SJ Mercury News, June 26, 2006

Lawmaker wants White House to prosecute the press

Before 911, even with all of the wars we've fought, this would never have been seriously considered.  The question is, why is it? More here:

Congressman Wants N.Y. Times Prosecuted

Market Watch June 24, 2006
GOP Candidate For Governor Calls for Forced Labor Camps

GOP Candidate For Governor Calls for Forced Labor Camps 23 Jun 2006 A Republican gubernatorial (AZ) candidate's call for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants drew rebukes Friday from two GOP lawmakers, who labeled it a low point in the immigration debate. The article in EFE, a national news agency of Spain, described Don Goldwater's plan as a "concentration camp" for migrants. [Halliburton's KBR is already on the case! See: KBR awarded $385M Homeland Security contract for U.S. detention centers .
 

What this article doesn't say: The Israel Lobby (Which includes such diverse groups as AIPAC, AEI, JINSA, Multiple News publications, journalists and editors, The Christian Right including The Southern Baptist Convention and thousands of unaffiliated groups bound together by the singular mission of Israel first) is one of the strongest constituencies behind the disastrous Iraq war and that the conflict between liberal pro-Israel hawks and populist antiwar left, is dividing the Democratic party, even if David Brooks and other MSM commentators are afraid to talk about it. Though they'll talk about Christian evangelists--people they don't know-- till the cows come home.  The Christian Right is also part of The Lobby.

This underlines the political significance of Walt & Mearsheimer: they may be intellectuals, but their work has had enormous political resonance. High noon.
 

Note: a soldier cannot be kidnapped.  Kidnapping is a civil crime.  A soldier, as a representative of the state is not a civilian and he may be captured but not kidnapped.

This is an instance of an active duty soldier manning an Israeli outpost that has been bombing Gaza non-stop since June 9, 2006.  According to Israeli publications, Israel has rained over 5,000 shells on Gaza since June 9th and averaged 750 a month since it 'withdrew' from Gaza. Supposedly, this was a cease fire period. During the same period approximately a dozen 3 mile range homemade qassam  rockets were fired at Israel.

The event covered in this story was a military operation designed to stop the Israeli shelling of Gaza civilians, in which soldiers were killed and one captured. Palestinian militia were following the rules of engagement.  This was not a terrorist attack, nor was it a criminal act as Israel is portraying in the media.
 

39-Years Later...

REMEMBERING THE
USS LIBERTY

Attacked June 8, 1967 in the Mediterranean  34 men were killed.  172 Wounded.

Justice? None.

When Americans and Politicians say, "We support our troops," most lie.  If 'we' supported our troops, we would support the crew and survivors of the USS Liberty.  We  will not because we prefer to protect a foreign nation's vanity over the lives, honor and respect of American citizens. 

The USS Liberty was attacked in peace time.  The miraculous escape from napalm, torpedo boats and aerial bombings is the stuff Hollywood movies love.  So why haven't you heard about the attack on the USS Liberty?  Because the country that attacked it is the only country in the world permitted to kill Americans and never have to answer for it.  Please learn about the heinous attack and even more astounding cover-up by the US and every single Administration since Johnson.  The families and survivors need Americas support.  After 39 years, haven't they waited long enough?

June 7, 2006, PINR
As Elections Approach, Mexico Faces Internal Instability

Hailed as a democratic leap forward, general elections in Mexico in 2000 ended the Institutional Revolutionary Party's (P.R.I.) 70-year long political monopoly. However, the country's new president, Vicente Fox, and his National Action Party (P.A.N.) were unable to gain a legislative majority, winning only 224 seats in the 500-seat lower house and 53 seats in the 128-seat senate. Mid-term elections, held in 2003, further undermined President Fox's legislative position, leaving P.A.N. with only 148 seats in the lower house and 47 seats in the senate.

The sectarian civil war in Baghdad is sparsely reported but from the mixed provinces around the capital there is almost no news. It is too dangerous for Iraqi as well as foreign journalists to go there.

There are sporadic police reports of the violence but they are impossible to check out. On the same day that parliament met, for instance, the bodies of 15 people, all tortured before they were killed, were delivered to the morgue in Musayyib south of Baghdad; nobody knows who killed them or why.
 

June 5, 2006, CounterPunch
Population Transfers, Land Theft and Bankrupt Ghettos
Palestine: It's All Over

The first item I ever wrote about Palestinians was around 1973, when I was just starting a press column for a New York weekly called the Village Voice. It concerned a story in the New York Times about a "retaliatory" raid by the Israeli air force, after a couple of Al Fatah guerillas had fired on an IDF unit. I'm not sure whether there any fatalities. The planes flew north and dumped high explosive on a refugee camp in Lebanon, killing a dozen or so men, women and children.

I wrote a little commentary, noting the usual lack of moral disquiet in the Times' story about this lethal retaliation inflicted on innocent refugees. Dan Wolf, the Voice's editor, called me in and suggested I might want to reconsider. I think, that first time, the item got dropped. But Dan's unwonted act of censorship riled me and I started writing a fair amount about the lot of the Palestinians.

Also see: Jewish Opposition to Zionism

In a situation in which the governments of the West effectively support the continuation of the occupation, even if they declare their opposition to it, this role moves to civil organizations. When a group of American attorneys, including Jews, calls for a boycott of the Caterpillar company, whose bulldozers razed complete neighborhoods in Khan Yunis and Rafah, it should be thanked for this. The same applies to the boycott of the universities: When an association of British university lecturers boycotts Israeli colleagues who are not prepared to at least declare their opposition to the occupation, we should appreciate it.

June 4, 2006, Washington Post
Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science

Just how far will corporate lobbyists go to tilt governmental decisions in their favor? Last fall, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Clean Air Act does not require regulating carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet at an unprecedented rate. It turns out that two of the jurists who helped decide the case -- Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge David B. Sentelle -- attended a six-day global warming seminar at Yellowstone National Park sponsored by a free-market foundation and featuring presentations from companies with a clear financial interest in limiting regulation. Exxon Mobil Corp. and other large businesses contribute to conservative think tanks to help "educate" federal judges through seminars like the one at Yellowstone. The Code of Conduct for federal judges does not prohibit attending such seminars -- as long as participation does not "cast reasonable dout on the capacity to decide impartially issues that may come before them." Leaders of Congress and the federal courts seem to recognize that the federal judiciary ought to be out of bounds for lobbyists. Judges are appointed for life, and allowing insider access threatens the integrity of the one branch of government that should stand above politics. Court cases must be won by argument, not by influence, and that means putting a stop to judicial junkets that give one side of the debate an unfair advantage.

June 4, 2006, New York Times
Invoking Secrets Privilege Becomes a More Popular Legal Tactic

Facing a wave of litigation challenging its eavesdropping at home and its handling of terror suspects abroad, the Bush administration is increasingly turning to a legal tactic that swiftly torpedoes most lawsuits: the state secrets privilege. Officials have used the privilege...to ask the courts to throw out three legal challenges to the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program. The privilege claim, in which the government says any discussion of a lawsuit's accusations would endanger national security, has short-circuited judicial scrutiny and public debate. While the privilege...was once used to shield sensitive documents or witnesses from disclosure, it is now often used to try to snuff out lawsuits at their inception. "If the very people you're suing are the ones who get to use the state secrets privilege, it's a stacked deck," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut. Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University...said the administration's legal strategy "raises profound legal and policy questions." Under Mr. Bush, the secrets privilege has been used to block a lawsuit by a translator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after accusing colleagues of security breaches. Two lawsuits challenging the government's practice of rendition, in which terror suspects are seized and delivered to detention centers overseas, were dismissed after the government raised the secrets privilege.

Note: Sibel Edmonds is one of several whistleblowers with powerfully incriminating information on 9/11 who have been silenced with tactics like those mentioned above. To learn more about this critical case which has been blocked.

June 1, 2006, Baltimore Sun
Exxon pay limits rejected

Shareholders of Exxon Mobil Corp., whose departing chief executive got a $357 million retirement package, overwhelmingly rejected resolutions to rein in compensation at the company's annual meeting yesterday. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex W. Tillerson said predecessor Lee Raymond deserved a $357 million retirement package that he received in January because he delivered record profits.

Note: So price gouging at the gas pumps brings record oil profits and one of the CEO's responsible gets hundreds of millions of dollars as a retirement gift. What kind of message does that send? Why didn't other major newspapers pick up this little "detail."

May 31, 2006, Chicago Tribune/Los Angeles Times
High court curbs free-speech rights of public workers on the job

The Supreme Court restricted the free-speech rights of the nation's 21 million public employees Tuesday, ruling that the 1st Amendment does not protect them from being punished for complaining to their managers about possible wrongdoing. Although government employees have the same rights as other citizens to speak out on controversies of the day, they do not have the right to speak freely inside their offices on matters related to "their official duties," the Supreme Court said in a 5-4 decision. Lawyers for government whistle-blowers denounced the ruling as a major setback. "In an era of excessive government secrecy, the court has made it easier to engage in a government cover-up by discouraging internal whistle-blowing," said Steven Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. The decision threw out most of a lawsuit filed by Deputy District Atty. Richard Ceballos, who said he was disciplined after he wrot memos alleging that a police officer may have lied to obtain a search warrant. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed he was entitled to a trial on his lawsuit because he had spoken on a "matter of public concern." But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling Tuesday. Because Tuesday's decision interprets the 1st Amendment, it applies to governments at all levels, including federal and states agencies, public hospitals and public schools and colleges.

May 30, 2006, New York Times
Block the Vote

In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it's amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting. In Washington, a new law prevents people from voting if the secretary of state fails to match the information on their registration form with government databases. There are many reasons that names, SocialSecurity numbers and other data may not match, including typing mistakes. The state is supposed to contact people whose data does not match, but the process is too tilted against voters. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives.

May 28, 2006, Seattle Post-Intelligencer/Associated Press
U.S. corporations are sitting on huge stockpiles of cash

Imagine the dilemma of having so much cash in your bank account that you didn't know what to do with it. This pipe dream for the average American is now reality for the country's biggest corporations. The industrial companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index...have a staggering $643 billion in cash and equivalents. "We're in a time that is out of whack with all historical numbers,'' said Howard Silverblatt, equity market analyst at Standard & Poor's. "People are demanding why corporations need so much cash, what are they going to do with it?" Companies began propping up their reserves through 16 straight quarters of double-digit profit growth. Leading the pack with the most cash is Exxon Mobil Corp., which has about $36.55 billion on its balance sheet. That amount is nearly equal to its 2005 profit of $36.13 billion, the highest ever for a U.S. company. Some results of the cash riches: An unprecedented $500 billion of stock buybacks. Last year, Exxon/Mobil spent $18.2 billion buying its shares. One of the biggest avenues in which companies have spent this excess money has been through mergers and acquisitions. Some 75.4 percent of all deals under $1 billion so far this year were done purely with cash.

Note: A Google search reveals that though this Associated Press article was widely picked up by medium-sized newspapers in the U.S., none of the top 10 papers picked it up. The Seattle newspaper above also removed the work "huge" from the title after it was published. $36 billion means that more than $100 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. went into Exxon/Mobil profits last year, and another $100 for each person went into their cash reserves. If Exxon/Mobil and other oil companies have so much extra cash, why are gas prices so high? It's also quite interesting that the advertisements of these mega-corporations continually invite us to go into debt buying their products, while their profits and cash reserves grow ever higher.

May 27, 2006, Chronicle

Nevada blast put on hold indefinitely

The planned detonation of 700 tons of conventional explosives in the Nevada desert next month was postponed indefinitely Friday because of fears over the possible spread of radiation. The detonation site for the blast, known as "Divine Strake," is at the Nevada Test Site, which is 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The plan was to detonate 1.4 million pounds of fuel oil and fertilizer -- 280 times the amount used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The prospect has drawn critics, who say the explosion could kick radiation-laced soil into the air, and conspiracists, who say the blast is a front for testing new nuclear weapons.

May 24, 2006, USA Today

Psychiatric drugs fare favorably when companies pay for studies

Drug companies fund a growing number of the studies in leading psychiatric journals, and drugs fare much better in these company-funded studies than in trials done independently or by competitors, researchers reported Wednesday. About 57% of published studies were paid for by drug companies in 2002, compared with 25% in 1992, says psychiatrist Igor Galynker of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. His team looked at clinical research in four influential journals: American Journal of Psychiatry, Archives of General Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. In the report, released at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in Toronto, reviewers did not know who paid for the studies they evaluated, Galynker says. There were favorable outcomes for a medication in about:
• Eight out of 10 studies paid for by the company that makes the drug.
• Five out of 10 studies done with no industry support.
• Three out of 10 studies done by competitors of the firm making the drug.
As drug companies increasingly fund research that yields favorable outcomes for their drugs, there may be a built-in bias because journals are reluctant to publish studies with negative or inconclusive findings.

Note: To learn more about the astonishing profits and power of the major drug companies, read our concise summary of a major insider's research.

Special Note: The School of the Americas provides military training for Central and South American military leaders in counter-insurgency tactics at Fort Benning, Georgia. Many who trained there have gone on to use what they learned to brutally repress anyone who spoke out against their dictatorial governments. Graduates have been directly involved in the murders of American nuns, a Catholic archbishop, and many others. To learn about this controversial school and why there is a movement to close it, see a revealing 13-minute documentary. For what you can do: http://www.soaw.org
 

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