposal to ban all electronic voting machines in the November election was approved by a Senate committee Wednesday, less than a week after Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's decision to decertify the machines unless they meet certain conditions.

"The key to democracy is that everyone's vote counts and is counted. The electronic voting machines used in the March primary failed to meet that fundamental test," said one of the bill's authors, Sen. Ross Johnson, R-Irvine.

The bill would not allow the use of any form of electronic voting, including touch-screen machines, in the Nov. 2 general election. It would apply only to that election.

The Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment passed the bill with a 3-1 vote.

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Teenage voting rights proposed
Ballot would count only 1/4 or 1/2 as much as an adult's
John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
Thursday, May 6, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Sacramento -- Being 14, an awkward, largely uncelebrated time that can seem to last for an eternity rather than a year, took a small step toward relevance in the Capitol on Wednesday.

After earnest testimony by teenagers and their youthful supporters, the Senate Elections and Reapportionment Committee passed legislation that would lower the state's legal voting age to 14.

If the bills by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara, become law, they would cause a historic shift in the state political system, dropping a rite of passage long tied to adulthood to an age far below what is typically required nationwide to get a driver's license, a pack of cigarettes or a marriage license.

However, ballots of 14- and 15-year-olds would be counted as one-quarter of an adult vote, while those of 16- and 17-year-olds would be worth one-half of an adult vote.

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Something about Iraq makes Americans want to look at nekkid people. Just more evidence that the Antichrist's influence flows into the world through Baghdad, I tell you…

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Guard commander disciplined for nude photos of female soldiers
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
©2004 Associated Press

A former National Guard commander is accused of taking naked pictures of female U.S. soldiers while they showered last year at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, a newspaper reported.

Capt. Leo V. Merck, 32, of Fremont, Calif., faces a court martial, the Contra Costa Times reported in Wednesday editions.

The Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the center of a scandal involving photographs of U.S. Army soldiers subjecting naked Iraqi prisoners to humiliating treatment.

Three female soldiers from the 870th Military Police Company from Pittsburg, Calif., filed the accusations against Merck in November, National Guard officials told the paper Tuesday.

Spc. Myrna Hernandez, 26, of Antioch, Calif. told the newspaper that she was showering on Nov. 12 at the same time as two other female soldiers when she saw Merck on his hands and knees taking pictures with a digital camera.

"It was very tough for me going through that ...," she said. "I want people to know what he did was wrong, and not something people can just brush off and kick him out."

The women turned Merck in the next day. Hernandez said the pictures were among the many inappropriate photos found on Merck's government computer.

Lt. Michael Drayton took over the unit and said that Merck faced a court martial in Kuwait. The women, who are back in the United States, won't need to go back to testify because Drayton said prosecutors had enough evidence.

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Renters losing home after 25 years
Katia Hetter, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Teresa Dulalas and her family, who are being evicted after 25 years in their home, are among the latest tenants in San Francisco to be ousted under a state law that landlords are using with increased frequency to empty their buildings of renters.

Advocates for tenants call the evictions -- under the Ellis Act, which allows them if owners promise to take their buildings off the rental market for a period of years -- a real estate speculator's ploy that makes a mockery of San Francisco's rent-control and tenant-protection laws.

Representatives for building owners, meanwhile, call the Ellis Act an important protection of the right of people to choose not to be landlords and to move in or sell off their real estate.

"It's like being stabbed in the back," said Dulalas, 40, whose 11-member family will have to move within the year from the three-bedroom home it rents for about $500. "Where are we going to go, especially in San Francisco? It's so hard to find affordable housing."

Dulalas joined a Tuesday night protest in front of her three-bedroom Folsom Street home that was organized by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the San Francisco Tenants Union to halt the Ellis Act evictions.

Petitions for Ellis Act evictions filed with the San Francisco Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board more than tripled in March compared with the same month last year, records show.

Landlords filed petitions to empty 39 units in March, compared with 12 units in March 2003, according to the rent board. Owners have petitioned to remove 221 units from the rental market over the six months ending March, compared with 83 units for the previous six-month period.

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May 05, 2004

The American Enterprise Institute's best spin on Iraq is pretty pathetic.

BROWN: There was word from the Pentagon today that the number of troops in Iraq will be kept at the current level, 135,000 give or take, possibly through the end of next year. In addition, commanders say replacement forces rotating into the country will be more heavily armed in recognition of the dangers these days.

Needless to say this is another unwelcome bit of business, along with the prison pictures and Fallujah and so on but does it and the rest also hide a larger, some would say less dire, reality?

Michael Rubin is an adviser to the Pentagon on Iraq and Iran. He recently returned from a long stretch in Iraq working for the CPA. We're pleased to have him on the program tonight. It's nice to see you, Michael. Thank you.

MICHAEL RUBIN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Thanks for having me here.

BROWN: Let me start with the hanging curve and then we'll go to a few fast balls here and there. But take 30 seconds and tell me what we're missing, what we don't see.

RUBIN: One of the things which I always looked at when I was in Baghdad is what people were investing in. If people are willing to put down tens of thousands of dollars into a new house, for example, that shows they have some confidence in the future. [P6: As long as people are spending money it's all good, isn't it?]

When I got to Baghdad back in July there were very few women on the streets and those that were, were fully veiled. People said it wasn't out of religious conviction. It was more because they were worried about security.

But by the time I left in March you had teenage girls walking without escort down the streets in Baghdad and Nasiriyah in Iraqi Kurdistan basically enjoying the nightlife, window shopping into the new boutiques and everything like that. It did show some improvement. [P6:Spending money and teenaged girls partying all night is the good news. Sounds like perverts run the AEI.]

BROWN: Would you say it's fair to say that what you have is a very complicated picture in Iraq that on the one hand clearly things are better, whether it be newspapers and satellite dishes and Internet cafes and all the rest that's going on and, on the other hand, you have a reality that 135,000 Americans, more, 20 percent more than anticipated, are going to be there for another year at least?

RUBIN: Exactly. I mean it is a very complicated situations. Sometimes actually we talk past each other when we talk about security. When Americans talk about security, of course, we mean force protection. When Iraqis talk about security they often mean freedom from violent or random crime.

They're two different issues. The freedom from violent or random crime from an Iraqi perspective security has gotten better. When you actually go down the streets, you see electrical appliances stacked on the sidewalks. The age of looting and the age of just random violence is over but Iraqis are still worried about terrorism and we need to be worried about force protection.[P6:At last. Someone recognizing that Iraqis see the different problems than Americans do, and that we will not solve our image problems by focusing on our desires to the exclusion of their needs.]

BROWN: Is that -- is terrorism the right word? Is that what they're worried about?

RUBIN: Yes. It is the right word because what's been going on with many of the car bombs, for example, is that they're trying to maximize civilian casualties. When I lived in the Mansoor district of Baghdad, or the Korada district of Baghdad outside the Green Zone, there were a couple car bombs that were clearly they killed 50 people in Baghdad lining up in a market.

In Karbala and Haramia (ph) you had car bombs and in Erbil you had suicide bombings. They were going after civilians. They were going after civilians for political gain. That's terrorism.

BROWN: What do you make, if you believe the polls, sometimes people don't and I'll get that too, the polls that show that the Iraqis really want the Americans out now that they've had it and that they really do see this as a hostile occupation at this point?

RUBIN: I think the polls can be rather volatile and when you actually look into the details of the polls many of them are just based on a sample of a couple hundred to maybe 3,000 or so. There's a large silent majority in Iraq. [P6: I have always wondered how people know what "the silent majority" wants when they haven't said anything. But…]

They haven't come out demonstrating in favor for us but after having lived there, not just eight months with CPA but eight months before working in the university system, they very much want us to stay.

The reason they're not coming out is they fell that in 1991 we cut and run and left them to Saddam Hussein and the thugs and they're worried we're going to cut and run again. Until they're sure that we're going to see it through to the finish, they're not going to put their necks out on the line for us again. [P6:…this is a fair (if somewhat obvious) assessment.]

BROWN: Michael, it's very good to have you on the program. I hope you'll come back from time to time. It helps, I think, paint the broadest picture which is good for all of us. Thank you.

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Oliver Willis:

Colin Powell was entrusted to be the Secretary of State, America's chief diplomat. And he decided to bite his tongue and allow our soldiers to march into danger for the sake of political expediency. Now he discovers that that may not have been the most prudent choice?

Too bad. You lie down with dogs, you're going to get fleas.

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ECONOMY – $6 BILLION LOOPHOLES: According to the WSJ, "The US system for taxing overseas profits of American companies is so riddled with loopholes and credits that the government would collect $6 billion more each year if it stopped trying to tax those profits altogether, according to a new estimate by congressional tax experts." The current U.S. system is so complex and allows so many breaks, credits, loopholes and deductions for American companies to exploit that it, in essence, gives American companies "more in tax breaks for foreign operations than it collects in revenues." "The fact that you get this result absolutely proves the system is broken," said economist Gary Hufbauer of the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank supported in part by corporations. "It's a mess."

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Not that I trust WSJ totally…they're saying the cost of collecting taxing overseas profits of American companies is (total tax collected + $6 billion) per year. What's amazing is the system is so byzantine such a claim is received with a sage nodding of the head.

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Indians say they were held in Iraq by U.S.
By V.M. Thomas, Associated Press Writer | May 5, 2004

COCHIN, India --Four Indians said Wednesday they were held against their will by U.S. troops in Iraq to do menial work in an Army camp amid insurgent attacks.

The U.S. Embassy said it was investigating the report.

Aliyarkunj Faisal, Abdul Aziz Shahjehan, Haniffa Mansool and Hameed Abdul Hafiz told The Associated Press they signed up in August with a recruiting agency to work for a caterer in Kuwait.

When they reached the Kuwait airport, a U.S. soldier ordered them to board a bus that took them to a base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, they said.

"There were some 20 Indians in the bus. Once we knew that we were inside Iraq, we protested," Faisal said. "But the Americans told us that they had paid a Kuwait agency $1,000 for each man and therefore it was a must that we work for them."

Shahjehan said the camp, which he could not name, often was the target of missile attacks by Iraqi fighters.

"Every time the camp was attacked, we took shelter in a bunker. The fear of seeing so many bomb explosions still haunts me," he said, adding that the Army also gave them training on how to remain alert and get into bunkers.

Shahjehan said the four -- all Muslims -- were forced to do menial jobs, including washing clothes.

"When I refused to work and told an officer that I wanted to go back, he beat me up," Shahjehan said.

Faisal said the men were promised $890 a month in Kuwait but instead made $200 from the Army in Iraq.

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Some Hispanic activists give president a failing grade
Lack of progress seen in education employment
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff | May 5, 2004

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will make another appeal to Hispanics today with a speech on the Mexican-American holiday of Cinco de Mayo, but on an issue of critical importance to the nation's largest minority group -- its sky-high school dropout rate -- the president has asked Congress for none of the $125 million his No Child Left Behind education bill authorized to address the problem.

John F. Kerry pledges to increase number of high school graduates by 1 million. A6

Bush's own White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans issued a report in March of 2003 noting that 1 in 3 Hispanic students do not complete high school and calling for the "full implementation and full enforcement of No Child Left Behind."

Instead, the Bush administration has sought to deal with the dropout problem by substantially increasing funding states can direct to areas the administration believes can help lower the high dropout rate, English-language programs and migrant education programs.

The $125 million authorized in No Child Left Behind would have specifically identified youngsters at risk of dropping out, and tailored programs to keep them in school.

"There's been substantial funding for dropout programs in the past, but they haven't shown results," said Adam Chavarria, executive director of the White House's Hispanic education initiative. "This administration hasn't been about funding programs just for the sake of funding programs."

But some Hispanic leaders say Bush's approach to education is similar to the way he deals with other issues of importance to their community: high-profile promises followed by inaction.

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Gore Plans To Launch New Cable TV Network
Programs to Be Aimed At Younger Audiences

By Christopher Stern
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page E01

NEW ORLEANS, May 4 -- Former Vice President Al Gore, once one of cable television's most ardent critics, stopped by the industry's annual convention on Tuesday to announce he was launching a new network of his own, designed to appeal to younger audiences.

Gore, along with business partner Joel Hyatt, said the two had acquired Newsworld International from Vivendi Universal SA for an undisclosed price and planned to transform it into a network aimed at viewers ages 18 to 35.

Newsworld International currently provides news produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., and the channel reaches about 17 million households. Gore said the network would shift its programming to youth-oriented shows over the next year and a half, but he declined to offer many more specifics.

Gore has long been rumored to be interested in acquiring a network of his own, with published reports speculating that he wanted to launch a channel to counter the conservative political points of view often associated with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. Gore has suggested in the past that the Democratic Party and liberals generally needed do a better job securing their own voice in the noisy media market by acquiring their own outlets.

Gore said Tuesday that his new venture is a purely entrepreneurial effort aimed at reaching a large young audience and that he has no intention of using the channel to promote a particular political point of view.

"This is not going to be a liberal network or a Democratic network or a political network in any way shape or form," Gore said during a news conference.

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Mass. Residency Proof Not Required for Gay Marriage
Out-of-State Couples Can't Legally Wed There

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A03

BARNSTABLE, Mass., May 4 -- A top legal adviser to Gov. Mitt Romney (R) told a gathering of city and town clerks Tuesday that marriage licenses issued in Massachusetts to same-sex couples from other states will be "null and void" and could have serious legal consequences for the couples involved.

But Daniel B. Winslow also said that couples need not provide evidence of residency and that those who "intend to reside" in the state are eligible to receive marriage licenses, opening the door for some out-of-state gay couples to marry here when such unions become legal on May 17.

A sworn statement at the bottom of marriage forms is sufficient evidence, and no further proof is necessary, Winslow said.

"What this means is it is not up to us to be the police for this whole particular process," said Linda E. Hutchenrider, president of the Massachusetts Town Clerks Association, who said the meeting had cleared up confusion over how the controversial law would be enforced. "It will be up to couples to make honest statements."

A landmark ruling by the state's Supreme Judicial Court last November made Massachusetts the only state in the country where same-sex marriage is legal.

Romney, who strongly opposes gay marriage, said last week that same-sex couples from elsewhere would be denied marriage licenses under a 1913 law that prohibits people from marrying in Massachusetts if their home state would not allow them to marry legally.

In recent weeks, a growing number of local officials had said that they would not seek to verify where couples applying for marriage licenses lived. The 1913 law, which was enacted in part to preserve other states' bans against interracial marriage, has not been enforced in decades, several clerks said.

"I think it was increasingly clear that the governor was facing a rebellion and local elected officials were unwilling to act as instruments of unjust laws and policies," said Joshua Friedes, advocacy director of the Freedom to Marry Coalition of Massachusetts. "To some extent, the governor has backed down."

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Quote of note:

Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses -- and reports of those abuses have been appearing since at least December 2002, when a Post story reported on harsh "stress and duress" interrogation techniques bordering on physical torture. Other reports by journalists and such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the lawless detention and criminal treatment of detainees, including the deaths of at least two prisoners at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan that were ruled homicides by military investigators. Yesterday the Army revealed that two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. prison guards last year and that 20 other detainee deaths and assaults are still being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been criminally charged in any of these deaths.

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A System of Abuse
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A28

SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday described the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison as "an exceptional, isolated" case. At best, that is only partly true. Similar mistreatment of prisoners held by U.S. military or intelligence forces abroad has been reported since the beginning of the war on terrorism. A pattern of arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions or any other legal procedure has been set from the top, by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior U.S. commanders. Well-documented accounts of human rights violations have been ignored or covered up, including some more serious than those reported at Abu Ghraib. In the end, the latest allegations may be distinguished mainly by the fact that they have led to court-martial charges -- and by the leak of shocking photographs that brought home to Americans, and the world, the gravity of the offenses.

Rectifying the problems dramatized by the Abu Ghraib photos will require far more than prosecution of a handful of reservists who committed abuses. Military intelligence officers and private contractors who encouraged or ordered maltreatment also must be prosecuted. Senior officers and administration officials responsible for creating the lawless system of detention and interrogation employed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 2001 should be held accountable. And the system itself must, at last, be changed to conform with the Geneva Conventions and other international norms of human rights. Congress, above all, must finally begin to exercise its authority to oversee and regulate the administration's handling of foreign detainees. That several of its senior Republican members were proclaiming themselves shocked yesterday to learn of the abuses -- as if none had been previously reported -- was itself shameful.

The foundation for the crimes at Abu Ghraib was laid more than two years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld instituted a system of holding detainees from Afghanistan not only incommunicado, without charge, and without legal process, but without any meaningful oversight mechanism at all. Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses -- and reports of those abuses have been appearing since at least December 2002, when a Post story reported on harsh "stress and duress" interrogation techniques bordering on physical torture. Other reports by journalists and such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the lawless detention and criminal treatment of detainees, including the deaths of at least two prisoners at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan that were ruled homicides by military investigators. Yesterday the Army revealed that two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. prison guards last year and that 20 other detainee deaths and assaults are still being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been criminally charged in any of these deaths.

The reported abuses at Abu Ghraib were in line with the earlier reports. Carried out by untrained reservists, they look like particularly harsh examples of the practices -- such as holding prisoners naked or forcing them to stand in uncomfortable positions for long periods -- commonly reported elsewhere. In response to these reports and complaints from human rights groups and foreign governments, the Bush administration pledged a year ago not to subject any foreign detainee to treatment unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution. But there is no evidence that the administration ever distributed guidelines implementing its decision to the military or intelligence agencies -- and the official investigations of Abu Ghraib show that there at least, the policy was never applied.

We have been saying for some time that Congress has neglected its responsibility to oversee the administration's conduct and provide the missing legal framework for handling foreign detainees. The result of its inaction and of the administration's refusal to respond to previous reports of abuses is the scandal of Abu Ghraib, which has done incalculable damage to the U.S. position in Iraq and around the world. The only way to even partial recovery is a full and independent congressional investigation of the abuses, both in Iraq and elsewhere; prosecution of all those responsible for crimes; and, finally, a resolve to handle prisoners in conformance with American standards of decency.

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Bush Grants Interviews to Arab Networks One Arab Network and a Shill
By Robin Wright and Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; 10:21 AM

President Bush will conduct two interviews today on networks broadcast to the Arab world as part of the administration's efforts to limit damage from revelations of prisoner abuse at a U.S. run prison in Iraq.

Bush will do the interviews this morning with the U.S.-sponsored al-Hurra television network and the Arab network al-Arabiya, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last night.

"This is an opportunity for the president to speak directly to the people in Arab nations and let them know that the images that we all have seen are shameless and unacceptable," McClellan said.

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What use is all that resolve when you keep doing stupid things the nation has to step back from?

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U.S. Retreats From Bush Remarks on Sharon Plan
Effort Is Intended To Placate Arabs

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS, May 4 -- The Bush administration on Tuesday joined in a high-level diplomatic statement that stressed that the key issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians must be negotiated by both sides, just weeks after President Bush pronounced that Israel could keep some West Bank settlements and Palestinian refugees should not resettle in Israel.

U.S. officials and foreign diplomats described the statement as an effort by the Bush administration to repair the international damage from the president's remarks last month, which had drawn sharp criticism in the Arab world and from European allies.

Bush's comments, made with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his side, had alarmed diplomats overseas because some perceived that the United States and Israel had cut their own deal on Sharon's plan to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians. U.S. officials now appear eager to erase that perception, both in private negotiating sessions and in public statements afterward.

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No better title is available.

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Wages don't figure in rebound
As profits soar, employees say good times haven't reached them

By Charles Stein, Globe Staff | May 5, 2004

For Caterpillar Inc., times could hardly be better.

Like much of corporate America, the Peoria, Ill., maker of construction equipment is benefiting from a surprisingly powerful economic rebound. Two weeks ago, the company reported a 200 percent increase in first-quarter profits and predicted profits for the rest of the year would be strong, as well. Chairman Jim Owens credited the global expansion and people across the company who are ''making a positive difference."

Not all those people are feeling as chipper as Owens. Three days after the earnings announcement, Caterpillar's 8,000 union workers rejected a proposed contract that offered one-time bonuses instead of raises, required bigger worker contributions for health insurance, and mandated significantly lower pay for new hires.

''The contract was a slap in the face," said Randy Ary, a 30-year Caterpillar veteran who voted against the pact. ''The company is making good money. All we are asking for is a share."

Other US workers may be asking for the same thing. A full year into an economic expansion that continues to pick up momentum, profits are growing rapidly, while wages are rising barely at all. In the fourth quarter of 2003, profits as a share of the total economy reached their highest level in more than 50 years. The share of the pie going to wages and salaries hit a 50-year low.

''What we are seeing is historically unprecedented," said Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University.

On the household level, the split also is lopsided. Affluent families have received significant gains from the rising value of their stocks and homes. On top of that, the well-to-do were the major beneficiaries of President Bush's tax cuts.

''Up to this point, most of the benefits of this expansion have accrued to higher-net-worth households," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a Pennsylvania research firm.

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Passage of Drug Import Bill Seen as Inevitable
The Health secretary's observations do not reflect a policy change, an official says.
By Vicki Kemper
Times Staff Writer

May 5, 2004

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's top healthcare official said Tuesday that passage of legislation allowing prescription drugs to be imported was inevitable, despite strong opposition from the White House and most congressional Republicans.

The statement by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson fell short of an endorsement of imported drugs, and he downplayed the potential savings for U.S. consumers.

Administration officials were quick to scale back Thompson's remarks.

But his comment, made during a news conference with reporters from regional newspapers, reflected the growing public demand for cheaper prescription drugs — and the political momentum that has been building for months to make it legal to import drugs.

As many as 2 million Americans bought U.S.-made prescription drugs from Canada last year, at savings of up to 70%. An expanding group of governors, mayors and lawmakers has been pressuring the Bush administration to make the practice legal.

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Senate Blocks New Rules on Pay for Overtime Work
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, May 4 — The Senate handed the Bush administration a significant defeat Tuesday by voting to block new rules on overtime that opponents say would cause millions of workers to lose their eligibility for the extra pay.

With five Republicans breaking ranks, the Senate voted, 52 to 47, to ensure that the new Labor Department proposal does not deny overtime to any category of worker now qualified to receive it. The proposal, which the administration says would expand eligibility for millions of workers, has been a source of growing conflict. Seeking to ease opposition, the Labor Department revised them last month.

"I think it is a clear message to the administration," said Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is a leading opponent of the proposal.

Mr. Harkin said the department should drop its initiative and "go back to the drawing board" to produce a fairer plan.

The defeat in the Senate does not necessarily mean that the proposed restrictions, supposed to start in August, will be thwarted. The Senate still has to vote on the corporate tax bill that includes the amendment blocking the overtime rules. The provision also faces an uncertain fate in the House. Last year, the White House was able to kill a similar effort to overturn the proposed rules.

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You know what? I'm starting to hate that title…

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Deepening Poverty Breeds Anger and Desperation in Haiti
By LYDIA POLGREEN

ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 4 - The pile of garbage behind the spot where Marie Joseph sells tins of tomato paste started out small, the usual primordial goo that coats this grimy capital's streets, binding a putrid mélange.

But in the two months since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first democratically elected leader, was forced from power by an armed rebellion, the pile has swelled like a rapacious tumor.

"I have never seen anything like this," Ms. Joseph said last week, squatting near the 12-foot-high pile, wrinkling her nose at the stench beneath a pair of gold-rimmed bifocals. "How can we live like this?"

Difficult as it may be to believe, people here say, life in the poorest nation in the hemisphere has gotten worse in the past two months.

Mounds of garbage choke the streets. Electricity in the capital has been scarce for weeks. The police force has fallen deeper into disarray, and crime has spiked, including a rash of kidnappings aimed at wealthy businesspeople. The price of rice, the Haitian staple, has doubled in some parts of the country.

A senior Western diplomat said the biggest concern was that the interim government, led by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, will face mass unrest over the deteriorating conditions, which could reignite violent clashes between Aristide supporters and rebels, who still occupy large swaths of the country despite the presence of 3,600 foreign troops.

Other than small, symbolic transfers, supporters of the former president and the rebels have both clung steadfastly to their weapons. If violence flares, the diplomat said, the government might not survive the next two or three months.

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If you can just free half the prisoners by fiat, what were they doing in prison to begin with?

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General Will Trim Inmate Numbers at Iraq Prison
By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: May 5, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 4 — The American commander in charge of military jails in Iraq said Tuesday that he had decided to reduce the number of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison sharply. The move comes after a military investigation into photographs and other evidence of prisoner mistreatment identified overcrowding as contributing to an abusive and chaotic atmosphere.

The commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, also said he had decided to end the hooding of prisoners, largely because it was too humiliating. But he defended practices like depriving prisoners of sleep and forcing them into "stress positions" as legitimate means of interrogation, noting that they are among 50-odd coercive techniques sometimes used against enemy detainees.

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A Human Tidal Wave, or a Ripple of Hysteria?
By MARK LANDLER

DEUTSCHNEUDORF, Germany - Ask a roomful of Germans in this secluded town on the Czech border what will happen now that the European Union has opened its doors to the east and they answer with a line that could have been lifted from a child's fable: "The Gypsies will come."

The Gypsies in question are a ragged settlement of 20,000 people, about 12 miles southeast of here, in the Czech city of Most.

The townsfolk are convinced that these newly minted Europeans will assert their right to move freely within the union by picking up stakes and crossing the German border. They foresee Gypsy caravans, with clanking pots and shoeless children, next to their well-kept backyards.

Even Europeans whose yards are half a continent away share an atavistic fear of the invading horde from the east. The week before the union welcomed 75 million new residents on May 1, tabloids in Britain published daily hyperventilating reports about the coming deluge.

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May 04, 2004

Even though there's a significant bit of text here, the article has much more detail. If you're really interested, skip the extended text and go straight to the article in The Telegraph.

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In this ravaged land, the old insanity of racism is breeding imminent catastrophe
(Filed: 03/05/2004)

Ethnic violence is ripping apart Darfur in western Sudan. Author Irvine Welsh, the first person to report from the region, sees the tragedy

It's been four years since I last visited Sudan with Unicef as part of the Weekenders team of British writers. Our aim was (and still is) to raise money for humanitarian projects by writing about the countries we visit.

Then, we were in the largely tropical southern part of this vast nation, the size of western Europe. But now I'm in another Sudan, in the Darfur region to the west of the country, witnessing the horrendous and tragic results of a campaign of ugly ethnic violence, which has left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.

Neighbouring Chad is home to more than 100,000 western Sudanese refugees, while the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur number around one million.

Playing the numbers game is dangerous in this remote, inaccessible area roughly the size of France, but the latest UN estimates - constantly being revised upwards - suggest that around 1.2 million people are now directly affected by the violence.

This conflict has its roots in the long-standing hostility between African pastoralists and tribes of nomadic Arabic horsemen.

The Africans have long blamed the government for turning a blind eye to abusive Arab behaviour over the years. This has involved looting villages, stealing cattle and seizing land as well as rape, murder and the occasional kidnapping of children.

Unlike the situation in the south, which I was familiar with, this is not a Christian versus Muslim schism as all parties here are Islamic. It has led many black Africans to believe that the Khartoum government treats them, at best, as second-class citizens.

The Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) grew out of this sense of discrimination and have waged guerrilla campaigns against government installations, usually from their mountain bases.

Stoic by nature, most of the African farmers simply want to get on with their lives and are disinclined toward this kind of militancy. The on-going abuses were shocking but relatively contained; the flashpoints usually seasonal and focused on established nomadic migratory routes.

Additionally there were mechanisms, however flimsy, for the resolution of such disputes at local level. In some cases African farmer and Arab herdsman were friends and neighbours, not united by lifestyle, but by a common faith and by their relative poverty.

The universal government line is spouted unceasingly from Khartoum to the most remote military and administrative outposts in Darfur: they are the honest brokers, trying to maintain order amongst the local population in face of terrorist attacks from militant rebels.

Yet out of a population of about six million, at least 700,000 Darfur residents are living in camps or have fled to villages to stay with families or friends.

Skirmishes between government troops and the SLA/JEM cannot begin to explain this level of displacement.

Only an understanding of the changing relationship between Khartoum, the Arab militia who have come to be known as the Janjaweed, and the African farmers can do this.

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Quote of note:

The Northeastern study confirms a Boston Globe study of the same traffic tickets last year: Minorities, especially men, are disproportionately ticketed and searched in most communities in the state. And when police officers decide whether to write a ticket or a warning, women are far more likely to get a break.

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Racial profiling is confirmed
Police face new rules on stopping motorists
By Bill Dedman, Globe Correspondent | May 4, 2004

Three out of four police departments in Massachusetts have engaged in racial profiling against nonwhite drivers, state Public Safety Secretary Edward A. Flynn is expected to report today.

To monitor police interaction with citizens, Flynn could require officers in as many as 249 departments, including state troopers, to fill out an extra form every time they pull over a motorist, even when they don't write a ticket or a warning.

Four years after the Legislature ordered a test for racial profiling in Massachusetts, police departments will receive their final grades this morning. Flynn is scheduled to release the final report of a state-sponsored study of traffic tickets by Northeastern University's Institute on Race and Justice and to announce what standard he will set for requiring the additional paperwork. Northeastern posted the report on its website last night.

The attorney for the state's police chiefs association predicted that many police officers will respond to Flynn's ruling by "de-policing," doing fewer traffic stops lest they give more ammunition to their critics.

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Sharpton Loses Federal Funding
The FEC rules that he spent too much of his own money on his campaign, exceeding the $50,000 personal limit.
From Associated Press

May 4, 2004

WASHINGTON — Al Sharpton's financially struggling campaign has lost one valuable source of money — at least for now.

The Federal Election Commission has cut off government financing for the Democrat's campaign. The FEC ruled Sharpton spent too much of his own money on his campaign, exceeding the $50,000 personal spending limit imposed on candidates who accept public funding.

Sharpton is considering going to court to challenge the commission, campaign spokesman Charles Halloran said Monday. Sharpton contends that when his personal spending on non-campaign travel is subtracted, he is well within the spending limit.

The FEC has not decided whether Sharpton will have to repay the $100,000 his campaign received from the government. It decided to cut off additional funding last week.

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A letter from Iraq.

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Oh, yeah. Elliot Spitzer for Attorney General. That would make me feel good about that office for the first time in years.

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Recording Companies Agree to Pay $50M
May 4, 9:58 AM (ET)

By DEEPTI HAJELA

NEW YORK (AP) - Major recording companies have agreed to return nearly $50 million in unclaimed royalties to Sean Combs, Gloria Estefan, Dolly Parton and thousands of lesser known musicians under a settlement being announced Tuesday.

A two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office found that many artists were not being paid royalties because record companies lost contact with the performers and had stopped making required payments.

"As a result of this agreement, new procedures will be adopted to ensure that the artists and their descendants will receive the compensation to which they are entitled," Spitzer said in a statement.

The Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the companies, planned to comment after the official announcement, said spokesman Jonathan Lamy.

Representatives for Combs and Parton did not immediately return calls for comment. A spokesman for Estefan, reached prior to the announcement, was unaware of the settlement and had no immediate comment.

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That which we call a skunk, by any other name, would still be all stank.

On April 26^th Bush/Cheney began its Winning the War on Terror Tour.

ARLINGTON, VA - Bush-Cheney '04 today launched the Winning the War on Terror Tour. The tour will highlight John Kerry's troubling record on national security and his inconsistent support for our troops. Today's kick-off events in Michigan, New Hampshire and Ohio will coincide with the release of a new ad, "Weapons," that will air in various markets and on national cable stations. Additionally, a state specific "Weapons" ad will air in 9 states. The Winning the War on Terror Tour will continue throughout the next two weeks.

Sadly, the tour didn't last two weeks.

President Bush Tours Michigan and Ohio on Yes, America Can Bus Tour

ARLINGTON, VA - On Monday, May 3, 2004, President George W. Bush will begin a two-day bus tour, Yes, America Can, through Michigan and Ohio. The President will participate in events focused on the strength, optimism and resolve of the American people in meeting the tests of our time - strengthening the economy, making our communities better and keeping America safe.

This is a whole new tour, even though it's taking place at the same time the previous tour was scheduled for, and is making all the same stops. It has to be. With all that resolve Bush wouldn't change the name of his tour from Winning the War on Terror would he? Because it would really look like he no longer believes the name represents a supportable statement. You know? I mean, it would really, really look like he's abandoning the issue that he himself believed would define his presidency.

He overcame or ignored the opposition of allies, the skepticism of big parts of the American public and even the doubts of some members of his own administration. He believes the outcome will define his presidency, aides say.

And he wouldn't do that, would he?

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The last paragraph I quote here may find a permanent home on the sidebar.

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Time for Bush to See The Realities of Iraq
By George F. Will
Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A25

Oh? Who?

Appearing Friday in the Rose Garden with Canada's prime minister, President Bush was answering a reporter's question about Canada's role in Iraq when suddenly he swerved into this extraneous thought:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.

[P6: As it happens, Kicking Ass had a post up about this blunder immediately.

Did Bush just say that America was a white country? Did he say that we were governed by white people? Is he out of his mind?

And as it happens, I commented there that yes, he did say it was a white country; yes, he said we are governed by white people; and he may indeed be crazy but that doesn't matter this time because it's true. Said comment is no longer there, sadly…white folks are so sensitive…]

…This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).

…Being steadfast in defense of carefully considered convictions is a virtue. Being blankly incapable of distinguishing cherished hopes from disappointing facts, or of reassessing comforting doctrines in face of contrary evidence, is a crippling political vice.

In "On Liberty" (1859), John Stuart Mill said, "It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say" that the doctrine of limited, democratic government "is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." One hundred forty-five years later it obviously is necessary to say that.

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No one hits every hot button in existance, all at once, by accident.

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White House Rejects Jordan's Request for Statement on Palestinians
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, May 3 - The Bush administration has rebuffed Jordan, turning down a request by King Abdullah II for a written statement this week that Palestinians deprived of land and homes would be compensated in a future peace accord with Israel, administration officials said on Monday.

The officials said that discussions over the possibility of a letter from President Bush on future Palestinian compensation had intensified over the last few days in preparation for King Abdullah's visit to the White House, scheduled for Thursday.

They said the visit was not in doubt as of Monday but that the king had made clear that he wanted a letter from Mr. Bush to be issued at the time of his White House meeting.

"There may be a letter, but not until after the visit," an administration official said. But he added that any letter would probably not contain the promises sought by the Jordanians. The matter would be negotiated in coming weeks, he said.

The king's visit, originally scheduled for last month, was postponed after the furor in the Arab world over President Bush's promise to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to support Israel's ultimate retention of some settlements in the West Bank and rejection of the longtime Palestinian demand for a right of return to family homes abandoned in 1948 in what is now Israel.

Mr. Bush, seeking to encourage Israel's plan to withdraw forces and settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, made the declaration in a letter and in public comments. Israeli officials said Mr. Sharon wanted the letter to get support for his plan among members of his governing Likud Party.

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Battlefield of Dreams
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last November the top economist at the Heritage Foundation was very optimistic about Iraq, saying Paul Bremer had just replaced "Saddam's soak-the-rich tax system" with a flat tax. "Few Americans would want to trade places with the people of Iraq," wrote the economist, Daniel Mitchell. "But come tax time next April, they may begin to wonder who's better off." Even when he wrote that, the insurgency in Iraq was visibly boiling over; by "tax time" last month, the situation was truly desperate.

Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.

A number of people, including Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, think that the Bush administration shunned early elections, which might have given legitimacy to a transitional government, so it could impose economic policies that no elected Iraqi government would have approved. Indeed, over the past year the Coalition Provisional Authority has slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors — reinforcing the sense of many Iraqis that we came as occupiers, not liberators.

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A reminder of what is at stake:

Marcus Dixon, of Rome, Ga., should be enjoying life in his freshman year at Vanderbilt University. Instead, he is locked up in a Georgia prison. Dixon was a star athlete who received a football scholarship to play at Vanderbilt, a member of the National Honor Society with a 3.96 grade point average, and scored over 1200 on his SAT. He since lost his scholarship to Vanderbilt and was permanently expelled from high school just one course away from graduation.
Shortly after being accepted to Vanderbilt, Dixon was accused of having forcible sex with a white girl three months shy of her sixteenth birthday. Marcus and others maintained that the sexual rendezvous, which took place on school grounds, was planned ahead of time. Several of the girl's classmates also testified that she had told them it was consensual.

It took the jury (9 whites and 3 blacks) only 20 minutes to acquit Marcus of charges of rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and sexual battery. The jury also concluded that, as was Dixon's claim, the sex was completely consensual.

Because Dixon was legally an adult at the time, the jury voted to convict him of misdemeanor statutory rape and aggravated child molestation. The latter carries a mandatory 10-year sentence with no hope of parole. The jurors hadn't been told about the sentencing guidelines, and several later said they believed they were agreeing to a very light charge that would allow Marcus to return home that afternoon. They were shocked when they heard the judge read the sentence.

Marcus Dixon is now serving 10 years for having consensual sex with a girl that was 15 years and 9 months old -- just three months shy of the legal age of consent -- while he, at 18, was technically an adult.

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Child Molesting Conviction Overturned in Georgia Classmate Case
By ARIEL HART

ATLANTA, May 3 — The aggravated child molestation conviction of a young man who was 18 when he had sex with a 15-year-old high school classmate was overturned on Monday by the Georgia Supreme Court in a 4-to-3 vote. He was released on his own recognizance, his lawyer said.

The young man, Marcus Dixon, was also convicted last May of misdemeanor statutory rape, and the justices said prosecutors should have brought that charge alone, without the more serious molesting count. He has been serving a 10-year sentence for molesting; the trial judge must still sentence him for statutory rape, but he has already served more than its one-year maximum term. Mr. Dixon was acquitted of rape, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and sexual battery.

Mr. Dixon is black, and the girl he had sex with is white. His conviction was attacked by civil rights groups and was reported on programs like "The Oprah Winfrey Show." Kweisi Mfume, president of the N.A.A.C.P., said he was "elated" at the ruling.

The girl suffered vaginal bruising, a cut lip and bruised arms, prosecutors said. The defense produced three classmates who said the arm bruises were there days before. Supporters of Mr. Dixon said they believed the girl was afraid her father would be angry that she had been with an African-American. Prosecutors contended the sex was against her will, and the justices Monday emphasized that consent was never proved.

Chief Justice Norman S. Fletcher wrote for the majority that there was "a clear legislative intent" that crimes like Mr. Dixon's be prosecuted as misdemeanor statutory rape, and that prosecutors not be able to choose among molestation laws. And since the statutory rape law overlapped with the molestation law, he wrote, Mr. Dixon was entitled to be prosecuted under it alone because it was more recent, more specific and carried a lesser sentence. He urged the Legislature to clarify the law.

The dissenting justices said that Mr. Dixon was convicted of two separate crimes based on different facts in the incident last year.

Leigh Patterson, the Floyd County district attorney, said her office would ask the court to reconsider.

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Agency Sees Withholding of Medicare Data From Congress as Illegal
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, May 3 — The Congressional Research Service says the Bush administration apparently violated federal law by ordering the chief Medicare actuary to withhold information from Congress indicating that the new Medicare law could cost far more than White House officials had said.

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

The actuary, Richard S. Foster, has testified that he was ordered to withhold the cost estimates last year, when Congress was considering legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare. The order, he said, came from Thomas A. Scully, who was then the administrator of Medicare.

Mr. Foster said Mr. Scully threatened to discipline him for insubordination if he gave Congress the data.

The research service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, said Mr. Scully's order "would appear to violate a specific and express prohibition of federal law." The actuary, it said, has a duty to "make professional and reliable cost estimates, unfettered by any particular partisan agenda."

In March, Bush administration officials suggested that they would provide the actuary's cost estimates to Congress. "We have nothing to hide, so I want to make darn sure that everything comes out," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said on March 16. But a month later, in a letter to Congress, the administration refused to provide the documents.

Mr. Scully has confirmed telling Mr. Foster that "I, as his supervisor, would decide when he would communicate with Congress."

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I have to admit to being torn about such cases as this. My first reaction is to shout several expletive and denounce the concept of giving these fools any money. My second reaction is the thought if no response is made, Black folks down south won't have any place to eat after a date.

This sort of behavior needs to be punished, not just corrected. It may be time for the Racial Discrimination Licensing Act.

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Cracker Barrel Agrees to Plan to Address Reports of Bias
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, May 3 — Cracker Barrel restaurants agreed Monday to overhaul their training and management practices after the Justice Department accused the country-style chain of widespread discrimination against black diners in about 50 locations.

A civil rights investigation found that black diners at Cracker Barrels in seven Southern states were routinely given tables apart from whites, seated after white customers who arrived later, and given inferior service, the department said in announcing the settlement.

Managers allowed white servers to refuse to wait on black patrons, and blacks were given less favorable treatment than whites when they complained about service, investigators found. Interviews with dozens of employees suggested that managers "often directed, participated in, or condoned the discriminatory behavior," the department said.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a chain based in Tennessee that has 497 locations nationwide and is known for its country-style cooking and folksy retail stores, denied the accusations in a lawsuit that the Justice Department filed on Monday in Georgia.[P6: Of course.] But in an agreement filed with the lawsuit, the company agreed to wide-ranging steps to combat discrimination against black diners. Among them are new training programs, random testing by undercover diners, the posting of nondiscrimination statements on menus, and the hiring of an outside auditor. [P6: Of course.]

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Higher Oil Prices Are Damaging Global Economy, a Study Shows
By JEFF GERTH

WASHINGTON, May 3 - Higher oil prices have hurt the global economy and could further hamper growth, bolster inflation and increase unemployment over the next two years if prices stay at their current levels, according to a study by the International Energy Agency (PDF) released on Monday.

"World G.D.P. growth may have been at least half a percentage point higher in the last two or three years," the study found, "had prices remained at mid-2001 levels."

If oil prices stay at their current level of more than $35 a barrel, more than $10 a barrel above their level of three years ago, "world G.D.P. would be at least half of 1 percent lower - equivalent to $255 billion - in the year following a $10 oil price increase."

In New York, crude oil for June delivery rose 83 cents, or 2.2 percent, to $38.21 a barrel on Monday.

The United States, which still produces about 40 percent of the oil it consumes, would suffer less than other developed countries: the report forecasts a drop in G.D.P. of three-tenths of a percentage point. Still, the agency found, continued higher prices would cause unemployment in the United States to "worsen significantly in the short term."

For developed nations as a whole, the effect of higher oil prices would include a rise of one-tenth of a percentage point in the unemployment rate, a rise of five-tenths of a point in consumer prices for 2004 and a reduction in economic growth of four-tenths of a point for the next two years.

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Quote of note:

The new loans go well beyond adjustable-rate mortgages. They include interest-only loans; "no document" loans, which allow people to borrow money at higher rates without proving their income or assets; and "no ratio" loans, which simply ignore a person's monthly income.

Oh, yeah. The reason for the post:

Regardless of when it happens, economists predict that a significant rise in interest rates will come as a jolt to many people. Those with home equity loans will see their monthly payments climb almost immediately. Adjustable mortgages will increase more slowly, because many borrowers lock in rates for several years. But monthly debt burdens will eventually rise.

In the meantime, housing prices could drop sharply in some overheated markets like New York and Southern California, where many homes have doubled in price over the last five years. People who bought their homes with no money down could find themselves unable to sell without owing money to their lenders.

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As Household Debt Rises, New Risk in Higher Rates
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, May 3 - Philo Thompson is 28, single and - like many other Americans these days - not afraid to stretch when it comes to buying a house.

A management consultant in Denver, Mr. Thompson bought a $500,000 townhouse last Friday in the suburb of North Cherry Creek.

As many other first-time homeowners have done, Mr. Thompson put no money down. Instead, he took out a first mortgage for 80 percent of the purchase price and paid the rest by taking a home equity loan against the new house. To reduce his monthly payments, and to qualify for a big enough loan, he took out an adjustable rate mortgage that requires him to make only interest payments.

People like Mr. Thompson could get squeezed if interest rates start to rise. With economic growth looking strong and hints of inflation in the air, Federal Reserve officials have made it clear that the era of extraordinarily cheap money is slowly drawing to a close. Yet Mr. Thompson betrays no worries.

"I'm too young to be scared," he said last week, betting that both the value of the house and his income will keep rising. If the bet fails, he said, it will not be the end of the world, adding: "There is a difference between being poor and being broke. Being broke is more of a temporary condition. Donald Trump has been broke a couple of times."

Mr. Thompson is not alone in such thinking. After a three-year period when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to their lowest level since 1958, Americans have become far more willing to load up on debt and banks have become far more willing to let them.

Household debt climbed at twice the pace of household income from the beginning of 2000 through 2003, according to data at the Federal Reserve. Enticed by low interest rates, Americans took on $2.3 trillion in new mortgage debt during that period - an increase of nearly 50 percent. Consumer credit, from zero-interest auto loans to the much more expensive debt on credit cards, climbed 33 percent, rising to $2 trillion in 2003 from $1.5 trillion in 2000.

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As much as the states need some kind of good news, after what was done to the last "surplus" I still get nervous.

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States' Tax Receipts Rise, Leading to Some Surpluses
By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, May 2 — States across the country are reporting stronger tax collections this spring for the first time in three years, fueling hopes that the bleakest budget-cutting days of the economic downturn are over, state officials and fiscal experts say.

From Florida to Oklahoma to Oregon, tax revenues are up in recent months from the same period last year, the first consistent increases many states have experienced since Wall Street's bubble burst in 2001.

…But most of those surpluses are small and a dark cloud remains: tax revenues are not growing fast enough to offset the rapidly rising costs of Medicaid, pensions and education, which account for most state spending.

As a result, 33 states faced projected revenue shortfalls in their 2005 budgets, and about 20 are still struggling to close them, the survey, released last week by the conference, said. Most states' fiscal years begin on July 1 or Oct. 1.

According to the survey, 30 states reported in March that personal income tax collections were at or above projections. In 36 states, sales taxes were coming in at levels as good as or better than forecast. And corporate income taxes were coming in on or above target in 37 states.

California has the worst budget problem by far, projecting a $15 billion gap in its 2005 budget. But for most states, the estimated shortfalls are significantly smaller than the yawning gaps they had to close in recent years, experts said.

"Yes, revenues are improving, but for almost all states, it is not enough," said Robert Kurtter, senior vice president for state ratings at Moody's Investors Service. "Fiscal '05 is continuing to be a difficult budget year."

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Housing Subsidies for the Poor Threatened by Cuts in U.S. Aid
By DAVID W. CHEN

New York City is facing a shortfall of at least $55.5 million in federal housing subsidies this year because of a recent regulatory change affecting the government's primary housing program for poor Americans.

The change, retroactive to January, stems from an effort by the Bush administration to control spiraling housing costs. In the past, the federal government paid the full cost of the 1.9 million rent vouchers given to poor tenants nationwide to help them pay for housing under the Section 8 program. But on April 22, the Department of Housing and Urban Development told housing agencies that it would pay only the cost of a voucher as of last August, plus an inflation adjustment.

The change could affect more than 900 of the nation's 2,500 public housing agencies, particularly those in cities where rent increases outpace inflation, according to the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials. New York City housing officials say that historically, the local cost of providing vouchers has gone up faster than inflation.

The total national shortfall could be hundreds of millions of dollars for the current fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington research group. That shortfall, in turn, may force housing agencies to freeze the number of vouchers, demand more money from tenants or do something that has never happened in Section 8's three-decade history: evict tenants from federally subsidized housing because of insufficient funding.

No city has more at stake in the ruling than New York, which issues more than 118,000 rent vouchers a year, far more than any other city. While city officials are cautiously optimistic that they can work with HUD to avoid any evictions, they acknowledge that several thousand tenants with vouchers appear to be in a far more precarious position today than they were a few weeks ago.

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May 03, 2004

In an effort to increase the literacy of thousands of rural Ghanaian children and their parents, the Digital Literacy Alliance, Inc.(A Not For Profit Organization) is currently sponsoring "The Books and Bucks" drive. I am on the Executive Committee of the DLA and am strongly urging my e-correspondents to contribute to this effort.

Book donations will be collected to furnish the Yaa Nyarkoa Library and serve the 20,000 people of two towns, Agona Duakwa and Agona Nsaba. This is a grass-roots effort that needs your support.

To take part in this drive, simply collect books from your attic, basement,friends, neighbors and co-workers and donate -or ask the donors to give- a dollar per book that will be used for shipping costs to Ghana. If you are a school teacher, please consider making this a class, or even school, project.

If you live in the New York area, I will be glad to come and collect the books from you. If you are in another part of the country - or world - email me and we can make arrangements to get the books from you to the library.

Please email Rasul to make arrangements to send your book donations to:

Mr. Rasul Murray
Library Fund Coordinator
P.O. Box 05042, 4 Pratt Station
Brooklyn, NY 11205-0424
e-mail: [email protected]

Your tax deductible donation will help support our campaign to increase the access to literature and improve the literacy skills of all those who are eager to learn. Your generous contribution to education will ensure that the dream of book accessibility in these two villages becomes a reality.

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On Education: At Poor Schools, Time Stops on the Library's Shelves
By MICHAEL WINERIP

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y.

FEBRUARY was Black History Month, and all students big and small at Edward Williams Elementary - which is 97 percent
black - were assigned reports on a famous black American. Francis Powell, a sixth grader, wanted to do Langston Hughes, but when Francis visited the school library, there were no books about the great poet, nor any of his poems.

Fahtemah Callands, another sixth grader, planned to do Whoopi Goldberg, but there was nothing in the school library about the actress. Nothing on Oprah Winfrey either. Nothing on Josephine Baker, Cicely Tyson, Leontyne Price, Ossie Davis. Nothing on Spike Lee. There was one book on Duke Ellington.

Students went looking for Benjamin Banneker, the mathematician; Granville T. Woods, the inventor; Alex Haley, the author; but there was nothing. Nothing on Rosa Parks.

One book on Frederick Douglass, but it was checked out fast. Indeed, the best collection available was a coloring book series, "Negro Pioneers," published in 1967.

At a poor school, the library is often the last priority, and at Williams, it has been neglected for decades. Much of the collection is from the 1950's and 1960's, when this was a white school. But it's not just about black and white. Children come in asking for Harry Potter, but there is no Harry Potter here. There is a complete series about a traveling pig named Freddy ("Freddy Goes to the North Pole" and "Freddy Goes Camping"). And Freddy was last checked out in 1967.

Many great young-adult writers are missing or underrepresented. No Katherine Paterson, one Gary Paulsen book, two Roald Dahls.

The shelves are filled with thousands of books, and at first glance, the place looks normal. Only by reading would you know. Typical is "Friendly Workers Visit Larry" (1960), a child's primer on jobs. The first job that young Larry learns about is telegraph delivery boy. Every worker that Larry meets - the dry cleaner, the deliveryman, the cleaning lady - is white and Larry talks funny. When his neighbor Mrs. Gay bakes cookies, Larry says, "Yum, Yum, the cookies I like best."

Need a technology book? Try "The First Book of Television," by Edward Stoddard (1955). "Most families in America today
have television sets," it begins. "Yet as short a time ago as 1945" Telephones? "Let's Find Out About Telephones" (1967). "When you phone you usually dial the number. But on some new phones you can push buttons."

Feel like singing? How about "When I Grow Up," by Lois Lenski (1960). Boys sing, "When I grow up I want to be a captain brave who sails the sea." Boys become cowboys, pilots, doctors, storekeepers. Girls grow up to be typists, store clerks, nurses, piano players and, of course, "a mother is best of all, with lots of children big and small."

Fahtemah, who is 12, says if you look hard you can find some good books in the library. "But it needs, like, more new and improved books," she says. "Some of the books you read, they fall apart."

Mount Vernon is the first stop out of the Bronx, a mix of urban New York City and suburban Westchester County. Just blocks from the city line, Williams is Mount Vernon's poorest school, with 90 percent on free lunches and nearly 10 percent living in homeless shelters.

Last fall the school got a new principal, its fourth in six years, Ernest Gregg. Mr. Gregg, 55, is persevering (he started as a teacher's aide, kept getting more education and moving up). The principal loves books - Langston Hughes and Dr. Seuss are two favorite writers. When he realized what was in the library, he was angry and embarrassed. "I felt as if I was walking into the past," he says. "It's criminal what's happened."

He has worked to improve the school. He has made the building more orderly, changing one lunch period of 500 students to two of 250. He also hired two extra teachers to reduce class size in kindergarten and first grade and added a reading specialist.

But just as important as teaching reading, he believes, is teaching a love of books. "A library should be the center of the school," he says, "A library should inspire. A library should be seductive."

The students who did the black history reports eventually did get information elsewhere, including using the Internet in the school's computer lab. "But it's not the same," Mr. Gregg says.

He has visited school libraries in rich suburbs like Scarsdale for ideas, and last October hired a licensed media specialist, LaSheune Cantey. But poor schools suck up new bodies. Ms. Cantey spends most of her day in the library teaching students during their classroom teachers' planning periods. She has little time to sort through the collection and figure out what to dump and what to keep. She recently got rid of sets of 1950's and 60's encyclopedias, leaving the newest, the 1991 World Book (missing the "B" and "R" volumes). But there are other books that Ms. Cantey, in her first media specialist job,
isn't sure about. Should she dump the "International Library of Negro Life and History" (1968), or does that reference set have historical value?

When there was no librarian, books and equipment were stolen. There is no card catalog - on index cards or computer. Ms. Cantey bought some Newbery award books with her own money, and brought in her own VCR, but, she says, "There are limits to what I can do."

The principal, with the help of Debra Fisher, a Mercy College volunteer, is hunting for book donations, but needs more. He would love to find retired librarian volunteers to help Ms. Cantey reorganize the collection.

Meanwhile, Anna Kagoro, a sixth grader who wants to be a neurosurgeon like Benjamin S. Carson, reads on. "I've read dozens of books in this library and I won't stop," she says.

The shelves are full. There's "The Motorman" (1934), describing how to safely avoid horse-drawn wagons crossing the tracks; "Plastic Magic'' (1959), with all the new uses for that wondrous new synthetic; and "The True Book of Automobiles" (1965), featuring cars of the future, which apparently will look like big-finned Chevy Impalas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/10/education/ 10education.html?ex=1080109900&ei=1&en=3be25104c98635dd

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Secret Searches Skyrocket

The Justice Department conducted more than 1700 secret electronic searches approved by the secret intelligence court last year, almost double the number conducted just two years ago. The dramatic rise in clandestine electronic surveillance, most directed at phones and computers, represents a sea change in the way the government investigates crime in the United States. The number of electronic searches approved by the secret court exceeded the number approved by all regular federal and state courts combined. Of the 1727 applications for secret searches requested by the Justice Department all but three were approved by the court – and two of those were ultimately approved after changes were made in the application. The trend is disturbing because applications for secret searches can be approved on a weakened standard of "probable cause" or other traditional protections afforded to the target of a criminal investigation under the 4th Amendment. Nevertheless, the fruits of the secret surveillance "can later be used in criminal prosecutions," although "defendants in such proceedings have fewer rights to attack the basis of the searches or to obtain intercepted information." The rise in this type of activity "was a direct result of the easing of standards for intelligence-gathering that was authorized by the Patriot Act" – a bill passed hastily in the days following 9/11. (For more on the stalled policy on Guantanamo, read this American Progress column by Mark Agrast.)

AIRLINES SEND VAST AMOUNTS OF SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFO TO FBI: In 2001, some of the nation's largest airlines, including American, United and Northwest, "turned over millions of passenger records to the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The information, which in some cases included as much as a year's worth of passenger records, included "names, addresses, travel destinations and credit card numbers." But, despite the size of the request, an F.B.I. official said "there is no indication that the passenger data produced any significant evidence about the [9/11] plot or the hijackers." The quantity of information turned over by the airlines to the FBI – 6,000 CD-ROMs of digital records from Northwest Airlines alone – was revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency, said the incident "is clearly something that is going to be, at minimum, a public embarrassment" for the government and the airlines.

TWO YEARS LATER, ONLY TWO DETAINEES IN GITMO CHARGED WITH A CRIME: 600 detainees still are languishing in the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Only two have been formally charged with a crime and just a handful have been permitted to see a lawyer. Many "have been in custody for two years." The detentions "have been condemned by foreign governments and human rights groups and are now being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court." Paul W. Butler, a Defense Department official who oversaw the detentions, said, "we freely admit we're learning this as we go along." While Vice President Dick Cheney called the detainees "the worst of a very bad lot," 134 were released without ever being charged with any crime.

AS PER USUAL, HALLIBURTON PROFITS: The prison camps in Guantanamo cost the military about $118 million a year to operate. A new facility, Camp 5, will open this week, expanding the prison's capacity to 1,100. Halliburton subsidiary KBR has been awarded $110 million worth of work "to build prison cells and other facilities." The expansion is curious in light of the fact that Paul Butler said the United States is interested in transferring at least half of the 600 remaining detainees to the custody of their home countries.

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A legal boost for noncustodial parents
In California, a gain for fathers' rights may ripple out nationwide.
By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

OAKLAND, CALIF. – A decision by the California Supreme Court is setting the stage for a national shift on one of the most contentious areas of divorce law. By keeping a mother from moving to Ohio with her children against the father's will, the court is sending legal tremors across the US.

Eight years ago, a California Supreme Court decision gave custodial parents - who are overwhelmingly mothers - broad powers to move as they wished, and it became the basis for many other states' laws. Now, the same court has moderated its stance, giving noncustodial parents more of a legal voice in the process, and suggesting that its initial ruling had been misapplied.

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Quotes of note:

The Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, explained the rationale.

"Without the opportunity for Democrats to participate, Republicans are going to be making very partisan decisions about the level of commitment to highways over the next several years," Mr. Daschle said. "That's wrong."

That's right.

Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said: "Historically in the Senate, when we passed a bill, we automatically went to conference. That has changed."

Now, Mr. Santorum said, Republicans have to secure unanimous consent, "or we do not get to conference."

Poor baby. At least you have more time to dream up inventive sex-with-animals scenarios. You seem to like doing that…

Bottom line: if Republicans can use parliamentary procedure to exclude Democrats, then Democrats can use parliamentary procedure to defend their interests. You don't like it? There's a simple solution.

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Feeling Left Out on Major Bills, Democrats Stall Others
By CARL HULSE and ROBERT PEAR

Published: May 3, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 2 — Senate Democrats, shut out of Congressional negotiations on Medicare and other important bills last year, are blocking House-Senate negotiations on other bills unless they are guaranteed a voice in writing the final legislation.

The tactic has infuriated Republicans and contributed to election-year paralysis as the House and Senate struggle to work out compromises needed to make law. The conflict intensified late last week and almost caused a partial shutdown of the Transportation Department.

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Sharon Suffers a Party Setback on His Gaza Plan
By GREG MYRE and ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: May 3, 2004

JERUSALEM, Monday, May 3 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has received a stinging setback from his rightist Likud Party, which soundly rejected his proposal to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip, according to results announced early Monday. The vote by party members was nonbinding, but it cast doubts on the plan's future as well as on the stability of Mr. Sharon's government.

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Report on Abuse Faults 2 Officers in Intelligence
By JAMES RISEN

Published: May 3, 2004

…Appearing on three Sunday talk shows, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave conflicting answers when asked if the problems at Abu Ghraib were systemic throughout detention centers in Iraq.

At first, General Myers insisted that the instances of mistreatment were not widespread and were the actions of "just a handful" of soldiers who had unfairly tainted all American forces in Iraq. But when pressed, he acknowledged that he had not yet read a classified, 53-page Army report completed in February by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, first reported in the May 10 issue of The New Yorker, that chronicled the worst of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. General Myers left open the possibility the abuses could be broader, saying, "We don't know that yet."

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The Cruelest Month
By WILLIAM SAFIRE SATIRE

WASHINGTON — "April is the cruelest month," wrote T. S. Eliot in "The Waste Land." This April cruelly set back democracy and antiterrorism in Iraq.

Casualties reached a peak. A Marine commander had to appeal to a Republican Guard general to come to terms with Baathist insurgents in Falluja. President Bush had to express America's disgust at the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by a handful of sadistic guards. Taken together, that's about as bad as it gets.

However, a certain grim logic suggests a turn for the better may be coming this summer.

Every other logic says it sucks more daily. But William Satire clings to his "certain grim" logic.

Our June 30 deadline for the end of occupation, once criticized, is now inexorable. Iraqi sovereignty, it has been agreed, will be palpable but limited; coalition troops will remain under command of the former occupiers, and the purpose of the U.N.-chosen transitional Iraqi government is strictly to set up free elections.

Definition of "palpable": capable of being perceived by the senses or the mind. So all we need to do is pass out the same drugs Satire uses and we'll all be satisfied with the results we're getting.

The U.N., at last given its long-sought "central role" in Iraq's politics, is becoming less afflicted with hubris.

This is the single most hypocritical statement a supporter of this invasion could make.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the Berber who sought cheap popularity among anti-Americans in Iraq by calling Israel "poison" and the U.S. support of Gaza withdrawal "thoughtless," was reported by Secretary General Kofi Annan to wish he had not said that.

Too bad the Bushistas can't seem to be as honorable about their errors.

Annan went on to assure NBC's Tim Russert that any U.N. employee who refused to cooperate with the independent investigation into the oil-for-food scandal would be fired.

Plame? Sixteen words? Just-In-Time Declassification?

Annan still called corruption charges a "smear." He passed the failed-supervision buck to the Security Council's 661 committee, then lamely professed little knowledge of a cover-up letter sent only two weeks ago in the name of his chief aide, hinting that it might not have been his aide's doing.

But the secretary general seemed aware of the damage done to the U.N. by the $5 billion kickback scheme.

Enron? Halliburton? Hello??

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Unfortunately

Fighting for Free Speech Means Fighting for . . . Howard Stern
By ADAM COHEN
The F.C.C. is using Howard Stern's arguable taste as a cover for a whole new approach that throws out decades of free-speech law.

…it's going to be one of those "when they came for X I was silent" things.

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In Re Scalia the Outspoken v. Scalia the Reserved
By ADAM LIPTAK

PHILADELPHIA, April 29 — About 20 minutes into stock remarks in praise of the Constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia paused. "Everything I've said up to now," he told a hotel ballroom full of lawyers here on Thursday, "has been uncontroversial."

What followed was not.

In emphatic phrases punctuated by operatic gesticulation, he then launched into an attack on a series of the most important Supreme Court decisions of the last 40 years.

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May 02, 2004

Taking out Saddam is looking more like taking out Archduke Ferdinand every week.

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Today I ran across an interesting educational site: Collapse: Why do civilizations fall? It teaches about the collapse of the Mayan, Mesopotamian, Chaco Canyon, and the Mali/Songhai civilizations.

Interestingly enough, they draw a few conclusions.

Understanding Collapse

The normal pattern of history shows one civilization succeeding another, either rapidly or gradually. When a large state-level society falls, the population size and density decrease dramatically. Society tends to become less politically centralized. Less investment is made in elements such as architecture, art, and literature. Trade and other economic activities are greatly diminished, and the flow of information among people slows. The ruling elites may change, but usually the working classes tend to remain and provide continuity (though in some cases, virtually no one remains).
[P6: Doesn't this sound familiar?]

Is it possible to prevent a collapse?

Scientists Thuman and Bennet have highlighted "prerequisites for survival," needs that must be met in order for a society to continue:

• Every society must be able to answer the basic biological needs of its members: food, drink, shelter, and medical care.
• Every society must provide for the production and distribution of goods and services (perhaps through a division of labor, rules concerning property and trade, or ideas about the role of work).
• Every society must provide for the reproduction of new members and consider laws and issues related to reproduction (regulation, marriageable age, number of children, and so on).
• Every society must provide for the training (education, apprenticeship, passing on of values) of an individual so that he or she can become a functioning adult in the society.
• Every society must provide for the maintenance of internal and external order (laws, courts, police, wars, diplomacy).
• Every society must provide meaning and motivation to its members.

This last prerequisite is more important than it may seem. No societal activity is possible unless people are motivated to participate. Why do we get up in the morning? How do we see ourselves in relation to other members of society? Why do we follow a society's rules? Without a sense of meaning and motivation, people will become apathetic. If this happens, a society may be threatened with decline.

How many of these prerequisites for survival are politically supported by Republicans? Conservatives? Libertarians?

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What would you say if I told you that 60 Minutes II story wasn't the first reported case of systemic abuse of Moslem prisoners?

What would you say if I reminded you the previous case happened in Brooklyn?

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.

An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.

The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.

"Some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time," the report said. "We determined that the way these MDC staff members handled some detainees was, in many respects, unprofessional, inappropriate and in violation of BOP policy."

LATER: I should have seen Mithras' discussion of why the torture took the form it did earlier. It applies to Brooklyn as well as Abu Ghuraib.

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Williams Is Acquitted on Manslaughter Charge
By ROBERT HANLEY and JOHN HOLL

OMERVILLE, N.J., April 30 — A jury today found the former New Jersey Nets star Jayson Williams not guilty of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a limousine driver at Mr. William's mansion. The jury could not reach a verdict on a charge of reckless manslaughter, but did convict Mr. Williams of four charges involving efforts to hinder the investigation.

The jury of eight women and four men reached a verdict on the fourth day of deliberations on the charges related to the killing of the driver, Costas Christofi, capping a three-month State Superior Court trial that had been plagued by delays and accusations of prosecutorial misconduct.

The jury deliberated on eight different charges, and acquitted Mr. Williams of three that carried the most severe sentences. They found him not guilty of possession of a weapon and aggravated assault, in addition to the charge of aggravated manslaughter, a charge that might have brought the former athlete a sentence of up to 30 years. The jury made no decision on one charge of reckless manslaughter.

The jury found Mr. Williams guilty of four charges involving hampering the investigation, which together carry a maximum sentence of 13 years in prison, officials said.

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For a Squeeze Play, Software Seeks Out Game Highlights
By IAN AUSTEN

BASEBALL fans who watch a televised game after it has been processed by video analysis software developed by Sharp Laboratories of America can forget about peanuts and Cracker Jack. There are no ritualistic warm-ups on the screen, no shots of boisterous fans or commercials.

Instead there's a nonstop assault of hits, runs and outs. Succumbing to any distraction like eating is enough to leave a viewer behind. Given that the system, called HiMpact Sports, reduces a three-hour baseball game to an eight-minute experience, there may not even be enough time to get hungry.

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Issues In Depth | 4.28.04

Moving Ideas Network, a project of The American Prospect, presents resources on the magazine's Special Report on Bush's War on the Middle Class.

Articles in The American Prospect's Special Report

Ronald Reagan's domestic program was properly understood as a war on the poor. But as this pacakge of articles shows, George W. Bush's is more like a war on the middle class.

American Families at Risk: An Overview
by Richard C. Leone

Middle Class and Broke: Once, the larger society shared the cost of raising and educating the next generation. These days, the responsibilities are falling more to individual families. It's bringing parents to their knees.
by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi

• Additional Readings:
• Penn area revival lures many, pushes others out, 2/24/2003, Philadelphia Inquirer
• Preschools are popping at the seams, 7/09/2002, Christian Science Monitor
• Building Blocks For Every Kid, 2/12/2001, Newsweek
• The State of Working America, Economic Policy Institute *
• Low Wages = Low Quality: Solving the Real Preschool Teacher Crisis, The National Institute for Early Education Research
• Myths About the Adequacy of Current Child Care Funding (PDF), Center for Law and Social Policy *
• Five Reasons Why the Senate Should Adopt the Snowe-Dodd Amendment to Increase Child Care Funding (PDF), Center for Law and Social Policy *

Schools of Hard Knocks: Education is the ticket of entry to the middle class. So why has Bush done so little to establish social equity and so much to impede social mobility? Chalk it up to "compassionate conservatism"
by Richard D. Kahlenberg

• Additional Readings:
  
• Rags, Riches and Race: The Intergenerational Economic Mobility of Black and White Families in the United States (PDF), Tom Hertz, Department of Economics, American University
• Budgeting for Disaster: Bush's Proposed 2005 Budget, Moving Ideas
• Statement of Lawrence Gladieux to the Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives
• School Choice: Doing It the Right Way Makes a Difference, Brookings Institute

• Reference:
• Public Schools of North Carolina
• No Child Left Behind, US Deptartment of Education
• Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, US Deptartment of Education
• Income Surveys, US Census Bureau
• Educating America, Moving Ideas

Don't Mourn, Mobilize: Middle-class voters grasp that Bush is not representing their interests. But they don't act on that perception. They might - but it's up to Bemocrats to motivate them.
by Ruy Teixeira

• Additional Readings:
• President's Savings Proposals Likely To Swell Long-Term Deficits, Reduce National Saving, And Primarily Benefit Those With Substantial Wealth, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities*
• The President's Proposal To Make Tax Cuts Permanent: $2.2 Trillion Cost Poses Danger To Economy In The Long Run, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities*
• Slash and Burn Economics: Extending the Tax Cuts, Moving Ideas

• Reference:
• Washington Post Tax polls
• Hardships in America: The Real Story of Working Families (PDF), Economic Policy Institute*
• How much is enough? Basic Family Budgets for Working Families, Economic Policy Institute*

Losing Ground: Outsourcing jobs, harassing labor unions, repealing safety regulations, undercutting benefits: The Bush administration is clearly winning a great victory in its war on America's workers.
by Jeff Faux

• Additional Readings:
• Missing the Moving Target: Meager job growth and the poor track record of the administration's job forecasts (PDF), Economic Policy Institute *
• The broad reach of long-term unemployment (PDF), Economic Policy Institute *
• White House Backs Off CEA Prediction Of "Average" Job Growth, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *
• Weak Recovery Claims New Victim: Workers' Wages (PDF), Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute*
• Measuring employment since the recovery : A comparison of the household and payroll surveys (PDF), Economic Policy Institute *

Throwing Away the Rules: In its zeal to kowtow to business, the Bush administration is dismantiling a century of regulations that protect middle-class consumers from financial fraud and health hazards.
by Merrill Goozner

• Additional Readings:
• Stop Corporate Control of the Media, Moving Ideas Network
• Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science, Union of Concerned Scientists

• Reference:
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
• World Sugar Research Organization, World Health Organization

The Great Tax Shift: The president says his cuts are simply a way of "giving people their money back." But the bill will come due one way or another - and lower - and middle-class households will foot it.
by William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag

• Additional Readings:
• Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration's Record on Cutting Taxes, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *
• The President's Proposal To Make Tax Cuts Permanent: $2.2 Trillion Cost Poses Danger To Economy In The Long Run, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *

Future Retirees at Risk: Bush's "ownership society" would replace existing social-insurance systems with personal savings accounts. His approach threatens to make old age and poverty synonymous again.
by Alicia H. Munnell

• Additional Readings:
• Understanding the Social Security and Medicare Projections, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *
• Fact Sheet : Misleading Claims About New Social Security and Medicare Projections, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *
• What The Trustees' Report Indicates About The Financial Status Of Social Security, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities *
  

Middle Class Reference:

• Center for Law and Social Policy *
• Center on Budget and Policy Priorities*
• Brookings Institute
• Economic Policy Institute *
• Campaign for America's Future *

* Denotes a member of Moving Ideas

Top

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Lt. Rieckhoff was interviewed by George Stephanopolis and handled his business. He said he has other Iraq II veterans ready to speak out.

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Iraq Veteran Criticizes Bush on Radio
Iraq War Veteran Criticizes President Bush's War Effort in Democratic Radio Address
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON May 1 — An Iraq war veteran expressed disappointment with President Bush on Saturday, saying the nation's leaders refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of continuing violence in Iraq.

Rieckhoff's comments, distributed by Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, were the Democratic response to the president's weekly radio address. Usually, a public official gives the response.

"Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden," said Rieckhoff.

Rieckhoff called his comrades in Iraq "men and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability."

"I don't expect our leaders to be free of mistakes. I expect our leaders to own up to them," said Army National Guard 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, who was a platoon leader in Iraq.

Rieckhoff's comments, distributed by Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, were the Democratic response to the president's weekly radio address. Usually, a public official gives the response.

"Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden," said Rieckhoff.

Rieckhoff called his comrades in Iraq "men and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability."

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America Has Second Thoughts About a United Europe
By ROGER COHEN

WASHINGTON — The expansion of the European Union this weekend from 15 members to 25, marking the formal end of Europe's postwar division, presents America with a choice. Should it embrace this new union that stretches to the Russian border or try to foster Europe's many fissures in order to divide and rule?

For the moment, there is scant official comment, but perhaps Europe should not take this personally. The United States has shifted paradigms: Europe is old news. Still, the less-than-benign neglect surrounding the European Union's addition of 10 members, 8 of them once part of the Soviet bloc, reflects a moment of great difficulty.

"The situation has never been so bad in 50 years," Gunter Burghardt, the union's ambassador in Washington, said in an interview. "It is a fact of life that America is a hegemonic power, but the question is how that power is used. We need to know that America is open to a confident relationship, not just with certain member states but with the E.U. as such."

This assessment reflects the enduring wounds of the Iraq war and the feeling among many European officials that an American administration has determined that its interests may lie more in division within Europe than in unity, more in forging improvised coalitions of the willing than in honoring a partnership of the wedded.

"This is an administration that simply does not care about Europe," said Philip H. Gordon, an expert on European affairs at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think they do anything solely to divide Europe, but if that's a consequence of an action, fine, because they don't want a counterweight to American power emerging."

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On This Week, John McCain is again proving himself Most Rational Republican.

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'Mississippi in Africa': The Promised Land
By IRA BERLIN

MISSISSIPPI IN AFRICA
By Alan Huffman.
328 pp. New York: Gotham Books. $27.

OF the many tragedies set in motion by the enslavement of African people in the United States, few are more sorrowful than the history of Liberia. Founded in 1816 as a refuge for black Americans by a peculiar alliance of slaveholders and abolitionists, Liberia was advertised by its proponents -- so-called colonizationists -- as a means of speeding slavery's demise and demonstrating the capacities of people of African descent; it would also renew the continent with an infusion of evangelical Christianity, American republicanism and commercial capitalism.

But from the start, the promise proved empty. The initial settlement was more a charnel house than a refuge, as ill-supplied immigrants succumbed to disease. Rather than ending slavery, Liberia became both a place of enslavement and a host to other forms of coerced labor that differed from slavery in name only. The immigrants and their offspring mercilessly exploited the indigenous African population. At the end of the 20th century, tensions between the Americo-Liberians and the local peoples exploded in a series of civil wars that killed, mutilated, exiled and impoverished hundreds of thousands. Only the most optimistic give the recent cease-fire much chance to redeem the colonizationists' original promise.

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The New Yorker has an article that implies the culpability for the torture of Iraqi prisoners of war goes fairly high up the chain of command.

Of course it does. You don't take brag about stuff like that unless you have reason to think the people you're bragging to will approve.

It's like when Abner Louima was assulted by ex-NYC police office Justin Volpe in the stationhouse. Afterward he ran around the stationhouse with the stick he used to commit the crime bragging to other officers. That only one officer testified against him for that it more an indictment of the atmosphere than the vindication of the police department it was claimed to be.

The article was mentioned in an earlier post, so I thought I'd link it. Barring the extraordinary, I think I'm done with the topic.

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Quote of note:

"There was a mentality that the people we're in charge of are not humans," the U.S. official said.

Oh, you mean a belief these people have no souls?

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Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Appears More Extensive
Several accounts describe infliction of physical and mental pain. A sergeant charged in the investigation says intelligence officers encouraged such actions.
By T. Christian Miller
Times Staff Writer

May 2, 2004

WASHINGTON — At least one Iraqi prisoner died after interrogation, some were threatened with attack dogs and others were kept naked in tiny cells without running water or ventilation, according to an account written by a military police sergeant who is one of six U.S. soldiers charged in a growing scandal over prisoner abuse in Iraq.

The account of Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, along with interviews Saturday with other soldiers in Frederick's unit and senior U.S. and military officials, paints a portrait of a prison that spun out of control last fall as thousands of captured Iraqis poured into its razor-wire confines.

In some cases, as few as a dozen U.S. soldiers were responsible for overseeing more than 1,000 prisoners. Escape attempts were common. Mortar fire from insurgents rained down on prison grounds, killing U.S. guards and Iraqi prisoners.

Relatives of Frederick, who faces court-martial in connection with the alleged sexual and physical degradation of prisoners in Iraq, gave The Times a copy of the account that they said was handwritten by Frederick shortly after his arrest in January.

Frederick, 37, wrote that U.S. intelligence officers and civilian contractors who were conducting interrogations urged military police at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad to take steps to make prisoners more responsive to questioning.

Military intelligence officers have "encouraged us, and told us, 'great job,' that they were now getting positive results and information," he said in the neatly written 10-page document that covers a two-week period of last fall.

One U.S. official said 50 to 100 Iraqis had died in U.S. custody during the last year, victims of mortar attacks, heat exhaustion, wounds suffered in battles and attacks by other prisoners.

Although Frederick said one prisoner died after interrogation, the official said that so far no such allegations had been independently substantiated. He said the deaths from other causes amounted to a small percentage of the estimated 35,000 Iraqis who had spent time in U.S. detention centers.

Still, he said that the abuse allegations and other evidence showed that Iraqi prisoners had suffered under U.S. custody.

"There was a mentality that the people we're in charge of are not humans," the U.S. official said. "That's not consistent with our values. The people who were doing this lost it."

The New Yorker magazine reported Saturday that it had obtained a 53-page U.S. military report that concluded that Iraqi prisoners had been subjected to "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison, which before last year's U.S.-led invasion had been Saddam Hussein's primary killing ground for political enemies.

The author of the report, identified by the New Yorker as Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, said it appeared that some of the inmates had been beaten and sodomized, perhaps with a broomstick or a chemical light.

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An excellent editorial, fully explaining the problem with the William Hung Phenomenon.

Quotes of note:

Hung's fans are blind to all of it, e-mailing me such thoughts as, "Can't you just leave well enough alone? "

Or my favorite: "Can't you just take things at face value?"

Sure. Why look deeper at anything?

And then there are those who say there's no harm in Hung's exploitation, because everyone's making money and having fun. And that bothers me.

Kathie Lee Gifford, appearing on Fox TV, talked about Hung, and she -- a master of image herself -- knows exactly what she is laughing at. "If [Hung] gets his teeth fixed," she said, "his career is over."

"Producers are already saying that Asian-American males that look like William Hung are going to be big money makers," Liu adds.

That's why Liu half suspects Hung could be an act -- say, like a Jim Nabors, who could go from "Gomer Pyle" to a pop standard with the flip of a switch. Liu says he can deal with an actor who plays a role. But, he adds, he has a harder time with a normal guy willing to help set images of the Asian-American male back about 40 years.

"I cannot see a real Asian-American man allowing this to happen," says Liu.

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Hung As Buckwheat
Emil Guillermo, Special to SF Gate
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
©2004 SF Gate

If you still think the stardom of UC Berkeley engineering student William Hung is so innocent, you should read some of the e-mails I received from Asian-American actors about my last column.

Far from downplaying the exploitation of the "American Idol" reject as a subject of ridicule, the actors see Hung's rise as clearly linked to giving America permission to be racist.

I'll get to their specific comments a bit later, but note that such opinions are in the minority among all the e-mails I received. Judging from most responses to my last column, you'd have thought I had uttered a sacrilege against someone really talented -- like Paris Hilton.

When I linked race with the rise of Hung, I hit a nerve, one that reveals how people are so unaware of racism that when it roots itself in something seemingly innocuous, it moves through the culture like some stealth bacteria.

Many people are so in love with the engaging, no-talent Hung that they don't even see the obvious. Sure, there's an appealing earnestness in the tale of the man who dared to stand his ground to the show's "evil" judge, Simon Cowell.

But overriding all that is the real achievement of the student turned karaoke king: racist stereotyping.

He's bucktoothed, moves like a man in need of a straitjacket and sings English in a Chinese accent.

And you like him, you really like him. But not like you like Sally Field.

In a report on the VH1 Web site, even Alan Grunblatt, general manager and executive vice president of Koch Records, which had the gumption to sign and rush Hung to market, admits it's Hung's accent that makes the music funny.

Grunblatt wasn't sad last week when Hung's CD debuted at No. 34 on the Billboard charts and sold nearly 40,000 copies. In fact, he's giving our lad a little affirmative action. "He's taking lessons, and, I think, in a year from now, he's going to be a really talented singer," Grunblatt says. "I would sign 10 more people just like him."

That's entertainment?

No, that's racist. (At least admit to gross pandering to racist notions for amusement and the almighty dollar.)

Of course, none of the bad stuff is diminished just because you get to laugh at the same time.

The warning from Grunblatt is an indicator that Hung isn't going to be a one-note phenomenon. The record-company executive is planning ahead. We're likely to see more abuses justified by reality, creating an ambiguous, soft racism passing as entertainment.

Now, that's what I'd call insidious.

Hung's fans are blind to all of it, e-mailing me such thoughts as, "Can't you just leave well enough alone? "

Or my favorite: "Can't you just take things at face value?"

Sure. Why look deeper at anything?

Some correspondents claim I am jealous and out to sink Hung. But I'm no Omarosa trying to deep-six Kwame on "The Apprentice."

And then there are those who say there's no harm in Hung's exploitation, because everyone's making money and having fun. And that bothers me.

Do you think prostitution is a victimless crime?

Other Asian Americans are just glad someone finally spoke up about the not-so-innocent selling of Hung. They'd been silent because the guy's apparent success clouded their view: "He's making money. It must be good."

It's not.

African Americans e-mailed me, saying the whole thing has a Stepin Fetchit quality.

In considering the whole issue, I had actually thought of the pickaninny, the classic caricature of the innocent black child with the big eyes and nappy hair.

But then an e-mailer, an Asian American, beat me to the punch line.

Hung, the correspondent says, is the modern Buckwheat.

People laugh at his eyes, accent and hair. Now, we laughed at Alfalfa, too, but we knew that not all white people look like him. But for some people, Buckwheat was the most ubiquitous image of an African American.

Kathie Lee Gifford, appearing on Fox TV, talked about Hung, and she -- a master of image herself -- knows exactly what she is laughing at. "If [Hung] gets his teeth fixed," she said, "his career is over."

The people most aware of the exploitation are others in show business, mostly because they know there are real victims in this equation -- and it's not just the people who spend their hard-earned dollars for a Hung CD.

In Hollywood, where it's all about image -- and even as Koch Records' Alan Grunblatt expresses his desire to replicate his success -- no one involved in the industry doubts we'll see more, not less, of the Hung type.

That's why the most sensitive e-mails I received came from Asian-American performers. Not amateurs. Real artists struggling with their craft to make it in mainstream television and films.

"I am disgusted at what is going on with [William Hung]," writes Dennis Takeda, an actor from Los Angeles, in an e-mail to me. "The entertainment industry is still using this stereotype of the Asian-American male for their pocketbooks, and William is perpetuating it."

Takeda adds that when he goes to auditions, he usually doesn't see William Hung types. "But I guess if we want to work in this industry, we should have ourselves made over like him!" he adds.

"I never would have noticed all this, except that I'm an actor," writes Liam Liu, another e-mailer from Los Angeles.

Liu, in his 40s, quit his job as a doctor to help his daughter pursue acting, then was bitten by the bug himself. He's half white, half Taiwanese. He knows what it's like to be rejected for both not looking Asian enough and for appearing too Asian.

He says he actually started getting callbacks when he stopped going to auditions as an "Asian male" and started submitting his name as a "multicultural" actor.

His goal is be the first Asian-American leading male actor to win an Academy Award in Hollywood without having to leave the United States for work. In other words, without going to Hong Kong or Europe, by making it here as a home-grown romantic male lead.

But he says that if the William Hung type -- the ineffectual, infantile incompetent -- becomes the "look" for the Asian/Asian-American male, he knows his career is going to be compromised.

"Producers are already saying that Asian-American males that look like William Hung are going to be big money makers," Liu adds.

That's why Liu half suspects Hung could be an act -- say, like a Jim Nabors, who could go from "Gomer Pyle" to a pop standard with the flip of a switch. Liu says he can deal with an actor who plays a role. But, he adds, he has a harder time with a normal guy willing to help set images of the Asian-American male back about 40 years.

"I cannot see a real Asian-American man allowing this to happen," says Liu.

And it's not just actors who are hurt when a dominant image is allowed to pervade the culture and become a new stereotype.

It trickles down to the rest of us.

If you're the majority population and you want to keep the fastest-growing minority population from being a real threat in America, what do you do?

You mock them as infantile, ineffectual and incompetent, and then sell them as pop entertainment.

It works. Always has.

Consider the number of real Asian-American males with power and status in all aspects of society. There aren't many.

What about the good, the talented and the truly deserving? Some make it. But in this society, too often, they're left hung out to dry.

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Fighting has U.S. grasping for a plan
June 30 deadline leaves everything 'up in the air'
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 2, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq stumbles from one problem to the next, suddenly everything seems to be up for grabs, and an administration that once seemed sure of its goals and its strategy now appears to be trying anything that might work.

Having long resisted calls for United Nations involvement, the White House is now embracing it, expecting the world body to come up with a political solution that has evaded the United States.

But with the chaotic surge in fighting and the growing discontent of ordinary Iraqis, even staunch supporters of the United Nations say it may not have the capacity to stop Iraq's meltdown.

And as the U.S. occupation prepares to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30, calls are increasing for what until now has been widely viewed as unthinkable -- a full-scale American troop withdrawal.

"Nearly everything is up in the air," said Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland who has been a high-profile diplomatic troubleshooter in the Balkans and other critical areas. "There is very little time to resolve the situation."

Ahtisaari is chairman of the International Crisis Group, a respected Brussels-based think tank that issued a report last week calling for the United Nations to be given unambiguous command of the political transition in Iraq. In an interview with The Chronicle, Ahtisaari cautioned that the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, must be given complete support by the Bush administration -- including the Pentagon, which has long distrusted the world body.

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