Search continues for missing Air France flight
(CNN) — Brazilian, French and Senegalese rescue teams combed vast sections of the Atlantic after an Air France jet disappeared in a possible crash.
Anne and Michael Harris, who lived in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, were two Americans aboard the flight.
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A report of “shiny spots” in the sea along the route of Flight 447 by a crew from the Brazilian airline TAM prompted a search in the territorial waters off Senegal, but without result.
The developments came as more details about the victims of Flight 447 began to emerge Tuesday.
The Airbus A330 encountered heavy turbulence early Monday, some three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro for Paris on an 11-hour flight, according to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon.
At that point, the plane’s automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company’s maintenance computers, indicating that “several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down,” he told reporters.
During that time, there was no contact with the crew, Gourgeon said.
“It was probable that it was a little bit after those messages that the impact of the plane took place in the Atlantic,” he added.
The Airbus A330 was off radar and probably closer to Brazil than to Africa at the time, he said.
Two squadrons from Brazil’s air force launched a search near the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in the Atlantic Ocean, about 365 kilometers (225 miles) from Brazil’s coast, an air force spokesman told CNN. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France sent ships and planes to the area about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Brazil. 
See map of suspected crash zone »
“Our Spanish friends are helping us, Brazilians are helping us a lot as well,” he said.
Among the passengers were 126 men, 82 women, seven children and a baby, in addition to the 12 crew members, Air France said. Of the crew, 11 were French and one was Brazilian. 
Watch latest report on missing aircraft »
An official list of victims by name was not available late Monday, but the only two Americans on board — Michael Harris, 60, and his wife, Anne, 54 — were identified by the couple’s family and his employer.
“Anne and Mike were indeed a beautiful couple inside and out, and I miss them terribly already,” said Anne Harris’ sister, Mary Miley.
Don’t Miss
Michael Harris was a geologist in Rio de Janeiro for Devon Energy, the largest U.S.-based independent natural gas and oil producer, according to a company spokesman.
The couple had lived in the city since July 2008 and were traveling to Paris for a training seminar for Michael and for a vacation, Miley told CNN.
The airliner identified the nationalities of the other victims as: Argentinean (1); Austrian (1); Belgian (1); Brazilian (58); British (5); Canadian (1); Chinese (9); Croatian (1); Danish (1); Dutch (1); Estonian (1); Filipino (1); French (61); Gambian (1); German (26); Hungarian (4); Icelandic (1); Irish (3); Italian (9); Lebanese (5); Moroccan (2); Norwegian (3); Polish (2); Romanian (1); Russian (1); Slovakian (3); Spanish (2); Swedish (1); Swiss (6); Turkish (1).
The jet was 4 years old and had last undergone routine maintenance April 16. Watch report on what could have caused aircraft to go down »
Its crew was comprised of three pilots, including a 58-year-old captain who had logged 11,000 hours in flight, and nine cabin crew members, Air France said in a statement. Some 1,700 of the captain’s hours were on two Airbus models. Of the two co-pilots — ages 37 and 32 — one had 3,000 hours of flying experience and the other 6,600 hours. The aircraft had flown 18,870 hours, the statement said.
Of the passengers, 149 had planned to connect to flights going elsewhere in Europe or as far away as China, Gourgeon said.
“This is a catastrophe the likes of which Air France has never seen before,” Sarkozy told reporters at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, where he had met with relatives of the missing aboard the flight.
“I said the truth to them: The prospects of finding survivors are very low,” he said. Watch comments from Sarkozy »
France asked the U.S. military to assist in the search with U.S. detection satellites, French Transport Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told CNN affiliate France 2. Pentagon officials did not immediately confirm the request.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told reporters in San Salvador, El Salvador, that he had spoken with Sarkozy, but neither leader knew what to say.
“All we could do was thank each other,” Lula said. “He thanked me for the speed with which the Brazilian air force took charge.”
He added, “In times like these, there is little to do but to deeply lament, to wish the families a lot of strength, because there are no words.”
The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said.
The jet took off from Rio de Janeiro’s Galeao International Airport at 11:30 p.m. Sunday. Its last known contact occurred at 02:33 a.m. Monday, the Brazilian air force spokesman said. It was not clear what that final contact was.
It was expected to check in with air traffic controllers at 03:20 a.m. but did not do so. Brazilian authorities asked the air force to launch a search mission just over three hours later.
Cheney Disavows 9/11-Iraq Link
On Monday, former Veep Dick Cheney admitted at long last that there was no link between the Sept. 11 attacks and Iraq, contrary to what the Bush administration had led the nation to believe in 2003 in order to justify waging a war on a country rich in history, culture … and oil. Tens of thousands of Iraqi and American casualties later, we thank you, Dick.
Bloomberg:
By James Rowley and Jonathan D. Salant
June 1 (Bloomberg) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney disavowed intelligence he once cited to suggest that then-Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein collaborated with al-Qaeda to stage the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cheney said today that information by the Central Intelligence Agency of collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaeda on Sept. 11 “turned out not to be true.” Still, Cheney said a longstanding relationship existed between Hussein and terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, that justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“I thought it was strong at the time and I still feel so today,” Cheney said at a National Press Club lunch in Washington. “There was a relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq that stretched back 10 years. That’s not something I made up.” Citing 2002 Senate testimony by George Tenet, then the CIA director, he said, “We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein was a state sponsor of terrorism.”
On whether Hussein helped al-Qaeda carry out the 2001 terrorist attacks, Cheney said, “I do not believe, and I have never seen any evidence, that he was involved in 9/11.”
Cheney continued his attacks on President Barack Obama’s pledge to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where suspected terrorists are being held. Obama has called the indefinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo a “mistake” and said he will close the camp — a vow that has been complicated by the refusal of lawmakers, including Democrats, to provide funding.
Difficult to Close
“I think it’s going to be very difficult to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “It’s a good, well-run facility. If you’re going to be engaged in a world conflict such as we are in terms of global war on terrorism, if you don’t have a place where you can hold these people, your only other option is to kill them. We don’t operate that way.”
Several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said it was “pretty well” confirmed that Mohamed Atta, one of the leaders of the attack, had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2000, according to a Washington Post account. Cheney later said the meeting’s existence couldn’t be proven, the Post said.
The presidential commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks concluded in 2004 that meetings or contacts between al- Qaeda and Iraqi officials didn’t result in collaboration between the terrorist group and Hussein’s regime.
Defending Policies
Cheney’s midday speech marked his latest salvo in a personal campaign to defend the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies while suggesting that Obama’s actions have made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
In his press club appearance, Cheney said that foreign governments that have criticized Guantanamo haven’t been willing to take in suspects detained there. And if detainees are admitted to the U.S., they would gain certain rights and protections they do not have in the prison in Cuba.
“If you bring them here and a judge rules you can’t hold them any longer, you have to release them in the United States,” Cheney said.
Cheney, 68, has said lives were saved by Bush administration actions, including authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques considered to be torture, such as waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.
Obama has banned waterboarding, saying such actions betray the country’s “ideals” and aren’t necessary to “wage an aggressive battle against organizations like al-Qaeda.
‘Worried’ About GM
Cheney also said today he was “worried” about General Motors Corp.’s bankruptcy protection that was forced upon the automaker by the Obama administration. The bankruptcy plan calls for taxpayers to own more than 60 percent of General Motors. “Once you get into the business of a government running a major corporation like General Motors,” political pressures “come to bear and not economic interests,’” Cheney said.
In an interview before his speech, Cheney said the U.S. will face “enormous pressure” to manage GM in a way that doesn’t cost jobs. Cheney, asked about gay rights at the luncheon, said decisions on whether to legalize same-sex marriages should be made by states, not the federal government.
Cheney, whose daughter, Mary, is gay, indicated that he supports same-sex marriages. “Freedom means freedom for everyone,” he said. “I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.”
www.bloomberg.com
Policy differences or high crimes?
Swanson: Obama allowing Cheney to play offense; constitution demands prosecution
David Swanson: “Torture was always illegal”
Who’s afraid of the CIA?
McGovern: Liz Cheney’s accusation of Wilkerson’s “fantasy stories” would be wonderful if it were true
Paul Jay speaks to Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst under seven US presidents. On May 17, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter, accused Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, of creating a “cottage industry” making up “fantasy stories” about her father on the George Stephanopoulos Show. After interviewing Wilkerson, McGovern says “it would be wonderful if it were [a] fantasy. [But] It’s all too real.”
Bio
www.therealnews.com
A New Era Of Politics
by Carey B
Yesterday the US entered what has been promised to be “a new era of politics”. President Obama has a lot of “change’s” to make in order to fix our international relationships. Like the rest of the world, I too am anxious to see what our “new era of politics” can produce abroad. Obama also has a lot of “change’s” to make in order to regain the support of our citizens, mainly the libertarian crowd and according to mainstream news, the general public.
If you voted for Obama, congratulations! I however did not vote this year and I’ll explain why. Both candidates, Obama and McCain supported things like the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, and Extreme Rendition. The worst of all of is Obama claims that there is “clean coal” energy. The scientific community, on the other hand, has flatly rejected the clean coal theory. There is no such thing as “clean” coal, in fact clean coal hasn’t even made it into the climate change discussion since October 08. Obama reportedly has a plan that designates millions of taxpayer dollars to “research” clean coal.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited that the Bush regime has ended and we get to start anew, however if you look into Obama’s economic appointees, and his cabinet you should see a Clintonesque strategy in the Obama camp. Clinton was a buisness republican maqurading as a democrat, just look at our capital during his presidency. I fear Obama might be cut of similar cloth. Clinton made social promises too, like health care and welfare reform. Welfare was reformed alright, but for the wealthy, the rest of his promises went to the wayside. However one must remember how the Clintonites got the US out of debt and awash in capital. Continuing the deregulation of markets that started with Reagan. In fact, those same individuals responsible for our current economic recession are the very same architects of the policies that created it, and are now in top positions in the Obama Whitehouse.
These are a few quotes from Obama’s Inaugural Address:
This is the source of our confidence. The knowledge that God calls on us to fulfill an uncertain destiny.
We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waiver in it’s defense.
For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents… you cannot out last us and we will defeat you.
This looks like anything but “a new era of politics”.
Source: http://rogueisle.wordpress.com
Noam Chomsky | 1-13-09 M.I.T. “Gaza” 1/10
Noam Chomsky give a speech at M.I.T on the recent invasion into Gaza.
Audio Only (fantastic quality)
Top Three Gaza Myths Debunked
Despite the so-called “liberal” media’s endless barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda, a significant portion of the U.S. public is opposed to the current attack on Gaza. As the casualties mount and peace is pushed further out of reach, The Indypendent’s Jaisal Noor exposes three big myths of the conflict.
MYTH # 1
The root of the conflict is that Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel.
It is true that Hamas commits unjustifiable terrorist acts and is on the United States’ terror list. The “terrorist” label is often used against enemies of U.S.-supported countries. When it was deemed in their interest, Israel and the United States bolstered both Hamas and its predecessor the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorist tactics were also used by the groups Irgun and the Stern Gang to aid in the creation of a Jewish state. Meanwhile, Israel stands accused of indiscriminately targeting civilians by the United Nations and human rights groups.
The “terror” list currently includes the Lebanese Hezbullah which was born from the resistance to the 1982 Israeli invasion, and until last year included Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress.
Another former member of the U.S. terror list is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The original PLO charter concurs with the Hamas charter, proclaiming that “armed struggle” be used to reclaim Palestine. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once accused former PLO leader Yasser Arafat of being a “terrorist,” and refused to negotiate with him. Today the PLO’s biggest party, Fatah, is the preferred peace partner.
Recently, Hamas has firmly maintained that it is now willing to participate in negotiations based on internationally recognized borders and rights. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that as early as 2006, Hamas leader Ismaeil Haniyeh offered “a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and … a truce for many years.” Haniyeh called on President Bush to launch a dialogue with the Hamas government. “We are not warmongers, we are peacemakers and we call on the American government to have direct negotiations with the elected government.” Hamas re-emphasized this position recently, adding, “our conflict is not with the Jews, our problem is with the occupation.” The United States and Israel ignored the offer.
Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank — which were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War — are recognized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 as the land for a future Palestinian state. This has become the international consensus for peace, with only Israel, the United States and a handful of other nations voting against the annual General Assembly resolution calling for a settlement based on “242.”
MYTH # 2
Hamas is to blame for ending the cease-fire and Israel’s actions are in self-defense.
The three conditions for the June 2008 ceasefire were that (1) Israel would drastically reduce its military blockade of Gaza, (2) Israel would halt all military incursions into Gaza and, (3) Hamas would halt all rocket attacks into Israel.
From the outset of the cease-fire, Israel did little to ease its military blockade. As a result, Gazans continued to suffer from a lack of food, fuel, financial aid, electricity, clean water, medical supplies and more. The United Nations warned that Gaza would face “catastrophe” if the blockade were not lifted. The Israeli government maintained that the blockade was necessary to stop rocket attacks. However, as the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper reports, Hamas had ceased launching rockets into Israel during the cease-fire and even arrested members of militant groups who did fire a handful of rockets.
Despite the intense blockade against Gazan civilians, the cease-fire held until Nov. 4. On that date, Haaretz reports, it was the Israeli military that made an incursion into Gaza and killed six Palestinians. The Israeli government sought to justify these actions, saying that these Palestinians were suspected of plotting to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Predictably, militants responded to the attack by launching rockets into Israel. Thus began the unraveling of the cease-fire.
Following the end of the cease-fire, Israel moved closer to an invasion, claiming this was the only remaining option to eliminate rocket attacks from Gaza. According to Haaretz, Hamas offered to extend the ceasefire if Israel lifted its blockade. There is evidence that Israel was planning to strike Gaza before and during the cease-fire.
The White House said that Israel will cease its attack when Hamas has agreed to a truce. Hamas has said it would abide by a cease-fire if border crossings were reopened and the economic siege of Gaza ended. Israel has refused this offer.
Meanwhile, Israel unleashed its U.S.-supplied arsenal — which includes unconventional weapons — while attacking its own designated safe-areas. This forced the Red Cross and United Nations to briefly suspend relief work in Gaza, spurring the Vatican to compare the conditions there to a “concentration camp.” The United States abstained from a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
MYTH #3
Israel and the United States are doing everything in their power to achieve peace.
For decades the United States has provided Israel with billions of dollars annually in military aid and backed Israel’s seizure of occupied lands. The number of settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has increased from 200,000 in 1990 to more than 460,000 today. Claiming it received secret U.S. approval , Israel announced it would build thousands of new homes in 2008. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that this directly “contravenes both international law and Israel’s obligations” in the peace process.
Israel has also erected a “security barrier” through the West Bank, annexing large swaths of land. In 2004, the International Court of Justice declared construction of the wall “contrary to international law.”
Meanwhile, even outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently stated that to achieve peace and recognition by the Arab world, Israel “should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.”
Amid reports that President-elect Obama may reverse U.S. policy and negotiate with Hamas, scholar Norman Finkelstein observes, “Hamas in recent months has supported a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, joining the international consensus. It’s abiding by the terms of the truce, showing it can be trusted to abide by its agreements, which means it was becoming a credible negotiating partner.” He adds, “Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce ‘harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.’ Translation: a protracted cease-fire that enhanced Hamas’ credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank.” Finkelstein concludes: “Israel was facing a new Palestinian peace offensive and therefore it has to knock out Hamas.”
Click here to view a 2008 map of Israeli Settlements and separation barrier in the West Bank produced by the The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’TSELEM.
Adam Sheets contributed to this article.
THE WORLD STANDS WITH PALESTINE: Pro-Palestinian women in New York City stand next to the Palestinian flag at one of the many demonstrations that have taken place since the Israeli assault on Gaza began in late December. From New York to London to Cairo, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets. “We are demanding that the Palestinians be protected, but as Americans, we are also demanding that our tax money not be spent on killing innocent civilians,” a protestor told The Indypendent at a Jan. 3 rally in New York City. PHOTO: MARK A. BAILEY
www.indypendent.org
BBC refuses to show Gaza appeal
The British Broadcasting Corporation has defended its decision not to participate in a television fund-raising appeal for Gaza, saying it did want to avoid compromising public confidence in its impartiality. Normally all broadcasters show Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals without charge, but in a statement on Friday, the BBC said: “Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC’s public appeal to raise funds for Gaza. “The BBC’s decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation, and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story.” DEC ‘unhappy’ The DEC is an umbrella organisation representing a number of aid agencies, including Action Aid, Save the Children, the British Red Cross, Islamic Relief and Oxfam. The organisation said its members will be providing immediate humanitarian aid, such as medicine, food and blankets, and will be involved in reconstruction in Gaza. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the DEC, said he was unhappy about losing the ability to broadcast the DEC’s appeal into people’s homes.
“I’m upset because the tradition over the years has been that we collaborate [with the media], and you know yourself the power of the media,” he said.Gormley said their appeal was a “a simple and cost effective way” for people to show that they care. “All I can say is if there are journalistic problems with agreeing then that’s their call,” he said. Gormley said the DEC had three criteria that needed to be met before it launched an appeal, namely that there was an overwhelming unmet need, that they could do something in a timely and effective way, and that there is public concern. He said he felt all three had been met and that any money raised by the DEC would go to people on the ground. “A huge amount needs to be done in opening up access. We need a little bit more cash to alleviate suffering. I’m just sorry that we haven’t been able to find an agreement,” Gormley said. Government appeal Douglas Alexander, Britain’s international development secretary, has written to Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director-general, as well as the heads of ITV and Sky, the other two British broadcasters who normally air the appeals, urging them to reconsider airing the appeal.
In his letter, Alexander said: “As you know, the support of broadcasters is highly effective and extremely valued by the group of charities and non-governmental organisations who provide humanitarian relief under the DEC umbrella.”The situation is developing on the ground and I understand that Oxfam, Save the Children and others have been able to get some aid into Gaza today. “But it is clear that the humanitarian situation will be dire for some time to come, with around 100,000 people having left their homes and more than 50,000 people in UN emergency shelters. “While I recognise that this is a decision rightly taken by broadcasters, I hope that in light of the great human suffering still taking place in Gaza, you will reconsider your decision in relation to the DEC appeal.” |
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Obama, hope and expectations
Bill Fletcher on the ‘heresy’ of critiquing Obama and what he wants Obama to do.
Paul Jay speaks to Bill Fletcher Jr. in this last segment of our interview on whether an Obama’s presidency constitutes actual change. Fletcher says, “I worry when [Obama] starts taking shots at Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or when he is silent around the atrocities in Gaza. When he continues to imply that nothing’s off the table when it comes to Iran.” Obama is afraid the charges against him during his campaign of not being ready will come true, or that he won’t be ready for an emergency, Fletcher says. Because of this, like Clinton, he may be inclined to use military force inappropriately, but because many American support his domestic plans, they may turn a blind eye to his foreign policies.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a columnist, activist, author and labor organizer. He is the Executive Editor of The Black Commentator and his newest book, cowritten with Fernando Gapasin, is entitled “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice”. He is the a cofounder of the Center for Labor Renewal, has served as President of TransAfrica Forum and was formerly the Education Director and later Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO.
Source:
www.therealnews.com
www.youtube.com
Obama’s “arc of instability”
What’s behind Obama’s charm offensive towards the Muslim world
Last week President Obama introduced the new U.S. State Department, including two new special envoys – George Mitchell to the Middle East and Richard Holbrooke to Afghanistan/Pakistan. Early this week the President gave his first sit-in interview in power – to an Arab TV network. He has promised a new partnership with the Arab world based on mutual respect. As groundbreaking as this may seem – compared to the Bush administration’s approach – Pepe Escobar argues that the overall strategy may not be substantially different.
Bio
Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge both published by Nimble Books in 2007.
www.therealnews.com
Clean Coal” Confrontation
We’re sure to hear more of this debate in coming months. Burning coal creates large quantities of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of the “greenhouse gases” that scientists say is heating up the planet and Obama has said he wants to reduce.
Is “clean coal” possible? Our answer: Probably, though it would come with a big price tag.
In our Analysis section, we try to shed a little light on the subject.
On screen: Clean coal. Promoting energy independence.
Barack Obama: Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent.
On screen: Clean coal. Creating jobs.
Obama: And by the way we can create five million new jobs in clean energy technology.
On screen: Clean coal. Meeting the climate challenge.
Obama: This is America — we figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years.
On screen: Clean coal. We can. We will.
Obama: You tell me we can’t find a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work.
(Soundtrack of audience members clapping, chanting “Yes we can!”)
The coal lobby’s most recent issue ad reminds viewers that the new president has voiced strong support for its side. It features a clip of then-candidate Barack Obama speaking last year, saying “clean coal” is an attainable goal that can create jobs and help the environment:
Obama: This is America – we figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years. You tell me we can’t find a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work.
In the opposite corner is the Reality Coalition, a collection of environmental groups spearheaded by ex-Vice President Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Its TV spot, which delivers the kicker “In reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal,” began running last month.
It’s a negative message delivered with some wit. The ad shows a man in a hardhat charging through a door to learn about “clean coal” technology, only to find a barren landscape on the other side. Print ads also portray “clean coal” as a ridiculous notion. In the subterranean reaches of a busy D.C. metro station, the group has put up a sequence of wordless posters showing a mermaid, a little green alien and Bigfoot each holding a lump of coal. Nearby panels repeat the message that “there’s no such thing as clean coal,” and add other info: “There are no homes in America powered by clean coal,” “There are roughly 600 coal plants providing electricity in the U.S. Not one of them captures and stores its global warming pollution,” and more.
Besides the Gore group, the Reality Coalition also includes the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation and the League of Conservation Voters.
Both sides say their ad campaigns are national in scope; Brian Hardwick, a spokesman for the Reality Coalition, said his group’s ad was running on CNN, Comedy Central, the several popular Sunday morning talk shows and other widely viewed programming. But neither side would tell us how much they were spending. “There are a whole lot of people gunning for us,” Cathy Coffey, the Northeast Region Communications Director for ACCCE, told FactCheck.org. Hardwick told us only that “We expect to spend what they’re spending.”
We find no factual misstatements in these ads, but that’s because they contain practically no factual claims. Obama did indeed say positive things about “clean coal” during the campaign, often in coal-producing states. (The snippets in ACCCE’s TV ad come from an October rally in Virginia coal country.)
Man in hardhat: Clean coal. Heard a lot about it. So let’s take a tour of this state-of-the-art clean coal facility.
(Goes through door labeled “Clean Coal Facility Entrance,” revealing barren landscape.)
Man in hardhat: Amazing! Machinery’s kinda loud, but that’s the sound of clean coal technology. And while burning coal is one of the leading causes of global warming, the remarkable clean coal technology you see here changes everything. Take a good long look. This is today’s clean coal technology.
On screen: In reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal.
But the Reality Coalition’s ads are true as well. There are no commercial “clean coal” plants operating currently in the U.S.
The larger question posed by these dueling ad campaigns is implied rather than stated outright. Can coal can be “clean” in the future? Is “clean coal” a laudable, achievable goal as Obama and the coal miners and electric utilities would have us believe? Or is it a ridiculous oxymoron on par with “controlled chaos,” as Gore and other environmental groups suggest?
This is partly a matter of opinion, and it’s certainly a matter of speculation. We don’t know what the future will bring. But we expect to see this debate play out in months to come, and we can offer some basic facts about what research has produced so far.
Solving the Coal Conundrum
But of all the nation’s coal-fired power plants (there were 616 of them as of 2006), none can be labeled “clean,” which, these days, is defined as being free (or nearly so) of carbon dioxide emissions. Globally, the CO2 that comes from the burning of coal, mainly to generate electricity, accounts for about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, coal-fired electric utilities in the U.S. put out close to two billion tons of CO2 each year.
Figuring out how to burn this easily available source of energy without causing major CO2 pollution is similar in some ways to the acid rain problem of decades past. Most coal-fired plants in the U.S. now scrub much of the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from their flue gases, rather than letting the chemicals escape to react with other substances in the atmosphere and lead to severe damage to forests and other living things. Carbon, though, is a tougher problem.
Most methods being studied to “clean” coal fall under the loose heading of “carbon capture and storage,” or CCS, which involves stripping the CO2 out of the coal-burning or coal-gasifying process and piping it deep underground. A study published in 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that CCS is “the critical enabling technology that would reduce CO2 emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world’s pressing energy needs.”
Carbon capture can occur at three different points. One is pre-combustion: When coal is gasified before it’s burned, an almost pure stream of carbon dioxide can be created, segregated and pumped away. The best-known of the methods in this category is IGCC, or Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, in which gasified coal is used to run a turbine to produce power. To increase efficiency – because it takes additional energy just to fuel this operation – waste heat from the process is captured as steam and used to create more power.
IGCC is used in industrial processes today, but the CO2 isn’t captured. That’s because there’s no penalty in the U.S. for releasing it into the atmosphere. However, some companies have plans on the books to change that. A joint venture between BP and Rio Tinto, called Hydrogen Energy, is working on a CCS plant in California that could burn coal using IGCC technology to separate the CO2 and capture it.
Other research has focused on trying to strip the CO2 from the gas that remains after coal is burned, which is similar to what’s done with the precursor chemicals to acid rain. Tenaska, Inc. has plans for a large coal-burning plant in Texas that will capture carbon from its flue gases.
Yet another technology, called oxyfuel, can be deployed during the actual combustion process. It involves burning coal in a mix of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and pure oxygen, and eliminates cumbersome steps for separating the resulting CO2 from other substances. Last year a plant in Germany became the first full-cycle oxyfuel demonstration project to begin operating; it provides power for about 1,000 homes. Its waste CO2 is being compressed, transported and buried two miles below a depleted gas field.
As it turns out, putting CO2 underground helps force reluctant liquids lurking there, like oil, to the surface. Selling captured CO2 to oil and gas field operators, as Tenaska plans to do with its Texas plant, and Hydrogen Energy hopes to do in California, can help recoup some of the companies’ investment in CCS technology. There’s been some real-world experience with the sequestration, or storage, part of the equation in other contexts. For example, natural gas produced at the Sleipner Field in the Norwegian North Sea contains unusually high levels of CO2 that must be stripped out. Norway’s high tax on carbon emissions justifies the added cost of piping the CO2 2,600 feet under the sea and injecting it into a 200-foot-thick layer of porous sandstone. Similarly, the Weyburn project on this continent has been taking CO2 produced at a synfuels plant in North Dakota and piping it to oil fields in Saskatchewan.
Seven regional partnerships under the Department of Energy’s umbrella have been working on the storage issue in the U.S., identifying where the geology is favorable for holding enormous amounts of CO2. Besides oil and gas fields, deep saline formations are also considered excellent candidates for the task. According to DOE, it would take hundreds of years to fill up all the underground space that it considers suitable for permanent CO2 storage.
Potential problems: CO2 storage will never be geologically foolproof, and a regulatory and legal structure (to deal with liability issues) will have to be set up before any proposal can win public acceptance. The Environmental Protection Agency has already been thinking about that: It’s in the process of finalizing rules covering underground injection of CO2 that would regulate site selection, monitoring techniques, construction of wells, insurance requirements, decommissioning and other steps in the process. In addition, transporting CO2 to storage sites could require, as one observer put it, the underground equivalent of “the highway system on steroids.”
Will storage sites for carbon dioxide draw as much public opposition as, say, Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste repository in Nevada that’s continually blocked by lawsuits and other obstacles? Maybe not, since CO2 is far less hazardous. But it’s not entirely benign, either: On Aug. 21, 1986 in Cameroon, 1,746 villagers were suffocated in their sleep when a huge cloud of naturally-occurring carbon dioxide that had been at the bottom of Lake Nyos erupted and blanketed the countryside.
Experts believe that significant research and demonstration efforts using CCS technology, such as those that DOE has funded, need to continue. They were disheartened when DOE last year killed its funding for a planned $1.8 billion demonstration plant, called FutureGen, in Matoon, Ill., citing costs. (DOE spokesman John Grasser told FactCheck.org that the project as announced in 2003 was envisioned to cost about $950 million). The single giant project, which was to be a 285-megawatt “living lab” that would test advanced CCS technologies, was a public-private partnership with contributions from several partner nations such as China. It has given way to several much smaller projects, but Illinois lawmakers have been arguing for revival of FutureGen as part of Obama’s stimulus package.
It’s clear, though, that some CCS technology is already far enough along to put into practice at a commercial level, and a few companies, as we note above, are giving it a shot. But it has a major drawback: It’s frightfully expensive, at least for now.
Here’s one of coal’s biggest selling points: It generates power at a far lower cost than other fossil fuels. According to the Energy Information Administration, in October, 2008, electric utilities paid $2.19 per million Btu for coal, as opposed to $6.94 for natural gas and $16.68 for petroleum. (The cost for petroleum is certain to be lower now, since the per-barrel price of oil has dropped dramatically, but coal is still much cheaper.)
A 2008 McKinsey study estimates that adding “clean coal” technology would increase the capital cost of a power plant by 50 percent – and that doesn’t include the costs of transporting and storing the captured CO2 or operating costs.
McKinsey: Compared to a “normal” power plant, CCS adds four additional costs. Firstly, capture equipment needs to be installed. Secondly, the capture process needs to be powered, leading to additional fuel costs. Thirdly, a transport system needs to be built. And finally, the CO2 needs to be stored. All of this requires both additional capital investment and additional operating cost.
Two Stanford experts, David Victor and Varun Rai, estimate that the cost of a 300 megawatt power plant with 90 percent CO2 capture would be $1 billion to $2.5 billion. But even a 300 megawatt coal-fired plant without carbon capture, proposed in Wisconsin, was projected to cost at least $1.1 billion last year. Many a clean coal project has foundered on the issue of cost. And besides, Victor and Rai say construction of power plants in general, dirty or clean, is at a standstill because of the financial crisis.
Assuming the economy improves, though, investors’ interest in coal-fired plants with CCS may ignite due to mounting pressure to put a price on carbon emissions in the interest of slowing global warming. Some argue that imposing a simple federal tax on carbon emissions would be the easiest regime to manage. The system that President Obama favored during his campaign, known as cap-and-trade, would impose limits on emissions that tightened over time and would require companies to buy and sell allowances to meet the targets.
Obama has committed to pushing for a ”cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent [from 1990 levels] by 2050.” His campaign website also promoted investment in “clean coal.” Under the heading “Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology,” it said, “Obama’s Department of Energy will enter into public private partnerships to develop five “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology.”
In addition, Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Natural Resources committee, has vowed to pass a cap-and-trade bill out of his committee by Memorial Day. And at least some in the industry are pitching in their ideas along similar lines. On Jan. 15, a consortium of business and environmental groups, ranging from Duke Energy to Conoco Phillips to the Environmental Defense Fund, released a blueprint calling for a cap-and-trade system that would cut emissions 80 percent by 2050 – quite a bit less than Obama’s goal, since it uses 2005 rather than 1990 as its baseline, but still substantial. The detailed plan of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), the product of two years of research and wrangling, also contains financial incentives for the first commercial coal plants to use CCS, would require any coal plant permitted after 2014 to emit a maximum of half the CO2 now considered normal. The idea is to help subsidize CCS until the caps are tight enough that companies simply can’t afford to emit CO2.
The idea is also to get started. “We and some industry leaders believe that right now the technology is there,” says George Peridas, a climate scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is part of USCAP. “We need to begin deployment.”
Whatever pricing mechanism were chosen, the idea is that electric utilities and other coal-burners might find it cheaper to invest in expensive “clean coal” plants than to pay the penalty for emitting CO2. And in fact, executives from two of the companies that have CCS plants in the works have said publicly that their projects only make financial sense because of the looming likelihood that sending CO2 into the air will no longer be free.
Tenaska Vice President Gregory Kunkel, congressional testimony, June 8, 2008: We have developed Trailblazer in anticipation of federal climate change legislation that would support, through placing a price on greenhouse gas emissions and other means, the significant capital and operating costs of carbon capture technology. Without climate legislation, it appears that revenues from enhanced oil recovery CO2 sales will be insufficient to cover all carbon capture costs. With proposed climate legislation, projected compliance cost savings and other effects of climate change legislation, combined with EOR revenues, would provide the needed economic incentives to build and operate Trailblazer.
NRG Energy CEO David Crane, Washington Post, Oct. 14, 2007: The company I run, NRG Energy, emits more than 64 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year — more than the total man-made greenhouse gas emissions of Norway…We do so because CO2 emissions are free…[R]emoving CO2 before or after the combustion process is vastly more expensive and problematic than just venting it into the atmosphere…[W]e need to move as quickly as possible toward implementing the low-emissions ways of combusting coal that are under development or in the case of “coal gasification” technology, are ready for commercial deployment. Effective incentives for these new technologies could easily and readily be included in a cap-and-trade regimen.
And the notion that coal can be truly “clean” was dealt a major blow just before Christmas when 5.4 million cubic yards of watery, toxic coal ash from a coal-burning power plant burst through a retaining wall, flooding a residential area near the Kingston Fossil Plant in the Tennessee Valley. The ash, contaminated with heavy metals and other toxic substances, forced residents to evacuate, destroyed several homes and left contamination that will take months to clean up.
For these critics, coal will never be “clean,” and pursuing that illusion will only take time, attention and dollars away from development of renewable sources of energy that are inherently “cleaner.” The several environmental groups that cooperated with industry in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership were cast as traitors to the green movement by many of their ardent colleagues.
They have a point, too. And we take no position on the merits of CCS technology and the other issues involved in getting coal to burn without creating a carbon dioxide problem; as we noted earlier, we can only say that it’s possible to do, though the cost will be high. But it’s worth noting that, given coal’s domestic abundance, the influence of huge corporations that are invested in the stuff, and the importance of coal-producing states – think Pennsylvania and Ohio, for starters – in the political process, it’s likely to be around as an energy source for a long time.
As evidence, note Steven Chu, Obama’s Nobel laureate Secretary of Energy, who called coal “my worst nightmare” for its climate consequences in a presentation at Berkeley in April 2007. His views now take a back seat to Obama’s, of course, and at Chu’s confirmation hearing Jan. 13 it seemed the nightmare had receded a bit, or at least become more politically astute. Chu told the Senate Energy Committee that, “if the world continues to use coal the way it is using it today, not only in the United States but in Russia, India and China, it is a pretty bad dream.”
But no longer a nightmare, perhaps, because Chu also told the senators he didn’t oppose new coal-fired power plants, at least as an interim step, and committed to pushing for more funding for CCS projects.
–by Viveca Novak
Katzer, James, executive director. “The Future of Coal: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007.
Garber, Kent. “Stimulus Debate Could Clarify How Much Obama Supports ‘Clean Coal,’” U.S. News & World Report, 9 Jan. 2009.
Mufson, Steve. “At Hearing, Chu Tempers Comments on Gas Tax, Coal,” The Washington Post, 14 Jan. 2009.
Hebert, H. Josef. “Waxman promises quick action on climate,” The Associated Press, 14 Jan. 2009.
Jha, Alok. “World’s first carbon capture pilot fires up clean-coal advocates,” The Guardian, 5 Sept. 2008.
Victor, David, and Varun Rai. “Dirty Coal is Winning,” Newsweek, 12 Jan. 2009.
Content, Thomas. “Power plant cost to top $1 billion,” Journal Sentinel, 14 June 2008.
Dewan, Shaila. “Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate,” The New York Times, 26 Dec. 2008.
Kunkel, Gregory P. “Testimony of Dr. Gregory P. Kunkel, Tenaska, Inc.,” House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, 12 June 2008.
Crane, David. “We’re carboholics. Make us stop,” Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2007.
“Cameroon Marks 10th Anniversary of Lake Tragedy,” Agence France Presse, 21 August 1996.
Energy Information Administration, U.S.Department of Energy. “Frequently Asked Questions–Electricity,” Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
Pew Center on Global Climate Change. “Coal and Climate Change Facts,” Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Underground Injection Program: Geologic Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide,” Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Acid Rain: What is Acid Rain?” Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The Future of Coal: Options for a Carbon-Constrained World,” 2007.
U.S. Department of Energy. “Carbon Sequestration Regional Partnerships,” Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
McKinsey & Company. “Carbon Capture and Storage: Assessing the Economics,” 2008.
Obama, Barack. “New Energy for America,” barackobama.com, Web site accessed 22 Jan. 2009.
BART Police Chief’s Memo to Officers: “Maintain integrity, despite public abuse and media’s reporting”
By Tim Jue / Beat Staff Writer
BART officials conceded Thursday that they had lost the confidence of the public Thursday afternoon when they announced that an outside third-party investigative body would take over the internal affairs investigation into the New Year’s morning shooting incident that left a 22 year-old man beaten and shot to death by two police officers in front of hundreds of train passengers — some of them videotaping the entire incident.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross reports Thursday evening that BART Police Chief Gary Gee issued an internal memo to his officers giving them instructions on how to donate food items or money to Johannes Mehserle, the former transit police officer who is seen on home videotapes shooting and killing Oscar Grant, who is now facing homicide charges at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, Calif.
Among other things, Gee asks the rank-and-file to “maintain your professionalism and integrity, despite being exposed to public abuse and the media’s reporting,” the Chronicle reports. “Together, we will weather this storm.”
Food, books, and money for Mehserle
BART Spokesperson Linton Johnson admitted to the Chronicle that “admittedly, this may not have been the best way to put the information out” but said told the newspaper that the memo was not indicative towards the attitudes that internal affairs investigators had when they were looking into the case.
- SPECIAL BEAT COVERAGE: Complete BART Shooting Incident Coverage
Gee, the BART Police Chief, had promised the public that his department would conduct a “an unbiased, thorough, and detailed investigation into what happened.”
Some angered community members have raised concerns about the legitimacy of those reassurances — saying that the memo urging officers — including what is presumed to be the same officers who are investigating the incident — to donate food and money to the jailed officer is a final nail in the coffin that validates their long-held suspicions that the investigation has been anything but transparent.
“It is unacceptable for the police chief, who ostensibly is investigating Mehserle and other officers, related to their conduct on the night that Oscar Grant was killed, to encourage officers to visit and make financial contributions to Mehserle,” John Burris, the attorney retained by the Grant family — who is suing BART for $25 million — said in a written statement.
Public confidence in the transit agency dipped considerably and anguish heightened again Friday evening when KTVU-TV broadcast a second video clip showing another BART Police officer, Tony Pirone, 36, punching Oscar Grant in the face before he was shot to death.
At a Wednesday morning meeting of the new police review committee of the BART Board of Directors, community leaders from around the Bay Area once again blasted the agency and it’s brass — General Manager Dorothy Dugger and Gee — for overlooking the punching incident and publicly exonerating all other officers of any wrongdoing.
“I came here trying to move forward, but I’m further back than when I started,” an angry community leader told the Board.
No radio communication after shooting
The Chronicle is also giving us a detailed look at what happened the night of the shooting incident, and points out in great detail that BART Police officers who responded to the Fruitvale Station platform on the early morning of New Year’s Day made critical mistakes that allowed witnesses to leave the scene and failed to inform supervisors and other officers down the line via police radios that there had been an officer-involved shooting.
Among the revelations uncovered by the Chronicle:
- Mehserle, Pirone and five other BART Police officers responding to the station that night were planning to place Oscar Grant and his friend under arrest for resisting arrest. It is unknown why he was being arrested in the first place.
- Pirone, an ex-Marine and former Lawrence Livermore Lab police officer, cursed at Grant and his friends and pointed his taser gun at them, threatening to stun them if they were belligerent.
- A crucial piece of video that was available for weeks on KTVU-TV’s website ktvu.com showing Pirone striking Grant in the face was either ignored or never uncovered by BART Police investigators until the television station aired it last Friday night. BART Board member Lynette Sweet said, “It’s embarrassing.”
- The seven BART officers on the platform that night ordered the operator to close the train doors, and continue on its way after the passengers became infuriated over the handcuffing of one of the members of Grant’s party. In video of the shooting incident, passengers can be seen hurling objects at the seven police officers after Grant is shot to death. Chaos erupted after more passengers realize that the young unarmed man laying on his stomach was shot in the back by Mehserle.
- Instead of holding the train at the platform and finding witnesses to interview, the train was sent on its way to Dublin-Pleasanton, where officers were dispatched to find anyone who may have seen the shooting incident. When they arrived at the terminal station and started asking for witnesses, they found none.
- Perhaps the most alarming error: BART Police officers did not communicate the officer-involved shooting through their radios leaving other BART officers down the line from the Fruitvale Station unaware of what just happened. Burris, the Grant family lawyer, told the Chronicle that the failure to radio what had happened into the Dispatch center, “creates more of an opportunity for a cover-up.”
The Chronicle points out that BART has been trying to improve its communication in the shooting incident by holding community town hall meetings and establishing a BART Board of Directors Police Review Committee to oversee the transit agency’s law enforcement operations.
The Public Trust
That same committee acknowledged Thursday afternoon that there was little or no public confidence in their agency. They announced plans to pass on the investigation to a yet-to-be-named outside third party to ensure that the investigation would be unbiased. Board Directors said they wanted to restore the public’s trust that they conceded has been lost.
“The BART Police Department and the agency need to rebuild trust with the public and one way to do that is to hand this off to a third party and let the facts take us wherever they go,” BART Director Joel Keller said in a written statement.
The agency also said that they would hire a third-party to examine the police department top-down and look at the police department’s hiring and training protocols.
Turmoil at BART Police
While there is growing pressure for Dugger and Gee to resign from the top posts at BART and BART Police, respectively, the police department is reportedly in deep turmoil over some officers who are upset with their own chief.
The Chronicle reported Thursday that the BART Police Officers Association — the union that represents the 200+ transit cops — are dismayed at the “lack of leadership” and the “reactionary response” of Gee to the shooting incident.
At a Jan. 22 meeting, the police union contemplated holding a vote of no-confidence on the police chief saying telling the Chronicle that they were disappointing with the way the situation was handled.
BART officials report that their officers are facing increasing hostility in the field from enraged members of the community who are shocked and dismayed over the New Year’s Day killing and apparent beating of Oscar Grant. Some officers have been spit upon and yelled at by the public.
Nonetheless, this week’s memo by Gee and BART Police Commander Travis Gibson was a one-page attempt to ask the rank-and-file to hang in there.
“You have our full support,” the two write.
Mehserle will appear at a 2:00 p.m. bail hearing at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse in Oakland Friday. Protesters have already started organizing a rally on local websites. There is no word on whether the Alameda County District Attorney will pursue charges against Pirone, who struck Grant in the face.
Israel vows tough rocket response
Despite Israel’s assault on Gaza, the rocket attacks have continue
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed a “disproportionate” response to rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza.
He was speaking at his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, soon after at least two rockets hit southern Israel. No casualties were reported.
Two weeks ago, Israel and Hamas – which controls the Gaza Strip – declared separate ceasefires.
They ended Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip, which Israel said was aimed at stopping rocket attacks.
On Sunday Mr Olmert warned Israel would respond forcefully to renewed rocket fire.
“We’ve said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a disproportionate Israeli response to the fire on the citizens of Israel and its security forces,” he said.
One of Sunday’s rockets landed between two nursery schools in the Eshkol region of southern Israel, media reports said.
On Saturday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded near the Israeli city of Ashkelon, with no casualties reported, and at least two were fired in the days before.
No ‘tit-for-tat’
“We will not agree to return to the old rules of the game and we will act according to new rules that will guarantee that we are not dragged into an incessant tit-for-tat war that will not allow normal life in the south of the country,” Mr Olmert said.
Israelis go to the polls in nine days
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“The situation… in recent days has increased in a manner that does not allow Israel not to retaliate in order to make sure that our position… is understood by those involved in the fire.
“The response will come at the time, the place and the manner that we choose.”
His strong stance was echoed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
The ceasefires, independently declared by each side, have been violated several times.
An Israeli soldier was killed in a bomb attack on the Gaza border last Tuesday. Israel responded with air raids and a brief ground incursion by soldiers and tanks.
Elections approach
About 1,300 Palestinians and 10 Israeli soldiers were killed in Israel’s devastating three-week assault on Gaza. Three Israeli citizens died in rocket attacks.
Israel wants the rocket attacks to end and wants to prevent militants in Gaza from being able to rearm.
Analysts say the politicians who ordered the Gaza attack also have an eye on elections on 10 February.
Hamas wants the border crossings into Gaza to be fully opened to end a 18-month blockade of Gaza which has wrecked its economy.
The Egyptians have been leading efforts to broker a permanent ceasefire by holding separate talks with officials from Israel and Hamas.
www.bbc.co.uk
Fed Lends Two Trillion Without Oversight
ANP: Will Congressman Alan Grayson be able to shed a light on the Fed’s secret spending?
So, you know about the Treasury’s $700 billion bailout plan. But you probably don’t know that the Federal Reserve has lent out about $2 trillion since September. Few do. And that is what’s irritating bulldog Congressman Alan Grayson.
Live From Gaza!
Gaza villages Wiped off the map
Another excellent report by Jonathan Miller.
Europe: Fears Over US Stimulus Pakage
Europe Warns against ‘Buy American’ Clause
Washington is planning billions in subsidies for the ailing automobile industry, and the US Senate is debating a ‘Buy American’ provision in its economic stimulus package. The European Union fears the US is trying to seal off its market — and is using its diplomatic arsenal in a bid to stop the move.
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The European Union is unhappy about a “Buy American” clause in the United States bailout program making its way through Senate this week that officials say reeks of protectionism and could threaten to spark renewed trade wars between the US and Europe.
“President Obama has a major opportunity to give leadership to the world,” said the EU’s ambassador to Washington, John Bruton, on Monday. “If the first major piece of legislation that he signs is one that is seen as damaging to the economic interests of other countries in a way that is unnecessary and wasteful, then his capacity to give the sort of leadership the world needs at this time is considerably and unnecessarily reduced.”
Tractors made by US manufacturer Caterpillar: The EU is threatening to sue at the WTO if Washington passes protectionist measures.
Last week, Congress prompted international concern that its planned bailout package would include protectionist measures that could seal the US market off from foreign competitors, including those in export-dependent Germany.
Congress, controlled by President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, is calling for a provision that would only allow US steel and iron to be used in infrastructure projects planned in the $825 billion (€643.2 billion) bailout package. At issue is a sum of about $300 billion that would be invested in infrastructure projects in the coming years like sewage treatment plants, new railroads and bridges as well as the modernization of the US electrical grid, wind farms and solar panels.
EU Ambassador Bruton, in a letter sent to top US politicians including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said that, if approved, the measure would set a “dangerous precedent.” According to the Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the letter, Bruton wrote that the US and other countries had pledged not to resort to protectionism in dealing with the crisis at a meeting of world leaders in November. Failure to meet that obligation “risks entering into a spiral of protectionist measures around the globe that can only hurt our economies further.” In Germany, the world’s largest exporter, companies export goods worth some €70 billion to the US each year.
The Obama administration has not yet stated its official position on the “Buy American” clause, but Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview last week, “I think it’s legitimate to have some portions of ‘Buy American’ in it.”
On Monday, however, the chairman of the conservative Republican Party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said he opposed the measures. “I don’t think we ought to use a measure that is supposed to be timely, temporary and targeted to set off trade wars when the entire world is experiencing a downturn in the economy,” McConnell said. “It’s a bad idea to put it in a bill like this, which is supposed to be about jump-starting the economy.”
European steel manufacturers have already called on the European Commission to sue the US at the World Trade Organization if necessary. Bruton said that any “Buy American” clause would, at best, be legally questionable. And, in his letter, Bruton wrote: “Measures of this nature, if they breach WTO rules, are likely to be the subject of legal action. There is always the possibility of retaliatory measures to be taken.”
On Monday, the US Senate began negotiating the economic stimulus package after Congress passed an €819 billion bill. In the Senate, however, that amount is expected to rise to up to €900 billion.
In the Senate version, the “Buy American” clause goes even further, stating that funds from the stimulus package cannot be used “unless all of the iron, steel and manufactured goods used in the projects are produced in the United States.”
‘A Negative Signal’
In both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Republicans have broadly rejected the protectionist provisions. They have also criticized the package for not containing sufficient tax breaks. The Republicans believe the package, in its current form, won’t have the immediate stimulus effect the Democrats are hoping for.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denied those charges on Monday. He also said that President Obama would review the “Buy American” provisions, and that changes were likely in the Senate draft before it is put to a vote on Friday. Afterwards, the drafts of the House and Senate version must be reconciled before it goes to President Obama for his approval. Given the divisions over the measures, Obama himself has expressed readiness to compromise. Obama is seeking to implement the stimulus package by mid-February.
In Germany, industry insiders are viewing the draft legislation with skepticism. “The fact that this clause even came to be is a negative signal that worries us,” said Sigrid Zirbel, regional director for America at the Federation of German Industry (BDI), who said she viewed the legislation as a “sign things are moving in the direction of protectionism.” But she said any final conclusions would have to be drawn after the bill is finalized.
On Friday, White House spokesman Gibbs said the Obama administration would review the “Buy American” provisions. “It understands all of the concerns that have been heard, not only in this room but in newspapers produced both up north and down south.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel would likely welcome any shift in American thinking. She has warned against national subsidies and protectionism in the wake of the global economic and financial crisis. “I am very wary of seeing subsidies injected into the US auto industry,” Merkel said last week. “Such periods must not last too long because they inevitably lead to a certain degree of distortion and, quite frankly, constitute protectionism.”
Merkel was also speaking out against comments made by the French government. On Friday, French Economics Minister Christine Lagarde described a little bit of protectionism during times of crisis as a “necessary evil.”
– dsl with wires
UN backtracks on claim that deadly IDF strike hit Gaza school
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The United Nations has reversed its stance on one of the most contentious and bloody incidents of the recent Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza, saying that an IDF mortar strike that killed 43 people on January 6 did not hit one of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools after all.
It seems that the UN has been under pressure to put the record straight after doubts arose that the school had actually been targeted. Maxwell Gaylord, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, said Monday that the IDF mortar shells fell in the street near the compound, and not on the compound itself. Gaylord said that the UN “would like to clarify that the shelling and all of the fatalities took place outside and not inside the school.”
UNRWA, an agency whose sole purpose is to work with Palestinian refugees, said in response Tuesday that it had maintained from the day of attack that the wounded were outside of the school compound. UNRWA said that the source of the mistake in recent weeks had originated with a separate branch of the United Nations. Senior IDF officials had previously expressed skepticism that the school had been struck, saying that two mortar shells could not kill 43 people and wound dozens more. Questions about the veracity of the claims that the school had been hit by the IDF were also raised last week by the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail. The newspaper said that a teacher in the UNRWA compound at the time of the strike “was adamant” that no people had been killed inside the compound. The newspaper quoted the teacher as saying that, “I could see some of the people had been injured… But when I got outside, it was crazy hell. There were bodies everywhere, people dead, injured, flesh everywhere.” The newspaper said that the teacher had been told by the UN not to speak to the media. “Three of my students were killed,” he said. “But they were all outside.” |
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UN: Hamas police seized food aid and blankets from needy Gazans
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A United Nation spokesman on Wednesday accused Hamas police in Gaza Strip of seizing thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
Spokesman Christopher Gunness said Hamas police raided a UN warehouse in Gaza City late Tuesday, snatching 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels. The aid is especially vital now because Gazans are facing hardship after Israel’s three-week military offensive against Hamas, which left thousands homeless.
The Gaza Strip is ruled by Hamas Islamists, who seized control of the territory from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007 after winning an election the previous year. Gunness said Wednesday this was the first time Hamas had seized UN aid, but Israeli officials have charged that the militant group routinely confiscates supplies meant for needy Gazans. A Hamas government spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Meanwhile, Abbas’ West Bank-based government on Wednesday annnounced a $600 million reconstruction prograM, most of which would be funded by foreign donors. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who heads Abbas’ Western-backed government, said the project would cover all houses destroyed or damaged during a 22-day Israeli military offensive. “The amount of the project is e600 million. Most of it will come from donors,” Fayyad said in a speech, adding that the details would be announced in the coming days. Egypt is to host an international conference in coordination with Abbas’s Palestinian Authority on March 2 on Gaza reconstruction, whose cost has been estimated at $2 billion. Saudi Arabia has said it would donate e1 billion. Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Europe to help with fast aid for the Gaza Strip, saying the reconstruction meeting would require damage assessments and the support of the European Union, the United Nations and others. |
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Obama: ‘I screwed up’ in Daschle withdrawal
Insists ‘there aren’t two sets of rules’ for elite and for other Americans
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday abruptly abandoned his nomination fight for Tom Daschle and a second major appointee who failed to pay all their taxes, telling NBC News: “I screwed up.”
“I’ve got to own up to my mistake. Ultimately, it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules — you know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes,” Obama said on NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams.”
The admission came little more than 24 hours after Obama had said he was “absolutely” committed to Daschle’s confirmation as secretary of health and human services, a job in which he would taken the lead in the president’s ambitious plans for the nation’s health care system.
“I’m frustrated with myself, with our team. … I’m here on television saying I screwed up,” Obama said on NBC. He repeated virtually the same words in interviews with other TV anchors.
Hours earlier, the White House had announced that Daschle had asked to be removed from consideration and that Nancy Killefer had made the same request concerning what was to be her groundbreaking appointment as a chief performance officer to make the entire government run better.
Worried about ‘a distraction’
Daschle said in a brief letter to Obama that he refused to “be a distraction” from the new president’s drive for health care reform. Obama said neither he nor Daschle excused the former Senate Democratic leader’s tax errors but that he accepted his friend’s decision “with sadness and regret.”
Personal tax problems had been piling up for the new administration. Last week, the Senate confirmed Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary, but only after days of controversy over the fact that the man who would oversee the Internal Revenue Service had only belatedly paid $34,000 in income taxes.
Bill Richardson bowed out, too, though his difficulties didn’t involve personal taxes. The New Mexico governor, who was Obama’s first choice for commerce secretary, withdrew amid a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.
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Questions about Daschle’s failure to fully pay his taxes from 2005 through 2007 had been increasing since they came to light last Friday. Daschle overlooked taxes on income for consulting work and personal use of a car and driver, and also deducted more in charitable contributions than he should have. To resolve it, he paid $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest last month.
Daschle, chosen to lead the administration’s push for sweeping health care reform, also was facing questions about potential conflicts of interests related to speaking fees he accepted from health care interests and about the advice he provided to health insurers and hospitals through his work at a law firm.
The car and driver were lent by Leo Hindery, head of a firm called InterMedia Advisors and former chief executive of the Global Crossing telecom company. Hindery is a longtime friend of Daschle and a veteran Democratic Party donor.
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Tax lien on Killefer
Killefer, an executive with consulting giant McKinsey & Co., had been chosen by Obama to serve in two roles: as the first chief performance officer in a White House and as a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget.
When Obama announced Killefer to much fanfare in early January, The Associated Press reported that the District of Columbia government had filed a $946.69 tax lien on her home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She resolved the tax error five months after the lien was filed. Since then, administration officials had refused to say whether her tax problems extended beyond that one issue.
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By Tuesday, the tax questions had reached critical mass.
“Today was an embarrassment for us,” Obama said on NBC. He said he was “angry,” “disappointed” and “frustrated with myself” over the Daschle episode.
But the president claimed credit for appointing hundreds of “top notch” executive branch officials who have no tax problems.
“It’s important not to paint (with) a broad brush here, because overall not only have we gotten in place a functioning government in record time, but overall the quality of these people is outstanding.”
Still, the dual-withdrawal fiasco is “something I have to take responsibility for,” Obama told Williams.
“I appointed these folks. I think they are outstanding people. I think Tom Daschle, as an example, could have led this health care effort, a difficult effort, better than just about anybody. But as he acknowledged, it was a mistake. I don’t think it was intentional on his part, but it was a serious mistake. He owned up to it and ultimately made a decision that we couldn’t afford the distraction.”
Heeding The New York Times
Daschle told NBC News that a chiding New York Times editorial played a role in his decision to exit.
In an emotional phone call with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Daschle said he had phoned Obama on Tuesday morning after reading the New York Times editorial calling on him to withdraw.
The editorial described Daschle’s ability to move “cozily between government and industry” as a cloud over any role he might play in changing the nation’s medical insurance system.
“I read the New York Times,” Daschle told Mitchell, adding: “I can’t pass health care if it’s too much of a distraction … so I called the president this morning.”
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the choice to step aside was Daschle’s alone and the former senator “did not get a signal” from the White House to do so. Daschle and Obama spoke Tuesday, and the president was surprised at the news, said White House senior adviser David Axelrod.
Surprised Democrats
Democratic lawmakers were surprised, too — and disappointed. Axelrod rushed to Capitol Hill to soothe frayed nerves.
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“I was a little stunned. I thought he was going to get confirmed,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the panel that would have voted on Daschle’s nomination. “It’s regrettable.”
Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Daschle’s former Democratic colleagues had leapt to the former Democratic leader’s defense. And it seemed that the clubby way that senators treat one of their own was likely to help Daschle survive the controversy.
But particularly after the divisive Geithner debate and vote, it apparently became too bitter a pill. Tax issues are easy for the public to understand, and also particularly easy to resent in wealthy officials at a time of widespread economic crisis.
They also created an opening for a drumbeat of criticism from Republicans and on newspaper editorial pages that Obama was engaging in a double standard: proclaiming his administration to be more ethical, responsible and special interest-free than his predecessors’ and yet carving out exceptions almost daily.
GOP Sen. John Ensign of Nevada said Daschle was going to be faced with tough questions from committee members, among them how the wealth he amassed from a lobbying firm — while not technically registered as a lobbyist — “passes the smell test.”
“I think he saved the president from being embarrassed next week in a public hearing,” Ensign said.
Loss for Obama’s agenda
But even while Obama aimed to stave off potentially crippling problems in one corner with the withdrawals, he created some new ones.
Obama has promised that moving toward universal health care coverage is one of the pillars of first 100 days agenda — a heavy lift that many believed Daschle, with his long experience in Washington, was uniquely qualified for. Daschle was going to wear two hats for Obama, as White House health czar on top of the post leading the Health and Human Services Department.
“We’re going to do health care reform,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said flatly after the nomination withdrawal. But others reacted differently.
“It really sets us back a step,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “Because he was such a talent. I mean he understood Congress, serving in the House and Senate he certainly had the confidence of the president.”
Among those considered for the post before it went to Daschle was Howard Dean, the physician-turned-politician who ran for president in 2004 and recently left as head of the Democratic National Committee. Other possible replacements include Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.
www.msnbc.com
Egypt prevents Al Jazeera journalists from entering Gaza
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Egypt on Tuesday prevented two senior Al Jazeera journalists from entering the Gaza Strip through Rafah border, the London-based Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi reported on Wednesday.
The two, Ahmad Mansour and Ghassan Bin Jido, said that the Egyptian authorities did not provide an explanation for their decision, and that employees of other media outlets were allowed to cross into the besieged territory without delay. During Operation Cast Lead last month, the network’s coverage of the events in Gaza was critical of Egypt’s opposition to Hamas. Mansour and Bin Jido are known for their favorable attitude toward the Palestinian “resistance movement,” as Hamas is known in the Arab world. They said they’d stay put until Egypt provides a “reasonable” explanation for their detention at the border.
Ben Jido, the head of Al Jazeera’s Lebanon office, interviewed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the wake of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and held a special program in honor of the convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar upon his release in a prisoner swap deal last year. On Tuesday, it was reported that the Israeli government is set to impose sanctions on Israel-based employees Al Jazeera in response to the closure last month of the Israeli trade office in Qatar, which hosts and funds the network. Qatar had closed the office in opposition to Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Following the closure, the Foreign Ministry, in conjunction with the newly-formed national information directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office, considered declaring the station a hostile entity and closing its offices in Israel. After submitting the idea to legal review, however, concerns emerged it would not be permitted by the High Court of Justice. Instead, it chose to limit the network’s activity in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. First, Israel will not renew the visas of Al Jazeera’s non-Israeli employees or grant visas to new employees. Second, station representatives will have reduced accessibility to government and military bodies, and will not be allowed into briefings or press conferences. www.haaretz.com |
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Pentagon report calls for narrower focus in Afghanistan
Says US should work to root out militants
WASHINGTON – A classified Pentagon report urges President Obama to shift US military strategy in Afghanistan, deemphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces.
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates has seen the report prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but it has not yet been presented to the White House, officials said yesterday.
The recommendations are one element of a broad policy reassessment underway along with recommendations to be considered by the White House from the commander of the US Central Command, General David Petraeus, and other military leaders.
A senior defense official said yesterday that it will probably take several weeks before the Obama administration rolls out its long-term strategy for Afghanistan.
The Joint Chiefs’ plan reflects growing worries that the US military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan by pursuing the Bush administration’s broad goal of nurturing a thriving democratic government.
Instead, the plan calls for a more narrowly focused effort to root out militant strongholds along the Pakistani border and inside the neighboring country, according to officials who confirmed the essence of the report. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.
During a press conference yesterday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs noted the ongoing “comprehensive reviews” of Afghan policy, but did not say when they would be made public.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not comment yesterday on the details of the Joint Chiefs’ report, but acknowledged that the US relationship with Pakistan is a critical component for success in Afghanistan.
“When you talk about Afghanistan, you can’t help but also recognize the fact that the border region with Pakistan is obviously a contributing factor to the stability and security of Afghanistan, and the work that Pakistan is doing to try to reduce and eliminate those safe havens, and the ability for people to move across that border that are engaged in hostile intentions,” Whitman said.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that Afghan authorities announced yesterday that they had broken up a suicide bombing cell responsible for a string of attacks in the capital, including a massive explosion last month that killed an American serviceman and wounded five other US soldiers.
A spokesman for Afghanistan’s main intelligence service said that the 17 men arrested in Kabul were believed to be affiliated with a Pakistan-based militant group known as the Haqqani network and that the cell’s ringleader was a Pakistani national.
Glaciers around the world found shrinking for 18th year
Researchers say pace of retreat is quickening
By Jeremy van Loon Bloomberg News
BERLIN – Glaciers from the Andes to Alaska and across the Alps shrank as much as 10 feet, the 18th year of retreat and twice as fast as a decade ago, as global warming threatens an important supply of the world’s water.
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Alpine glaciers lost on average 0.7 meters of thickness in 2007, data published yesterday by the University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service showed. The melting extends an 11-meter retreat since 1980.
“One year doesn’t tell us much, it’s really these long-term trends that help us to understand what’s going on,” Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Department of Geography, said in an interview. “The main thing that we can do to stop this is reduce greenhouse gases” that are blamed for global warming.
The Alps have suffered more than other regions with half of the region’s glacier terrain having disappeared since the 1850s, Zemp said.
Almost 90 percent of the glaciers in the Alps are smaller than 0.4 square mile and some are as thin as 30 meters, he said.
Some maritime glaciers, or those that terminate in the sea, have grown in recent years, including 2007, Zemp said. They include glaciers at Nigardsbreen, Norway, and Alaska that were helped by temperatures that remain below freezing and ample snow.
Glaciers further inland in Alaska in such sites as the Kenai mountains and Scandinavia matched the overall declining trend seen in Chile, Colombia and throughout the Alps.
The World Glacier Monitoring Program has measured 30 glaciers, of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 worldwide, in nine mountain ranges since 1980. More ice has been lost than gained on average in 25 of the past 28 years with the last year of growth reported in 1989.
Glacier loss is measured by hammering poles into the ice sheet and observing how much the ice has retreated or gained against the measuring rod. Calculations are made, too, at the tongue or end of the glacier while satellite technology is also employed, Zemp said.
The pace of the decline has doubled since the 1990s, when the average loss was about 0.3 meters compared with 0.7 meters now, he said. Glaciers at high altitudes and latitudes, such as Switzerland’s Aletsch and the Devon Ice Cap in Canada, would probably survive a global temperature increase of 3 degrees.
Some glaciers in the Alps have shrunk so much it’s becoming difficult to take accurate measurements, Zemp said. Such ice has not recovered from the 2003 European summer heat wave that melted the snow, revealing darker ice underneath which heats up faster than whiter surfaces.
The global average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees since preindustrial times, according to the UN’s Environment Program.
Last Guantánamo detainee’s trial halted
Charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri over USS Cole attack are dropped by terror judge
The last terror trial at Guantánamo Bay had been halted after the senior military judge dropped charges against a suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, the Pentagon has said.
The military charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active war crimes case at the US Navy base in Cuba.
The decision by Susan Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantánamo, brings all cases into compliance with Barack Obama’s executive order to halt terror court proceedings at the base.
A Pentagon spokesman said Crawford dismissed the charges against al-Nashiri without prejudice. That means new charges can be brought again later. He will remain in prison for the time being.
“It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the president has issued an executive order which mandates that the military commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantánamo,” the spokesman said.
The ruling also gives the White House time to review the legal cases of all 245 terror suspects held there and decide whether they should be prosecuted in the United States or released to other nations.
Obama is expected to meet families of victims of the Cole incident and the 9/11 attacks at the White House to announce the move today.
Seventeen US sailors died on 12 October 2000, when al-Qaida suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, as it sat in a Yemen port.
The Pentagon charged al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, last summer with “organising and directing” the bombing and planned to seek the death penalty in the case.
In his 22 January order, Obama promised to shut down the Guantánamo prison within a year. The order also froze all detainees’ legal cases pending a three-month review as the Obama administration decides where or whether to prosecute the suspects who have been held there for years, most without charges.
Two military judges granted Obama’s request for delays in other cases.
But a third military judge, James Pohl, defied Obama’s order by scheduling a n arraignment for al-Nashiri at Guantánamo. That left the decision whether to continue to Crawford, whose delay on announcing what she would do prompted widespread concern at the Pentagon that she would refuse to follow orders and allow the court process to continue.
Last year, al-Nashiri said during a Guantánamo hearing that he confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by US interrogators. The CIA has admitted he was among terror suspects subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons.
www.guardian.co.uk
Why you should know Gen. Jack Keane
Porter: Keane key player in campaign to attack Obama’s plans to withdraw forces from Iraq
In part two of our interview with Gareth Porter, we examine the roots of Obama’s break with the military leadership over Iraq. In doing so, we examine the leading voice for continuing the occupation, Gen. Jack Keane. Keane, like many so-called ‘retired’ military officials, has continued to participate in policy-making at the Pentagon, while simultaneously working in the private military contracting sector and commenting publicly on US foreign policy. In this sense, he serves as an example of the military-industrial complex at work.
Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
www.therealnews.com
Pentagon sets sights on public opinion
WASHINGTON – As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls “the human terrain” of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law.
An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That’s almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.
This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.
“We have such a massive apparatus selling the military to us, it has become hard to ask questions about whether this is too much money or if it’s bloated,” says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Committee on Media and Democracy, which tracks the military’s media operations. “As the war has become less popular, they have felt they need to respond to that more.”
Yet the money spent on media and outreach still comes to only 1 percent of the Pentagon budget, and the military argues it is well-spent on recruitment and the education of foreign and American audiences. Military leaders say that at a time when extremist groups run Web sites and distribute video, information is as important a weapon as tanks and guns.
“We have got to be involved in getting our case out there, telling our side of the story, because believe me, al-Qaida and all of those folks … that’s what they are doing on the Internet and everywhere else,” says Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who chairs the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. “Every time a bomb goes off, they have a story out almost before it explodes, saying that it killed 15 innocent civilians.”
Pumping out press releases
On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers.
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Eric Gay / AP
Clippings of articles published by the Joint Hometown News Service are shown in their San Antonio office.
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What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was written by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go out with authors’ names but not their titles, and do not mention Hometown News anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400 press releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews, among other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.
The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon’s rapidly expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many media companies.
In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press interviewed more than 100 people and scoured more than 100,000 pages of documents in several budgets to tally the money spent to inform, educate and influence the public in the U.S. and abroad. The AP included contracts found through the private FedSources database and requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Actual spending figures are higher because of money in classified budgets.
The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences.
Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military’s average cost per service member. That’s double the staffing costs for 2003.
Recruitment and advertising are the only two areas where Congress has authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on propaganda to the American public.
Pentagon can’t sell policy
“It’s not up to the Pentagon to sell policy to the American people,” says Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., who sponsored legislation in Congress last year reinforcing the ban.
Spending on public affairs has more than doubled since 2003. Robert Hastings, acting director of Pentagon public affairs, says the growth reflects changes in the information market, along with the fact that the U.S. is now fighting two wars.
“The role of public affairs is to provide you the information so that you can make an informed decision yourself,” Hastings says. “There is no place for spin at the Department of Defense.”
But on Dec. 12, the Pentagon’s inspector general released an audit finding that the public affairs office may have crossed the line into propaganda. The audit found the Department of Defense “may appear to merge inappropriately” its public affairs with operations that try to influence audiences abroad. It also found that while only 89 positions were authorized for public affairs, 126 government employees and 31 contractors worked there.
In a written response, Hastings concurred and, without acknowledging wrongdoing, ordered a reorganization of the department by early 2009.
Another audit, also in December, concluded that a public affairs program called “America Supports You” was conducted “in a questionable and unregulated manner” with funds meant for the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper.
The program was set up to keep U.S. troops informed about volunteer donations to the military. But the military awarded $11.8 million in contracts to a public relations firm to raise donations for the troops and then advertise those donations to the public. So the program became a way to drum up support for the military at a time when public opinion was turning against the Iraq war.
The audit also found that the offer to place corporate logos on the Pentagon Web site in return for donations was against regulations. A military spokesman said the program has been completely overhauled to meet Pentagon regulations.
“They very explicitly identify American public opinion as an important battlefield,” says Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University. “In today’s information environment, even if they were well-intentioned and didn’t want to influence American public opinion, they couldn’t help it.”
In 2003, for example, initial accounts from the military about the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch from Iraqi forces were faked to rally public support. And in 2005, a Marine Corps spokesman during the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah told the U.S. news media that U.S. troops were attacking. In fact, the information was a ruse by U.S. commanders to fool insurgents into revealing their positions.
‘Psychological’ spending doubles
The fastest-growing part of the military media is “psychological operations,” where spending has doubled since 2003.
Psychological operations aim at foreign audiences, and spin is welcome. The only caveats are that messages must be truthful and must never try to influence an American audience.
In Afghanistan, for example, a video of a soldier joining the national army shown on Afghan television is not attributed to the U.S. And in Iraq, American teams built and equipped media outlets and trained Iraqis to staff them without making public the connection to the military.
Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of strategic communications for the U.S. Central Command, says psychological operations must be secret to be effective. He says that in the 21st century, it is probably not possible to win the information battle with insurgents without exposing American citizens to secret U.S. propaganda.
“We have to be pragmatic and realistic about the game that we play in terms of information, and that game is very complex,” he says.
The danger of psychological operations reaching a U.S. audience became clear when an American TV anchor asked Gen. David Petraeus about the mood in Iraq. The general held up a glossy photo of the Iraqi national soccer team to show the country united in victory.
Behind the camera, his staff was cringing. It was U.S. psychological operations that had quietly distributed tens of thousands of the soccer posters in July 2007 to encourage Iraqi nationalism.
With a new administration in power, it is not clear what changes may be made. Obama administration officials have said they intend to go through the Department of Defense budget closely to trim bloated spending.
Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence
The emphasis on influence operations started with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In 2002, Rumsfeld established an Office of Strategic Influence that brought together public affairs and psychological operations. Critics accused him of setting up a propaganda arm, and Congress demanded that the office be shut down.
Rumsfeld has declined to speak to the press since leaving office, but while defense secretary he spoke bluntly about his desire to revamp the Pentagon’s media operations.
“I went down that next day and said, ‘Fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I’ll give you the corpse,’” Rumsfeld said on Nov. 18, 2002, according to Defense Department transcripts of a speech he delivered. “‘There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.’”
In 2003, Rumsfeld issued a secret Information Operations Roadmap setting out a plan for public affairs and psychological operations to work together. It noted that with a global media, the military should expect and accept that psychological operations will reach the U.S. public.
“I can tell you there wouldn’t be a single American disappointed with anything that we’ve done that might be out there, that they don’t know about,” says Col. Curtis Boyd, commander of the 4th PSYOP Group, the largest unit of its kind. “Frankly, they probably wouldn’t care because maybe they are safer as a result of it.”
In January 2008, a new report by the Defense Science Board recommended resurrecting the Office of Strategic Influence as the Office of Strategic Communications. But Congress refused to fund the program.
In February, the Army released a new eight-chapter field manual that puts information warfare on par with traditional warfare.
The title of an entire chapter, Chapter 7: “Information Superiority.”
www.msnbc.com
Wired for War
The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
As the wars get longer and personel becomes hard to find, robots are filling the positions. Warfare is now outsourced like software. In these interviews, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now speaks with author P.W. Singer about his Book Wired For War.
Part 1
Part 2
www.democracynow.org
Venezuelans protest Chavez plans
Tens of thousands of Venezuelans have demonstrated on the streets of Caracas, the capital, in protest against constitutional changes that could allow the president to run for office indefinitely. The march, under the slogan “No is no”, was the largest to be held in more than a year by opposition parties and anti-government students who claim Hugo Chavez intends to turn Venezuela into a version of communist Cuba. March organisers said hundreds of thousands of people took part in the protest, while government television said turnout was low. “This reform hides, as President Chavez himself has said, the start of what would be a country, a state with a Castro-communist system,” said Manuel Rosales, a former opposition presidential candidate. Protesters complained about a surge in violent crime under Chavez and wore shirts emblazoned with the phrase “I also want to be president”. Chavez rebuke Many people carried Venezuela’s red, yellow and blue flag in the march that stretched from the edge of the city’s largest slum to a wealthy business district. Chavez, wearing a baseball jersey with the word “Yes” emblazoned across his chest during door-to-door campaigning in a poor Caracas neighbourhood, said: “If we did a march, we would have 100 times the people they brought today.” Opinion polls give a slight lead to Chavez before a February 15 vote on whether to allow him and other politicians to run for re-election as many times as they like in South America’s top oil exporter. Voters rejected a similar proposal in 2007. If he loses, Chavez would leave office in four years, but he has not ruled out staging another attempt to change the electoral law. Referendum threat Another referendum defeat for him could embolden opponents and increase resistance to unpopular spending cuts or a currency devaluation that analysts say might result if oil income remains low.
But Chavez denies he will prohibit private property and has pointed out the government continues to work with foreign oil companies.A close friend of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former leader, Chavez is a vocal critic of the United States and provides Cuba with cheap oil in return for doctors and advisers. He has nationalised industries and raised spending on health and welfare since he took office in 1999, but says he needs more time to build what he calls “21st century socialism” in one of the principal oil suppliers to the United States. Considerable power Still popular with about half of the population, he has amassed considerable power and most institutions are run by his allies. Opponents say Chavez is authoritarian and will turn people’s homes and possessions over to the state. He has won multiple elections in the past decade and survived a brief coup, a months-long shutdown of the vital oil industry and a recall referendum. The opposition only recently made gains against Chavez, defeating the 2007 referendum and winning seats in state and city elections last year. |
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Woman claims Atlantic swim first
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A 56-year-old American athlete claims to have become the first woman on record to swim the Atlantic.
Jennifer Figge took 24 days to swim from the Cape Verde islands off Africa to Trinidad. The exact distance she covered has yet to be calculated.
She swam inside a cage to protect her from sharks.
Figge, who had originally planned to make landfall in the Bahamas, now plans to finish by swimming from Trinidad to the British Virgin Islands.
She first dreamed of swimming across the Atlantic Ocean as a little girl.
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  Looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way  Jennifer Figge
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The swimmer finally moved nearer her goal when she left Cape Verde Islands on 12 January, facing waves of up to 9m (30 ft).
Each day she would spend up to eight hours in the water at a stretch before returning to her support boat.
Crew members would throw the athlete energy drinks as she swam along, if it was too stormy divers would deliver them in person.
She saw pilot whales, turtles, and dolphins, but no sharks.
“I was never scared,” she told the Associated Press news agency.
“Looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool.”
Jennifer Figge’s journey comes 10 years after a French swimmer, Benoit Lecomte, made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim covering 6,400km (4,000 miles) in 73 days.
Figge had planned to swim 3,380km (2,100 miles), but she was blown off course and reached Trinidad rather than the Bahamas.
Israel Votes In a Bubble
Posted on Feb 10, 2009
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| Flickr / david55king |
With world opinion soured by the recent events in Gaza, Israelis are headed to the polls to elect a new government that is widely expected to move further to the right. Pre-election polls put the conservative Likud in the lead. Labor trailed a distant fourth, behind even the ultra conservative Yisrael Beitenu, despite taking a hawkish turn.
Israel continues to draw criticism from the U.N. for hampering its relief efforts in Gaza. A number of shipments have been stopped at the border, including—and you can’t make this up—the paper needed to print new textbooks for a course in human rights.
The Herald Tribune has a succinct primer on Israeli elections here.
AP via International Herald Tribune:
The top U.N. official in Gaza criticized Israel on Monday for blocking the shipment of paper to print textbooks for a new human rights curriculum that will be taught to children in all grades in the Palestinian territory.
Israel also has refused to allow 12 truckloads of notebooks into Gaza as well as plastic sheeting which is turned into plastic bags to distribute food that the U.N. provides to some 900,000 people, John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, said in a videoconference with reporters at U.N. headquarters.
Key facts about Israel’s election
Key facts about Israel’s general election:
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WHAT’S AT STAKE: Voters will elect a 120-member parliament, or Knesset, Israel’s 18th.
Citizens vote for party lists, not individual candidates. Seats are allocated in the Knesset according to the percentage of the vote the parties win.
WHO’S RUNNING: Thirty-three parties are fielding candidates. Key parties are the governing Kadima Party, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians and a supporter of conciliation with the Arab world; Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister who takes a hard line against the Palestinians, and Labor, headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, another former premier and a retired army chief who won widespread public approval for his role as point man in Israel’s three-week offensive against Hamas in Gaza last month. Small parties include Green Leaf, which supports the legalization of marijuana, the Pensioners Party, Arab parties and a joint venture of moderate Orthodox Jews and environmentalists. Few, if any. are expected to win representation.
A party must receive at least 2 percent of votes cast to be represented in parliament.
In the 2006 election, 31 parties registered to run but only 12 won enough votes to win seats.
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FORMING A GOVERNMENT: In Israel’s 60-year history, no party has ever won an outright majority of 61 seats, and the country has always been governed by a coalition.
Within seven days after the Feb. 18 publication of official results, Israel’s president meets with party factions to determine which party has the best chance of forming a government. The president then taps the head of that party — usually parliament’s largest — to undertake that task. That person will have up to six weeks to form a coalition. If successful, he or she becomes prime minister; if not, the president chooses another party to try.
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THE VOTE: There are 5,278,985 eligible voters. Most of the 9,263 polling stations across the country opened at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT, 12 a.m. EST) and close at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT, 3 p.m. EST).
Voter turnout in the last election in 2006 was 63.2 percent, the lowest in Israel’s history.
Election Day is a national holiday, and workers have the day off.
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ISRAEL BY THE NUMBERS:
Population: 7.2 million of whom 75 percent (5.5 million) are Jews, 20 percent (1.4 million) are Arabs and the rest are classified as “others,” most of them non-Jewish immigrants.
Per capita GDP: $28,900
Sources:
www.iht.com
www.truthdig.com
Widow sues over immigrant’s death at R.I. detention center
PROVIDENCE – A Chinese immigrant being held at a Rhode Island detention center was denied medical care, abused, and accused of faking his illness in the weeks before he died of cancer, according to a federal lawsuit filed yesterday by the man’s widow.
Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng, 34, a computer engineer accused of overstaying his visa, died of liver cancer in August, weeks after being taken to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. His cancer went undiagnosed until days before he died.
Ng’s death prompted a public outcry and state and federal investigations into his detention and treatment. Federal officials determined Ng was mistreated and denied access to medical care. They pulled immigration detainees out of the facility in December before terminating their contract with Wyatt.
“They treated him like he was a piece of furniture. They treated him like an animal,” said Jack McConnell, a volunteer for the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Ng’s widow, Lin Li Qu.
The lawsuit alleged guards denied Ng the use of a wheelchair, on one occasion dragging him crying and screaming in pain from his cell to an appointment in Hartford to meet with officials from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During the return trip, guards threw him on the ground and again dragged him by his arms and legs, breaking his back, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, names the facility’s owners, warden, and staff and another facility in Vermont, where Ng was held before being moved to Wyatt. It also names officials of the federal immigration agency, who it says scheduled the Hartford trip to get back at Ng after his attorney went to federal court to try to get him medical care.
Wyatt spokeswoman Margaret Lynch-Gadaleta said it was premature to comment on the lawsuit.
“It’s not a surprise that a lawsuit was filed,” she said. “There will be discovery and review.”
Michael Gilhooly, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, would not comment on the allegations, but said the agency’s investigation, done three days before the agency canceled its contract with Wyatt, found employees violated the agency’s national detention standards.
“Any death is certainly tragic and unfortunate, and we review the circumstances of all deaths in custody very closely,” he said.
Hearing held for top mafia member
‘The Saint’ charged with 2 attempted
mob hits
Updated: Monday, 09 Feb 2009, 7:15 PM EST
Published : Monday, 09 Feb 2009, 7:09 PM EST
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Reputed mob captain Anthony “the saint” St. Laurent faces charges of trying to pull off a gangland slaying in downtown Providence.
On Monday, St. Laurent participated in a U.S. District Court in Providence by video conference from the federal prison in Massachusetts. St. Laurent is currently serving a sentence for extortion.
St. Laurent, identified by law enforcement as Capo Regime in the Patriarca crime family, tried to hire two men to kill rival Capo, Robert “Bobby” Deluca in 2006, and again from behind bars in 2007.
In a criminal complaint obtained by Target 12, FBI case agent Joseph Degnan wired up an informant ,who recorded a 2006 conversation in St. Laurent’s house.
According to the recording, St. Laurent not only told two men he wanted Deluca dead, but he said he had the permission of “the boss.”
The boss, according to court documents, is Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, who runs the New England crime family from Providence’s Federal Hill. St. Laurent even drove one of the men to Deluca’s workplace, Sidebar Bar and Grille in Providence.
Shortly after that, St. Laurent was scooped up in a separate extortion plot. But apparently, still raging from behind bars at Fort Devens Federal Prison in Massachusetts, investigators said St. Laurent tried to solicit a hit through fellow inmates.
In a criminal complaint, unsealed on Friday, St. Laurent was charged with solicitation of murder. The FBI released a statement Friday afternoon touting cooperation between Rhode Island State Police, Massachusetts State Police, Providence Police and Boston Police.
Target 12 Investigator Tim White spoke with Deluca’s attorney Artin Coloian late Friday and said his client was informed of the attempted hit and that Deluca is not concerned for his safety.
Source: www.wpri.com
Troubled Teen Shot By N.Kingston P.D.
NORTH KINGSTOWN — An 18-year-old man shot by the police Sunday remains in critical condition this afternoon at Rhode Island Hospital.
The owner of the house he lived in at 635 Tower Hill Road, Muriel Miller, 72, said his name is Mark Kilcline and that he had lived with her for about a year.
Miller said that Kilcline was upset about his relationship with a couple of friends and had agreed to let her take him for counseling at Butler Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital in Providence, when the police came to the house.
Miller said that Kilcline, who is her grandson’s best friend, was in his pajamas when he was talking to her and had just gone upstairs to change. She said it was somewhere around 9 a.m. Sunday.
Kilcline was shot by North Kingstown police officers, and an officer was hit by a stray bullet, during a confrontation yesterday morning in the apartment building. Police said he was hit with Tasers and then shot after he refused to drop a knife.
Miller said Kilcline is a bright, generous young man who never gave her any trouble in the year he lived with her. She used to give him rides to the park’ n ‘ride so he could attend Community College of Rhode Island in Warwick, but he had had to drop out for some reason, she said.
Kilcline slept upstairs but used the kitchen and other areas of the house. Miller said Kilcline likes to cook. On Saturday night he had two female friends at the house and had cooked and baked for them, she said.
Sunday morning, one of the young women called Miller upset over a conversation with Kilcline that night. She told Miller that Kilcline had cut his wrist with a steak knife.
That morning Miller talked with Kilcline. She offered to bandage his wound but he declined, Miller said. Kilcline told her he felt the women didn’t really care for him and were talking advantage of him, and he began to cry. She convinced him he needed counseling and he went upstairs to change his clothes so they could go to Butler. She said he stayed at Butler four months ago for five days.
Miller would not talk about anything that occurred after police arrived at the house. The police said Kilcline moved toward them with a knife in a threatening way, and that they asked him to stop before Tasering and then shooting him.
Mary Trout, a friend of Miller’s who lives three houses down, said she feared something had happened to Miler when she saw the police in front of the house.
She was shocked to learn Kilcline had been shot. “He was concerned about his mental health. That turned out to be the least of his problems,” Trout said.
Kilcline’s 10 by 10 foot bedroom is on the right at the top of the stairs in the front of the house. Down a short narrow hallway is an apartment where a couple lives with their son. They were home at the time of the shooting.
Today, drops of blood on the floor led to Kilcline’s bedroom. His clothes, papers and other debris were strewn on the bedroom rug ,along with drops of blood. There was blood on his bedspread. Behind a rocking chair where he had hung a dress jacket, there was half a tray of brownies.
Source: www.newsblog.projo.com
Tenants reluctant to report Providence building violations
Journal Staff Writer
Tenant Bobby Lopez shows Providence inspectors the basement of the two-family house on Heath Street where she lives with her children. For a time, tenants there were without running water.
The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy
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Inspectors Ana Quezada and Bill Packard stand in the hallway outside an illegal third-floor floor apartment on Heath Street. in Silver Lake. They were unable to get into the apartment because the door was padlocked.
–>PROVIDENCE — Inside a neglected double-decker on Heath Street, in the city’s Silver Lake section, three families with young children endure the demands of daily life for weeks with no running water.
They try to keep the problem quiet, but a neighbor calls the city to complain.
One January morning, housing inspector Ana Quezada climbs the narrow staircase to the second-floor apartment and knocks.
Video
Code enforcement officer finds children sleeping with their coats on
Inside, a woman tries to quiet her three toddlers as Quezada looks around. The kitchen is warm, the inspector notes, so they have heat. Then she notices office-size Poland Spring jugs next to the refrigerator.
“You guys have no water?”
Quezada tries the kitchen faucet. Nothing.
In neighborhoods throughout Providence, the housing market bust and rising unemployment have left a growing population of tenants living in misery: crowded into apartments with broken windows, leaking pipes, crumbling ceilings, jury-rigged electrical wiring –– and, at times, no heat or running water.
Tenants who complain may get the problems fixed –– or they may be ordered to move out.
“People are desperate and they’re doing dangerous things,” said Sheila M. Barrett, the new director of the city’s Department of Inspection and Standards. “They come in looking for help and we tell them: You have to move. They’re not happy about it, but it’s not safe.”
The extent of the problem is not known. The inspections department has no consistent computer record-keeping, although it plans to computerize the records soon. But the department’s tally of minimum housing code violations last year was up 25 percent from 2006.
Paper files stored in battered metal filing cabinets tell stories of hundreds of properties riddled with unresolved code violations:
“Windows don’t open.”
“No key to front door.”
“Repair roof (leaking).”
“Restore heating equipment to proper working order.”
“Rats.”
Landlords must provide water, heat and electricity to comply with the city’s minimum housing codes. If not, the city can condemn the property and give the occupants 10 days to move out.
But if a tenant refuses to let a housing inspector into the house, the inspector has to get a court order just to conduct the inspection. And it can take months, or even years, before the violations get corrected. And those are just the violations the city knows about.
The woman on Heath Street who had no water told the housing inspector that the water was shut off after the man who used to collect the rent stopped coming by. One of the tenants called the city water department and was told they would have to pay $750 for unpaid fees to get the water turned back on. A community organizer managed to negotiate the payment down to $300. But the tenants still had not paid the bill.
“We’re saving money too, to move,” the woman said. “But for now …”
Quezada, the inspector, listened, patiently. Then, she laid down the law.
“If you don’t have water,” she warned, “we have to condemn the building.”
Rental housing is generally the hardest hit during an economic downturn, said Nicolas P. Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “People who lose their jobs or whose hours are cut back, he said, have a harder time paying their rent — which, in turn, means landlords have less money for repairs.”
In Providence, landlords who do not live in their rental houses are prohibited from getting low-cost repair loans through city or state agencies under a housing plan the city adopted a decade or more ago to promote owner-occupied housing. It’s consistent with a basic tenet of the nation’s housing policy that home ownership improves upward mobility and stabilizes neighborhoods.
“We have tailored our programs to home ownership,” said Thomas E. Deller, the city’s director of planning and development. “We’re not into funding lots of absentee landlords…who have tended to be the problem in our neighborhoods.”
City and community groups don’t want to reward absentee owners by giving them access to credit at a discount, said Ray Neirinkx, at the Rhode Island Housing Resources Commission’s office of home ownership. But with so many properties owned by absentee landlords, he said, that begs the question: “Are we really looking to improve the place? Is it a place-based approach to improve the quality of the home? Or, is it driven by ownership?”
Meanwhile, investors seeking to cash in on falling house prices snatch up multifamily houses at bargain prices, and then post “For Rent” signs.
In the city’s Olneyville neighborhood, a two-family house on Kossuth Street which in 2006 sold for $345,000 was foreclosed just over a year later, only to be bought by an investor last October for $15,000, according to Providence Journal real-estate listings.
Andrea Harris had just been laid off from her job at an after-school program last October and was searching for a cheaper rental when she saw an apartment in the house on Kossuth Street listed for $550 per month.
The house needed a lot of work, Harris recalled, but the landlord had workers who were fixing it up, and he assured her it would be ready by the time she moved in. But shortly after she moved into the second-floor apartment with her five children last November, the gas was shut off. “We had no heat,” she said.
Then the electricity went out.
“When I was helping the kids with homework,” Harris said, “I opened the curtains for light.”
It got so cold that shortly before Christmas she sent her older children to stay with a cousin and she took the younger ones with her to her sister’s house.
Downstairs, Maria Serrer and her children also had no heat and they couldn’t flush their toilet. Serrer complained to the landlord — and then to the city.
“He said, just give him time. Give him time,’” recalled Serrer.
In response to the complaint, Quezada, the housing inspector, inspected the first-floor apartment on Jan. 7 and cited the company that bought the house, Megazone Realty, LLC, for 11 housing code violations. She ordered the owner to “restore heat to kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.”
Thirteen days later, Quezada returned for a follow-up inspection and reported that the two most serious violations –– the lack of heat and broken toilet –– had been corrected.
Teofilo Regus, manager of Megazone Realty, said that he had the old electric meters removed in preparation for installing new ones. The problems in the second-floor apartment, he said, also have been fixed. And he said he’s in the process of evicting the first-floor tenant for nonpayment of rent
“These houses were built like 1930 something. There’s always gonna be an issue with the properties. They’re not perfect,” Regus said. “If they want to live in a Five Star resort they can move into a Westin or something. This is Providence. Olneyville … This is low-income housing. But it’s livable
One morning last this week, Quezada returned to the double-decker on Heath Street — where the apartment had no water — to find out if the tenants had paid the $300 to get their water turned back on. Building inspector William Packard also came along to check out an illegal third-floor attic apartment where a couple and their young children were living.
The driveway was covered in snow and ice; discarded air conditioners leaned next to overflowing garbage cans.
The woman from the second-floor was strapping one of her children into her van’s car seat. Bobby Lopez is 26 and lives with her fiancé and her three children. The man she knew as “Nelson Cruz” who used to come by every month to collect the rent had not been by since last summer. She later learned that he’d died.
Lopez let the inspector into her apartment to show her that the water was back on. Then she led the inspector into a dark, filthy basement. A water heater was leaking onto the cement floor. An extension cord was strung along the ceiling for light. Packard looked at the uncovered electrical box, then at the three gas meters. The house had three apartments but it was only zoned for two.
The building inspector climbed the stairs to the third floor to the attic apartment, but it was padlocked shut. Nobody answered.
The next day, he returned to the house and saw the white van parked in the driveway, but nobody answered the front door. He came back and posted a violation notice on the door.
Less than six miles away, in a neighborhood of neat ranch houses in Pawtucket, the owner of the house on Heath Street had just returned three days earlier from a five-month trip to his native Colombia.
Gil Robinson, a machine operator at a factory in Smithfield, said he heard that the man who had been collecting the rent and paying his mortgage for the property on Heath Street had died of a heart attack.
Robinson said that he had no idea that the water had been shut off because the bill wasn’t paid. If he had known, he would have taken care of it, he said.
Violation notices sent to Robinson at the Heath Street house were returned to the inspections department unopened. “Why they not send it to me here?” said Robinson, seated on his living room couch. “Because I don’t want people to live like that.”
Bill seeks to repeal controversial ‘hire-a-judge’ law
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A bill has been introduced in the Rhode Island House of Representatives that would repeal a controversial law — never used, but which soon may be implemented — to allow people involved in civil lawsuits to hire, for pay, a retired judge to hear their disputes in private.
State Rep. Alfred A. Gemma, D-Warwick, is the prime sponsor of a bill to abolish the law, which has become known in the legal community as the “rent-a-judge law.’” It is being co-sponsored by three members of the Rhode Island bar, state Reps. Gregory J. Schadone, D-North Providence; Robert B. Jacquard, D-Cranston; and Stephen R. Ucci, D-Johnston.
The law to allow private civil trials has been on the books since 1984, but never used. Currently, the Rhode Island Supreme Court is considering ways to implement it at the request of one newly retired judge, Howard I. Lipsey of the Family Court, who has expressed an interest in being hired by parties to hear their cases behind closed doors. Lipsey currently gets a 100 percent pension — $150,933 a year –plus health insurance, since he continues to sit several days a week at the Family Court. Lipsey says there is a backog of contested divorce cases that could easily be heard in private.
If implemented, the law would allow all retired judges in Rhode Island to earn extra pay beyond their pensions adjudicating civil cases in private.
The Rhode Island Association for Justice, the state association of plaintiffs’ trial lawyers, has urged the high court not to implement the law, as has the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, trial lawyer Thomas R. Bender, Barbara Meagher, a journalism professor at the University of Rhode Island and president of ACCESS/RI, the state’s freedom of information coalition.
“I don’t think you should be able to rent judges,” Gemma said today in an interview. “The whole idea of secret negotiations and trials is completely anathema to me. The judicial system is public and should be transparent,” the leigslator said.
Gemma also said he thinks the law “really cheapens the system of justice. These retired judges don’t need the money. It just looks like they are money grubbing.” If there’s a backlog in the courts, Gemma said, then have the judges work longer hours.
The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. No hearing date has yet been set.
Extra: Read the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s proposed plan for implementing the Retired Justice Act
Source: www.newsblog.projo.com
1980’s Interview: Former KGB Agent Explaining the Basic Propaganda Model
In these interviews (1985) former KGB agent Uri Bezmenov gives a detailed explanation of the tactics of the basic propaganda model created centuries earlier. His understanding of world relations and media studies is impressive, and displays real dexterity when talking about America, and it’s future. During the interview he makes predictions about the US and it’s government that are visible today. -Carey
Whats So Bad About Socialism Anyways?
So·cial·ism
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Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Socialism
Socialism\, n. Socialism of the chair [G. katheder socialismus], a term applied about 1872, at first in ridicule, to a group of German political economists who advocated state aid for the betterment of the working classes. Sock \Sock\, v. t. [Perh. shortened fr. sockdolager.] To hurl, drive, or strike violently; — often with it as an object. [Prov. or Vulgar] –Kipling.
Socialism
So”cial*ism\, n. [Cf. F. socialisme.] A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor. In popular usage, the term is often employed to indicate any lawless, revolutionary social scheme. See Communism, Fourierism, Saint-Simonianism, forms of socialism. [Socialism] was first applied in England to Owen’s theory of social reconstruction, and in France to those also of St. Simon and Fourier . . . The word, however, is used with a great variety of meaning, . . . even by economists and learned critics. The general tendency is to regard as socialistic any interference undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, . . . radical social reform which disturbs the present system of private property . . . The tendency of the present socialism is more and more to ally itself with the most advanced democracy. –Encyc. Brit. We certainly want a true history of socialism, meaning by that a history of every systematic attempt to provide a new social existence for the mass of the workers. –F. Harrison.
Cite This Source
| socialism | |
| noun | |
| 1. | a political theory advocating state ownership of industry |
| 2. | an economic system based on state ownership of capital [ant: capitalism] |
An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. There are many varieties of socialism. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy; others insist on an abolition of private enterprise. All communists are socialists, but not all socialists are communists.
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
While listening to all the old Cold War propaganda today about “evil socialism” , I feel it’s all ways important to remember the origins of our own society and how it relates to socialism. By exploring the The Visual Thesaurus one can begin to understand the fundamental origins of Capitalism, branches from the many various forms of socialist theory.After reading the definitions given for socialism one can easily see socialism in our public programs and welfare systems. Socialism is most prominently visible in the US government. It has become one of the most powerful nations on the planet through centralization of power, state owned industry and state owned, capital based economics. In fact, capitalism sits somewhere in between socialism and communism.So hoping to get a barrage of responses I ask, what’s so bad about socialism anyways?
ANP: William Greider on the Democrats’ Money Dilemma
Greider talks about the Democrats’ role in deregulating the financial markets.
William Greider has covered politics from D.C. for The Washington Post, Rolling Stone Magazine, and currently The Nation. Greider’s most recent book, Come Home America, examines the implications of our country’s predicament. He talks about the Democrats’ current dilemma between representing their funders and their constituents.
The Afghan trap
Ray McGovern: US attempt to trap the USSR in 1979 is at root of current situation in Afghanistan
As Obama sends 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, we look back to the roots of the conflict. Ray McGovern says that the USSR was “mousetrapped” into invading Afghanistan by the CIA under both the Carter and Reagan administrations. He adds that the CIA policies of that day are “largely responsible” for the existence of today’s armed fundamentalist groups.
Campaign to close down School of The Americas
Pablo Ruiz: US tax dollars are used to train Latin American soldiers how to oppress their own people
While the US commits 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, in part to seek out terrorist training camps, many in the US and Latin America are demanding that President Obama shut down what they believe is a terrorist training camp run on US tax dollars, the School of the Americas. One such person is Pablo Ruiz, who spoke to The Real News during his first-ever trip to the US, where, as a survivor of torture carried out by SOA graduates, he is laying out his argument for the immediate closure of the school.
Bio
Source www.realnewsnetwork.com
Providence Police: These online deals were really hot
01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Journal Staff Writer
Daniel Goldstein in District Court yesterday.
The Providence Journal Bob Breidenbach
PROVIDENCE –– Jane Dillon knows all about how some great deals on the Web site craigslist.org can be true steals.
On Friday, she saw her bass guitar — stolen the day before from her East Side apartment — selling on the Internet classified site for $250, the police say.
Susanne Lowney learned as well some of the ins and outs of the newest in “e-fencing” when the police called her Monday with news about her stolen electronics, taken two weeks earlier.
Apparently the same thief responsible for breaking into her apartment, she says, had used her computer to help sell Dillon’s guitar.
The cases, the police say, shed light on the growing trend of thieves turning to e-commerce sites to sell their stolen goods.
“A lot of that stuff on craigslist is stolen,” said Providence Detective Lt. Paul Campbell. But in this case, “because of some good detective work, we managed to clear up five separate breaks and return a lot of property back to their owners.”
The man at the center of these two East Side breaks and, the police allege, three others in the last six weeks, appeared in District Court yesterday. The police charged Daniel Goldstein, 20, of 25 Pitman St., with five counts of breaking and entering in which thousands of dollars of electronics were stolen while their owners slept.
Goldstein didn’t travel far to find his victims, the police say: all five breaks occurred either on Pitman or on the adjacent streets of East George or East Manning. In one case, the backyard of the house on East Manning abuts the backyard of the apartment house Goldstein lives in.
The police noticed a pattern to the breaks — each happened early in the morning, before 5 a.m. — and they suspected the perpetrator was walking through the neighborhood checking for unlocked doors.
Michael O’Connell, of East Manning Street, said the police told him this week they had recovered, from Goldstein’s apartment, some of the jewelry and electronics taken from his apartment on Feb. 3.
“I never even thought of looking for it on craigslist,” said O’Connell, who is now considering getting a dog. “I did go to a local pawnshop but didn’t find anything.”
A BREAK in the cases came Friday, when Dillon notified the Providence police that she had seen her stolen bass guitar advertised on craigslist.
The day before, Dillon reported that her East Manning Street apartment had been broken into while she slept and that, besides the guitar, more than $7,000 worth of laptops, Wii game computers and software — and a backpack containing her driver’s license, credits cards and checkbook — had been taken.
Detective )Sgt. Vincent Mansolitto, posing as an interested buyer on the Web site, attempted to make contact with Goldstein through e-mail without success. Then, over the weekend, Detective Sgt. William Dwyer and Detective Angelo Avant joined in, e-mailing Goldstein that they were interested in buying the laptop he had advertised.
Dwyer says the laptop was the Apple iBook taken from Dillon’s apartment.
“He wanted $550 for it,” Dwyer said. “I told him I planned to be in the Providence area in the next day or two, and if it was in good condition, I’d give him $500 for it.”
Dwyer said Goldstein agreed and made arrangements for a meeting at Goldstein’s home on Pitman Street. Goldstein was waiting on the curb while the snow was still falling Monday morning when, Dwyer says, he and two other detectives pulled up in unmarked cars.
Dwyer said Goldstein — who entered no plea at his initial court appearance yesterday in light of the charges being felonies; bail was set at $2,500 — put up no struggle.
E-COMMERCE sites have in many cases replaced the pawnshops where thieves historically have traded their goods.
“E-fencing is a huge issue,” says Michael J. Healey, spokesman for Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch. “The reason people steal stuff is to sell it. Sites like craigslist, eBay, and Yahoo auctions, they really are just the newest markets … And thieves will always find markets to fence their goods.”
Healey said Congress, for a second year in a row, is considering legislation to clamp down on illicit activities on the Web, which run the gamut of selling stolen goods to prostitution. But the best efforts might come from the Web sites improving their own way of doing business.
“It’s really going to take … their changing their approach and trying to introduce more effective screening and verification practices to hold sellers accountable.”
In the meantime, Providence police detectives are still working to retrieve Jane Dillon’s bass guitar.
Some one bought it on craigslist over the weekend, says detective Dwyer, for $150.
Warrant issued for Sudan’s leader on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Omar al-Bashir says the charges reflect Western hostility towards Sudan
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The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
But the court in The Hague stopped short of accusing Omar al-Bashir of genocide. He denies the charges and has dismissed any ICC ruling as worthless.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, after the announcement, amid fears of unrest.
The UN estimates 300,000 people have died in Darfur’s six-year conflict.
Millions more have been displaced.
Court spokeswoman Laurence Blairon announced the ruling by a panel of judges on the charges presented by ICC prosecutors.
She said Mr Bashir was suspected of being criminally responsible for “intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property”.
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This decision is exactly what we have been expecting from the court, which was created to target Sudan Mustafa Othman Ismail
Aide to Omar al-Bashir  |
Ms Blairon said the violence in Darfur was the result of a common plan organised at the highest level of the Sudanese government, but there was no evidence of genocide.
The court would transmit a request for Mr Bashir’s arrest and surrender as soon as possible to the Sudanese government, she added.
It is the first warrant issued by The Hague-based UN court against a sitting head of state.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo made the request for the warrant in July 2008.
‘Toothless’
Reacting to the charges, an aide to Mr Bashir said the ICC judges were biased.
“This decision is exactly what we have been expecting from the court, which was created to target Sudan and to be part of the new mechanism of neo-colonialism,” Mustafa Othman Ismail told Sudanese TV.
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ICC’s BASHIR CHARGE SHEET
War crimes:
Intentionally directing attacks against civilians
Pillaging
Crimes against humanity:
Murder
Extermination
Forcible transfer
Torture
Rape
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Speaking on Tuesday ahead of the announcement, Mr Bashir said the Hague tribunal could “eat” the arrest warrant.
He said it would “not be worth the ink it is written on” and then danced for thousands of cheering supporters who burned an effigy of the ICC chief prosecutor.
Sudan expert Alex de Waal told the BBC the indictment is “pretty toothless” as the ICC does not have a police force.
Heavy security is in place in Khartoum and large pro-Bashir demonstrations were expected.
African and Arab countries have warned that the court’s action will only increase tensions and violence in Sudan.
Egypt said it was “greatly disturbed” by the ICC’s decision and called for a meeting of the UN Security Council to defer implementation of the warrant.
Sudan’s foreign ministry said President Bashir would ignore it and attend an Arab summit scheduled later this month in Qatar.
Aid workers withdrawn
Human-rights groups welcomed the decision.
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“With this arrest warrant, the International Criminal Court has made Omar al-Bashir a wanted man,” said Richard Dicker of the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.
The French charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had withdrawn foreign staff from Darfur after the Sudanese government ordered them to leave.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Sudan to “co-operate fully” with all United Nations entities.
He said the UN would “continue to conduct its vital peacekeeping, humanitarian, human rights and development operations and activities in Sudan”.
The war crimes court has already issued two arrest warrants – in 2007 – for Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ahmed Haroun and the Janjaweed militia leader Ali Abdul Rahman.
Sudan has refused to hand them over.
Bashir attacks West over warrant
Sudan’s president has angrily rejected a warrant for his arrest on charges of war crimes, issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). A defiant Omar al-Bashir told thousands of his supporters gathered in Khartoum on Thursday that Sudan was being targeted by Western powers and that the ICC was a tool of colonialists after Sudan’s oil. “The true criminals are the leaders of the United States and Europe,” al-Bashir, brandishing a cane, told the roaring crowd outside the Republican Palace. “We have refused to kneel to colonialism, that is why Sudan has been targeted … because we only kneel to God.” “Sudan represents the voice that says ‘no’ to all attempts of domination. In the past we said no to occupation … and we succeeded in throwing the occupiers out of Sudan.” Protesters carried banners branding Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, a criminal. Cheers of “We are ready to protect religion!” and “Down, down USA!” interrupted al-Bashir’s speech. ‘Regrettable’ decision The ICC indicted al-Bashir on Wednesday on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which included murder, rape and torture. The three-judge panel said it had insufficient grounds to consider charges of genocide, though the ICC said the non-inclusion of a genocide charge could change “if additional evidence is gathered by the prosecution”.
But international response to the ICC’s decision has been mixed. While the US has hailed the court’s decision, South Africa called it “regrettable” and others echoed Pretoria’s warning that al-Bashir’s arrest could damage peace negotiations. “South Africa concurs with the African Union’s initial response that the ICC’s decision is regrettable as it will impact negatively on the current peace processes in the Sudan,” Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s foreign minister, said. Earlier China, which buys the majority of Sudan’s oil and is one of the country’s most important trading partners, voiced similar concerns. “China expresses its regret and worry over the arrest warrant for the Sudan president issued by the International Criminal Court,” Qin Gang, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement on the ministry’s website. “China is opposed to any action that could interfere with the peaceful situation in Darfur and Sudan.” ‘Neo-colonialist policy’ The US administration, which has imposed sanctions against Sudan, welcomed the ICC’s decision and the UK and France have also been in favour of the warrant. The EU has also urged Khartoum to fully co-operate with the ICC. But the support of Western nations has added fuel to the fire of those who see the ICC’s decision as “neo-colonialist”. “They do not want Sudan … to become stable,” Mustafa Osman Ismail, an adviser to al-Bashir, said.
“The court is only one mechanism of neo-colonialist policy used by the West against free and independent countries.”Sudan’s UN envoy said the government will drop its campaign to have the UN Security Council delay the al-Bashir’s prosecution for a year and would instead demand that the “criminal plot against our country” be stopped. Amr el-Kahky, Al Jazeera’s correspondent, reporting from Khartoum, said that many in Sudan felt the ICC decision threatened the peace process. “According to the people … it is doing more harm than good,” he said. “They say it is de-railing and threatening the peace process between the Sudanese government and the rebels in Darfur on the one hand and … [that] the warrant comes at a very bad time, especially after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Justice and Equality Movement [JEM], the biggest rebel faction in Darfur, and the Sudanese Government in the Qatari capital, Doha.” But inside Sudan, JEM offered some support for the ICC’s arrest warrant. “This decision will create huge transformation in Sudan,” Ibrahim Khalil, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, told Al Jazeera. “We expect Bashir to refuse attending the trail in person, as is the case with all war criminals, but then he will lose eligibility to govern and legitimacy and therefore his rule will be illegitimate.” OIC condemnation The Organisation of Islamic Conference also condemned the decision, with Ekmeleddine Ihsanoglu, its secretary-general, saying that the warrant might negatively affect efforts to solve the crisis in Darfur and could threaten stability in Sudan and the whole region. The Arab League and African Union are sending delegates to the UN to attempt to persuade the body to delay the implementation of the warrant.
The Rome statute that set up the ICC allows the UN Security Council to pass a resolution to defer or suspend for a year the investigation or prosecution of a case.Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has urged Sudan to co-operate with the court. The UN says that up to 300,000 have been killed in Darfur, where the UN is running one of the world’s largest humanitarian missions, while Khartoum says that 10,000 have died. A further 2.7 million people are estimated to have been uprooted by the conflict, which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003. Aid work suspended Following the ICC’s decision, Sudan revoked the operating licences of up to 10 aid agencies working in Sudan, the UN said. Alun McDonald, a spokesman for Oxfam, one of the agencies to have its licence revoked, said it was “going to have a devastating effect on hundreds of thousands of people”. Save the Children, which supports 50,000 children across Sudan, said its suspension would put thousands of lives at risk. Sudanese government officials have in the past threatened to take action against Darfur-based aid groups which they say are passing evidence on to the global court’s prosecutor – accusations the agencies deny. |
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Providence: Dominicans denounce reported desecration of their flag
Journal Staff Writer
The Dominican flag includes the words Dios, Patria, Libertad (God, Fatherland, Liberty).
PROVIDENCE — An administrator at Roger Williams Middle School has been placed on paid leave after he reportedly grabbed a Dominican flag from at least one student and stepped on it.
Several students brought flags to school on Friday to celebrate the Caribbean nation’s 165th independence anniversary, school officials said yesterday. During a confrontation with one or more students, the administrator snatched the flag away, threw it to the floor and stepped on it, according to Sen. Juan Pichardo, D-Providence.
And state Rep. Grace Díaz, D-Providence, said that the administrator said something like, “We mop the floor with your flag.”
School officials said they don’t know what sparked the incident.As word spread, students became increasingly upset and a large food fight broke out in the cafeteria, school officials said. Several students face disciplinary action and possible suspension for taking part.
School spokeswoman Christina O’Reilly refused to release the name of the middle school administrator or the names of the students involved.
Principal Rudy Moseley sent out an automated telephone message that Friday to the student’s parents telling them what happened.
Pichardo said that Latino talk radio was inundated with phone calls from members of the Dominican community who were upset over the incident. Latino students comprise 59 percent of the Providence school population.
“As Dominicans, we feel insulted,” said Lorenzo Acevedo, a Dominican man who heard of the incident on the radio. “We feel that we have been stepped on, like our flag.”
“It means they don’t want us here,” said Prisca Hernández.
“For someone to act like that, you don’t need words,” said Mara Pimentel, who is Puerto Rican. “That’s disrespectful to anybody.”
Jerry Hopper expressed similar outrage, adding the administrator should be fired.
“What kind of example are you setting for the kids?” Hopper asked.
Rather than offering guidance to the students, Hopper said, “It’s like you are killing their hopes and dreams.”
“This is the United States of America. It shouldn’t be happening.”
“In any country, if there is something that one respects, it is the flag, regardless of whose flag it is,” added Acevedo.
On Tuesday, Providence School Supt. Tom Brady sent an e-mail statement to Pichardo and members of the Latino news media who had inquired about the incident. Brady wrote that an administrator “displayed a lack of judgment and cultural insensitivity in his actions toward students who were demonstrating pride in their Dominican heritage.
“In video footage from the school’s security cameras, it does appear that the administrator may have engaged in disrespectful treatment of the Dominican flag,” Brady wrote. “The Providence public school district values the rich diversity and variety of cultural identities of its students, faculty and staff and such blatant disregard for the culture of another by any member of the Providence School Department community is never to be tolerated.”
The administrator, he said, has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
“We apologize to the students and their families for the apparent actions of this administrator,” Brady concluded, “and I pledge that appropriate personnel action will be taken.”
Yesterday, Pichardo said that he was pleased with Brady’s prompt response, but he asked Brady to hold a public meeting with Roger Williams students and parents to discuss racial sensitivity and asked the School Department to develop a policy regarding the observance of ethnic holidays.
“At this point, I’m happy with their response,” Pichardo said. “But we will not tolerate this type of action toward anyone’s flag. It’s unacceptable.”
— Maria Armental contributed to this story.
Berlin Still Divided on How to Commemorate Wall
By Jess Smee
It has been nearly 20 years since Berliners hacked away at the Wall that once separated East Germany from the West. Two decades on, its crumbling remnants remain highly controversial. Many would like to see Berlin make more of its unique history, but old wounds are taking time to heal.
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Bernauer Strasse used to be just another unassuming residential street — that is until the Berlin Wall catapulted it to international fame overnight. The street, which was built into the city’s Cold-War-era divide, saw east Berliners flee to the West by clambering out of upper-story windows towards the crowds on the street below.
PHOTO GALLERY: REMEMBERING THE BERLIN WALL
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (4 Photos)
The historic images were beamed around the world and the road which lined the east-west border became an icon of the human tragedy behind the Berlin Wall. Today, despite its less than central location, Bernauer Strasse, is the site of the capital’s memorial to the Wall, attracting a steady stream of visitors.
Coaches with foreign number plates stand just meters away from the grey concrete slabs of the former wall. Tourists wander through the Berlin drizzle: But those who expect a taste of the city’s dramatic history often leave somewhat bemused.
“Part of visiting Berlin is finding trails of its unique recent history — but it has been hard to find this place,” said Juanjo Gonzalo, a Spanish tourist who was visiting the city for 10 days. “All we found was was a tiny sign reading ‘Wall’ by the metro station”.
Nearby a group of British students stood around a map trying to establish which side of the road used to be the east and which was on the west.
The tourists’ bewilderment has been supported by the German press which, this week, fired some sharp words at the important site. “A virtually indecipherable wasteland,” ran a headline in Die Tageszeitung, while the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: “Here Berlin has gambled away an inheritance of international importance.”
PHOTO GALLERY: BERLIN WALL ‘SHOOT TO KILL’ ORDER FOUND
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (15 Photos)
Indeed, the site is far from straight forward to negotiate. One of its more controversial features is a massive Wall memorial, built by the Stuttgart-based architects Kohlhoff&Kolhoff in 1998. By positioning two steel walls parallel to each other, they wanted the reflections to create the impression of a never-ending wall. Unfortunately the metal has lost its shine and most visitors leave soon after they arrive.
Bernauer Strasse’s Revamp
But the Berlin Wall Foundation, the group which runs the memorial site, rebuffs the critics, saying the current confusion will soon be a thing of the past. Later this year, on Nov. 9 — two decades after the wall was deemed obsolete — a new information pavilion is to be opened. It is part of a broader revamp of the Bernauer Strasse memorial, due to be finished by 2011. Thomas Klein, of the Berlin Wall Foundation, admits there are still some “big deficits” but says the facelift will make the history accessible to more people, using media like animation to guide people through the story of the Wall. Ahead of the anniversary, the site will also host some 50 events including open-air cinema, readings, concerts and art projects.
Klein argues the foundation faces a delicate task. “This is not the site of one serious crime. We need to represent different aspects — the purpose of the divide, the Wall’s victims and also the more positive associations of the end of the Wall era, for example” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE in his office just meters away from the Wall’s bulky remains. “This is a deeply complicated place.”
That complexity is compounded by the emotive power of the Wall for Berliners. Ever since the legendary press conference on Nov. 9, 1989 when Günter Schabowski, a member of East Germany’s Politbüro, surprised journalists with news that people could travel without restrictions, most Berliners wanted to rid their city of what Westerners had dubbed the “Wall of Shame.”
In the immediate aftermath of the news, locals and visitors laid into the concrete divide with chisels and hammers. At Bernauer Strasse, the structure is only intact today because a local priest defended the wall as a warning for future generations, even guarding it at night to ward off hammer-wielding Berliners.
PHOTO GALLERY: REMEMBERING BERLIN WALL VICTIM
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (10 Photos)
Although the initial anger has faded, the ongoing sensitivity of the issue slows any decision-making. Just this week, amid much debate, the Berlin Wall Foundation, the organization in charge of the official memorial site, unanimously rejected a government call to rebuild a 19-meter-long hole in the surviving stretch of the Wall on Bernauer Strasse. Opposition to the project was strong — with officials rejecting any “Disneyland” style reconstruction. As Klein said: “Building a new artificial wall was simply not an option.”
Historian Brian Ladd, author of the book “The Ghosts of Berlin” also warns that the forthcoming 20th anniversary is an awkward time for Germany, not least because of the slower-than-expected pace of reunification.
“At the time, nearly everyone in Germany greeted the fall of the Wall as the great triumph of German history, an occasion for unalloyed joy. But it soon became clear that division had left wounds that would be difficult to heal,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Ever since the 1990s, Germans have had to ask: Can we celebrate the event — unlike so much else in German history — or do we have to think of it as a little like May 8, 1945, a time of sober reflection?”
Tourist Traps
But while decision-makers stall, Berlin is luring an increasing number of foreign visitors, many of whom are keen for a glimpse of the city’s divided past. But their options are sorely limited. Aside from Bernauer Strasse, many take a polluted trek alongside the 1,300 meters of the East-Side Gallery — Berlin’s longest segment of the Wall, which borders a six-lane road. There are other, less authentic, responses to the influx of “Wall tourists”. German students dressed up as Cold War border guards, now stand at historic border points like the Brandenburg Gate or Checkpoint Charlie, earning their euros by posing for photos or stamping passports. At Potsdammer Platz, where the no-man’s land has now sprouted skyscrapers, visitors take turns to photograph each other standing in front of a few pieces of the Wall, which have been repositioned near the metro entrance.
REUNIFICATION: HOW THE WALL FELL
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (19 Photos)
Elsewhere, a central Berlin hotel, the Westin Grand, has responded to the gap in the market by acquiring a large chunk of the former Wall for its foyer. Its guests can hire helmets and hammers to chip away their own chunk of Berlin Wall as a souvenir.
As the capital seeks to attract more visitors to offset the slowing economy, Christian Tänzler from Berlin’s Tourism Marketing GmbH told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that it was time to take a more balanced approach towards the Wall’s history. But he also acknowledged the extent of opposition within the city: “The people who suffered under the Wall still have the need to radically from themselves from it.”
But at the Bernauer Strasse memorial site, standing by the redundant Wall is still a poignant experience for many Germans. Some join services in a simple chapel on the former no-mans-land, built to remember the estimated 136 people who died trying to cross the death strip into West Berlin.
Among those moved by her visit to Bernauer Strasse is Jutta Marten, a former resident of West Berlin who recalled how she tried to visit her grandparents in East Berlin on August 13, 1961, the day the Wall was built.
“Suddenly we were turned away. No one knew what was going on. It all happened incredibly fast,” she said, standing alongside the building site near the Wall. “It is very hard for anyone to imagine how it feels to have your family separated from one day to the next. This place is authentic. It should help people to imagine how it felt.”
www.spiegel.de/international
WFD Layoffs Complete, No Talks Slated
Journal Staff Writer WOONSOCKET — No talks between the firefighters union and the city, which wants money-saving contract concessions, were held yesterday and none were set for today as the Fire Department scrambled through its first day with 11 fewer firefighters.
The layoffs took effect at 12:01 a.m. yesterday, made possible by a Superior Court judge’s decision on Wednesday to lift an earlier order barring them.
Joseph A. Andriole, staff representative for the Rhode Island chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said Woonsocket’s action was, to his knowledge, the first instance of firefighter layoffs in Rhode Island for budgetary reasons.
“They were all line personnel,” Andriole said, “firefighters that actually worked in the stations.”
Besides the 11 layoffs, seven vacant positions are going unfilled, cutting the department roster to 115 members.
Chief Kenneth Finlay said he had to keep some firefighters over to another shift to maintain a contract-mandated 28 firefighters per shift yesterday, but he said he was not going to allow anyone to be on duty for more than 48 hours straight.
“There have been quite a few overtime shifts,” he said. “But we knew overtime would go up.” Firefighters alternate two days of 14-hour night shifts with two days of 10-hour day shifts and then four days off.
Finlay said he thought he could maintain adequate staffing as long as the department didn’t suffer a rash of injuries. If too many department members are out too long, he said, he may have to ask the mayor and City Council for permission to bring back some of the laid-off men. He said the best solution would be an agreement on money-saving contract concessions.
“I’m really hoping for a resolution,” he said.
The layoffs are needed, the city says, to help offset an anticipated $3.6 million cut in the state aid the city is expecting from the state for the current year. The city’s chief labor negotiator, Joseph R. Rodio, said the city needs about $729,000 in concessions from the firefighters union to help close that gap. The sides have been talking for more than a month.
Rodio characterized the sides’ positions as “light-years apart.”
Andriole said the firefighters had been willing to meet over the weekend but the city declined.
Rodio said he spent the better part of yesterday in talks with the city’s police union, from which the city is seeking about $530,000 in concessions. He said progress was made in those talks. Police union negotiator Gary Gentile could not be reached for comment.
The city’s two City Hall unions have made concessions, agreeing to unpaid furlough days and a sliding scale of health insurance premium copayments. The city had originally sought 5 percent pay cuts and 15 percent copayments. Rodio said the City Hall union deals achieved the same monetary savings through different means.
Teen shot, killed at party in South Providence
Journal Staff Writer PROVIDENCE — A city teenager, partying with friends in the backyard of a house on Friendship Street, was shot and killed early yesterday morning, according to Providence police.
Angelo Camarena, 17, of Somerset Street, died at Rhode Island Hospital yesterday, after being driven there by other party-goers, the police said.
The police were called to Friendship and Pearl streets about 1:40 a.m., where they learned Camarena had been shot while he was in the rear yard of 382 Friendship St.
The police have yet to identify a suspect in the shooting death — the fourth homicide in the city this year.
Camarena, “a known gang associate,” according to Providence police Maj. Thomas F. Oates, was among 20 to 30 people at 382 Friendship St. when an unidentified assailant walked up to the corner lot and opened fire. The gunman fired several shots, striking Camarena once, before running away.
The shooting did not appear to be random, Oates said, though it’s unclear whether Camarena was targeted by the gunman.
Yesterday afternoon, there were no signs of the altercation outside the three-story wood-frame house in Upper South Providence and no one answered a visitor’s knocks on the door of the multi-unit house.
Last night, outside the Camarena family apartment at the corner of Pine and Somerset, in the Indian Village apartment complex, friends and family had set up a memorial of 17 thin white candles.
Rosary beads and a photo of Camarena –– slim, smiling, and wearing a dark Hollister T-shirt –– were taped to the side of the apartment, near the candles. Among the 25 young people was John “Y.C.” Rodriguez, Camarena’s 19-year-old cousin.
He said Camarena had been attending Ocean Tides, a residential program for at-risk boys in Narragansett, for the past two months and only came home for the weekend.
“We don’t know what happened. We were told it was a thing at a birthday party,” said Rodriguez. “The family is going crazy.”
With five sisters, Camarena was the second youngest of the family, which is originally from the Dominican Republic and came to Providence from New York City, said Rodriguez.
As Camarena’s friends wept, a police cruiser stood watch about half a block down and music blared from a party across the street. At one point, an unmarked car with members of the police department’s Gang Unit slowly passed by.
–– With staff reports from Philip Marcelo
The Costs of Empire: Can We Really Afford 1,000 Overseas Bases?
Our overseas military bases are pushing the nation deeper into debt and making the United States and the planet less secure.
In the midst of an economic crisis that’s getting scarier by the day, it’s time to ask whether the nation can really afford some 1,000 military bases overseas. For those unfamiliar with the issue, you read that number correctly. One thousand. One thousand U.S. military bases outside the 50 states and Washington, DC, representing the largest collection of bases in world history.
Officially the Pentagon counts 865 base sites, but this notoriously unreliable number omits all our bases in Iraq (likely over 100) and Afghanistan (80 and counting), among many other well-known and secretive bases. More than half a century after World War II and the Korean War, we still have 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in places like Aruba and Australia, Bulgaria and Bahrain, Colombia and Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Romania, Singapore, and of course, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — just to name a few. Among the installations considered critical to our national security are a ski center in the Bavarian Alps, resorts in Seoul and Tokyo, and 234 golf courses the Pentagon runs worldwide.
Unlike domestic bases, which set off local alarms when threatened by closure, our collection of overseas bases is particularly galling because almost all our taxpayer money leaves the United States (much goes to enriching private base contractors like corruption-plagued former Halliburton subsidiary KBR). One part of the massive Ramstein airbase near Landstuhl, Germany, has an estimated value of $3.3 billion. Just think how local communities could use that kind of money to make investments in schools, hospitals, jobs, and infrastructure.
Even the Bush administration saw the wastefulness of our overseas basing network. In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to close more than one-third of the nation’s overseas installations, moving 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilians back to the United States. National Security Adviser Jim Jones, then commander of U.S. forces in Europe, called for closing 20% of our bases in Europe. According to Rumsfeld’s estimates, we could save at least $12 billion by closing 200 to 300 bases alone. While the closures were derailed by claims that closing bases could cost us in the short term, even if this is true, it’s no reason to continue our profligate ways in the longer term.
Costs Far Exceeding Dollars and Cents
Unfortunately, the financial costs of our overseas bases are only part of the problem. Other costs to people at home and abroad are just as devastating. Military families suffer painful dislocations as troops stationed overseas separate from loved ones or uproot their families through frequent moves around the world. While some foreign governments like U.S. bases for their perceived economic benefits, many locals living near the bases suffer environmental and health damage from military toxins and pollution, disrupted economic, social, and cultural systems, military accidents, and increased prostitution and crime.
In undemocratic nations like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Saudi Arabia, our bases support governments responsible for repression and human rights abuses. In too many recurring cases, soldiers have raped, assaulted, or killed locals, most prominently of late in South Korea, Okinawa, and Italy. The forced expulsion of the entire Chagossian people to create our secretive base on British Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is another extreme but not so aberrant example.
Bases abroad have become a major and unacknowledged “face” of the United States, frequently damaging the nation’s reputation, engendering grievances and anger, and generally creating antagonistic rather than cooperative relationships between the United States and others. Most dangerously, as we have seen in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign bases create breeding grounds for radicalism, anti-Americanism, and attacks on the United States, reducing, rather than improving, our national security.
Proponents of maintaining the overseas base status quo will argue, however, that our foreign bases are critical to national and global security. A closer examination shows that overseas bases have often heightened military tensions and discouraged diplomatic solutions to international conflicts. Rather than stabilizing dangerous regions, our overseas bases have often increased global militarization, enlarging security threats faced by other nations who respond by boosting military spending (and in cases like China and Russia, foreign base acquisition) in an escalating spiral. Overseas bases actually make war more likely, not less.
The Benefits of Fewer Bases
This isn’t a call for isolationism or a protectionism that would prevent us from spending money overseas. As the Obama administration and others have recognized, we must recommit to cooperative forms of engagement with the rest of the world that rely on diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties rather than military means. In addition to freeing money to meet critical human needs at home and abroad, fewer overseas bases would help rebuild our military into a less overstretched, defensive force committed to defending the nation’s territory from attack.
In these difficult economic times, the Obama administration and Congress should initiate a major reassessment of our 1,000 overseas bases. Now is the time to ask if, as a nation and a world, we can really afford the 1,000 bases that are pushing the nation deeper into debt and making the United States and the planet less secure? With so many needs facing our nation, it’s unconscionable to have 1,000 overseas bases. It’s time to begin closing them.
Madoff sent straight to prison after pleading guilty to $65bn fraud
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 March 2009
- Article history
In front of a New York courtroom packed with angry, embittered victims who lost millions of dollars in Madoff’s $65bn (£47bn) Ponzi scheme, the 70-year-old financier confessed to 11 criminal charges of operating a vast, corrupt business empire dating back to the early 1990s.
Andrew Clark at the sentencing of Madoff in New York Link to this audio Madoff said he was “deeply sorry and ashamed” of his actions and accepted that he had hurt “many, many people”.
Rejecting a request by defence lawyers for Madoff’s bail to be continued pending formal sentencing in June, the judge Denny Chin, sent the financier directly to jail. “In the light of Mr Madoff’s age, he has the incentive to flee and he has the means to flee,” said the judge. “Bail is revoked.”
After a hearing lasting barely 90 minutes, US marshals handcuffed the slim, grey-haired fund manager and led him away to a federal prison. The US government is pressing for the maximum possible punishment of a 150-year jail term.
Madoff’s imprisonment ends three months of house arrest for the once-respected Wall Street fixture, whose clients included Hollywood stars Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, the author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and scores of charities, hedge funds and pension funds.
Exposed by a meltdown in global financial markets, Madoff’s financial empire began unravelling in December. Statements sent to clients suggested that his fund contained nearly $65bn but investigators have so far found only $1bn.
Hundreds of investors, bystanders and media queued from the early hours of the morning to get a glimpse of Madoff, who arrived at 7.30am in a silver 4×4.
The car’s progress to the court was broadcast live by television helicopters and Madoff, who has been the subject of death threats, was surrounded by a tight security detail.
Once inside, the judge questioned Madoff on whether he understood the charges, whether he had sought adequate legal advice and on his mental fitness. Listing the 11 charges of fraud, money-laundering, false statements and perjury in turn, the judge asked Madoff how he was pleading.
“Guilty,” replied Madoff to each count, in a dull, expressionless tone. Asked to explain exactly what he had done, Madoff gave a brief speech describing how his scheme originated in the early 1990s when a recession made it difficult to produce healthy returns. Instead of investing in stocks and shares, he began using new deposits to pay out fake profits to existing clients.
“I’m actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly speak about the crimes for which I am so deeply sorry and ashamed,” he said.
The financier said that at the outset, he had been falsifying records on a temporary basis: “I believed it would end shortly and that I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme. This proved difficult and, indeed, impossible.”
Madoff accepted that he had been living a lie for many years: “As the years went by, I realised my risk and that this day would inevitably come.”
He described laundering money through a London branch of his company to create a false paper trail, and he accepted concocting sophisticated tales to customers about a purported “split strike” strategy to beat his rivals.
“I’m painfully aware,” said Madoff, “that I have deeply hurt many, many people including clients, my family and my friends,” said Madoff.
The level of anger in the courtroom was palpable. At one stage, Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, mentioned that the financier’s wife, Ruth, had paid for guards to monitor her husband’s home detention “at her own expense”. There was loud, outraged laughter from victims who regard her money as ill-gotten proceeds from her husband’s fraud.
Several victims were allowed to address the court. One of those who spoke, George Nierenberg, accused the financier of protecting accomplices to his “egregious” activities: “I know Mr Madoff’s operation was massive. He didn’t commit these crimes alone.”
Stepping towards Madoff, who was staring straight ahead at the judge, Nierenberg said: “I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance to turn around and look at your victims.”
As a marshal moved forward to avert a confrontation and the judge interjected, Madoff turned and briefly glanced over.
Maureen Ebel, a widowed, retired nurse who has been obliged to take a housekeeping job after losing her savings to Madoff, told the court that she objected to the financier’s guilty plea circumventing a full trial.
“If we go to trial, we have more chance to comprehend the global scope of his horrendous crime,” said Ebel, 60. “We can hear and bear witness to the pain that Mr Madoff has inflicted on the young, the old and the infirm.”
Legal experts have expressed surprise that Madoff pleaded guilty without any attempt to bargain for lenient treatment by the prosecution. Some have suggested that a deal fell apart because Madoff refused to confess to a charge of conspiracy, which would have implied that others were involved in his crimes.
Others say that the US government has opted to throw the book at Madoff, mindful of the criticism over federal authorities’ failure to spot his crimes earlier.
“They know there’s a great deal of public outrage,” said Bradley Simon, a former federal prosecutor who believes the authorities will still need Madoff’s help. “There’s no way the government is going to end this case by just prosecuting Bernard Madoff and there’s no way they’re going to bring down anyone else without Madoff’s co-operation.”
www.guardian.co.uk
Obama signs $410bn spending bill
Barack Obama, the US president, has signed into law a $410bn bill to fund the federal government until the end of September, despite his own concerns and those of Republicans. Upon signing the budget on Wednesday, Obama demanded that legislators in the Democratic-controlled congress halt the practice of slipping money into spending bills for unrelated state projects. “I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it’s necessary for the ongoing functions of government and we have a lot more work to do,” Obama said. “We can’t have congress bogged down at this critical juncture in our economic recovery. “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past. So, let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability that the American people have every right to expect and demand.” Contentious bill Republican legislators – the minority in congress – had objected to the large spending commitment in light of soaring national debt. “In just 50 days, congress has voted to spend about $1.2 trillion,” Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate leader, said. “To put that in perspective, that’s about $24bn a day, or about $1bn an hour – most of it borrowed.” The newly signed bill includes funds for the departments of transportation and agriculture, as well as measures that begin to roll back strict limits on travel and trade with Cuba. Under the current law, US citizens can visit their family in Cuba once every three years. The new bill would change that to once a year. Senators sent the bill to the White House on Tuesday following a contentious fight. Many Republicans fought the bill because it raised government spending by eight per cent above fiscal 2008 levels, saying that it added more money to programmes already funded by the $787bn economic stimulus package approved last month. Debate over the bill, which has at times been full of partisan rhetoric, may foreshadow even bigger battles over Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget for 2010, and his plans to overhaul national health care, which congress will turn to in the coming weeks. |
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Obama’s New Spending Bill Has 9,000 Earmarks
By: William Douglas and David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks.
“We need earmark reform,” Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. “And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”
President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that’s riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts on Capitol Hill to curtail the practice.
The bill will contain about 9,000 earmarks totaling $5 billion, congressional officials say. Many of the earmarks — loosely defined as local projects inserted by members of Congress — were inserted last year as the spending bills worked their way through various committees.
So while Obama and McCain were slamming earmarks on the campaign trail, House and Senate members — Democrats and Republicans — were slapping them into spending bills.
“It will be a little embarrassing for the president if he signs a bill with that many earmarks on it,” said Stan Collender , a veteran Washington budget analyst. “He’ll say they’re left over from the Bush years, and he as to say that next year the bill will be clean.”
Experts agree that most earmarks are legitimate. Cary Leahey , senior economist with Decision Economics in New York , said the nation’s economic crisis is a contributing factor to the plethora of earmarks. Lawmakers can argue that for a relatively small price they’ve helped boost the economy.
“One congressman’s earmark is another legislative way to fix a serious problem in his district,” Leahey said.
Kenneth Thomas , a lecturer in finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business, agrees.
“I generally believe that the priority is getting money into the system sooner rather than later, especially if it’s for projects that will use local contractors and create jobs,” he said.
Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Earmarks have come under fire because of those that seem to provide what Maya MacGuineas , president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, calls “laugh lines,” such as Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” or North Dakota’s Lawrence Welk Museum .
Obama pledged to take a hard hand on earmarks and warned lawmakers in a Feb. 3 letter from Budget Director Peter Orszag not to decorate the recently signed $787.2 billion stimulus bill with them.
Democrats declared the bill earmark-free. Republicans disagreed.
“While this bill does not include traditional earmarks, we should all understand that there are earmarks in this bill,” said Sen. Mike Enzi , R- Wyo. “There is $850 million … to bail out Amtrak , a $75 million earmark for the Smithsonian, a $1 billion earmark for the 2010 census.”
Democrats have been trying to revamp the earmark process for about two years. In 2007, they instituted a system that required members to explain the contents of each earmark, as well as a justification for why it was included in the legislation that way. They claimed this led to a reduction in earmarks by as much as 43 percent.
But critics contended the system still had problems. Simply making information more available, they said, didn’t address the major criticism: That such projects should go through the regular legislative process, subject to detailed hearings and bipartisan votes.
Not only does this mean the public has no chance to challenge questionable spending, but too often powerful interests who know how to work the system get favorite measures inserted.
For instance, Congressional Quarterly reported recently that more than 100 House members got earmarks for clients of the PMA Group , a lobbying firm with close ties to Rep. John Murtha , D- Pa. , who heads the powerful defense spending subcommittee. The CQ Politics analysis said that in the 2009 defense spending bill, which Congress approved last year, PMA clients got about $300 million .
The CQ study came after reports that the FBI is investigating the possibility of illegal campaign contributions by PMA to Murtha and other lawmakers. A Murtha spokesman said earlier this month that the FBI probe has nothing to do with Murtha. A PMA spokesman declined to comment on the probe.
Appropriations committee chairmen say they are on track to reform the earmark process beginning in fiscal 2010 by requiring members to make public their requests early, so the public can scrutinize them and presumably contact lawmakers.
The change, though, doesn’t apply to the 2009 funding that Congress will consider next week.
Several experts believe that dramatically reducing the number of earmarks, while a laudable goal, is almost impossible. But others contend that earmarks aren’t that big of a problem.
“Earmarks get more attention than they deserve,” said MacGuineas. “The problem is that they cause a loss of confidence in the whole budget process.”
© 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Reprinted Via Newscom.
Obama bin Lyin “Deck of Deception”
This is a real good example of Capitalist Propaganda. I find it more disturbing that most people lack a fundamental understanding of what Socialism actually is. – Carey
OBAMA bin LYIN
“DECK of DECEPTON”
Cure the ‘OBAMA HANGOVER’!
Order your ‘Obama bin Lyin’ Deck of Deception!
Based on Obama’s response to the economic situation in the U.S., it has become clear that his socialist bent is alive and well! But the proof is in the pudding. In Obama’s case, Wall Street does not seem to have the same confidence that voters had when Obama was elected! Maybe that is because Obama’s solution is to earmark Billions for liberal organizations like ACORN, which has been accused by many of committing voter fraud in the 2008 election on Obama’s behalf. And financial experts believe that there is more downside to come! In the Obama bin Lyin Deck of Deception, we warned about Obama’s proclivity toward Socialism (King of Diamonds) and toward Marxism (Ace of Spades), by pointing out that his remarks to Joe the Plumber that he wanted to “spread the wealth around”. That’s not just semantics, like Obama tried to pass it off as, but pure Marxism! “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need!”
Put in Cost Accounting terms, “from each according to his ability” is like the selling price of a product, and “to each according to his need” is like the cost to produce a product. The difference is Profit, and in Obama’s world, the profit goes directly to the Federal Government in the form of tax revenue obtained by the 20% of Americans who account for 80% of the tax revenue. That 20% is the small business owner who is successful at what they do through hard work. If Obama had his way, we’d be a socialist economy tomorrow, and we predicted it all in the Obama bin Lyin Deck of Deception!
www.Newsmax.com
Pakistan is boiling
Ahmad: Obama’s decision to add troops and arm Afghan militias is dangerous Pt.1
Sharmini Peries speaks with Senior Analyst Aijaz Ahmad about the dangers of the long-term US involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ahmad says the only way for Obama to proceed in the region is to withdraw US military presence there and strengthen regional powers for a stable Afghanistan.
Aijaz Ahmad: Pakistan is in complete chaos – Bad decisions Pt. 2
The recent leadership shifts in Pakistan coupled with wave of terrorist attacks, and the ongoing US Army drone missile from bases inside Pakistan are all wreaking havoc on the Pakistani people. “Pakistan is in complete chaos,” says Aijaz Ahmad, Senior News Analyst for The Real News Network.
Bio
Focus on Gaza
Al Jazeera’s recent coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza was unparalleled. The network was the only international broadcaster with reporters on both sides of the border, in Israel and Gaza.
In Depth
The war may now be over but the human suffering continues. Focus on Gaza is a new weekly show that will examine all facets of life in the Gaza Strip.
Presented by Imran Garda, the programme will bring all the latest news and developments in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Al Jazeera will also showcase family life in the densely populated area that some describe as the world’s largest open prison.
Focus on Gaza features Al Jazeera’s team in the territory, including correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin, as we continue to lead the way in covering one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
The Blockade
In the week that British activists arrived in Gaza with 100 trucks of aid, we look at the blockade they broke though, and the impact it is having on quality of life.
We speak to George Galloway himself about why he and his British volunteers made it their mission to bring the goods to Gazans personally.
Also in the programme we feature a cartoon about life under siege made for an Israeli anti-blockade group by the director of acclaimed animation Waltz With Bashir.
And we spend the day out at sea with fisherman off the Gazan coast as they risk their lives for their catch. It’s an industry desperately struggling to remain viable with ever-declining yields as tensions on the ground mean tighter controls imposed out at sea.
Part 1 Focus On Gaza
Part 2 Focus On Gaza
Rebuilding Gaza
Israel’s war on Gaza left 4,000 homes destroyed and 17,000 damaged. Schools, hospitals, police stations, even the parliament building all need to be rebuilt.
The international community has pledged $5bn to fund the reconstruction but the Israeli government is refusing to allow even the most basic building materials into the Strip.
Todd Baer reports on how this is hampering reconstruction efforts and we ask Major Peter Lerner from the Israeli defence ministry, whether the blockade makes a mockery of the pledge.
In our weekly film on family life in Gaza, we follow a father as he tries to get help for his family, which was made homeless by the war.
Part 1 Rebuilding Gaza
Part 2 Rebuilding Gaza
Policing Gaza
Two months to the day since police stations across Gaza were hit in Israeli air strikes, killing dozens and marking the first day of the war, we ask why the Gazan police were Israel’s number one target and how a now ruined Gaza can be policed at all.
We also revisit the Samouni’s – the family Al Jazeera English followed throughout the war – to find out how the children are attempting to go on with their lives after losing their loved ones.
Usama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, joins the show to discuss Palestinian reconciliation.
Part 1 Policing Gaza
Part 2
A Crime Of War?
Human rights investigators continue to look into allegations that Israeli soldiers may have committed crimes of war during their Gaza military campaign.
The first Focus on Gaza, A Crime of War? looks at the story of an alleged war crime that occurred in the small village of Khuza’a, half a kilometre from the Israeli border.
Ayman Mohyeldin speaks with village residents who tell the story of a Gazan woman who was killed with a single shot to the head while waving a white flag as she led children to safety.
Part 1 A Crime Of War?
Part 2 A Crime Of War?
Focus on Gaza can be seen on Al Jazeera each week at the following times GMT: Friday 1430 and 2030; Saturday 0330 and 2230; Sunday 0830
Source: english.aljazeera.net
After the fire, grief
“We were very close,” says Ronny Silva, who lost his brother, Anthony, in a fire last Saturday in Pawtucket. Silva is shown with the dog his brother gave him, whom they called “Mr. Wendell.”
The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer
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The fire at this apartment house in Pawtucket began when a first-floor tenant apparently left a cigarette burning while she went to the second floor to have supper with her elderly mother.
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ANTHONY SILVA
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Mike Finnegan, 38, lives temporarily with Ronny Silva on Meadow Street in Pawtucket, across the street from the house where Finnegan had lived with his mom and grandmother until a fire last Saturday.
The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer
–>PAWTUCKET Six days later and Ronny Silva has no interest in crossing Meadow Street and walking up to his brother’s third-floor apartment.
“I don’t feel like it,” he was saying yesterday from his living room, the window shades drawn on a sunny morning. “It makes me nervous.”
Six days later, and where his body won’t go, his mind won’t seem to leave.
“I don’t know what happened, that’s the thing,” Silva says. “Nobody knows what happened on that third floor except Anthony.”
His voice starts to break: “I couldn’t make it up to the third floor. There’s a fire escape, but I forgot all about it. I was too busy thinking of her. I couldn’t leave her up there, you know?”
Last Saturday night, at 8:15, Ronny Silva was home watching television when his neighbor Louise Finnegan banged on the door screaming for help. Her three-story tenement house across the street, the one her parents owned for decades, was on fire with her mother trapped inside.
Finnegan, who lives on the first floor, had apparently left a cigarette burning when she went up to the second floor to have supper with her 80-year-old mother, Ingeborg Turkiw. On the way downstairs, she noticed some “fog.” Then she opened the door of her apartment. A blast of superheated air struck her face and singed her hair.
She screamed out for her pets and began to choke on the thick black smoke. Out the front door she stumbled and ran across the street to Ronny Silva’s.
Ronny Silva, 45, knows the house well. Two years ago, after his mother died and he lost the Johnston apartment they shared, Ronny moved in with his older brother Anthony for a couple of months. It’s hard sometimes living with relatives, and harder still in a cramped, one-bedroom apartment.
Ronny, an out-of-work carpenter, eventually moved across the street into a small house he shares with Margaret Martin. Anthony, a seasonal house painter, often came over for supper. On Wednesday evenings, the two brothers, along with Finnegan’s son, Michael, enjoyed what they called their bowling night. They would hook up their Wii computer game to Ronny’s television and bowl for bragging rights.
When Ronny got to the house Saturday night, flames and smoke spewed from windows that had exploded from the heat.
“I tried to get in the side door there, but there was too much smoke and flames,” he says. “Then I ran around the front and I saw [Louise’s mother] in the window. She was yelling ‘Help me.’ ”
Ronny didn’t think about Anthony at first; he had run right past his car parked on the street without noticing it. The elderly lady in the nightgown — there in the window above the front-door portico — had all his attention.
He and another neighbor started climbing the two metal trellises that also serve as support columns for the small roof. The other neighbor “couldn’t take the heat and jumped off,” says Silva, “but I couldn’t leave her ….”
Silva reached the roof, pulled the woman from the window and then tried to climb back down with her. She was too heavy for him to hold with one hand as he gripped the roof railing with his other. “I couldn’t get her all the way down so I dropped her. Thank God there was people down there that caught her. She’s doing OK, only some scratches on her arm.”
It all happened so fast; the fire raging, the poisonous smoke belching. Then, at some point, Ronny Silva saw his brother’s car. The firefighters arrived and pushed him and the others back. “I told them my brother’s up there on the third floor.”
Ronny shakes his head: “I heard nothin’ from him.”
Firefighters took Anthony M. Silva, 47, from the third floor. He died en route to Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island a few blocks away, where Ronny Silva, his two sisters, their father and other relatives gathered and wept.
“They said he tried to make it to the door but there was too much smoke.”
ALL WEEK LONG, friends and relatives stopped by Ronny’s house to offer condolences. Many brought clothes and food to Louise and Michael Finnegan, who lost virtually everything in the fire. The mourners looked across the street at the gutted tenement house with the scorch marks above the first-floor windows and called Ronny Silva a hero.
“I’m not a hero,” he kept telling them.
By Tuesday night, Ronny wanted to get away from it all. The Dunkin’ Donuts Center replaced the destroyed tickets Michael Finnegan had for the Celtic Woman performance with better ones. Ronny and Mike sat close to the stage. Ronny again found himself rejecting the hero title as Michael told some other show patrons what had happened.
The show “took my mind off stuff, definitely,” says Ronny. “For one night anyway.”
Ronny Silva knows he did the best he could. Even if he had remembered that fire escape, even if he could have reached up and grabbed it, the fire was too hot for him to climb to the third floor. “If I got up there, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get back down.”
He just keeps wishing things were different.
On Wednesday, one of Ronny’s sisters negotiated the charred first floor of the tenement house and made it up to Anthony’s apartment. She gathered up a few of the miniature cars and figurines he liked to collect and a suit which Anthony will be buried in next week.
Tomorrow from 1 to 5 p.m., the JK Social Club, 520 Central Ave. in Pawtucket, is hosting a spaghetti dinner to raise money for Anthony’s funeral.
Ronny Silva will be there for his brother.
Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses
Posted on Mar 17, 2009
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| Composite: AP photo: Mike Groll, file, and Mark Lennihan |
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Laying down the law: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is on AIG’s case. |
There must be a criminal investigation of the AIG debacle, and it looks as if New York’s top lawman is on the case. The collusion to save this toxic company in order to salvage the rogue financiers who conspired to enrich themselves by impoverishing millions is being revealed as the greatest financial scandal in U.S. history. Instead of taking bonuses, the culprits should be taking perp walks.
I’m not just referring to the swindlers in the Financial Products Subsidiary of AIG who devised and sold those insurance policies on derivatives that brought the world economy to its knees. They do seem deserving of a special place in hell, and presumably the same divine power that according to Scripture labeled usury a high moral crime and threw the money-changers out of the temple will consider that outcome.
However, the enablers are the AIG leaders who, as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed Tuesday, signed those bonus contracts a year ago to reward the very people “principally responsible for the firm’s meltdown.” That’s a cool $44 million divided among the top 10 shysters, even though the depth of their chicanery was well known to top management.
As Cuomo noted in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank: “The contracts shockingly contain a provision that required most individuals’ bonuses to be 100% of their 2007 bonuses. Thus, in the spring of last year, AIG chose to lock in bonuses for 2008 at 2007 levels despite obvious signs that 2008 performance would be disastrous in comparison to the year before.”
The lame argument that those bonus-baby employees needed to be retained in order to sort out the mess they had created was also shot down by Cuomo, who revealed after his office’s initial investigation had pierced AIG’s veil of secrecy that “[e]leven of the individuals who received `retention’ bonuses of $1 million or more are no longer working at AIG, including one who received $4.6 million.”
But the $165 million in taxpayer funds used to reward them is but a sideshow in a far larger drama of moral decay swirling around the banking bailout. It should not distract from the many billions, not paltry millions, of our dollars being diverted to reward the very folks who brought us such misery. Consider the $12.8 billion of the $170 billion that taxpayers gave AIG in bailout funds that AIG then secretly diverted to Goldman Sachs, a company that evidently has a lock on both the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve no matter which political party is in power. It was the biggest payoff among those that AIG made to a score of foreign and domestic financial giants.
The bailout is a response to a banking crisis that resulted from the radical deregulation pushed by former Goldman Sachs honcho Robert Rubin when he was President Clinton’s treasury secretary. Another Goldman Sachs chairman-turned-treasury-secretary, Henry Paulson, in the Bush administration designed the trillion-dollar bank bailout that will go down as the greatest swindle in U.S. history.
It was because of Paulson that AIG was saved from bankruptcy hours after Goldman rival Lehman Brothers was allowed to go down the drain. Why that reversal of strategy in a top-secret meeting called by then New York Fed Chair Timothy Geithner, a Rubin protégé and now Barack Obama’s treasury secretary? Why was Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein the only financial industry CEO in attendance? When that news leaked out, his role was defended as that of a noninvolved concerned citizen with expert knowledge, and whose firm had no direct monetary stake in the outcome.
That was a lie.
Goldman Sachs was into AIG insurance policies for at least $20 billion, which is why the firm got that $12.8 billion while Paulson was in charge. It took six months for the embarrassing facts to finally come out. The bailout program was administered by Neel Kashkari, a former Goldman Sachs VP; why are we not surprised at that?
Another pretend innocent in all this is AIG’s CEO Edward M. Liddy, famed defender of the $440,000 AIG executive retreat in Monarch Beach, Calif., held on the heels of the taxpayer bailout. His actions now are defended as mistakes made by a well-intentioned outsider who decided to work for a dollar a year after Paulson appointed him head of AIG. That is just garbage.
Liddy was complicit in Goldman Sachs’ role in creating this mess. As a director of Goldman Sachs, he was paid $685,770 in 2007 and would have come in for some questioning if the firm had gone down. Liddy even headed its audit committee during the five years before he resigned that seat to take over AIG in September 2008. As for his salary sacrifice, not to worry; in 2005, when he was still CEO of Allstate Insurance, he received $26.7 million in compensation.
What we have here is a rare glimpse into the workings of the billionaires’ club, that elite gang of perfectly legal loan sharks who, in only the most egregious cases, will be judged as criminals—Bernard Madoff, former chairman of NASDAQ, comes to mind. These other amoral sharks, who confiscated billions from shareholders and the 401(k) accounts of innocent victims, were rewarded handsomely, rarely needing to break the laws their lobbyists had purchased.
Josef Fritzl trial: Engineer pleads guilty over baby’s death in Austrian cellar
Surprise admissions of homicide and enslavement follow reports of daughter’s presence in court
Josef Fritzl, the Austrian engineer who held his daughter Elisabeth captive in an underground prison for 24 years, today admitted he was responsible for the death of one of the seven children he fathered with her.
In a shock move on the third day of his trial, the 73-year-old calmly pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, including negligent homicide and enslavement. He had already admitted four of the charges against him – incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment.
For the first time since his arrest, last April, he also expressed regret for what he had done.
At a press conference this afternoon, the court authorities in St Pölten categorically denied reports that the now 42-year-old Elisabeth Fritzl was in court today. Franz Cutka, the court’s spokesman, said he could neither confirm nor deny that Elisabeth attended yesterday’s hearing. But he did say reports she had watched proceedings from an adjacent room were false. “There is no such room,” he told reporters.
Fritzl’s lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, said he was unable to confirm or deny Elisabeth’s attendance because to do so would breach the rules of the in-camera proceedings.
“You can draw your own conclusions from that,” he said. “I’m the wrong person to ask. If she was there [yesterday], it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, in terms of his confession,” he told the Guardian.
He suggested his client’s change of heart today came as a result of the psychological impact of yesterday’s gruelling court session, in which he watched a videotape of Elisabeth giving evidence.
“All I know is that he asked to see a psychiatrist in his cell [after hearing yesterday's testimony] and after that decided to give a full confession.” The case was adjourned this morning and will start again for what is expected to be the final day of the trial tomorrow at 9am Austrian time.
After the lawyers deliver their closing statements, the eight-member jury will retire to consider their verdicts. Under Austrian law, admission of guilt is not enough to pronounce a guilty verdict, so they will still have to consider the evidence they have heard. They will also have to decide whether Fritzl’s 11th-hour confession should be counted as a mitigating factor, which could alter his sentence.
This done, the jury will decide on Fritzl’s final sentence, under the guidance of three judges. He is expected to spend the rest of his days in an institution for the criminally insane.
For the first time in the trial, Fritzl arrived in the courtroom this morning without covering his face with a blue folder.
Opening proceedings, the judge, Andrea Humer, said she wanted to return to Elisabeth’s testimony from yesterday.
“Do you have anything to say to me?” Humer asked Fritzl. “I recognise that I am guilty,” he responded, adding, “I regret it.”
“Why are you saying that now?” asked Humer. “Because of the videotape testimony of my daughter,” said Fritzl.
Referring to the murder charge, Humer asked why Fritzl hadn’t done more to help his newborn baby boy, Michael, who died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar in 1996.
“Did you not realise he was gravely ill?”
Fritzl responded: “I just overlooked it. I thought the baby was going to survive. I should have realised. It was only yesterday I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth. I had never realised it before.”
Fritzl previously admitted burning the child’s body in an incinerator in his back yard, but had denied he was responsible for the baby’s death. The surviving twin, Alexander, was one of three of Elisabeth’s seven children who “appeared” above ground at the Fritzl’s house in Amstetten, west of Vienna. Alexander was the last of the three children to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie.
Fritzl also changed his plea from partial to full guilt on the rape charge and admitted the slavery charge.
For the first two days of his trial, Fritzl denied that he enslaved Elisabeth in the purpose-built, windowless cellar he constructed under his own home.
The jury heard that Elisabeth was imprisoned under Ybbsstrasse 40 at the age of 18. Her father lured her into the cellar on 29 August 1984 by putting a cloth over her nose and mouth and dragging her into the cellar. He then secured a chain around her stomach so she could not escape. The next day he raped her. As she bore his children over the next 24 years, he repeatedly raped her in front of them, the court heard.
Christiane Burkheiser, the prosecuting lawyer, described the cellar as Fritzl’s “playground”, where he used his daughter like a “toy”.
We’ve heard America ‘loudly and clearly’
WASHINGTON – The head of battered insurance giant AIG told Congress on Wednesday that “we’ve heard the American people loudly and clearly” in their rage over executive bonuses.
Under intense pressure from the Obama administration and Congress, the head of the bailed-out insurance giant declared that some of the firm’s executives have begun returning all or part of bonuses totaling $165 million. He said the payouts were a legal obligation of the company, although he called them “distasteful.”
Edward Liddy, brought in last year to oversee a company that has received $182 billion in federal bailout funds, offered no details. Buffeted by congressional outrage, he said he was angry, too, but did not respond directly when advised in pungent terms to pay to the Treasury all the money handed out last weekend in “retention payments.”
“Eat it now. Take it out of your profits down the road. It’s a lot sweeter now than it’s gonna be later,” said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.
Liddy slid into the witness chair at a congressional hearing as President Barack Obama sought anew to quell a furor that has bedeviled his administration since word of the bonuses surfaced over the weekend.
Obama, who took office just under two months ago, told reporters his administration was not responsible for a lack of federal supervision of AIG that preceded the company’s demise, nor for the decision made last year to pay what he called “outrageous bonuses.”
Still, he said, “The buck stops with me.” He said that “my goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again,” and he disclosed the administration was consulting with Congress on the possibility of creating a new agency to govern the meltdown of large financial institutions such as AIG.
He also gave a strong vote of confidence to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who has been the target of growing Republican criticism.
Obama spoke as congressional Democrats worked on legislation designed to recoup most or all of the $165 million by exposing it to new taxes. A House vote was likely Thursday on a bill placing a 90 percent tax on the payments to top-paid executives at companies like AIG that received large bailouts from the federal government.
Republicans raised pointed questions about the extent of Geithner’s advance knowledge of the bonuses, and stressed they had been locked out of discussions earlier this year when Democrats decided to jettison a provision from legislation that could have revoked the payments.
“The fact is that the bill the president signed, which protected the AIG bonuses and others, was written behind closed doors by Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. There was no transparency,” said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
Liddy’s presence in a congressional hearing room was evidence of a bipartisan opposition to the bonuses, although his status as a $1-a-year CEO called out of retirement last year to try and untangle AIG’s financial mess made him a less-than-easy target for expressions of outrage.
“No one knows better than I that AIG has been the recipient of generous amounts of government financial aid,” he said. “We have been the beneficiary of the American people’s forbearance and patience,” he added, acknowledging that patience was wearing thin.
Liddy said that on Tuesday, he had “asked those who have received retention payments in excess of $100,000 or more to return at least half of those payments.” Some have “already stepped forward and returned 100 percent,” he added.
Asked by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., whether he would turn over the names of individuals who received the money, as well as the amounts, he said he would do so only if assured the information not be made public.
When Frank said he might seek a subpoena, Liddy said he was concerned about the safety of the employees and their families, and read aloud from a death threat received by one of them.
Frank said he would be guided in part by security considerations, but Ackerman later noted that Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general, was already seeking the names with a subpoena.
Liddy said he had not yet complied, sidestepped several times when asked whether he would, and finally said “it would be our intent” to do so.
But Cuomo swiftly issued a statement saying Liddy’s pledge was “simply too little, too late. … Rather than take half-measures, AIG should immediately turn over the list, which we have subpoenaed, of who got what and when.”
He added, “We prefer not to go to court on this matter, but AIG is leaving us little choice. I hope the leadership at the company comes to its senses now.”
Separately, AIG spokesman Mark Herr said he could not say how many executives had turned back the money. “Bear in mind, these bonuses were only just paid,” he said.
He added the company may not release that information. Asked why, he responded, “Why is it cloudy today? Because sometimes it just is.”
For his part, Liddy also said the Federal Reserve knew long in advance of the bonus payments and acquiesced in them, noting that officials from the independent agency attend key company meetings. But he said the same was not true of Geithner, adding, “We do our work with the Federal Reserve.”
Liddy gave skeptical committee members what amounted to a tutorial in the practice of paying retention bonuses — he did not call them that — to executives.
He said the money was offered to executives in AIG’s financial products section, where risky investments finally became the entire company’s undoing. He said each executive was offered money to dispose of his “business book,” meaning the transactions he had been in charge of handling, and thus far, the company’s financial derivatives had been reduced from $2.7 trillion to $1.6 trillion.
He had decided it was worth paying the money to retain the services of executives who knew the business best, he said. And he had received legal advice that there were valid contracts requiring the payments.
“I know 165 million is a very large number. It’s a very large number. In the context of 1.6 trillion … we thought it was a good trade,” he said.
Liddy added there was still a risk of financial catastrophe if the remaining $1.6 trillion in financial instruments were not disposed of properly.
But Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., angrily told the witness the contract read like “the captain and the crew of the ship reserving the lifeboats.”
Liddy replied that he was not at the firm when the contracts were negotiated, and said, as he has before, that he would not have approved them.
www.msnbc.com
A big man with a big gun — FBI searching for serial robber
By Globe Staff
The FBI is asking for the public’s help in catching a man thought to have robbed a bank in Stoneham, two convenience stores in Cambridge, and another in Revere.
The Stoneham Savings Bank on Main Street was robbed at 3:37 p.m. on March 2. A white male in his late 30s, 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-4 and weighing 325 to 350 pounds, pointed a black handgun at bank employees while demanding money, the FBI said.
“He’s a very, very large man with a gun,” said FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz. “We consider him armed and dangerous.”
The suspect also did something that Marcinkiewicz said was unusual for a bank robber. Rather than simply focusing on bank employees, he also robbed a customer standing in line.
“We’ve never seen that before,” she said.
The other robberies included a Dec. 15 robbery at the Kirkland Convenience Store in Cambridge, a Jan. 29 robbery at the 7 Day Convenience Store in Revere, and a Feb. 10 robbery at the Quick Food Mart in Cambridge.
The FBI asked anyone with information to call its Violent Crimes Task Force at 617-742-5533.
www.boston.com
Israeli troops admit abuses in Gaza
Bennis: Public discourse about alleged Israeli war crimes is a break through
Bio
Source: www.therealnews.com
Obama’s Plan to Save the World
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Posted on Mar 24, 2009
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| AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel |
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Burning coal, whether within America’s borders or in China, above, contributes to global warming. As sea levels rise, so does the threat of mass migrations of people, intensifying competition for the resources essential for survival. |
By Scott Ritter
While pundits and politicians wrestle with immediate issues such as the economic meltdown, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, global climate change has emerged as one of the most critical and contentious security issues of the 21st century. The new director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, has cited rising temperatures, combined with an increase in weather-related natural disasters, as a major facilitator of governmental instability worldwide, especially in underdeveloped regions. Issues of poverty, infrastructure degradation, social and political collapse and environmental decay will all be exacerbated by global warming. While the crises stemming from climate change will initially manifest themselves most critically in regions of the world already impacted by political, social and economic turmoil, there is a pronounced threat of spillover as entire populations migrate from the stricken regions into areas where humans have a better chance of survival. The severity and longevity of the consequences of severe weather-related events will make current mechanisms of containing and mitigating these crises inadequate. The scope and scale of these massive migrations would be unprecedented in modern history, as would the ensuing conflicts over basic resources such as food and water, not to mention energy.
The potential catastrophe that global climate change could unleash on America makes every other foreign policy crisis pale in comparison. Recognizing the importance of proactive, as opposed to reactive, policy to head off these looming problems, President Obama has crafted a national policy designed to address the principal underlying cause of global climate change: greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas reduction is one of three pillars on which Obama has constructed his ambitious energy plan, the other two being economic stimulus and increased energy security. In the recent economic stimulus bill signed by the president, some $50 billion of a $789 billion total stimulus package will be set aside for programs related to efficient and renewable energy. This will be followed by an outlay of $150 billion over 10 years for investments in projects related to clean energy, efficient power generation and usage, and improved domestic oil and gas production.
Increased domestic energy production is linked with a broader concept of increased energy security, the stated objectives of which are to reduce American dependency on imported oil from the Middle East and Venezuela, which together account for 33 percent of the United States’ daily consumption, 10 million barrels. Reducing or eliminating this dependency is seen as a mechanism for freeing up American diplomatic and economic options in these critical regions, providing U.S. leaders with more flexibility in crafting solutions deemed to be in the national interest, and not so heavily tied to the need to guarantee continued access to the