From Washington Post via truthout.org :
1,100 Laptops Missing From Commerce Department
By Alan Sipress
The Washington Post
Friday 22 September 2006
More than 1,100 laptop computers have vanished from the Department of Commerce since 2001, including nearly 250 from the Census Bureau containing such personal information as names, incomes and Social Security numbers, federal officials said yesterday.
This disclosure by the department came in response to a request by the House Committee on Government Reform, which this summer asked 17 federal departments to detail any loss of computers holding sensitive personal information.
Of the 10 departments that have responded, the losses at Commerce are "by far the most egregious," said David Marin, staff director for the committee. He added that the silence of the remaining seven departments could reflect their reluctance to reveal problems of similar magnitude.
In a private briefing yesterday for three members of Congress, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez estimated that the disappearance of laptops from the Census Bureau could have compromised the personal information of about 6,200 households, Marin said. He said the department was still trying to determine the extent of the problem.
"We don't know exactly how many computers were lost or whether personal information was compromised," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who chairs the House Government Reform Committee and attended the briefing. "The secretary has assured me that getting that information is priority number one, and I'm confident he'll get his arms around the problem."
Commerce officials told the congressmen that the inventory of missing laptops had escalated rapidly in recent weeks as the department investigated the disappearances. Marin said the committee was concerned that that number could increase significantly as Commerce officials learn more about missing handheld computers, which are increasingly being used in the Census Bureau.
Commerce officials said in a statement that they knew of no instances in which information from the missing laptops had been improperly accessed, adding that all the equipment contained safeguards that would prevent a breach of personal data.
"The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low," Gutierrez said in the statement.
With its disclosure, Commerce is the latest federal agency to admit in recent months that it had lost laptops with sensitive personal data. In May, an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs lost a laptop containing unencrypted information on about 26.5 million people. Three months later, Veterans Affairs acknowledged that a second computer, with information on about 38,000 hospital patients in Pennsylvania, was also missing.
The Federal Trade Commission has lost two laptops with files containing people's financial account numbers, and the Department of Agriculture announced that one of its laptops had disappeared along with personal information on about 350 employees.
Gutierrez and his staff told the congressmen that 1,137 laptops had been stolen, lost or otherwise vanished since 2001, mostly from the Census Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of these, 249 contained personally identifiable information, nearly all from the Census Bureau. All were password-protected, a low-level safeguard. Only 107 of the computers were fully encrypted.
Wrap...
Friday, September 22, 2006
Heck of a job, EPA...
From Voice of San Diego. org:
E. Coli Infections Hit San Diego
Two 8-year-old San Diego children have contracted E. coli bacterial infections after drinking raw milk.In a news release, the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency said an 8-year-old girl became ill after consuming raw milk produced by Organic Pastures, a Fresno County dairy company.
The county has asked local stores to pull the company's products off their shelves, and urged any county residents to report stores that haven't yanked the company's whole milk, skim milk, cream or colostrum. If you spot the stuff, call the county at 619/338-2379.
E. coli is a common bacteria, though this particular strain -- 0157:H7 -- can cause abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. Serious illness, including kidney failure, can also occur in a small percentage of cases. Young children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are most at risk.
A majority of infections come from eating under-cooked beef. Bacteria lingering on a cow's udders or on dairy equipment can transfer it to raw milk, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ROB DAVIS
Friday, September 22 -- 1:25 pm
Wrap....
E. Coli Infections Hit San Diego
Two 8-year-old San Diego children have contracted E. coli bacterial infections after drinking raw milk.In a news release, the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency said an 8-year-old girl became ill after consuming raw milk produced by Organic Pastures, a Fresno County dairy company.
The county has asked local stores to pull the company's products off their shelves, and urged any county residents to report stores that haven't yanked the company's whole milk, skim milk, cream or colostrum. If you spot the stuff, call the county at 619/338-2379.
E. coli is a common bacteria, though this particular strain -- 0157:H7 -- can cause abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. Serious illness, including kidney failure, can also occur in a small percentage of cases. Young children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems are most at risk.
A majority of infections come from eating under-cooked beef. Bacteria lingering on a cow's udders or on dairy equipment can transfer it to raw milk, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ROB DAVIS
Friday, September 22 -- 1:25 pm
Wrap....
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Military: Go arrest Bush and Cheney....
From Information Clearing House:
VT Congressional Candidate Calls For Arrest of Bush and Cheney by U.S. Military :
Former Army Lieutenant and a candidate for Congress in VT, Dennis Morrisseau of W. Pawlet, today called for the arrest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney by the American military "if necessary" to prevent an unauthorized attack upon the nation of Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15056.htm
Wrap...
VT Congressional Candidate Calls For Arrest of Bush and Cheney by U.S. Military :
Former Army Lieutenant and a candidate for Congress in VT, Dennis Morrisseau of W. Pawlet, today called for the arrest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney by the American military "if necessary" to prevent an unauthorized attack upon the nation of Iran.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15056.htm
Wrap...
Closing Fed. libraries?!! What the hell?....
From truthout.org :
EPA Closing Its Headquarters Library October 1
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Thursday 21 September 2006
Congress asks for review of effects on research, regulation and enforcement.
The US Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the other library collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone.
The Headquarters Library collection contains 380,000 documents on microfiche (including technical reports produced by EPA and its predecessor agencies), a microforms collection that includes back files of abstracts and indexes, 5,500 hard copy EPA documents, as well as more than 16,000 books and technical reports produced by government agencies other than EPA.
EPA will not say when any of this material will again become available to its staff or the public either via the internet or through inter-library loans. As the agency claims that the library closures are for budgetary reasons, it has no dedicated funds for digitizing hard copies, making microfiche available online or re-cataloguing the tens of thousands of documents that will be relocated to large storage areas called "information repositories."
"EPA is busily crating up and locking away its institutional memory," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that more than 10,000 EPA scientists and other specialists are protesting the library closures as hindering their ability to do their jobs. "Despite its 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' public statements, EPA has no coherent plan let alone a timetable for making these collections available."
EPA made a formal announcement of this latest library closure in a Federal Register notice published on September 20, 2006, just days before the complete shutdown takes effect. The notice is required under a federal policy (Office of Budget & Management Circular A-130) requiring that the public be notified whenever "terminating significant information dissemination products."
Curiously, EPA issued no similar public notice for its closures of its regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, even though these three libraries provide services for the general public in 15 states and 109 tribal nations.
EPA's library closures (which the agency euphemistically calls "deaccessioning procedures") are sparking congressional scrutiny. On September 19th, the Ranking Members of the House Committee on Science, Energy & Commerce and Government Reform (Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), respectively) asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the effects that the EPA library closures will have on access to environmental information and the impacts on scientific research, regulatory quality and enforcement capability.
"EPA is taking the hard copies and microfilms and placing them in three giant information dumps, which they call 'repositories,'" added Ruch, pointing to the agency promise to create three such repositories (one at its D.C. headquarters with the others in Cincinnati and Durham) to serve the entire nation. "Once these mountains of documents are moved into the repositories, what happens next is anyone's guess."
Wrap...
EPA Closing Its Headquarters Library October 1
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Thursday 21 September 2006
Congress asks for review of effects on research, regulation and enforcement.
The US Environmental Protection Agency is closing its Headquarters Library to the public, as well as its own staff, effective October 1. This shutdown is the latest in a series of agency library closures during the past few weeks, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As with the other library collections, the books, reports and research monographs in the EPA Headquarters Library have been boxed up and are currently inaccessible to anyone.
The Headquarters Library collection contains 380,000 documents on microfiche (including technical reports produced by EPA and its predecessor agencies), a microforms collection that includes back files of abstracts and indexes, 5,500 hard copy EPA documents, as well as more than 16,000 books and technical reports produced by government agencies other than EPA.
EPA will not say when any of this material will again become available to its staff or the public either via the internet or through inter-library loans. As the agency claims that the library closures are for budgetary reasons, it has no dedicated funds for digitizing hard copies, making microfiche available online or re-cataloguing the tens of thousands of documents that will be relocated to large storage areas called "information repositories."
"EPA is busily crating up and locking away its institutional memory," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that more than 10,000 EPA scientists and other specialists are protesting the library closures as hindering their ability to do their jobs. "Despite its 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' public statements, EPA has no coherent plan let alone a timetable for making these collections available."
EPA made a formal announcement of this latest library closure in a Federal Register notice published on September 20, 2006, just days before the complete shutdown takes effect. The notice is required under a federal policy (Office of Budget & Management Circular A-130) requiring that the public be notified whenever "terminating significant information dissemination products."
Curiously, EPA issued no similar public notice for its closures of its regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, even though these three libraries provide services for the general public in 15 states and 109 tribal nations.
EPA's library closures (which the agency euphemistically calls "deaccessioning procedures") are sparking congressional scrutiny. On September 19th, the Ranking Members of the House Committee on Science, Energy & Commerce and Government Reform (Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), John Dingell (D-MI) and Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), respectively) asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the effects that the EPA library closures will have on access to environmental information and the impacts on scientific research, regulatory quality and enforcement capability.
"EPA is taking the hard copies and microfilms and placing them in three giant information dumps, which they call 'repositories,'" added Ruch, pointing to the agency promise to create three such repositories (one at its D.C. headquarters with the others in Cincinnati and Durham) to serve the entire nation. "Once these mountains of documents are moved into the repositories, what happens next is anyone's guess."
Wrap...
Playing dirty with ballot initiatives...
From truthout.org:
A Stealth Campaign for Deep Cuts in Social Services
NOW
t r u t h o u t Programming Note
Airdate: Friday, September 22, 2006, at 8:30 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)
A stealth campaign for deep cuts in social services. This time on NOW.
In the voting booth this fall, voters in states across the country will find ballot initiatives with titles like "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" and "SOS - Stop Over Spending." The aim is to slash state spending, including deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? On Friday September 22, at 8:30 pm, NOW investigates how one wealthy New Yorker is secretly providing major funding for these and other ballot measures way outside his neighborhood, in states across the country. NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot. Is someone manipulating your state's laws, your vote, and you? This time on NOW.
Note: Starting this Friday, the NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will feature a state-by-state tool that will allow users to see the ballot initiatives they'll be facing in November and check how their states score on a campaign finance report card.
Wrap...
A Stealth Campaign for Deep Cuts in Social Services
NOW
t r u t h o u t Programming Note
Airdate: Friday, September 22, 2006, at 8:30 p.m. on PBS. (Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)
A stealth campaign for deep cuts in social services. This time on NOW.
In the voting booth this fall, voters in states across the country will find ballot initiatives with titles like "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" and "SOS - Stop Over Spending." The aim is to slash state spending, including deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? On Friday September 22, at 8:30 pm, NOW investigates how one wealthy New Yorker is secretly providing major funding for these and other ballot measures way outside his neighborhood, in states across the country. NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot. Is someone manipulating your state's laws, your vote, and you? This time on NOW.
Note: Starting this Friday, the NOW website at www.pbs.org/now will feature a state-by-state tool that will allow users to see the ballot initiatives they'll be facing in November and check how their states score on a campaign finance report card.
Wrap...
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Hit the dance floor!
Here is some dance music from the late 50's. Just love it. A mass of selections...
http://www.bobforrest.com/JukeBox.htm
Wrap...
http://www.bobforrest.com/JukeBox.htm
Wrap...
Future book and film selections....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION:
Bellwether Prize winner Hillary Jordan's MUDBOUND, which deals with the entwined fates of a white farming family in the Mississippi Delta and their black sharecroppers after the sons of both families return home from WWII, to Kathy Pories of Algonquin, in a pre-empt, by Chris Parris-Lamb at The Gernert Company in his first deal (world). clamb@thegernertco.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Bestselling author of Bel Canto, Ann Patchett's RUN, focused on twenty-four hours in the life of a Boston family during a blizzard, when a passerby pushes one of the sons out of the way of an oncoming car she sets off a chain reaction of events that unlock the past, the present, and the future of the family, for publication in fall 2007, plus a short non-fiction book based on a recent commencement speech, to Jonathan Burnham and Alison Callahan at Harper, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (NA).
Whitbread Prize winning poet John Burnside's THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINTS, the story of a man trying to come to terms with a suspended life, and the fear, guilt, and grief that mark it, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese by Melanie Jackson (US).
Rights to Lumen in Spain, Mouria in Holland, Knaus in Germany, and Metailie in France, by Laurence Laluyaux and Stephen Edwards at Rogers, Coleridge & White.Film: Norman Norman at RCW
Author of The Widow of The South, Robert Hicks' next two books, the first the story of General John Bell Hood, who gave up his command and sacrificed everything - including ultimately his life - to make a new start in New Orleans, where he fought against poverty, racism, and some of the most deadly epidemics ever, again to Amy Einhorn at Hachette, by Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management (world).
UK:
Fortress Malta author James Holland's VERITY series, about a young WWII private, recruited at the very start of the war and who survives through to the bitter end, to Bill Scott-Kerr at Bantam UK, in a very significant deal, for four books (out of a planned eight-book series), for publication beginning in June 2008 and following annually thereafter, by Patrick Walsh at Conville & Walsh.patrick@convilleandwalsh.comUS: emma@fletcherparry.com
Tom Cain's thriller THE ACCIDENT MAN, introducing series hero, Daniel Carver - a good guy, who makes bad things happen to bad people, to Simon Thorogood at Bantam Press, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, by Julian Alexander at Lucas Alexander Whitley.
William Petrie's THE ALEXANDER CIPHER, concerning the lost tomb and body of Alexander the Great, to Wayne Brookes at Harper UK, in a two-book deal, by Luigi Bonomi at Bonomi Associates.
FILM:
Film rights to Mark Haskell Smith's (Moist and Delicious) forthcoming novel SALTY, to director Simon West (Con Air, The General's Daughter), by Endeavor on behalf of Mary Evans of Mary Evans.
NON-FICTION: BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
Retired UPS driver and publications editor Greg Niemann's BIG BROWN, the rags-to-riches story of reclusive UPS founder Jim Casey and the world's largest package delivery company celebrating its centennial in 2007, to Neal Maillet of Jossey-Bass, by Sally van Haitsma of The Castiglia Agency.
Chief businesswriter of the Economist Matthew Bishop and Michael Green's PHILANTHROCAPITALISM, a look at how capitalism's winners are using their vast fortunes to change the world by giving away billions of dollars, to Colin Dickerman at Bloomsbury, by Dan Mandel at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (world English).
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Sarah Vowell's upcoming re-examination of the Puritans, WORDY SHIPMATES, to Geoff Kloske at Riverhead, by Jaime Wolff at Pelosi Wolf Effron & Spates.
Author of WORSE THAN WATERGATE and CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE John Dean's next book, to Rick Kot at Viking Penguin, by Lydia Wills at Paradigm (world).
CNN journalist Jack Cafferty's IT'S GETTING UGLY OUT THERE!, on politics, politicians, corporate bigwigs, blowhards, liars and other types -- drawing on the author's own life story, to Tom Miller at Wiley, by Paul Fedorko at Trident Media Group (World English).
NARRATIVE:
Robin Hemley's DO-OVER, in which a middle-aged man takes a second shot at youth's disappointments, from sleep-away camp to the senior prom, with humorous results, to Liz Nagle at Little, Brown, by Katharine Cluverius at ICM (NA).
SCIENCE:
New Scientist editor Anil Ananthaswamy's TO THE EDGE OF REASON: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology, journeying to some of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth -- from the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Soudan Mine in Minnesota to Siberia's Lake Baikal and Antarctica -- in search of the cutting-edge work in experimental physics and the quest for a grand unified theory of the universe, to Amanda Cook at Houghton Mifflin, in a very nice deal, by Peter Tallack at Conville & Walsh (NA).
Wrap...
FICTION:
Bellwether Prize winner Hillary Jordan's MUDBOUND, which deals with the entwined fates of a white farming family in the Mississippi Delta and their black sharecroppers after the sons of both families return home from WWII, to Kathy Pories of Algonquin, in a pre-empt, by Chris Parris-Lamb at The Gernert Company in his first deal (world). clamb@thegernertco.com
GENERAL/OTHER:
Bestselling author of Bel Canto, Ann Patchett's RUN, focused on twenty-four hours in the life of a Boston family during a blizzard, when a passerby pushes one of the sons out of the way of an oncoming car she sets off a chain reaction of events that unlock the past, the present, and the future of the family, for publication in fall 2007, plus a short non-fiction book based on a recent commencement speech, to Jonathan Burnham and Alison Callahan at Harper, by Lisa Bankoff at ICM (NA).
Whitbread Prize winning poet John Burnside's THE DEVIL'S FOOTPRINTS, the story of a man trying to come to terms with a suspended life, and the fear, guilt, and grief that mark it, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese by Melanie Jackson (US).
Rights to Lumen in Spain, Mouria in Holland, Knaus in Germany, and Metailie in France, by Laurence Laluyaux and Stephen Edwards at Rogers, Coleridge & White.Film: Norman Norman at RCW
Author of The Widow of The South, Robert Hicks' next two books, the first the story of General John Bell Hood, who gave up his command and sacrificed everything - including ultimately his life - to make a new start in New Orleans, where he fought against poverty, racism, and some of the most deadly epidemics ever, again to Amy Einhorn at Hachette, by Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management (world).
UK:
Fortress Malta author James Holland's VERITY series, about a young WWII private, recruited at the very start of the war and who survives through to the bitter end, to Bill Scott-Kerr at Bantam UK, in a very significant deal, for four books (out of a planned eight-book series), for publication beginning in June 2008 and following annually thereafter, by Patrick Walsh at Conville & Walsh.patrick@convilleandwalsh.comUS: emma@fletcherparry.com
Tom Cain's thriller THE ACCIDENT MAN, introducing series hero, Daniel Carver - a good guy, who makes bad things happen to bad people, to Simon Thorogood at Bantam Press, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, by Julian Alexander at Lucas Alexander Whitley.
William Petrie's THE ALEXANDER CIPHER, concerning the lost tomb and body of Alexander the Great, to Wayne Brookes at Harper UK, in a two-book deal, by Luigi Bonomi at Bonomi Associates.
FILM:
Film rights to Mark Haskell Smith's (Moist and Delicious) forthcoming novel SALTY, to director Simon West (Con Air, The General's Daughter), by Endeavor on behalf of Mary Evans of Mary Evans.
NON-FICTION: BUSINESS/INVESTING/FINANCE:
Retired UPS driver and publications editor Greg Niemann's BIG BROWN, the rags-to-riches story of reclusive UPS founder Jim Casey and the world's largest package delivery company celebrating its centennial in 2007, to Neal Maillet of Jossey-Bass, by Sally van Haitsma of The Castiglia Agency.
Chief businesswriter of the Economist Matthew Bishop and Michael Green's PHILANTHROCAPITALISM, a look at how capitalism's winners are using their vast fortunes to change the world by giving away billions of dollars, to Colin Dickerman at Bloomsbury, by Dan Mandel at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (world English).
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Sarah Vowell's upcoming re-examination of the Puritans, WORDY SHIPMATES, to Geoff Kloske at Riverhead, by Jaime Wolff at Pelosi Wolf Effron & Spates.
Author of WORSE THAN WATERGATE and CONSERVATIVES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE John Dean's next book, to Rick Kot at Viking Penguin, by Lydia Wills at Paradigm (world).
CNN journalist Jack Cafferty's IT'S GETTING UGLY OUT THERE!, on politics, politicians, corporate bigwigs, blowhards, liars and other types -- drawing on the author's own life story, to Tom Miller at Wiley, by Paul Fedorko at Trident Media Group (World English).
NARRATIVE:
Robin Hemley's DO-OVER, in which a middle-aged man takes a second shot at youth's disappointments, from sleep-away camp to the senior prom, with humorous results, to Liz Nagle at Little, Brown, by Katharine Cluverius at ICM (NA).
SCIENCE:
New Scientist editor Anil Ananthaswamy's TO THE EDGE OF REASON: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Cosmology, journeying to some of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth -- from the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Soudan Mine in Minnesota to Siberia's Lake Baikal and Antarctica -- in search of the cutting-edge work in experimental physics and the quest for a grand unified theory of the universe, to Amanda Cook at Houghton Mifflin, in a very nice deal, by Peter Tallack at Conville & Walsh (NA).
Wrap...
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Repub Congress & BushCo..all about torture...
From Information Clearing House...a selection:
FBI triples its Capitol Hill corruption squads: There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the New York Daily News has learned.http://tinyurl.com/gzekj
*************************************
Harry Reid : Not a single terrorist has been brought to justice : "Five years after September 11, not a single terrorist has been brought to justice under the President's flawed policy. http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=263124&
************************************
Sidney Blumenthal : How Bush Rules: Torture and The Quest For Unfettered Power: The Bush administration's new torture policy prompted the export of torture technique from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15023.html
***************************************
Ret. military leaders & frmr DOD officials say Detainee Treatment Act poses a grave threat to American service-members: : Detainee Treatment Act violates the core principles of the Geneva Conventions and poses a grave threat to American service-members, now and in future wars. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2006/09/mil-060912-sasc01.htm
*****************************************
Judge, jury, and torturer: ``TRUST US. You're guilty. We're going to execute you, but we can't tell you why." That is how Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, characterized the Bush administration's recent proposal for a draconian new trial system to deal with accused terrorists.http://tinyurl.com/oxuop
***************************************
Bush's Cruel and Degrading Presidency By Mike Whitney Washington is a moral swamp. When the chief executive can stand at the presidential podium and make an unabashed appeal for torture, then the American dream is dead.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15026.htm
****************************************
Senate Bills Would Allow for Lifelong Detention Without Trial, Torture Without AccountabilityAudio and transcript Both proposed bills in the Senate strip away the right to habeas corpus and cut back the ability of rape survivors of to hold their perpetrators accountable. We speak with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15027.htm
Wrap...
FBI triples its Capitol Hill corruption squads: There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the New York Daily News has learned.http://tinyurl.com/gzekj
*************************************
Harry Reid : Not a single terrorist has been brought to justice : "Five years after September 11, not a single terrorist has been brought to justice under the President's flawed policy. http://democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=263124&
************************************
Sidney Blumenthal : How Bush Rules: Torture and The Quest For Unfettered Power: The Bush administration's new torture policy prompted the export of torture technique from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15023.html
***************************************
Ret. military leaders & frmr DOD officials say Detainee Treatment Act poses a grave threat to American service-members: : Detainee Treatment Act violates the core principles of the Geneva Conventions and poses a grave threat to American service-members, now and in future wars. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2006/09/mil-060912-sasc01.htm
*****************************************
Judge, jury, and torturer: ``TRUST US. You're guilty. We're going to execute you, but we can't tell you why." That is how Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, characterized the Bush administration's recent proposal for a draconian new trial system to deal with accused terrorists.http://tinyurl.com/oxuop
***************************************
Bush's Cruel and Degrading Presidency By Mike Whitney Washington is a moral swamp. When the chief executive can stand at the presidential podium and make an unabashed appeal for torture, then the American dream is dead.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15026.htm
****************************************
Senate Bills Would Allow for Lifelong Detention Without Trial, Torture Without AccountabilityAudio and transcript Both proposed bills in the Senate strip away the right to habeas corpus and cut back the ability of rape survivors of to hold their perpetrators accountable. We speak with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15027.htm
Wrap...
Trash Diebold machines!!!
From Freedom to Tinker via truthout.org:
"Hotel Minibar" Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines
By Ed Felten
Freedom to Tinker
Monday 18 September 2006
Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold's security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate:
The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine - the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus - can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.
On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and sure enough it opened the voting machine.
This seemed like a freakish coincidence - until we learned how common these keys are.
Chris's key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop - they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.
Using such a standard key doesn't provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold's use of encryption - they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.
The bad guys don't care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don't care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn't work in the field.
Wrap...
"Hotel Minibar" Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines
By Ed Felten
Freedom to Tinker
Monday 18 September 2006
Like other computer scientists who have studied Diebold voting machines, we were surprised at the apparent carelessness of Diebold's security design. It can be hard to convey this to nonexperts, because the examples are technical. To security practitioners, the use of a fixed, unchangeable encryption key and the blind acceptance of every software update offered on removable storage are rookie mistakes; but nonexperts have trouble appreciating this. Here is an example that anybody, expert or not, can appreciate:
The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine - the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus - can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet.
On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key and sure enough it opened the voting machine.
This seemed like a freakish coincidence - until we learned how common these keys are.
Chris's key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It's a standard part, and like most standard parts it's easily purchased on the Internet. We bought several keys from an office furniture key shop - they open the voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.
Using such a standard key doesn't provide much security, but it does allow Diebold to assert that their design uses a lock and key. Experts will recognize the same problem in Diebold's use of encryption - they can say they use encryption, but they use it in a way that neutralizes its security benefits.
The bad guys don't care whether you use encryption; they care whether they can read and modify your data. They don't care whether your door has a lock on it; they care whether they can get it open. The checkbox approach to security works in press releases, but it doesn't work in the field.
Wrap...
Monday, September 18, 2006
The brave Repub Senator...
From NO QUARTER:
Sen. Graham served for 22 years in the Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps. The new issue of Time magazine reports that Graham remains an advocate for the principles of military law:
If you want to understand how a baby-faced freshman Republican Senator from conservative South Carolina has come to be standing against President George W. Bush on the issue of how to interrogate and try terrorism suspects, it helps to know how Lindsey Graham spent part of his summer.
A month ago, when most Senators were back home campaigning and fund raising, he was in Kabul, Afghanistan, answering to "Colonel." Wearing desert fatigues, with an M9 pistol strapped to his hip, Graham was conducting a two-day tutorial on the principles of U.S. military law at the Afghan Defense Ministry. He recalls coaching Afghan military lawyers, who are modeling their system after that of the U.S.: "It's important that when the troops act badly, they are punished to keep good order and discipline, but it's equally important that people believe that the punishment and the system itself are fair."
The only Senator now serving in the National Guard or reserve, and the first in decades to do military duty in a combat zone, Graham adds, "It has to be based on what the person did and not who the person is."
That's pretty much the same argument that Graham is making back in Washington, where he is helping turn what looked like a smart political strategy into an internecine battle among Republicans on Capitol Hill ...
Yesterday, on CBS's Face the Nation, Graham spoke about his willingness to risk his Senate seat to uphold standards of military law and recognition of international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions:
CBS Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer said to Graham, "This would seem to me to be a huge political risk for you. You come from a very conservative state. A state that is probably one of the strongest states for President Bush. You're taking on the president on this. I'll bet you that you get a primary opponent as a result of this."
Senator Graham responded, "Well, I'm getting pounded at home by some people -- why can't you work with the president? The president wants to defend us. The CIA needs to get good information. These guys are barbarians. Why are you standing in the way? I'm not standing in the way. I share the same goals, but I'm a military lawyer. Twenty-two years as a member of the Air Force JAG Corps. When I put that uniform on, I took an obligation as a military officer.
"Now I have an obligation as a senator. I admire our president, I want to help him. But the biggest risk in the world is not Lindsey Graham losing an election. We can have a good country without Lindsey Graham being in the Senate. We cannot have a great nation when we start redefining who we are under the guise of redefining our law."
Wrap...
Sen. Graham served for 22 years in the Air Force Judge Advocate General Corps. The new issue of Time magazine reports that Graham remains an advocate for the principles of military law:
If you want to understand how a baby-faced freshman Republican Senator from conservative South Carolina has come to be standing against President George W. Bush on the issue of how to interrogate and try terrorism suspects, it helps to know how Lindsey Graham spent part of his summer.
A month ago, when most Senators were back home campaigning and fund raising, he was in Kabul, Afghanistan, answering to "Colonel." Wearing desert fatigues, with an M9 pistol strapped to his hip, Graham was conducting a two-day tutorial on the principles of U.S. military law at the Afghan Defense Ministry. He recalls coaching Afghan military lawyers, who are modeling their system after that of the U.S.: "It's important that when the troops act badly, they are punished to keep good order and discipline, but it's equally important that people believe that the punishment and the system itself are fair."
The only Senator now serving in the National Guard or reserve, and the first in decades to do military duty in a combat zone, Graham adds, "It has to be based on what the person did and not who the person is."
That's pretty much the same argument that Graham is making back in Washington, where he is helping turn what looked like a smart political strategy into an internecine battle among Republicans on Capitol Hill ...
Yesterday, on CBS's Face the Nation, Graham spoke about his willingness to risk his Senate seat to uphold standards of military law and recognition of international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions:
CBS Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer said to Graham, "This would seem to me to be a huge political risk for you. You come from a very conservative state. A state that is probably one of the strongest states for President Bush. You're taking on the president on this. I'll bet you that you get a primary opponent as a result of this."
Senator Graham responded, "Well, I'm getting pounded at home by some people -- why can't you work with the president? The president wants to defend us. The CIA needs to get good information. These guys are barbarians. Why are you standing in the way? I'm not standing in the way. I share the same goals, but I'm a military lawyer. Twenty-two years as a member of the Air Force JAG Corps. When I put that uniform on, I took an obligation as a military officer.
"Now I have an obligation as a senator. I admire our president, I want to help him. But the biggest risk in the world is not Lindsey Graham losing an election. We can have a good country without Lindsey Graham being in the Senate. We cannot have a great nation when we start redefining who we are under the guise of redefining our law."
Wrap...
Doing the right thing..not letting BushCo off the hook.
From The Pen:
There is an apocryphal tale about a child who, having failed to perform an assigned task, invented the most outlandish excuse for why he could not produce the required finished work. We cannot say if there ever was an actual child who claimed that the dog had eaten his homework. But we have its equivalent now in the current president of the United States.
The incredible world spectacle we have is this. First, the president demands that the War Crimes Act, the law of the land, be changed to accommodate the crimes that have ALREADY been committed at his direction, specifically to authorize methods of torture previously and rightfully considered verboten. If this is not a naked admission that he has broken the law in the most hideous way we don't know what is.
Second, and at the same time, he is demanding that new laws enacted be to hotrod the prosecution of those he personally deems enemies of the state. What is he trying to tell the world, that those people CANNOT be convicted of an offense under our current law, but that he himself cannot ESCAPE conviction under that same law for what he has done?
Shame on any member of Congress who signs on to any of this in any part. Let us address each of these two points in turnTHE WAR CRIMES ACT MUST NOT BE CHANGED AT ALLACTION PAGE 1: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum500.php
If there was an Olympic event for hypocritical lying, the Bush administration would have no peer anywhere. But perhaps the biggest honking lie of all is that the torture of our detainees has given us any intelligence to make us safer. Indeed, it was information extracted by torture (of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) that was used as an EXCUSE by the Bush and Cheney that it was so drop dead critical to attack and occupy Iraq, now recognized by all with an honest bone left in their body as the greatest strategic blunder in our nation's military history. It is all contained in the Phase 2 Senate Intelligence Committee Report, which Cheney claims not to have read himself.
Those who really know interrogation know that information extracted by such means is BAD intelligence, notwithstanding the most extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario the Bush regime constantly throws in our faces. But just as they have systematically done in every other policy area without exception, those who actually know what they are talking about have here again been muscled out of government decision making. We are told for example that the military JAG attorneys were held for hours in a meeting and not allowed to leave until they signed on to the president's demands.
And now Bush directly threatens the American people by saying if they will not rubberstamp his torture program as is, he will scuttle it. That's exactly akin to a bank robber threatening to stop robbing banks unless we change the laws to his specifications. Of course it has to stop. When we have a program that is so destructive to our REAL national security it absolutely MUST stop. Maybe then, just maybe, we could get back to obtaining good intelligence of actual value. But Bush in his patented flim-flam way would make it sound like his critics would have us stop all intelligence operations to protect our families.
They have their talking point, that the law needs to be "clarified", and they are going to keep repeating it like a broken record until we all run screaming from the room. The problem is that they KNEW they were breaking international and U.S. law when they did it, in the most premeditated way, and were so warned in advance by their own attorney general in no uncertain terms. Part of the language they would now unilaterally and retroactively excise from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions refers to "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating . . . " At Abu Ghraib, Bush administration henchmen DESIGNED methods of treatment with the deliberate intent of being maximally offensive to their Muslim victims, most of whom were innocent of any crime whatsoever.
If war itself were not enough of an atrocity, when the depth of the horrors of World War II came to light some to the greatest legal minds ever labored to define in words what civilized people must forever proscribe, even in war. And in the Geneva Conventions they succeeded. Any who dare to violate these mutually accepted definitions of despicable behavior are guilty of war crimes on their face. We need NOT behave as monsters ourselves to protect our people. Such acts only lead to the remaining civilized people in the world shunning us as pariahs, to never again volunteer the good intelligence we really need to thwart those who mean us harm.
In fact, the Bush administration has repeatedly jeopardized intelligence operations of REAL value to score media propaganda points. The British were furious two years ago when they outed a very valuable mole in Al Qaeda, thereby doing incalculable damage to our ability to stop the bad guys. And they did it again by pressuring the British to move prematurely on the recent airline plot, related to so-called "liquid explosives" which had no chemical possibility of ever being operational. The case against those plotters and their associates is accordingly weaker than it would have been otherwise.
Keep in mind that in both the above situations informants were gained by winning people to our side. Such intelligence losses cannot be compensated for by stooping to torture methods which have the exact OPPOSITE effect.
DETAINEES MUST BE PROSECUTED UNDER CURRENT LAWACTION PAGE 2: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum501.php
The fact that the detainees HAVE been tortured is precisely the reason why the Bush administration is so determined to deny them any rights they have under current law to see the evidence against them, or to have any other protections thereunder. Secret evidence means keeping also secret their own war crimes. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. And to butcher the law "ex post facto" (after the fact) anytime the result will not be as we would like is to render our entire legal system of no force and effect. It is to tell the world that we have laws of convenience only, and that they are subject to change without notice.
There are disreputable precedents in world history, the Star Chamber, kangaroo courts and show trials. The Supreme Court, even stacked as it is already is with Bush beholden appointees, has ruled that the military tribunals proposed are contrary to the Constitution itself, let alone statutory law. The solution is not to enact further Constitutional outrages in the Congress, perhaps in hopes of stacking a contrary deciding fifth additional vote by the time it arrives back at the Supreme Court.
The detainees must be prosecuted under existing law. To do otherwise is to send the loudest message possible to the entire world that we believe THEY HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME FOR WHICH THEY CAN BE PROSECUTED. Some who were irrefutably innocent have already been released after years of torture, and with no apology or compensation for their ordeal. If the truly guilty cannot be found so under current law, we have no moral standing in the world left at all.
There's a ticking time bomb all right, but unfortunately it's our own current president of the United States. Day by day he becomes more pugnacious and more defiant. It is just a matter of time before he commits an atrocity in our name so heinous that no American will ever be safe ever again anywhere in the world, unless he is peacefully and swiftly removed from office.
And if a dog did eat his homework, it would have been a dog of war.
This alert is brought to you through the activism of James Wright, running for the U.S. House in the 8th Congressional district, and one of the leading progressive voices in the state of Texas. Follow the other links on the action page for Jim's own proposals of bills to REALLY protect us.
When a brave candidate steps forward in such a district as Texas 8th, shall we do anything to show him our support? If so, please also consider making a donation to Jim's campaign so he can spread the call to action message on impeachment, starting to bring our troops home from Iraq, and on so many other issues.
DONATIONS: http://www.usalone.com/wright/donations.php
Wrap...
There is an apocryphal tale about a child who, having failed to perform an assigned task, invented the most outlandish excuse for why he could not produce the required finished work. We cannot say if there ever was an actual child who claimed that the dog had eaten his homework. But we have its equivalent now in the current president of the United States.
The incredible world spectacle we have is this. First, the president demands that the War Crimes Act, the law of the land, be changed to accommodate the crimes that have ALREADY been committed at his direction, specifically to authorize methods of torture previously and rightfully considered verboten. If this is not a naked admission that he has broken the law in the most hideous way we don't know what is.
Second, and at the same time, he is demanding that new laws enacted be to hotrod the prosecution of those he personally deems enemies of the state. What is he trying to tell the world, that those people CANNOT be convicted of an offense under our current law, but that he himself cannot ESCAPE conviction under that same law for what he has done?
Shame on any member of Congress who signs on to any of this in any part. Let us address each of these two points in turnTHE WAR CRIMES ACT MUST NOT BE CHANGED AT ALLACTION PAGE 1: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum500.php
If there was an Olympic event for hypocritical lying, the Bush administration would have no peer anywhere. But perhaps the biggest honking lie of all is that the torture of our detainees has given us any intelligence to make us safer. Indeed, it was information extracted by torture (of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) that was used as an EXCUSE by the Bush and Cheney that it was so drop dead critical to attack and occupy Iraq, now recognized by all with an honest bone left in their body as the greatest strategic blunder in our nation's military history. It is all contained in the Phase 2 Senate Intelligence Committee Report, which Cheney claims not to have read himself.
Those who really know interrogation know that information extracted by such means is BAD intelligence, notwithstanding the most extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario the Bush regime constantly throws in our faces. But just as they have systematically done in every other policy area without exception, those who actually know what they are talking about have here again been muscled out of government decision making. We are told for example that the military JAG attorneys were held for hours in a meeting and not allowed to leave until they signed on to the president's demands.
And now Bush directly threatens the American people by saying if they will not rubberstamp his torture program as is, he will scuttle it. That's exactly akin to a bank robber threatening to stop robbing banks unless we change the laws to his specifications. Of course it has to stop. When we have a program that is so destructive to our REAL national security it absolutely MUST stop. Maybe then, just maybe, we could get back to obtaining good intelligence of actual value. But Bush in his patented flim-flam way would make it sound like his critics would have us stop all intelligence operations to protect our families.
They have their talking point, that the law needs to be "clarified", and they are going to keep repeating it like a broken record until we all run screaming from the room. The problem is that they KNEW they were breaking international and U.S. law when they did it, in the most premeditated way, and were so warned in advance by their own attorney general in no uncertain terms. Part of the language they would now unilaterally and retroactively excise from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions refers to "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating . . . " At Abu Ghraib, Bush administration henchmen DESIGNED methods of treatment with the deliberate intent of being maximally offensive to their Muslim victims, most of whom were innocent of any crime whatsoever.
If war itself were not enough of an atrocity, when the depth of the horrors of World War II came to light some to the greatest legal minds ever labored to define in words what civilized people must forever proscribe, even in war. And in the Geneva Conventions they succeeded. Any who dare to violate these mutually accepted definitions of despicable behavior are guilty of war crimes on their face. We need NOT behave as monsters ourselves to protect our people. Such acts only lead to the remaining civilized people in the world shunning us as pariahs, to never again volunteer the good intelligence we really need to thwart those who mean us harm.
In fact, the Bush administration has repeatedly jeopardized intelligence operations of REAL value to score media propaganda points. The British were furious two years ago when they outed a very valuable mole in Al Qaeda, thereby doing incalculable damage to our ability to stop the bad guys. And they did it again by pressuring the British to move prematurely on the recent airline plot, related to so-called "liquid explosives" which had no chemical possibility of ever being operational. The case against those plotters and their associates is accordingly weaker than it would have been otherwise.
Keep in mind that in both the above situations informants were gained by winning people to our side. Such intelligence losses cannot be compensated for by stooping to torture methods which have the exact OPPOSITE effect.
DETAINEES MUST BE PROSECUTED UNDER CURRENT LAWACTION PAGE 2: http://www.usalone.com/wright/pnum501.php
The fact that the detainees HAVE been tortured is precisely the reason why the Bush administration is so determined to deny them any rights they have under current law to see the evidence against them, or to have any other protections thereunder. Secret evidence means keeping also secret their own war crimes. Either we are a nation of laws or we are not. And to butcher the law "ex post facto" (after the fact) anytime the result will not be as we would like is to render our entire legal system of no force and effect. It is to tell the world that we have laws of convenience only, and that they are subject to change without notice.
There are disreputable precedents in world history, the Star Chamber, kangaroo courts and show trials. The Supreme Court, even stacked as it is already is with Bush beholden appointees, has ruled that the military tribunals proposed are contrary to the Constitution itself, let alone statutory law. The solution is not to enact further Constitutional outrages in the Congress, perhaps in hopes of stacking a contrary deciding fifth additional vote by the time it arrives back at the Supreme Court.
The detainees must be prosecuted under existing law. To do otherwise is to send the loudest message possible to the entire world that we believe THEY HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME FOR WHICH THEY CAN BE PROSECUTED. Some who were irrefutably innocent have already been released after years of torture, and with no apology or compensation for their ordeal. If the truly guilty cannot be found so under current law, we have no moral standing in the world left at all.
There's a ticking time bomb all right, but unfortunately it's our own current president of the United States. Day by day he becomes more pugnacious and more defiant. It is just a matter of time before he commits an atrocity in our name so heinous that no American will ever be safe ever again anywhere in the world, unless he is peacefully and swiftly removed from office.
And if a dog did eat his homework, it would have been a dog of war.
This alert is brought to you through the activism of James Wright, running for the U.S. House in the 8th Congressional district, and one of the leading progressive voices in the state of Texas. Follow the other links on the action page for Jim's own proposals of bills to REALLY protect us.
When a brave candidate steps forward in such a district as Texas 8th, shall we do anything to show him our support? If so, please also consider making a donation to Jim's campaign so he can spread the call to action message on impeachment, starting to bring our troops home from Iraq, and on so many other issues.
DONATIONS: http://www.usalone.com/wright/donations.php
Wrap...
Professor to parents....THE FACTS!!!
The following is an emailed reply to a previous post here, "If the shoe fits", wherein the message to parents on the Pacific school answering machine gives the parents an extended phone tree with some beauts of choices.
So the Grad School Prof who teaches teachers replies:
I don't know if the message is real or an urban legend. What I do know is that it is plausible. I also know it is plausible that parents are suing the school and its teachers for failing kids who don't go to school, or class if they are in school, and don't do any homework. They are the same people who complain about the lack of academic rigor in the public schools and vote against bond issues until the schools get it right.
But the schools never get it right because the criterion for "right" is the good old days when we were in school, and the schools did it right, then.
Well, I have the distinction to have been in the schools for three generations of the good old days. I went to the good old days' schools in the '40s and '50s. I taught in the next generation of the good old days in the '60s. And I have been preparing teachers to teach in the schools since 1967. I have some perspective.
I know that third and seventh graders today read, on average, a full grade level better than their grandparents, and their mathematics exceeds their grandparents' mathematics curriculum by nearly three grade levels, and fully half of their mathematics curriculum wasn't taught to their grandparents at all. They know more science than their grandparents, if only because 75% of what they know in science didn't exist when their grandparents were in school.
I know that in the good old days of 1940, the high school dropout rate was 60%, not because high school was harder, but because the kids left school to go to work. In 1941, 62% of naval officer candidates, the nation's best and brightest, failed mathematical reasoning.
Way back when the good old days were especially terrific, 300 teachers in Massachusetts left their classrooms and schools in fear of student violence. I know that the nation was claimed to be at risk because of poor public schools in 1900, in the 1950s ("progressive" education), in the 1960s (Sputnik), the 1970s (Vance Packard), the 1980s (A Nation at Risk), and the triple oughts (No Child Left Behind).
I also know that US kids, in schools unlike any in any country on earth, perform better than their age mates in any country other than Switzerland and Canada on the most recent International Assessment of Educational Progress.
I suspect those morons in Pacific Palisades who are offended by the school's telephone message don't know the extent of their public education bargain. They certainly have revealed that they don't know much about much. And if anyone on the list knows anyone who lives in Pacific Palisades, especially someone among the morons, please forward my message. After all, I am an educator, and my purpose in life is to help people who do not understand come to grips with their colossal ignorance, and do something about it.
Leif
Wrap...
So the Grad School Prof who teaches teachers replies:
I don't know if the message is real or an urban legend. What I do know is that it is plausible. I also know it is plausible that parents are suing the school and its teachers for failing kids who don't go to school, or class if they are in school, and don't do any homework. They are the same people who complain about the lack of academic rigor in the public schools and vote against bond issues until the schools get it right.
But the schools never get it right because the criterion for "right" is the good old days when we were in school, and the schools did it right, then.
Well, I have the distinction to have been in the schools for three generations of the good old days. I went to the good old days' schools in the '40s and '50s. I taught in the next generation of the good old days in the '60s. And I have been preparing teachers to teach in the schools since 1967. I have some perspective.
I know that third and seventh graders today read, on average, a full grade level better than their grandparents, and their mathematics exceeds their grandparents' mathematics curriculum by nearly three grade levels, and fully half of their mathematics curriculum wasn't taught to their grandparents at all. They know more science than their grandparents, if only because 75% of what they know in science didn't exist when their grandparents were in school.
I know that in the good old days of 1940, the high school dropout rate was 60%, not because high school was harder, but because the kids left school to go to work. In 1941, 62% of naval officer candidates, the nation's best and brightest, failed mathematical reasoning.
Way back when the good old days were especially terrific, 300 teachers in Massachusetts left their classrooms and schools in fear of student violence. I know that the nation was claimed to be at risk because of poor public schools in 1900, in the 1950s ("progressive" education), in the 1960s (Sputnik), the 1970s (Vance Packard), the 1980s (A Nation at Risk), and the triple oughts (No Child Left Behind).
I also know that US kids, in schools unlike any in any country on earth, perform better than their age mates in any country other than Switzerland and Canada on the most recent International Assessment of Educational Progress.
I suspect those morons in Pacific Palisades who are offended by the school's telephone message don't know the extent of their public education bargain. They certainly have revealed that they don't know much about much. And if anyone on the list knows anyone who lives in Pacific Palisades, especially someone among the morons, please forward my message. After all, I am an educator, and my purpose in life is to help people who do not understand come to grips with their colossal ignorance, and do something about it.
Leif
Wrap...
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Counterterroism agents...aren't!!!
From LA Times via truthout.org:
Spy Agencies Outsourcing to Fill Key Jobs
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706B.shtml
At the National Counterterrorism Center - the agency created two years ago to prevent another attack like September 11 - more than half of the employees are not US government analysts or terrorism experts. Instead, they are outside contractors.
Wrap...
Spy Agencies Outsourcing to Fill Key Jobs
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091706B.shtml
At the National Counterterrorism Center - the agency created two years ago to prevent another attack like September 11 - more than half of the employees are not US government analysts or terrorism experts. Instead, they are outside contractors.
Wrap...
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Results of BushCo's war in Iraq....
From The Republic:
America's Afghanistan
The best comparison to make for the American adventure in Iraq is not Vietnam, but Afghanistan. And America's future could be most like Russia's in the 1990s
by Kevin Potvin
March 3, 2005
Prior to invading Iraq, senior US government officials frequently compared their mission to the US mission in Europe in the early 1940s. Critics then compared the war-mongering Bush Jr White House to Hitler's regime in 1939. Once the war in Iraq was well engaged and the Iraqi insurgency took shape as a strong and resilient fighting force, the comparison to the American ill-fated adventure forty years earlier in Vietnam was irresistible. In response, US regime supporters drew comparisons instead to successful US military actions in Somalia, Kosovo and even Panama.Making comparisons between present wars and past wars is a whole side industry of the media. But for good reason: no plans go awry as predictably as war plans. If generals are forever guilty of fighting their previous war, it's because they are desperate in war's fog to discover some pattern that can tell them which way the present war is going.
Everyone knows that history repeats itself for those who don't study and learn from it. In wartime, an unintended repeat can be devastating. Vietnam figures as a poignant comparison for critics and proponents alike of the present US war in Iraq because the consequences for the US in that war were so severe.
Comparisons between past and present wars are therefore a useful and necessary exercise. But the US experience in Vietnam may not be the best comparison available to help understand where the US war in Iraq is going. For one thing, the US rate of death in Iraq, though growing, remains far below the average rate of death for Americans in Vietnam over the course of their major engagement there from 1961 to 1973. Over the course of those 12 years, the US lost an average of about 12 soldiers per day. They have lost so far in Iraq an average of about two per day.
The number of US soldiers stationed in Vietnam in the later 60s was around 500,000 at any one time. The number in the nearly two years so far of the US action in Iraq has usually remained around 130,000.
And the American economy and contemporary society bears no comparison at all. Still flush with cash as the sole big economic power in the world, the US then enjoyed a constant trade surplus and was even a net exporter of oil. And the American people were buoyant and hopeful, driven to fix in one generation, racism, poverty, and illness.Today, America runs catastrophic trade deficits approaching a staggering US $600 billion annually. It must import huge quantities of nearly every resource, most notably oil. And the American people are not interested in The Great Society any longer.
Only the cost to the US treasury compares. The Vietnam War cost in total US $133 billion over the course of its 12 years, or an average of US $11 billion per year. Expressed in 2005 dollars, it is the equivalent of US $76 billion per year-remarkably close to the US $80 billion per year the Iraq war has cost the US so far, after almost two years.
The remaining comparisons-lack of an exit strategy, difficulty in rooting out insurgents, problems maintaining popular support at home and in the target country, and shifting overall purposes draining morale-are common features in most wars, and though they compare well between Vietnam and Iraq, the comparison is no better than between Iraq and any other war.
Instead of the US war in Vietnam in the 1960s, a more apt comparison might be the Russian experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Here, the numbers come out looking strikingly similar. In the ten years between the Russian invasion in 1979 and their hasty pullout in 1989, the Russians committed about 115,000 troops to Afghanistan at any one time-a figure very close to the US numbers in Iraq. The Russians lost about 15,000 soldiers in that conflict, or about 125 per month. The US and its coalition partners over the last six months have lost a comparable average of 100 per month.
The average Russian military budget during the decade they were engaged in Afghanistan amounted to about US $250 billion annually, or about US $655 billion in today's dollars. The current total US military outlay, including items not counted in the official Pentagon budget-like the costs of the Iraq war-is estimated to be about US $600 billion per year, a number within 8% of the Russian figure. For the Russians in the mid-1980s, their Afghanistan-trapped military soaked up about 12% of their GNP. For the Americans in the mid-2000s, their Iraq-trapped military is soaking up almost 6% of their GNP-a smaller part for sure, but of a much larger and more diversified economy.
However, consider that the Afghan adventure cost the Russian government about 4.9% of its overall annual budget; the Iraq adventure is costing the American government about 3.6% of its overall annual budget. It was the cost to the Russian government budget, not necessarily the cost to the Russian GNP that caused the Russians to give up in Afghanistan. The financial impact of Iraq on the finances of the American government at this early stage is already almost 75% of what the impact of Afghanistan was on the finances of the Russian government by the time they were finished.
This number is surely the most important one to consider when looking for comparisons to the American war in Iraq at least in terms of learning where America may be headed in this conflict, and as a nation. All experts agree that the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan primarily because they could not keep up to the level of spending required to maintain or win the conflict.
More dramatically, it is widely believed that the financial costs of the Afghan war was the primary cause of the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union itself, and its very disappearance from the world stage. The demise was rapid: in the same year Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan, the chief symbol of its empire, the Berlin Wall, was toppled. Nation after nation once under Soviet control declared independence in the following 12 months.
By the end of the following year, the Soviet Union itself was terminated. Within three years, its economy was completely ruined, its currency had collapsed to nearly no value, and its capital and infrastructure was nearly completely looted. Fifteen years later, the Russian population continues to decline rapidly and the life expectancy of Russians, as well as their level of literacy, health, and savings, approaches those of the terminally under-developed third-world nations.In one generation, Russia had gone from a world-straddling economic and military empire second in almost every respect only to America itself, and busy making a bold foray into Middle Eastern politics, down to a desperate and shrinking third-world nation dependent on foreign aid and loans draining what remains of its natural resources.
Compare this description of Russia from a 1981 issue of Foreign Affairs , to the Russia we know today: " Russia today is a mighty world power, with the largest territory of any state, a population of 260 million, great mineral resources in a resource-hungry world, and a geopolitical position that gives it a large role in both European and Asian affairs. It is a military superpower with intercontinental and intermediate-range nuclear missiles in large numbers, supersonic airplanes, a huge standing army based on universal military service, and fleets in all oceans. It controls an East and Central European empire extending deep into Germany and the Balkans. Its power and influence radiate into Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Africa and Latin America."
Many long-term and complex reasons account for this dramatic reversal of fortune, many lying at the core of a rotted-out economy and society. But what triggered the collapse were the problems the Soviet military encountered in Afghanistan.Similarly, the US today experiences many long-term and complex problems lying at the core of its economy and society. The huge corporate collapses in the last couple of years, most notably at Enron and Worldcom, are indicative of a rot at the core of the American economy. Though those examples have receded from the popular imagination, they will yet re-emerge in it for the dramatic and larger collapse they will come to be seen to have portended.
Similarly, the exposure of torture and extreme abuse of prisoners in US military custody at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and the short-lived public response to them, are indicative of a sharp turn in American social attitudes. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been attributed by some observers to the dispirited Russian polity as much as it has been accounted for by the hollowed-out Russian economy. In recent books by, for example, Thomas Frank ( What's the Matter With Kansas? ) and by Barbara Ehrenreich ( Nickel and Dimed ), we glimpse an American society every bit as tired and unhappy as any described by writers in the Russia of the 1970s. The war in Afghanistan in 1979, it has been argued, was waged in part to distract the restless Russian population from their gloomy lives and dwindling prospects. The same has been suggested of America's war in Iraq.
The Russians would surely have fared better in Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union may well have survived, had it not been for foreign interference in the conflict emanating mostly from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and orchestrated and financed chiefly by the US. It was the introduction of US-made Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the conflict in 1986 that made air transport too dangerous and expensive for the Russians, and ultimately doomed their far-flung bases dotted around the country, and ended their invasion. The US funneled US $2 billion through various channels into the conflict to tie down, and ultimately defeat, the Soviet Red Army.
It is unclear if any foreign powers have so far intervened in the Iraq conflict. But then, it took the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan about five years to realize that the Afghan resistance was a formidable force willing and able to stand up to the mighty Russian army-and to begin to see the larger geopolitical possibilities available by financing the mujahadin fighters there.
As the Iraqi resistance continues to surprise the world with its obvious willingness and apparent ability to stand up to the even mightier US army, how long will it be before other players in the geopolitical arena begin to make the calculations and see the possibilities available by covertly intervening in the conflict there?
Any number of well-financed players on the world stage could benefit directly from seeing the US military tied down indefinitely, and possibly even eradicated, in Iraq.
China has already been publicly tagged by American political strategists as the next great challenger to US hegemony. Russia under strongman Vladimir Putin seeks a triumphal return from its exile from the world stage. Iran sees a possible return to regional dominance. Saudi Arabia has ever only been to America a partner of convenience and the family running the huge oilfields has at best a tenuous grip on power. Egypt and Syria, erstwhile brothers and progenitors of pan-Arabism, may see in America's problems air to breathe again the dream of one large Arab state.
Once the Iraqi resistance shows its staying power, who's to say which countries wouldn't find benefit in helping them along with weapons here, cash there, not necessarily to defeat the Americans, but not to let them get out, either-at least not until its too late for the whole American enterprise.
This was America's, Pakistan's, and Saudi Arabia's strategy in pumping carefully calibrated quantities of arms and cash into the mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan then confronting the Russian army. And here is where the comparison between Russia's experience in Afghanistan and America's experience in Iraq come closest to a direct match: it was a total surprise for the world when American financing and arming of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network not only chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but triggered the collapse of the whole empire.
It was a surprise because no one then knew how weak were the economic, social and military pillars of Russian society, and no one expected a defeat of the one, much less a collapse of the other two. But a sober consideration of the state of America's economic and social pillars today, plus an appreciation for the dreadfully overstretched state of its military around the world, reveal conditions not too unlike those reminiscent of 1980s Russia." Brezhnev's goal was to make the USSR into one of the strongest political superpowers in the world," reads a popular history of the country. "The military was richly funded and the authoritative influence of Brezhnev could be felt in the asperity of the population. When Brezhnev died in 1982, he left behind an empire with one of the world's strongest military sectors, but weakest population morale. The Soviet Union was an empty superpower with crumbling financial, social and political sectors." Can this not be said of America today?
With economic, social and military conditions looking largely the same, and with the war costing in treasure and blood about the same, and with the same kind of confluence of international interests not averse to its failure abroad and utter collapse at home, the Russian experience in Afghanistan may be the best comparison to the American experience in Iraq. And if that is true, then the consequences for Russia and the Russians over the course of the following generation probably best portends the consequences for America and the Americans over the next twenty years or so.
That is to say, the world may sometime very soon be as surprised as it was in 1990 when the Soviet empire disappeared. It is certainly a possibility that ought to be planned for in capitals closely tied to America-most especially Ottawa.
http://www.republic-news.org/archive/108-repub/108_potvin_afghanist
Kevin PotvinPublisher, EditorThe RepublicPO Box 56072Vancouver BC V5L
5E2republic-news.orgkpotvin@republic-news.org
Wrap...
America's Afghanistan
The best comparison to make for the American adventure in Iraq is not Vietnam, but Afghanistan. And America's future could be most like Russia's in the 1990s
by Kevin Potvin
March 3, 2005
Prior to invading Iraq, senior US government officials frequently compared their mission to the US mission in Europe in the early 1940s. Critics then compared the war-mongering Bush Jr White House to Hitler's regime in 1939. Once the war in Iraq was well engaged and the Iraqi insurgency took shape as a strong and resilient fighting force, the comparison to the American ill-fated adventure forty years earlier in Vietnam was irresistible. In response, US regime supporters drew comparisons instead to successful US military actions in Somalia, Kosovo and even Panama.Making comparisons between present wars and past wars is a whole side industry of the media. But for good reason: no plans go awry as predictably as war plans. If generals are forever guilty of fighting their previous war, it's because they are desperate in war's fog to discover some pattern that can tell them which way the present war is going.
Everyone knows that history repeats itself for those who don't study and learn from it. In wartime, an unintended repeat can be devastating. Vietnam figures as a poignant comparison for critics and proponents alike of the present US war in Iraq because the consequences for the US in that war were so severe.
Comparisons between past and present wars are therefore a useful and necessary exercise. But the US experience in Vietnam may not be the best comparison available to help understand where the US war in Iraq is going. For one thing, the US rate of death in Iraq, though growing, remains far below the average rate of death for Americans in Vietnam over the course of their major engagement there from 1961 to 1973. Over the course of those 12 years, the US lost an average of about 12 soldiers per day. They have lost so far in Iraq an average of about two per day.
The number of US soldiers stationed in Vietnam in the later 60s was around 500,000 at any one time. The number in the nearly two years so far of the US action in Iraq has usually remained around 130,000.
And the American economy and contemporary society bears no comparison at all. Still flush with cash as the sole big economic power in the world, the US then enjoyed a constant trade surplus and was even a net exporter of oil. And the American people were buoyant and hopeful, driven to fix in one generation, racism, poverty, and illness.Today, America runs catastrophic trade deficits approaching a staggering US $600 billion annually. It must import huge quantities of nearly every resource, most notably oil. And the American people are not interested in The Great Society any longer.
Only the cost to the US treasury compares. The Vietnam War cost in total US $133 billion over the course of its 12 years, or an average of US $11 billion per year. Expressed in 2005 dollars, it is the equivalent of US $76 billion per year-remarkably close to the US $80 billion per year the Iraq war has cost the US so far, after almost two years.
The remaining comparisons-lack of an exit strategy, difficulty in rooting out insurgents, problems maintaining popular support at home and in the target country, and shifting overall purposes draining morale-are common features in most wars, and though they compare well between Vietnam and Iraq, the comparison is no better than between Iraq and any other war.
Instead of the US war in Vietnam in the 1960s, a more apt comparison might be the Russian experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Here, the numbers come out looking strikingly similar. In the ten years between the Russian invasion in 1979 and their hasty pullout in 1989, the Russians committed about 115,000 troops to Afghanistan at any one time-a figure very close to the US numbers in Iraq. The Russians lost about 15,000 soldiers in that conflict, or about 125 per month. The US and its coalition partners over the last six months have lost a comparable average of 100 per month.
The average Russian military budget during the decade they were engaged in Afghanistan amounted to about US $250 billion annually, or about US $655 billion in today's dollars. The current total US military outlay, including items not counted in the official Pentagon budget-like the costs of the Iraq war-is estimated to be about US $600 billion per year, a number within 8% of the Russian figure. For the Russians in the mid-1980s, their Afghanistan-trapped military soaked up about 12% of their GNP. For the Americans in the mid-2000s, their Iraq-trapped military is soaking up almost 6% of their GNP-a smaller part for sure, but of a much larger and more diversified economy.
However, consider that the Afghan adventure cost the Russian government about 4.9% of its overall annual budget; the Iraq adventure is costing the American government about 3.6% of its overall annual budget. It was the cost to the Russian government budget, not necessarily the cost to the Russian GNP that caused the Russians to give up in Afghanistan. The financial impact of Iraq on the finances of the American government at this early stage is already almost 75% of what the impact of Afghanistan was on the finances of the Russian government by the time they were finished.
This number is surely the most important one to consider when looking for comparisons to the American war in Iraq at least in terms of learning where America may be headed in this conflict, and as a nation. All experts agree that the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan primarily because they could not keep up to the level of spending required to maintain or win the conflict.
More dramatically, it is widely believed that the financial costs of the Afghan war was the primary cause of the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union itself, and its very disappearance from the world stage. The demise was rapid: in the same year Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan, the chief symbol of its empire, the Berlin Wall, was toppled. Nation after nation once under Soviet control declared independence in the following 12 months.
By the end of the following year, the Soviet Union itself was terminated. Within three years, its economy was completely ruined, its currency had collapsed to nearly no value, and its capital and infrastructure was nearly completely looted. Fifteen years later, the Russian population continues to decline rapidly and the life expectancy of Russians, as well as their level of literacy, health, and savings, approaches those of the terminally under-developed third-world nations.In one generation, Russia had gone from a world-straddling economic and military empire second in almost every respect only to America itself, and busy making a bold foray into Middle Eastern politics, down to a desperate and shrinking third-world nation dependent on foreign aid and loans draining what remains of its natural resources.
Compare this description of Russia from a 1981 issue of Foreign Affairs , to the Russia we know today: " Russia today is a mighty world power, with the largest territory of any state, a population of 260 million, great mineral resources in a resource-hungry world, and a geopolitical position that gives it a large role in both European and Asian affairs. It is a military superpower with intercontinental and intermediate-range nuclear missiles in large numbers, supersonic airplanes, a huge standing army based on universal military service, and fleets in all oceans. It controls an East and Central European empire extending deep into Germany and the Balkans. Its power and influence radiate into Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Africa and Latin America."
Many long-term and complex reasons account for this dramatic reversal of fortune, many lying at the core of a rotted-out economy and society. But what triggered the collapse were the problems the Soviet military encountered in Afghanistan.Similarly, the US today experiences many long-term and complex problems lying at the core of its economy and society. The huge corporate collapses in the last couple of years, most notably at Enron and Worldcom, are indicative of a rot at the core of the American economy. Though those examples have receded from the popular imagination, they will yet re-emerge in it for the dramatic and larger collapse they will come to be seen to have portended.
Similarly, the exposure of torture and extreme abuse of prisoners in US military custody at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and the short-lived public response to them, are indicative of a sharp turn in American social attitudes. The collapse of the Soviet Union has been attributed by some observers to the dispirited Russian polity as much as it has been accounted for by the hollowed-out Russian economy. In recent books by, for example, Thomas Frank ( What's the Matter With Kansas? ) and by Barbara Ehrenreich ( Nickel and Dimed ), we glimpse an American society every bit as tired and unhappy as any described by writers in the Russia of the 1970s. The war in Afghanistan in 1979, it has been argued, was waged in part to distract the restless Russian population from their gloomy lives and dwindling prospects. The same has been suggested of America's war in Iraq.
The Russians would surely have fared better in Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union may well have survived, had it not been for foreign interference in the conflict emanating mostly from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and orchestrated and financed chiefly by the US. It was the introduction of US-made Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the conflict in 1986 that made air transport too dangerous and expensive for the Russians, and ultimately doomed their far-flung bases dotted around the country, and ended their invasion. The US funneled US $2 billion through various channels into the conflict to tie down, and ultimately defeat, the Soviet Red Army.
It is unclear if any foreign powers have so far intervened in the Iraq conflict. But then, it took the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan about five years to realize that the Afghan resistance was a formidable force willing and able to stand up to the mighty Russian army-and to begin to see the larger geopolitical possibilities available by financing the mujahadin fighters there.
As the Iraqi resistance continues to surprise the world with its obvious willingness and apparent ability to stand up to the even mightier US army, how long will it be before other players in the geopolitical arena begin to make the calculations and see the possibilities available by covertly intervening in the conflict there?
Any number of well-financed players on the world stage could benefit directly from seeing the US military tied down indefinitely, and possibly even eradicated, in Iraq.
China has already been publicly tagged by American political strategists as the next great challenger to US hegemony. Russia under strongman Vladimir Putin seeks a triumphal return from its exile from the world stage. Iran sees a possible return to regional dominance. Saudi Arabia has ever only been to America a partner of convenience and the family running the huge oilfields has at best a tenuous grip on power. Egypt and Syria, erstwhile brothers and progenitors of pan-Arabism, may see in America's problems air to breathe again the dream of one large Arab state.
Once the Iraqi resistance shows its staying power, who's to say which countries wouldn't find benefit in helping them along with weapons here, cash there, not necessarily to defeat the Americans, but not to let them get out, either-at least not until its too late for the whole American enterprise.
This was America's, Pakistan's, and Saudi Arabia's strategy in pumping carefully calibrated quantities of arms and cash into the mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan then confronting the Russian army. And here is where the comparison between Russia's experience in Afghanistan and America's experience in Iraq come closest to a direct match: it was a total surprise for the world when American financing and arming of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network not only chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but triggered the collapse of the whole empire.
It was a surprise because no one then knew how weak were the economic, social and military pillars of Russian society, and no one expected a defeat of the one, much less a collapse of the other two. But a sober consideration of the state of America's economic and social pillars today, plus an appreciation for the dreadfully overstretched state of its military around the world, reveal conditions not too unlike those reminiscent of 1980s Russia." Brezhnev's goal was to make the USSR into one of the strongest political superpowers in the world," reads a popular history of the country. "The military was richly funded and the authoritative influence of Brezhnev could be felt in the asperity of the population. When Brezhnev died in 1982, he left behind an empire with one of the world's strongest military sectors, but weakest population morale. The Soviet Union was an empty superpower with crumbling financial, social and political sectors." Can this not be said of America today?
With economic, social and military conditions looking largely the same, and with the war costing in treasure and blood about the same, and with the same kind of confluence of international interests not averse to its failure abroad and utter collapse at home, the Russian experience in Afghanistan may be the best comparison to the American experience in Iraq. And if that is true, then the consequences for Russia and the Russians over the course of the following generation probably best portends the consequences for America and the Americans over the next twenty years or so.
That is to say, the world may sometime very soon be as surprised as it was in 1990 when the Soviet empire disappeared. It is certainly a possibility that ought to be planned for in capitals closely tied to America-most especially Ottawa.
http://www.republic-news.org/archive/108-repub/108_potvin_afghanist
Kevin PotvinPublisher, EditorThe RepublicPO Box 56072Vancouver BC V5L
5E2republic-news.orgkpotvin@republic-news.org
Wrap...
Friday, September 15, 2006
Let illegals in...the military has to have them....
From Information Clearing House:
Coaxing the unwilling: The result: US ground forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens, old-timers, foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and promises.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI16Aa03.html
Wrap...
Coaxing the unwilling: The result: US ground forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens, old-timers, foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and promises.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI16Aa03.html
Wrap...
Yet more of BushCo's filthy dealings...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) has agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges related to his dealings with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Ney is the first member of Congress to admit to criminal charges in the Abramoff case.
Krauthammer's Iran "calculus": "An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option. ... The decision is no more than a year away."
The Bush administration has proposed eliminating funding for two renewable energy sources: hydropower and geothermal power research. Federal studies suggest that the "costs of lost opportunities from dropping such research could be enormous in the long run." Yesterday the House approved a "sham" earmark reform bill that critics say is "filled with loopholes that would still permit anonymous projects to be inserted into law without public scrutiny." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), former chairman of the appropriations committee, called the bill "the death of lobby reform."
Border-crossing deaths have "more than doubled in the past decade," according to a GAO report. "More and more, the dead are women," and "more migrants are dying from exposure in the desert than from other causes."
In 2004, the FCC "ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage," the AP reports. StopBigMedia.com has a copy of the study.
Sectarian "killings and violence are surging around Iraq," "despite a month-old security crackdown in the capital." "It's barbaric but sadly we've become used to it," an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. "Forty bodies, 60 bodies - it's become a daily routine."
"Newly formed cities are giving the keys to city hall to private companies that say they can run a government better than bureaucrats." Critics worry about a "shadow government" that isn't "subject to the same kind of open-records and open-meetings laws as public employees are."
And finally: Madonna joins Lance Bass as the celebrities whom the Russian government will not send into space. The Duma rejected a proposal to "send a formal inquiry to the Russian space agency about organizing a space trip for her in 2008." "Taking into account her good physical preparedness and financial capabilities, the dream of [Madonna] of a space flight could be realized in 2009," one lawmaker said in support of the trip.
Wrap...
Think Fast
Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) has agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges related to his dealings with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Ney is the first member of Congress to admit to criminal charges in the Abramoff case.
Krauthammer's Iran "calculus": "An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option. ... The decision is no more than a year away."
The Bush administration has proposed eliminating funding for two renewable energy sources: hydropower and geothermal power research. Federal studies suggest that the "costs of lost opportunities from dropping such research could be enormous in the long run." Yesterday the House approved a "sham" earmark reform bill that critics say is "filled with loopholes that would still permit anonymous projects to be inserted into law without public scrutiny." Rep. David Obey (D-WI), former chairman of the appropriations committee, called the bill "the death of lobby reform."
Border-crossing deaths have "more than doubled in the past decade," according to a GAO report. "More and more, the dead are women," and "more migrants are dying from exposure in the desert than from other causes."
In 2004, the FCC "ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage," the AP reports. StopBigMedia.com has a copy of the study.
Sectarian "killings and violence are surging around Iraq," "despite a month-old security crackdown in the capital." "It's barbaric but sadly we've become used to it," an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said. "Forty bodies, 60 bodies - it's become a daily routine."
"Newly formed cities are giving the keys to city hall to private companies that say they can run a government better than bureaucrats." Critics worry about a "shadow government" that isn't "subject to the same kind of open-records and open-meetings laws as public employees are."
And finally: Madonna joins Lance Bass as the celebrities whom the Russian government will not send into space. The Duma rejected a proposal to "send a formal inquiry to the Russian space agency about organizing a space trip for her in 2008." "Taking into account her good physical preparedness and financial capabilities, the dream of [Madonna] of a space flight could be realized in 2009," one lawmaker said in support of the trip.
Wrap...
If the shoe fits....
Rec'd via email:
SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE
This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School (California) staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine. This is the actual answering machine message for the school.
This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework. The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough schoolwork to pass their classes.
The outgoing message: "Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to help you reach the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:
* To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1
* To make excuses for why your child did not do his work- Press 2
* To complain about what we do - Press 3
* To swear at staff members - Press 4
* To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - Press 5
* If you want us to raise your child - Press 6
* If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7
* To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8
* To complain about bus transportation - Press 9
* To complain about school lunches - Press 0
* If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day.
If you can read this - thank a teacher! If you are reading it in English- thank a veteran!
Wrap....
SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE
This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School (California) staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine. This is the actual answering machine message for the school.
This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework. The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough schoolwork to pass their classes.
The outgoing message: "Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to help you reach the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:
* To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1
* To make excuses for why your child did not do his work- Press 2
* To complain about what we do - Press 3
* To swear at staff members - Press 4
* To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - Press 5
* If you want us to raise your child - Press 6
* If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7
* To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8
* To complain about bus transportation - Press 9
* To complain about school lunches - Press 0
* If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day.
If you can read this - thank a teacher! If you are reading it in English- thank a veteran!
Wrap....
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Putting the pressure on their men....
From BBC via truthout.org :
Colombian Gangsters Face Sex Ban
BBC News
Wednesday 13 September 2006
Wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia's most violent cities have called a sex ban in a bid to get their men to give up the gun.
Dozens of women are said to be taking part in what is being called the "strike of crossed legs", a move backed by the mayor of Pereira.
The city in Colombia's coffee-growing region reported 480 killings last year.
A city official said the idea came from a meeting of wives and girlfriends over the progress of a disarmament scheme.
Rap Song
"We met with the wives and girlfriends of gang members and they were worried some were not handing over their guns and that is where they came up with the idea of a vigil or a sex strike," the mayor's spokesman told Reuters news agency.
"The message they are giving them is disarm," he added.
Studies found that local gang members were drawn to criminality by the desire for status, power, and sexual attractiveness, not economic necessity, Colombian radio reported.
One of the girlfriends, Jennifer Bayer, told Britain's Guardian newspaper: "We want them to know that violence is not sexy."
Ms. Bayer said the women had come up with a strike anthem rap song that included the lyrics: "As women we are worth a lot. We don't want to fall for violent men because with them we lose too much."
Wrap...
Colombian Gangsters Face Sex Ban
BBC News
Wednesday 13 September 2006
Wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia's most violent cities have called a sex ban in a bid to get their men to give up the gun.
Dozens of women are said to be taking part in what is being called the "strike of crossed legs", a move backed by the mayor of Pereira.
The city in Colombia's coffee-growing region reported 480 killings last year.
A city official said the idea came from a meeting of wives and girlfriends over the progress of a disarmament scheme.
Rap Song
"We met with the wives and girlfriends of gang members and they were worried some were not handing over their guns and that is where they came up with the idea of a vigil or a sex strike," the mayor's spokesman told Reuters news agency.
"The message they are giving them is disarm," he added.
Studies found that local gang members were drawn to criminality by the desire for status, power, and sexual attractiveness, not economic necessity, Colombian radio reported.
One of the girlfriends, Jennifer Bayer, told Britain's Guardian newspaper: "We want them to know that violence is not sexy."
Ms. Bayer said the women had come up with a strike anthem rap song that included the lyrics: "As women we are worth a lot. We don't want to fall for violent men because with them we lose too much."
Wrap...
Greg Palast is free!!!
From Greg Palast:
REPORTER PALAST SLIPS CLUTCHES OF HOMELAND SECURITY
September, 14, 2006
Forget the orange suit. Exxon Mobil Corporation, which admits it was behind the criminal complaint brought by Homeland Security against me and television producer Matt Pascarella, has informed me that the oil company will no longer push charges that Pascarella and I threatened "critical infrastructure."
The allegedly criminal act, which put us on the wrong side of post-9/11 anti-terror law, was our filming of Exxon's Baton Rouge refinery where, nearby, 1,600 survivors of Hurricane Katrina remain interned behind barbed wire.
I have sworn to Homeland Security that we no longer send our footage to al-Qaeda -- which, in any case, can get a much better view of the refinery and other "critical infrastructure" at Google maps.
Given Exxon's back-down, I hope to confirm with Homeland Security, Baton Rouge, that charges will be dropped today. Matt and I want to thank you, our readers and viewers, for your extraordinary and heartfelt responses. Public support undoubtedly led Exxon to call off the feds. Of course, this was never about our tipping off Osama that Louisiana contains oil refineries. This has an awful lot to do with a petroleum giant's sensitivity to unflattering depictions of their plants which are major polluters along Louisiana's notorious "Cancer Alley."
I've learned that, in April last year, Exxon brought a similar Homeland Security charge against Willie Fontenot, an assistant to the Attorney General of Louisiana. Fontenot was guiding a group of environmental studies pupils from Antioch College on a tour of Cancer Alley. Exxon's complaint about the "national security" threat posed by their photos of the company's facility cost Fontenot his job.The issue is not national security but image security.
You can get all the film you want from Exxon of refineries if you'll accept nice, sanitized VPRs (video press releases) of clean smokestacks surrounded by happy herons.
What's dangerous is not that reporters will end up in Guantanamo; the insidious effect of these threats is to keep networks from filming government and corporate filth, incompetence and inhumanity. Besides the Exxon foolishness, our camera crew was also blocked from filming inside the notorious Katrina survivors trailer encampment.
Furthermore earlier that same day, a FEMA contractor had grabbed our camera, in mid-interview, when polite but pointed questions exposed their malfeasance.
As with Exxon, the bar from filming at the refugee camp and in the offices of the government contractor were presented to us as a "Homeland Security" matter. After the September 11 attacks, CBS Newsman Dan Rather said, "George Bush is the President. …Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where."
Reporters who step out of line, who ask uncomfortable questions and film uncomfortable scenes, soon find their careers toasted, as Dan can attest to.
One of George Bush's weirder acts in office (and that's saying a lot) was to move FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose main job is to save us from floods and earthquakes, into the control of the Department of Homeland Security. Exxon's refineries, once "pollution source points" scrutinized by government watchdogs, are now "critical infrastructure" protected by federal hounddogs.
As the front lines in the War on Terror expand from Baghdad to Baton Rouge, we find that America has been made secure only against hard news and uncomfortable facts.Again, our sincere thanks and gratitude for your support. Cakes with files have been consumed.- Greg Palast, New York
*****
Many of you have asked for copies of the film which threatened national security. In response to your requests, with the permission of LinkTV, we are making "Big Easy to Big Empty: the Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans" available on DVD. The disc will also include an interview of reporter Greg Palast by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman plus an excerpt from Palast's bestseller, Armed Madhouse on the topic, "Class War and Hurricane Katrina."For a copy of the film, I am asking for a modest, tax-deductible donation to our foundation, the Palast Investigative Fund. The fund supports our work and pays our legal fees.
Wrap...
REPORTER PALAST SLIPS CLUTCHES OF HOMELAND SECURITY
September, 14, 2006
Forget the orange suit. Exxon Mobil Corporation, which admits it was behind the criminal complaint brought by Homeland Security against me and television producer Matt Pascarella, has informed me that the oil company will no longer push charges that Pascarella and I threatened "critical infrastructure."
The allegedly criminal act, which put us on the wrong side of post-9/11 anti-terror law, was our filming of Exxon's Baton Rouge refinery where, nearby, 1,600 survivors of Hurricane Katrina remain interned behind barbed wire.
I have sworn to Homeland Security that we no longer send our footage to al-Qaeda -- which, in any case, can get a much better view of the refinery and other "critical infrastructure" at Google maps.
Given Exxon's back-down, I hope to confirm with Homeland Security, Baton Rouge, that charges will be dropped today. Matt and I want to thank you, our readers and viewers, for your extraordinary and heartfelt responses. Public support undoubtedly led Exxon to call off the feds. Of course, this was never about our tipping off Osama that Louisiana contains oil refineries. This has an awful lot to do with a petroleum giant's sensitivity to unflattering depictions of their plants which are major polluters along Louisiana's notorious "Cancer Alley."
I've learned that, in April last year, Exxon brought a similar Homeland Security charge against Willie Fontenot, an assistant to the Attorney General of Louisiana. Fontenot was guiding a group of environmental studies pupils from Antioch College on a tour of Cancer Alley. Exxon's complaint about the "national security" threat posed by their photos of the company's facility cost Fontenot his job.The issue is not national security but image security.
You can get all the film you want from Exxon of refineries if you'll accept nice, sanitized VPRs (video press releases) of clean smokestacks surrounded by happy herons.
What's dangerous is not that reporters will end up in Guantanamo; the insidious effect of these threats is to keep networks from filming government and corporate filth, incompetence and inhumanity. Besides the Exxon foolishness, our camera crew was also blocked from filming inside the notorious Katrina survivors trailer encampment.
Furthermore earlier that same day, a FEMA contractor had grabbed our camera, in mid-interview, when polite but pointed questions exposed their malfeasance.
As with Exxon, the bar from filming at the refugee camp and in the offices of the government contractor were presented to us as a "Homeland Security" matter. After the September 11 attacks, CBS Newsman Dan Rather said, "George Bush is the President. …Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where."
Reporters who step out of line, who ask uncomfortable questions and film uncomfortable scenes, soon find their careers toasted, as Dan can attest to.
One of George Bush's weirder acts in office (and that's saying a lot) was to move FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose main job is to save us from floods and earthquakes, into the control of the Department of Homeland Security. Exxon's refineries, once "pollution source points" scrutinized by government watchdogs, are now "critical infrastructure" protected by federal hounddogs.
As the front lines in the War on Terror expand from Baghdad to Baton Rouge, we find that America has been made secure only against hard news and uncomfortable facts.Again, our sincere thanks and gratitude for your support. Cakes with files have been consumed.- Greg Palast, New York
*****
Many of you have asked for copies of the film which threatened national security. In response to your requests, with the permission of LinkTV, we are making "Big Easy to Big Empty: the Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans" available on DVD. The disc will also include an interview of reporter Greg Palast by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman plus an excerpt from Palast's bestseller, Armed Madhouse on the topic, "Class War and Hurricane Katrina."For a copy of the film, I am asking for a modest, tax-deductible donation to our foundation, the Palast Investigative Fund. The fund supports our work and pays our legal fees.
Wrap...
Olbermann on Rumsfeld....
From truthout.org:
William Fisher
A Murrow Moment
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091406A.shtml
Looking back at McCarthy-era paranoia and Edward Murrow's radio broadcasts, William Fisher writes, "There's a reason I cite all this old radio-days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio 'news.' Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests - owners and sponsors."
[Click on link above for Olbermann]
Wrap...
William Fisher
A Murrow Moment
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091406A.shtml
Looking back at McCarthy-era paranoia and Edward Murrow's radio broadcasts, William Fisher writes, "There's a reason I cite all this old radio-days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio 'news.' Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests - owners and sponsors."
[Click on link above for Olbermann]
Wrap...
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