Dirty Tricks in PA

Obama Community Blog

If you were planning to vote yesterday in the Pennsylvania primary you had another thing coming as reports of voting machine problems in all of Obama's stronghold precincts. Several machines were malfunctioning in the city, leading one local community leader to allege "dirty tricks" were the cause.
Many residents trying to cast ballots yesterday found long lines and broken machines and intimidation across the region.


Six of ten machines were down at a busy Delaware County polling site. It took 103 people 8 hours to vote in Upper Darby, which is heavily populated by immigrant and first time voters. Many of those freshly-minted voters had difficulties using the six machines that still functioned. "Hell of a day for six of the machines to go down," said one poll worker.


In South Philadelphia, voting machines were broken at 4th and Ritner, smack dab in the middle of a Obama strong hold. "The dirty tricks have begun," said John Lucas, spokesman for the election board, who sees a conspiracy.


A local elections official interviewed on MSNBC acknowledged some problems early Tuesday morning, but he said those had been resolved before midday. He denied reports that only one or two voting machines were functional in some predominantly African American neighborhoods.


[..]Because of the expected large turnout, election judges' difficulty getting machines started at a polling place in North Braddock and another in the city's Banksville section prompted some concern.


At these two sites, election judges, clerks and inspectors, all nominally paid volunteers, initially were unable to print out verification that the voting machines had been set at zero. A technician was dispatched to each location and helped to properly set up the machines,upon further inspection machines had been manipulated and set with 500 to 1500 votes calibrated to Clinton.


Only 30 people in Banksville and several more in North Braddock could use emergency paper ballots to cast their votes, "30 ballots for an entire district" If that's not fraud, i don't know what is. Heavily black districts didn't have any ballots at all just broken or defective machines that didn't work.

U.S. Was 'Clueless' on Counterinsurgency in Iraq

The New York Sun

Paul Wolfowitz, in his first public remarks on the Iraq war in years, said the American government was "pretty much clueless on counterinsurgency" in the first year of the war.


The former deputy secretary of defense said yesterday that the force sent to Iraq was adequate for fighting Saddam Hussein's military, citing the speed with which American troops toppled the regime. But Mr. Wolfowitz said no one in the Bush administration anticipated that Saddam would order his security services to wage an insurgency after their formal defeat on the battlefield.

If you were an Army chief and were about to meet a superior force on the ground that had a history in a previous conflict of decimating your Army in a frontal assault, what would you do?
a. Surrender
b. Die with honor in a frontal assault.
c. Avoid a frontal assault, go asymmetrical and mount an insurgency.
DUH!
It just shows you how out of touch with reality the Neocons were and still are.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: The Weakness of America

American Interest Magazine

I think you’re putting your finger on a major weakness of contemporary America. The weakness is that we’re more democratic than we’ve ever been before, in the sense that popular pressures translate into policy pressures very quickly. And we’re probably as ignorant as ever about the rest of the world, because everybody now lives in a kind of simplistic, trivialized virtual reality in which fact and fiction, impressions and impulses, are mixed up in an incoherent fashion. The public really has no grasp of complexities, no sense of intellectual refinement in judging them, and our political leaders have become increasingly demagogic. The way George W. Bush campaigned for the war in Iraq, with reference to fictitious WMDs, and with sweeping, simplistic, black-and-white generalizations about freedom and tyranny, is a case in point. But he was responding to our increasingly imbecilized societal condition. This is very troublesome. I think the degeneration of the newspapers as a primary source of information, the collapse of serious television news programs, and the emergence of this kind of instant communion between reality and virtual reality creates a collective state of mind that is not derived from rational analysis.

Bush: Robin Hood for the Rich

The Bush economic policy was a scam, a rip off, probably the biggest bait and switch in history.
I began with a tactic proposed by Grover Norquist called "Starving the Beast". I've been writing about it for four years. The idea is that if the US government spends itself into debt so far that it can't grow the economy enough to get out, the only outcome can be major cuts in government spending. Combine this with Globalization, the pressure on the wages of the average American will continue to decrease relative to the cost of living. The end result is we have a major counter-revolution, a return to pre-New Deal times where the rich were richer and the worker was too busy to pay attention to anything but paying for food and shelter.
If you don't believe me, read on:
AlterNet

The recession of 2001 never ended.


At least not for ordinary Americans.


Ordinary Americans found that their income was declining. From 2001 to 2007, median family income declined - depending on where you get your figures from - by somewhere between $500 and $1,000. Median individual income went down by at least $1,000.


The yearly average number of new private sector jobs created from 2001-2008 was just 369,000, not even keeping up with the growth in population. It should be compared to the average number of new private sector jobs created from '92 to 2,000: 1,760,000 per year. The number of people in manufacturing jobs decreased by over 3 million. The number who got health care at work went down, from 64.2 million to 59.7 million. The number of people without health care went up from 38.4 to 46.9 million. The number of people in poverty increased from 31.6 million to 36.5 million.


The value of America's businesses, at least as measured by the stock market, did not go up. An astonishing thing in what was called a boom. Meantime, the cost of living went up. Home heating oil went up about 150 percent. Gas at the pump at least doubled. The cost of health insurance went up about 50 percent. The cost of college went up about 30 percent. Now food is going up.


[..] The key fact is this: during the Bush administration the US economy "grew" by 37 percent. Give or take, plus or minus, but something around there. What has been ignored is what that growth consists of. And even more, what it cost. The middle class has shrunk and is less well off. So the growth isn't there. The stock market is flat, so it's not in business. Manufacturing jobs have been dramatically reduced, so it's not there.


The "growth" in the US economy is a bubble. It consists entirely of debt. Can it be true that the growth in the US economy in the last seven years, such as it is, consists entirely of debt?


Here are the numbers:


The US economy grew by about $4 trillion.


-- The national debt in Jan. 2008: $9.2 trillion


-- The national debt in 2001: $5.7 trillion


An increase of $3.5 trillion


-- Total consumer credit debt in 2008: $12.8 trillion


-- Total consumer credit debt in 2001: $7.65 trillion


An increase of $5.25 trillion


In the course of achieving growth of $4 trillion, we took on $8.75 trillion in debt, combining what we owe as a nation and as individuals.


[..] The government pumped out lots of money by increased spending, much of it going to the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, and, of course, a special big chunk on the wars.


They also cut taxes. Mostly for the very rich. So rich people suddenly had lots of money on hand. They didn't go out and open new businesses, they simply sold the money. That is, they put it in "the financial sector," banks, investment companies, brokerages, insurance companies, real estate funds, hedge funds and the like. The financial sector suddenly had an influx of money. So they went out and sold it. That is, they went out aggressively to make loans, both to businesses and consumers. The government was hand in glove with them, keeping interest rates low and deregulating or ignoring regulations.


There was a real estate bubble. That should have been a warning sign. Real estate is a passive investment. It is a signal that there is a lot of money around with no productive place to go. No businesses expanding. No hot new industries. No genuine growth. The real estate bubble is now routinely described as the root of our current economic problems. That's not true. It's merely a symptom.


The problem is that the government, the nation, and the individuals in our country have all taken on massive amounts of new debt. Without investing it anything productive. Even our conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq are not profitable (except for specific war profiteers), they are drains, endlessly creating more debts. Debts which are, bizarrely, kept off the books the way Enron used to do it, or more pertinently, the way George Bush used to do it when he was at Harken Energy. This is quite accurately reflected in the fall of the dollar against such currencies as the Euro. The dollar is now worth one third less than it was in 2001, pretty much the size of the bubble, one third of the economy. It is also the primary cause of half of the increase in the price of oil. Since oil is priced in dollars, oil producers have had to raise their prices by fifty percent just to keep even. As our energy policy has been to just keep using oil, that makes the problem self-perpetuating, sending more and more money out of the country.


Here's another statistic to make things scarier still: Amount more Americans earned than spent in 2001: +2.3 percent Amount less Americans are earning than spending in 2008: -0.5 percent (State of the Union 2008: By the Numbers, Reuters, 1/28/2008 the source of many of the statistics included here.) The beat goes on.


The solutions that have been proposed so far are more of what has created the problem. A check sent to every American, paid for by .... debt. Support for failing financial institutions and for defaulting mortgage holders, paid for by .... debt. Artificially low interest rates, so there will be more lending, creating more debt. All to keep the big bubble from bursting. All in the service of denying the big bubble is actually a bubble.


If America is going to get out of this, we will probably have to do it the old fashioned way, work for it. The way to encourage work, is to make doing business - making things, inventing things, providing services - more attractive and profitable than simply lending money.

Obama says US will need to abandon maize-based ethanol production

Obama proves himself to be more statesman than politician here. In this statement he is likely to do his candidacy more harm than good, but he speaks an absolute truth that most others wouldn't dare.
BigNewsNetwork.com

In the US, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has said the US will not be able to ignore global suffering from a food crisis. Obama said the US should be "mindful" of the effect its own search for alternative fuel sources is having and should slowly move away from maize-based fuel production that has shared the blame for surging food prices.


He said that maize-based ethanol, which is heavily subsidised in Obama's home state of Illinois, was a technology that should soon make way for other alternatives. "We're going to have to shift to cellulosic ethanol, using biomass that is not part of the food chain," he said. "And that's going to require some time."


The production of bio-fuels in industrial nations has been widely blamed for the sharp rises in the price of maize, wheat, soya and other food staples. More than 30 countries have been threatened with food riots and starvation in the face of high food costs. Aid agencies have called for more than US$700 million to meet increased demand.

Zimbabwe: Headed for Civil War?

Bloomberg.com

Supporters of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change have retaliated against attacks by President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front, New York-based Human Rights Watch said.


``The emergence of tit-for-tat retaliatory attacks between Zanu-PF and MDC supporters could further escalate the violence, putting the general population at greater risk,'' Human Rights Watch said in an e-mailed report.


The violence follows the establishment by Zanu-PF supporters of torture camps in Zimbabwe's rural areas, HRW said. Zanu-PF is using the camps to punish hundreds of MDC supporters for voting for the opposition in the southern African nation's March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections, it said.


The opposition MDC was poised to win control of the country's House of Assembly after 18 of the 23 contested seats were confirmed today, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said. The victory would leave the southern African nation's House of Assembly in opposition hands for the first time in 28 years.


The electoral commission, handpicked by Mugabe, was recounting 23 of the country's 210 parliamentary seats following a complaint from Mugabe's party, which said the MDC had bribed electoral officials to rig the election. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has claimed an ``outright victory'' in the presidential election, while Zanu-PF says a rerun will be necessary.


George Chiweshe, the electoral commission chairman, said today that presidential candidates would likely be invited to verify results of the presidential poll on April 28. Delays in the recounting of parliamentary seats and the announcement of Zimbabwe's presidential elections have led to increasing tension. International pressure has also escalated with calls for an announcement of the presidential poll coming from within Africa as well as Europe, the U.S. and the United Nations.


MDC supporters have burned homes belonging to Zanu-PF backers and officials in parts of Mashonaland East and Manicaland provinces, Human Rights Watch said, citing eyewitnesses. ``The scope of these incidents bears no comparison to the widespread state-sponsored violence by Zanu-PF and its allies,'' the human rights group said.


At least 15 MDC members have died in political violence after the elections, MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said in a telephone interview from Harare today.


``It could be higher because Zanu-PF, using the so-called war veterans, the police and the army, have sealed off villages,'' Chamisa said. ``We have confirmed 15 deaths, including activist Tabitha Marume, who died near Makoni after being shot in the stomach.'' Makoni, a former Zanu-PF party stronghold, is in eastern Zimbabwe.


Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena didn't answer or return calls from Bloomberg News to verify the number of deaths.


Zimbabwean police yesterday arrested 215 MDC supporters in a raid on the opposition party's Harare headquarters, the state- controlled Herald reported, citing Bvudzijena. He declined to confirm the number of arrests when contacted by Bloomberg News earlier today.


Police also searched the offices of the independent Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network, the Harare-based newspaper said on its Web site.


``We believe some of them are responsible for post-election violence and have burned houses belonging to Zanu-PF supporters,'' Bvudzijena said. ``We will weed out those we believe are guilty.''


The whereabouts of these people is unknown, Chamisa said.


``The people arrested had come here to escape violence in the rural areas,'' Chamisa said. ``Many of them had been badly beaten or had their houses burnt to the ground and we now fear for their fate in the hands of the police, who act solely for Zanu-PF.''


British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a statement today called for a United Nations mission to investigate the violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Brown said Britain would step up diplomatic efforts before a UN Security Council meeting on April 29.

Joint Chiefs Preparing to Attack Iran

washingtonpost.com

The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference.


Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said.

A Solution to the Food Crisis

AlterNet

Here's what we must do to prevent an epidemic of starvation from breaking out. First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1.


Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.


To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give.

Syria Nuclear Story a Diversion

Informed Comment

The US and Israel accused Syria on Thursday of building a secret nuclear reactor with North Korean help. There was a lot of innuendo in the press that the reactor was intended for nuclear weapons production. But AFP notes:

'They said US intelligence had "high confidence" that the structure bombed by the Israelis was a nuclear reactor, "medium confidence" that the North Koreans were involved in building it, and "low confidence" that plutonium from it was for nuclear weapons.

[..]The real question is the timing of the announcement, since the bombing happened a long time ago. It is suspicious to me that the announcement was made just after a spy for Israel was arrested in the US who had stolen US nuclear secrets. Is it diversionary?


Syria expert Josh Landis discusses a different theory of diversion, having to do with revelations that Syria and Israel are closer to an agreement on the future of the Golan Heights.


I'd add that former president Jimmy Carter's recent trip to meet with Hamas leaders has put pressure on Israel to come back in a serious way to the negotiating table. Also Hamas's own apparent change in stance on diplomacy, as Helena Cobban discusses.


Bush's own remarks Thursday that he is seeking a viable Palestine that does not look like Swiss cheese revealed some of what the administration must have been pressing the Israelis on in recent months in preparation for Bush's trip in May.


So the timing of the Syria reactor announcement does seem suspicious in Middle East terms. If the US doesn't in fact think there is any evidence that the reactor had weapons implications, then it is really a non story, and releasing it can only be for hoopla reasons.


...Aljazeera's report on the issue, which contains yet another diversionary theory, that the revelations are aimed at pressuring North Korea.

Here is BBCs take on it:
BBC NEWS

The underscoring of an alleged nuclear link between Pyongyang and Damascus certainly harms both governments. For all the talk of renewed conflict between Israel and Syria, there has also been a good deal of talk about a possible deal over the Golan Heights as well. The signals have been complex and contradictory. But highlighting a clandestine Syrian nuclear programme now might serve to reinforce Syria's isolation. Without US brokerage, any talk of a Syria-Israel deal is illusory.


Some analysts believe that the decision to go public on the evidence of the Syrian reactor project may be the culmination of the playing out of competing currents within the Bush Administration. In this scenario it is a victory of the more hawkish voices, who fear that President Bush might be going soft as his term of office draws to a close. In their view, the Americans should not accept any dealings with Syria, nor should it make the concessions required to North Korea to keep alive the deal to roll back its nuclear programme.


Such arguments appear strongest with regard to North Korea. It is clear that conservative voices both inside and outside the Bush administration see the proposed agreement with North Korea as fatally flawed. More liberal arms control experts also hold that view. "It stinks," one told me, "but perhaps the US should hold its nose in the hope of keeping the negotiating track open". So were the intelligence revelations intended to anger Pyongyang to damage any chance of a deal? Or was this a clearing of the air ahead of further progress?

a little snark with the morning cuppa

Food Crisis: Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World

Globalresearch.ca

Consumers in rich countries feel it in supermarkets but in the world's poorest ones people are starving. The reason - soaring food prices, and it's triggered riots around the world in places like Mexico, Indonesia, Yemen, the Philippines, Cambodia, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Egypt, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Peru, Bolivia and Haiti that was once nearly food self-sufficient but now relies on imports for most of its supply and (like other food-importing countries) is at the mercy of agribusiness.


Wheat shortages in Peru are acute enough to have the military make bread with potato flour (a native crop). In Pakistan, thousands of troops guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. In Thailand, rice farmers take shifts staying awake nights guarding their fields from thieves. The crop's price has about doubled in recent months, it's the staple for half or more of the world's population, but rising prices and fearing scarcity have prompted some of the world's largest producers to export less - Thailand (the world's largest exporter), Vietnam, India, Egypt, Cambodia with others likely to follow as world output lags demand. Producers of other grains are doing the same like Argentina, Kazakhstan and China. The less they export, the higher prices go.


Other factors are high oil prices and transportation costs, growing demand, commodity speculation, pests in southeast Asia, a 10 year Australian drought, floods in Bangladesh and elsewhere, a 45 day cold snap in China, and other natural but mostly manipulated factors like crop diversion for biofuels have combined to create a growing world crisis with more on this below. It's at the same time millions of Chinese and Indians have higher incomes, are changing their eating habits, and are consuming more meat, chicken and other animal products that place huge demands on grains to produce.


Here's a UK April 8 Times online snapshot of the situation in parts of Asia:


-- Filipino farmers caught hoarding rice risk a life in jail sentence for "economic sabotage;"
-- thousands of (Jakarta) Indonesian soya bean cake makers are striking against the destruction of their livelihood;
-- once food self-sufficient countries like Japan and South Korea are reacting "bitterly (as) the world's food stocks-to-consumption ratio plunges to an all-time low;"
-- India no longer can export millions of tons of rice; instead it's forced to have a "special strategic food reserve on top of its existing wheat and rice stockpiles;"
-- Thailand is the world's largest rice producer; its price rose 50% in the past month;
-- countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka are scrambling for secure rice supplies; they and other Asian countries are struggling to cope with soaring prices and insufficient supply;
-- overall, rice is the staple food for three billion people; one-third of them survive on less than $1 a day and are "food insecure;" it means they may starve to death without aid.


The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that worldwide food costs rose almost 40% in 2007 while grains spiked 42% and dairy prices nearly 80%. The World Bank said food prices are up 83% since 2005. As of December, it caused 37 countries to face food crises and 20 to impose price controls in response.


It also affected aid agencies like the UN's World Food Program (WFP). Because of soaring food and energy costs, it sent an urgent appeal to donors on March 20 to help fill a $500 million resource gap for its work. Since then, food prices increased another 20% and show no signs of abating. For the world's poor, like the people of Haiti, things are desperate, people can't afford food, they scratch by any way they can, but many are starving and don't make it.


The Haitain crisis is so extreme it forces people to eat (non-food) mud cookies (called "pica") to relieve hunger. It's a desperate Haitian remedy made from dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau for those who can afford it. It's not free. In Cite Soleil's crowded slums, people use a combination of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening for a typical meal when it's all they can afford. A Port-au-Prince AP reporter sampled it. He said it had "a smooth consistency (but it) sucked all the moisture out of (my) mouth as soon as it touched (my) tongue. For hours (afterwards), an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered." Worse is how it harms human health. A mud cookie diet causes severe malnutrition, intestinal distress, and other deleterious effects from potentially deadly toxins and parasites.


Another problem is the cost. This stomach-filler isn't free. Haitians have to buy it, and "edible clay" prices are rising - by almost $1.50 in the past year. It now costs about $5 to make 100 cookies (about 5 cents each), it's cheaper than food, but many Haitians can't afford it:


-- 80% of them are impoverished in the hemisphere's poorest country and one of the world's poorest;
-- unemployment is rampant, and two-thirds or more of workers have only sporadic jobs; and
-- those with them earn 11 to 12 cents an hour; the country's official minimum wage is $1.80 a day, but IMF figures show 55% of employed Haitians receive only 44 cents daily, an impossible amount to live on.


Here's what it's like for poor Haitians. They have large families, live in cardboard and tin homes, there's no running water and little or no electricity, and life inside and around them is horrific. Bed sheets can be thick with flies, there's no sanitation, and outside garbage is everywhere. Children are always hungry, there's never enough food, often it's for one meal a day, illness and disease are common, life expectancy very low, and so-called Blue Helmet "peacekeeper" and gang violence plague communities like Port-au-Prince's Cite Soleil.


Now with a food crisis, Haitians are in the streets over prices for essentials that tripled in the past year and a president, prime minister and government doing practically nothing about it. For days, they were everywhere, throughout the country, and numbered in the thousands. They protested in Port-au-Prince, carried empty plates to signify their plight, smashed windows, set buildings and cars alight, looted shops, looked for food, tried to storm the presidential palace, shouted "we are hungry," and demanded President Rene Preval resign.

US arrests man for passing secrets to Israel

The Daily Star

US authorities have arrested an American man on charges that he disclosed classified defense information, including on nuclear weapons, to Israel, the Justice Department said Tuesday. Ben-Ami Kadish worked as a mechanical engineer at a US Army weapons center in New Jersey when he provided the documents to Israel's consul for science affairs in New York over several years, the department said.


US authorities also accused Kadish of illegally acting as an agent for Israel from 1979 to 2008 without notifying the US attorney general's office.


The complaint alleges the consular official, identified in the indictment as "CC-1," gave Kadish lists of classified defense documents to obtain from the US Army's Armament Research, Development, and Engi-neering Center at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey.


On numerous occasions between 1979 and 1985, the suspect took classified documents to his residence in New Jersey, where CC-1 would photograph them, prosecutors charged. One of the documents taken by Kadish "contained information concerning nuclear weaponry and was classified as 'restricted.'"


Kadish, who worked at the arsenal from 1963-1990, kept in touch with CC-1 via telephone and e-mail and met the consular official in Israel in 2004, authorities said. CC-1 left the US in 1985 and has never come back, authorities said.


Kadish was charged with conspiring to disclose documents related to the national defense to Israel and conspiring to act as an agent of Israel. He was also charged with conspiring to hinder a communication to a law enforcement officer and one count of conspiring to make a materially false statement to a law enforcement officer.

Selling the Iraqi War on TV

Remember, propaganda is illegal when directed towards the voting public.
AlterNet

In Sunday's New York Times, investigative reporter David Barstow exposed television's "military analysts" on the Iraq War as sock puppets of the Pentagon who consciously peddle the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq while hiding their own vested economic interest in selling the public on the Bush administration's happy talk about the war.


This very long and very well-documented story lays bare the most blatantly obnoxious feature of the "Military-Industrial-Media Complex" which ensures that the airwaves convey the administration's major messages on the war day in a day out. The story should mobilize the blogosphere and news media figures who still have some integrity to demand immediate reform of a massively corrupt network system of covering military affairs.


For starters, the networks should be forced to fire every "military analyst" who has been recruited and accepted all-expenses-paid trips to Iraq, uncritically mouthed the administration talking points while concealing their special relationship or maintained vested financial interests in Pentagon contracts through business relationships with contractors.


Based on 8,000 pages of email messages, transcripts and records, Barstow recounts a successful effort by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon to use retired military officers to create a "media Trojan horse" on the Iraq War. Not only did the "military analysts" routinely violate basic ethical standards of journalism by accepting trips completely arranged and paid for the administration; they were consciously participating in its strategy to manipulate public opinion by regurgitating the pro-war arguments they were given in top-level official briefings -- which they had to promise to keep secret.


But even worse, Barstow shows how they had a personal financial stake in parroting the administration's war propaganda. He reports that several dozen military analysts who appear constantly on Fox, CNN and other networks and invariably support the administration's line "represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants."


Even when they knew they were being fed Pentagon BS, these agents of the war system could not utter a critical word about administration policy. They were afraid of retribution from Pentagon officials who could affect contracts for which their companies were competing. One corrupted former television analyst told Barstow he refrained from even the slightest criticism of the Pentagon's policies because of the fear "some four-star could call up and say, 'Kill that contract.'"


Several of these officers told Barstow that even the "mildest criticism" would bring telephone calls expressing official displeasure within minutes of being on the air. When one analyst went so far as to say that the United States was "not on a good glide path right now" in Iraq, the Pentagon immediately "fired" him from the analysts group which had received privileged access to high-ranking administration officials.


In the most egregious cases, such as retired Air Force general Thomas G. McInerney of Fox News, "analysts" operated just like employees of the Pentagon. McInenery assured the Pentagon in an e-mail in late 2006 that he would use in his on-air appearances the latest talking points that he had just been given.


The story of the Pentagon's "media Trojan horse" should bring overwhelming public pressure for the immediate termination of any "military analyst" who has been compromised by links with the Pentagon and/or its business allies. The television networks should adopt transparent rules about who can and can't be hired as analysts on military issues that would keep out paid agents of the war system. Unfortunately the networks themselves appear to be such an integral part of that system that they couldn't care less about conflicts of interest.

Clinton on Iran: If They Attack Israel, We Could 'Obliterate Them'

ABC News

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.


"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Iraq the Debacle

A National Defense University study by a former Pentagon official:

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.


"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.

Carter - Israeli sanctions on Gaza a 'criminal atrocity'

The consummate statesman from the US, former President Carter, minces no words about Israel these days. By making impassioned statements about Israel's excesses, he hopes to carve space for Hamas to stop rocketing unilaterally. This man is truly courageous, devoting his final years to using his influence to cut through politics as usual and make a constructive impact, whatever the cost to his personal reputation. He is a man to be admired.
BigNewsNetwork.com

Former US president Jimmy Carter and high-level leaders of the radical Palestinian organisation Hamas, have held talks in the Egyptian capital Cairo. The United States and Israel oppose Mr Carter's private peace mission, especially since he is making a special effort to meet with leaders of the Islamic Hamas movement, which he says cannot be ignored.


On Friday, the former US president will meet with the most senior official in the Hamas movement, Khaled Meshaal, in the Syrian capital Damascus. Meanwhile, Mr Carter has defended his meetings with Hamas and has told university students in Egypt that sanctions imposed on Gaza Strip are “criminal atrocity”. He told the students: "For every Israeli killed, between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel".


Carter said Israel and the US were trying to make the quality of life in Gaza markedly worse than in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah group is in control. He said he had also asked Hamas officials to stop rocket attacks into Israel.

Mugabe Accuses Winning Opponent of Treason

Bloomberg.com

Zimbabwe's main opposition denied allegations in state media that it conspired with the U.K. government to end President Robert Mugabe's rule. The state-controlled Herald newspaper today cited Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, colluded with U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown to effect ``illegal regime change in Zimbabwe.'' The actions are ``treasonous,'' the newspaper, often used by the government to make official pronouncements, said.


``The reports in today's Herald are absolute rubbish,'' George Sibotshiwe, Tsvangirai's spokesman, said in an interview today from Johannesburg. ``No one familiar with Zimbabwe should be surprised by these tactics of defamation and lies. They are typical of Mugabe's regime and its mouthpiece newspapers.''


Tsvangirai competed in presidential elections on March 29 in which he sought to end Mugabe's 28-year rule of the southern African nation. Results from the vote, which the MDC says its leader won with 50.3 percent of the vote, haven't been released by the Electoral Commission yet. Opposition parties ended the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's majority in the lower House of Assembly in a parliamentary poll held at the same time. Tsvangirai has twice faced charges of treason in Zimbabwe, which can carry the death penalty. On both occasions, the charges were thrown out of court for lack of evidence.

The Beingness Doctrine

STEPHAN A. SCHWARTZ, Editor - Schwartzreport.net


Naomi Klein has written a book, Shock Doctrine, whose premise is that a formal strategy for forcing social change began evolving on the Right as long ago as the 1950s based on an extremist view of conservative free market capitalism.


As Eric Klinenberg wrote in his Book Forum review 'Why do so many nations have economic policies more laissezfaire and social programs less generous than their citizens prefer? Naomi Klein argues that the answer lies in a simple two-step strategy, honed over three decades by an international cabal of freemarket fundamentalists: First, exploit crises-whether due to economics, politics, or natural disasters - to advance an agenda that would never survive the democratic process during ordinary times. Next, create a ‘corporatocracy,' in which multinationals and political leaders align to promote their interests at the public's expense.'1


In her extraordinarily well-documented work she describes how the tactics of this strategy have now reached a level of sophistication such that in settings as disparate as Iraq and Katrina it has forced change which would otherwise have been unacceptable through normal democratic processes. A change wrought under the guise of responding to some kind of social catastrophe, whether natural, like a hurricane, or man made such as the early policies under Paul Bremmer in the first days of the occupation of Iraq. Klein points out that often this occurs with disastrous consequences, as anyone familiar with Katrina's aftermath, or today's headline on Iraq can see. If you have not read this book I urge you to do so. It will give you a perspective through which much that seems chaotic and disconnected, will be revealed as not only connected, but deliberate. The book is so disturbing that it forced me to consider if an alternative life-affirming strategy existed that had proven it could work. A kind of counter Shock Doctrine.


I began by making a list of what I thought everyone would agree were significant progressive social evolutions in American society. This was my list:


Abolition
Public Education
Penal Reform
Women's Suffrage
Civil Rights
Nuclear Freeze
Environmental Protection


The obvious thing they had in common is that they were all the product of non-violence; at least that was the intent of those seeking the change. But, as I dug deeper I saw that underneath the obvious, and independent of political considerations, there beat a deeper drum, one that was rarely recognized. I saw that the most fundamental thing all these changes had in common was that they had occurred as the result of a transformation wrought by what Gandhi called 'beingness.'


In the last interview he gave, before being assassinated, Gandhi was asked by a young reporter, from the Times of India, how he had forced the British to leave India. They had, afterall, dominated the subcontinent for more than 350 years. Gandhi had no army, no money to speak of, no official position, none of the trappings that normally confer authority and power. Yet he had made the most powerful nation of his day leave its most valuable colonial possession. Before I read further in the interview, I thought, as you may be thinking now, that Gandhi would speak about his policy of non-violence. But he did not, and his answer states the Beingness Strategy clearly.


It was not what we did that mattered, he told the reporter, although that mattered. It was not what we said that mattered, he added, although that mattered. It was our beingness that 'caused the British to choose to leave India.'


What, exactly, did Gandhi mean by beingness?


The answer to this very fundamental question, I think, lies in the nature of personal character, and the tiny choices we make by the thousands throughout each day. Choices about clothes, food, courtesy, and a host of other seemingly unconnected expressions of intent that create not only our personal character but, collectively, the national character of the nation of which we are a part. The process can be seen clearly in the dramatic arc that made smoking socially undesirable in the United States in less than a generation.


Smoking ceased to be fashionable because individuals made choices. When a critical consensus was reached, smokers became odd. Because it is in essence about values, change based on 'beingness' often begins, and continues driven by religious and spiritual considerations. But religion qua religion is no guarantee whatever that values are life-affirming, as the historic and present day reality of hate and violence tied to religious fundamentalism makes so sanguinely irrefutable.


To my surprise as I dug into the history of these historic transformations I discovered that at the core of each was a small group of Quakers (formally, The Society of Friends). To get a sense of proportion about this consider the percentage of the U.S. population that is 'churched.' That is individuals and families who identify themselves as formally being members of a religious organization that meets regularly, and who participate in its activities.


Protestant (all sects) 52%
Catholic (all sects) 24.5%
Latter Day Saints (Mormon) 1.93%
Jewish 1.3%
Moslem 0.5%
Quakers (Society of Friends) 0.035%


In the whole of American history, from the colonial era to the present day, there have been a total of less than one million Quakers. Today, in a population of approximately 300 million, about 250,000 of us are Quakers. It is such a small faith that most people have never met a Quaker, and never will, and few know anything about what they believe. And yet ...


If one works back to the headwaters of every one of the major positive social currents I have listed (and many more besides), one finds a small group of Quakers. How could this be, I thought? How could this tiny group of people create movements that ultimately involved millions and, because enough people personally changed, made the change the new society norm? Studying the histories eight - I hesitate to call them laws but, because they are constants in each case, I think they have earned the term - began to emerge. They were not at all what I had anticipated. Taken together they constitute a proven Strategy of Beingness.


Law Number One - The Individuals, individually, and the group, collectively, must share a common intention.


Law Number Two - The individuals and the group may have goals, but they may not have cherished outcomes.


Law Number 3 - The individuals in the group must accept that their goal may not be reached in their lifetimes, and be O.K. with that.


Law Number 4 - The individuals in the group must accept that they may not get either credit or acknowledgment for what they have done, and be authentically O.K. about this.


Law Number 5 - Each person in the group regardless of gender, religion, race, or culture must enjoy fundamental equality even as the various roles in the hierarchy of the effort are respected.


Law Number 6 - The individuals in the group must foreswear violence in word, act or thought.


Law Number 7 - The individuals in the group must make their private selves consistent with their public postures.


Law Number 8 - The individuals in the group, and the group collectively, must always act from the 'beingness' of life-affirming integrity.


So how many individuals are required to start? For an answer I turned to the most prestigious prize in the world, the Nobel Peace Prize. Begun in 1901, it is the one award made from Oslo by a committee of five people. All the others come out of Stockholm. Why Alfred Nobel set it up this way no one knows, although it may be his sense of the differing measure of beingness he saw in his own culture, at a time when Sweden and Norway constituted a single combined political entity. The award is not given every year, and in the 106 years since it was created, 95 individuals - former Vice President Al Gore being the latest - have been awarded the prize, nine of them women. Nineteen Organizations have received it.


Of the individuals, it seems to go to three kinds of people:


Government officials
Hereditary and acknowledged leaders
Ordinary people who are committed to change


It is the regular folk who make up the third category that are the most interesting, because they illustrate clearly the eight laws of the Strategy. Consider just three: The 1976 Peace Prize was awarded jointly to two Irish housewives, Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams. Each was in her early thirties when, on a Saturday afternoon in August 1976 when, along with a male friend, Ciaran McKeown, they founded the Community of Peace People. Both were solidly working class and lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mairead's father was a window cleaning contractor, and her mother was a housewife. Mairead had been working since she was 16 in various clerical jobs, was proud of her shorthand, and had risen to become the Confidential Secretary to the Managing Director of a local company.. Betty William's life was much the same. Her father was a butcher.


Like her friend, Mairead, she was married, and she had two children, a son, Paul and a daughter, Deborah. They had no prior experience as activists and, by their own admission, were hardly sophisticated in politics. But they had had enough of the religious violence in Ireland, and believed that even though they were utterly lacking in the sort of resume one associates with political success, they could make a difference.


The 1992 Peace Prize was won by Rigoberta Menchú, daughter of a impoverished Quiche Mayan peasant family in which both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big often absentee owner plantations. Reared as a Catholic, she became involved in social reform activities through the Church and, while still a teenager, she became prominent in the women's rights movement. By the time she was chosen for the Nobel she was a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally.


The 2004 Peace Prize was won by Wangari Muta Maathi, who was born in colonial Kenya. She was the first woman of all the millions who have lived in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree. After doing so she went on to become head of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy. In 1976, she decided to address the deforestation of her homeland in the simplest and most direct manner. Eschewing government programs, and large international aid organizations, she just got women to start planting trees. This simple idea developed into a broad-based, grassroots, organization that, by the time she won the Nobel, had planted more than 20 million trees throughout Kenya, on farms, school lands, and church compounds. So there is a road to change that does not involve violence and exploitation, The Strategy of Beingness.


The challenge is it requires patience and real character, and you may not get the credit.


1 Eric Klinenberg. 'It Takes a Crisis.' Book Forum, September/October/November 2007.

Will the Constitution Be Altered to Eliminate Key Liberties?

AlterNet

Though little discussed on the campaign trail, a crucial issue to be decided in November is whether the United States will return to its traditions as a constitutional Republic respecting "unalienable" human rights or whether it will finish a transformation into a frightened nation governed by an all-powerful President who can do whatever he wants during the open-ended "war on terror."


That reality was underscored on April 1 with the release of a five-year-old legal opinion from former Justice Department official John Yoo asserting that President George W. Bush possessed nearly unlimited authority as Commander in Chief, including the power to have military interrogators abuse terror suspects.


While most news coverage of Yoo's March 14, 2003, memo has focused on the legal gymnastics justifying harsh treatment of detainees -- including possible use of mind-altering drugs -- the centerpiece of Yoo's argument is that at a time of war the President's powers are essentially unfettered.


Yoo's memo fits with views expressed by Bush ("The Decider") and many of his top legal advisers. Yoo's opinion also appears to be shared by four conservative Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court -- John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- just one vote shy of a majority.


Yoo's military interrogation memo -- and a similar one he penned for the CIA on torture -- were withdrawn by Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith after he succeeded Yoo as the top official at the Justice Department's powerful Office of Legal Counsel later in 2003. Goldsmith considered Yoo's legal reasoning flawed.


But Goldsmith subsequently was pushed out of the job, and Bush is seeking to fill the vacancy with Steven Bradbury, who signed off on Yoo's "torture memos" while holding a lower position in the Office of Legal Counsel.


In other words, Bush has not given up on his vision of grandiose presidential powers that let him act more like an English monarch before the Magna Carta, who could pick out anyone under his domain and throw the person into prison with no due process and no protection against torture or other abuse.


Under the Bush-Yoo theories, all Bush has to do is pronounce a detainee "an unlawful enemy combatant" -- whether a U.S. citizen or not, whether there is any credible evidence or not -- and the person loses all human rights.


As radical -- and as shocking -- as these theories may seem to many Americans, Bush is within one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court of having his vision enshrined as "constitutional."


If one more vacancy occurs among the five "non-imperial" justices -- and the replacement is in line with Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-and-Alito -- the U.S. Constitution could be effectively altered to eliminate key individual liberties -- from habeas corpus and other fair-trial rights to bans on "cruel and unusual" punishment to protections against self-incrimination and "unreasonable searches and seizures."


Though civics books tell us that the Constitution can only be amended by two-thirds votes of the House and Senate and approval by three-quarters of the states, the reality is that five ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court can alter the nation's founding document by simply voting as a bloc.


And since the "war on terror" is unlike other wars -- in that the enemy is vaguely defined, the duration could be forever and the war's location can be anywhere -- the Bush-Yoo logic suggests that the de facto suspension of the American constitutional Republic is not just a short-term emergency measure.


Instead, the shift from a Republic, with legal protections of individual rights, to an Empire, led by an Executive who can operate without any constraints, would be permanent. As long as the President says some danger lurks out there, he or she could assert "plenary" -- or total -- powers as commander in chief.


In his memo, Yoo argued that the 9/11 attacks "triggered" America's "right to self-defense." Therefore, he wrote: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network.


"In that case, we believe that he could argue that the Executive Branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."


Yoo further argued that even abuses that would "shock the conscience" -- one of Bush's standards for what might be considered torture -- could be mitigated by a subjective evaluation of the circumstances.


In other words, if the President or a subordinate judged the detainee to represent some imminent threat or to be particularly odious, they would have an even freer hand to act as they saw fit. Those judgments about shocking the conscience would be left, again, to the Executive to decide unilaterally.


Yoo's two memos were the underpinnings of the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the CIA's secret detention facilities.


The memos gave legal protection to U.S. interrogators and guards who stripped detainees naked, hooded them, put ladies underpants on their heads, paraded them in the nude, beat them, subjected them to extremes of hot and cold, put them into painful stress positions, deprived them of sleep, threatened them with death and -- in three acknowledged cases -- flooded their covered faces with water in a simulated drowning known as waterboarding.


[For more details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]


Yoo's memos shielded interrogators from U.S. military intelligence and the CIA, but did not spare the night guards at Abu Ghraib, who got stiff prison terms after they made the cardinal mistake of photographing the humiliation they inflicted on Iraqi detainees and letting the pictures reach the public.


In a comment to the Washington Post, Thomas J. Romig, who was the Army's judge advocate general in 2003, said Yoo's military interrogation memo appears to argue that there are no rules in a time of war, a concept that Romig said he found "downright offensive." [Washington Post, April 2, 2008]


But the greater legacy from Yoo -- who is now a professor of law at the University of California in Berkeley -- and his imperial legal theories is that they have been embraced by many Bush supporters and four right-wing Supreme Court justices.


Though Bush may not get another chance to further shape the Supreme Court with the appointment of another Roberts or Alito, his successor likely will. For some Americans angered by Bush's assault on the Constitution, John McCain's past support for Bush's judicial appointments may represent one of the strongest reasons to vote against him.


The future of the American Republic may be at stake.


Besides undergirding the abuses at Guatanamo and Abu Ghraib, the Bush-Yoo theories have laid the groundwork for ending a noble experiment in human liberty that the Founders began more than 230 years ago -- with their defiant declaration that no leader is above the law and that everyone possesses "unalienable rights" under the law.


Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."
© 2008 Consortium News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/81638/

Double Think Dubya's "Surge" Debacle

Informed Comment

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney initially rejected the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report, which advised that Iraq could not be solved militarily and that regional diplomacy and engagement would be necessary.


Bush chose instead to pursue an escalation of the war, which he euphemistically called a 'surge.' This tactic backfired when Bush inadvertently allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad, turning the capital into a playground for the Shiite Mahdi Army. As a result of the Shiitization of Baghdad, violence in the city thereafter declined, since there were fewer Sunnis around to kill (many were cowering in Damascus). The US achieved a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army (and why not, since the US military was disarming its enemies and allowing it to then chase them off to Syria?)


Moreover, Baghdad was only one hot spot in a very complicated country, and security continued to deteriorate in the Kurdish north along the Turkish border and in the southern Shiite oil port of Basra, as I argue in an op-ed today in the Boston Globe.


Even the temporary reduction in violence was more modest than the US press tended to assume. And the death rate may have reached its nadir and begun climbing back up now that the extra troops are being withdrawn. As David Fiderer pointed out, that outcome is precisely what the ISG report predicted.


So now it turns out that recently General David Petraeus has been doing regional diplomacy in an attempt to get local regimes to cooperate in cutting the flow of foreign fighters, money and arms to Iraq.


In other words, the military escalation, which is now getting to be over with, did not do the trick. So the only alternative is to go back to the Baker Hamilton Commission recommendations.


Question: How far ahead of the game would we be if this regional diplomacy had started in December of 2006 instead of being dismissed by Bush and Cheney in favor of a set of purely military tactics?


Another question: Why not also talk to Iran?


Likewise, the ISG pointed out that the Badr Corps paramilitary was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and is close to Tehran. (See below). It fought on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's side in the recent Basra fighting. In other words, the government side was the pro-Iranian side. The Mahdi Army and Sadr neighborhood militia forces they attacked were largely Iraqi nativists who bad-mouth Iran. Fiderer points out that the ISG report had already diagnosed this syndrome. The Bush team did propaganda, pointedly declining to name Badr as an Iranian client and blaming Iran for the Mahdi Army's violence. In fact, the violence came as a response to violations of the cease fire by the US and the Iraqi government, which took advantage of it to arrest Mahdi Army commanders (that's a ceasefire?)

The World’s Worst Religious Leaders

Foreign Policy
Hassan Nasrallah
Religion: Shiite Islam
Who is he?: Secretary-General of Hezbollah
Country: Lebanon
Quote: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology, and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.”
Joseph Kony
Religion: Christianity/personality cult
Who is he?: Commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
Country: Uganda
Quote: “[The spirits] speak to me. They load through me. They will tell us what is going to happen. They say ‘You, Mr. Joseph, tell your people that the enemy is planning to come and attack.’ They will come like dreaming; they will tell us everything.”
Yogi Adityanath
Religion: Hinduism
Who is he?: Religious leader and member of parliament from Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous province
Country: India
Quote: “I want Muslim votes, too. But wash them in Gangajal [Ganges water] first.”
Athuraliye Rathana
Religion: Theravada Buddhism
Who is he?: Monk and member of parliament
Country: Sri Lanka
Quote: “Peace negotiations simply made the LTTE [Tamil Tigers] stronger. We mustn’t talk to them; we can crush the LTTE. It is like surgery.”
Dov Lior
Religion: Hasidic Judaism
Who is he?: Head rabbi of Kiryat Arba settlement
Country: Israel
Quote: “A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.”

Russian Army chief threatens action if Ukraine or Georgia join NATO

M&C

Russia's top army general vowed to take military action if NATO expands eastward to include its former Soviet neighbours Georgia and Ukraine, news agency Interfax reported Friday. 'Russia will take unambiguous action toward ensuring its interests along its borders,' General Yuri Baluyevsky was quoted as saying.


'These will not only be military steps, but also steps of a different character,' he said.


Moscow lobbied hard to head off Georgia and Ukraine's ambition for membership at last month's NATO summit in Bucharest, but alliance leaders intend to review their bid in December. Russia views NATO's willingness to enlarge eastward as the continuation of the Western Cold War containment policy and the spread of a foreign military bloc along its border.

Rush to Pass This Bill

The Nation

Currently, six states and a number of counties in 14 other states will be conducting completely unauditable elections in 2008. Shockingly, only about a dozen states will conduct audits. Holt's bill would reimburse jurisdictions that choose to implement voter-verified paper trails; help states move to an entirely paper-based system; and/or provide funding for audits of election returns.


The alternative? How many lessons do we need? The 2000 debacle alone should be enough to show the need for these changes. Want more? How about 2006, when 18,000 votes were lost by electronic voting machines in Florida's 13th Congressional District – in a contest decided by less than 400 votes. As a New York Times editorial put it, "The flaws of electronic voting machines have been thoroughly documented by academic studies and by voters' experiences. The machines are far too vulnerable to hacking that could change the outcomes of elections. They are also so prone to mechanical error and breakdown that there is no way to be sure that the totals they report are correct. In some cases, these machines have been known to "flip" votes -- award votes cast for one candidate to an opponent. The solution is for all votes to be recorded on paper records."

Rush to Pass This Bill

Zimbabwe gangs go after opposition voters

Los Angeles Times

The mob materialized quietly in the fading dusk light. There were 50 youths hurrying along, armed with sticks, rawhide whips and knives. It was Sunday night, just over a week after Zimbabwe's disputed national elections, and even before the shouting began, John Saramu knew what was going to happen.


He felt it in the knot of fear in his stomach.


"They just appeared on the corner. In my heart I felt afraid. I saw them very close to me," said Saramu, an activist for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in a farming district outside the town of Mutare.


"They came into my house. They were shouting, 'We want to kill you!' They were saying, 'We want to go around and find all the MDC supporters one by one, and we want them to get out.' "


Saramu, 39, said he was beaten for two hours by members of a gang that was pro-President Robert Mugabe, and that his house was ransacked before he managed to get away. He was badly cut in his right leg and left hand.


"I escaped by a whisker. I don't even know how I did it," he said. The assailants stole cash and a list of MDC members, which could be used to find and terrorize other opponents.


Saramu and about 50 other activists near Mutare in Manicaland province were hunted down in their homes, said Misheck Kagurabadza, the area's MDC parliamentary candidate, who defeated his foe from the ruling ZANU-PF party in the recent election. Intimidation of opposition activists is occurring -- outside the limelight -- in rural areas of Zimbabwe that have traditionally been ruling party strongholds but where the MDC scored upset parliamentary victories. One activist has been killed. The fear tactics are viewed both as political retribution and as an attempt to scare opposition supporters from backing the MDC in a possible presidential runoff, allowing the 84-year-old Mugabe to hold on to power. Thus far, many believe the heavy-handed tactics are working.


MDC spokesman Shadrick Vengesai said hundreds of opposition activists and supporters had been arrested, beaten or displaced in Zimbabwe since the March 29 elections, for which the presidential results have yet to be released by the Electoral Commission. The parliamentary outcome has been announced, and Mugabe's ZANU-PF, for the first time in the nation's 28 years, has lost control of the legislative body.


The opposition insists its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidential vote outright, and it fears spiraling violence if election officials decide a runoff is needed. The ruling party, which controls appointments to the Electoral Commission, says no candidate won the required 50%-plus-one majority to avoid a runoff."We don't want a second round," Saramu said. "It's not very safe for us."


"It's very tense," Kagurabadza said. "Gangs of ZANU-PF militias are patrolling at night and even during the day. They go into the areas where they know there are MDC supporters. They are preparing for the runoff. They will cow people so they don't vote MDC."


He said he feared the same thugs would surround polling booths on election day and take down the names of people who voted in an attempt to frighten them, as happened in 2000 and 2002.


As the days drag on without official presidential results, Zimbabweans have gone back to the grind of scraping a living in a country with 100,000% inflation and severe shortages of food and other basics. Voluntary road crews fill in potholes, money dealers wait on street corners and women sell vegetables to raise money for food.


In the capital, Harare, vans with helmeted riot police crawled through the streets Tuesday, arresting female money dealers for illegal street trading. Some opposition activists have been beaten in pro-MDC neighborhoods near the city.


In rural areas, where MDC supporters are isolated and vulnerable, gangs of unemployed thugs have proved easy to unleash.


[..]Though the ruling party won in Mutoko village in Mashonaland East, party supporters, armed with AK-47s and pistols, forced people in the village center to attend an impromptu meeting Sunday morning, witnesses said.


"They stopped people and said they were hunting for MDC activists and they wanted to kill people. They had guns, which they showed us," said Knowledge Maponda, 26, an MDC supporter but not an activist. Even nurses and patients from a nearby clinic were forced to attend, he said.


"They said: 'We are going into a runoff, so you need to vote for the presidential candidate of ZANU-PF. We are not going to tolerate any nonsense. We are going to kill if you vote for the MDC. We are watching you closely.'


In Landas, also in Mashonaland East, dozens of ZANU-PF youths have been parading in the streets, singing songs and beating up street traders.


"All the people fear those guys. Some people run away because they know they can be beaten up," said local MDC activist Itai Bindu, 28.


He said the gangs were conducting door-to-door raids at night, dragging opposition activists from their houses and beating them. About 20 people had been beaten since the elections, he said.


Many activists think the chances of winning a runoff would be slim after several more weeks or months of terror.


But Bindu believes that many people are so sick of the Mugabe regime, they won't desert the opposition even in the face of violence.


"It's hardening MDC supporters. People are tired of this ZANU-PF. People are saying, 'We can't change the results, we're now MDC people.' "

In the Boardroom, Every Back Gets Scratched

New York Times

According to the Congressional Research Service, average pay for chief executives stood at 179 times average worker pay in 2005, up from a multiple of 90 in 1994. Adjusted for inflation, average worker pay rose by a total of only 8 percent from 1995 to 2005; median pay for chief executives at the 350 largest companies rose 150 percent.


Top executives’ pay as a ratio of their employers’ earnings has also skyrocketed in the last 15 years. And these executives are paid far more than their counterparts at companies of comparable size in Britain or Japan. How did this happen? How did pay grow so fast at the top?


It starts with several corporate governance factors and then goes into psychosocial factors. For one thing, although a company’s stockholders by every legal precept own the company, they have almost no say in how their employees, the executives, are paid. Instead, the pay of the top executives is set by the board, usually the compensation committee. The directors are elected by the stockholders via proxies — those things you get in the mail and then throw away. Thus, in effect, the board is selected by top management, usually by the C.E.O. himself. Once a director is on the board, there is only the slightest of chances that he will leave, except for death or old age or illness.


To be a member of the board of a large company is a little example of paradise. You get good pay for just sitting in a meeting and listening to summary presentations. You get insurance and a pension. You can go to luxurious resorts and play golf. What the heck are security lines? You fly in private jets. Sometimes, you get stock options, and these can be meaningful.


In other words, it’s nice to be the director of a public company. How do you keep your job? You are really nice to the person who put you in that job. You don’t know the little stockholder in Muncie who might have 500 shares. But you do know the guy who repeatedly reappoints you for your post at the directors’ table. The little stockholder cannot do a thing for you, but the boss can.


When it comes to compensation, you want him to be really happy. It doesn’t matter how well he’s doing, unless he’s wreaking havoc and you may be sued. It doesn’t matter if the stock price has languished. You want what’s best for No. 1, and that means what’s best for Mr. Big. You hire a compensation consultant to work out pay and options and deferred pay and retirement and every other good thing for Mr. Big. The compensation committee knows that its hiring and rehiring are dependent on Mr. Big’s being happy. So it crafts a package that will keep him happy — and throws in a few goodies for the directors.


It’s called the “boardroom buddy system,” and it works perfectly once you are on the inside. You just have to make sure you stay on the inside. And to do that, you don’t upset the apple cart with tacky questions about what the C.E.O. is doing or why he is paid so much.


Let’s look at some recent real-world tales of executive pay. My old pals at Goldman Sachs are paid so much that over 40 percent of the firm’s net revenue went to compensation and benefits last year, according to its latest 10-K. Goldman’s chief, Lloyd C. Blankfein, was paid $54 million last year. To be sure, the firm did well in 2007, but the stock has been tanking. It’s now at $175.40, down from $250.70 on Oct. 31.


Similarly, Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone, which has lost about 40 percent of its value in the past six months, got more than $350 million. This is a company that has been a nightmare for investors since its debut last year as a public company. Pay at this level is art. (Blackstone wasn’t included in Equilar’s compensation survey because its revenues were below $6.5 billion.)


The amazing fact is that as the economy goes through challenges, as the stockholders and workers fume, the executives can basically set their own pay. Once the board has acted, according to a legal doctrine known as “the business judgment rule,” hardly anyone can challenge its actions. If it gets that compensation consulting firm to approve what it did, or if it comes from the compensation firm first, the pay is set in stone — except for the next time the board wants to raise it.


[..]Now we come to a sad fact about modern American life. It was brought up by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often said that America, through its technology, has made of itself a neighborhood, but not a brotherhood. It is a lot worse now. The nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family.


I am not sure where this has come from — maybe from media that glamorize wealth and high-end consumption, maybe from poor moral training. But one thing is clear: Current law does not give shareholders or regulators any tools to rein in executive greed. There simply is no legal “cause of action” for pay packages that, however obscene, are approved by the board and disclosed to shareholders. Congress could change this. So could the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Punishing Hamas Has Backfired

International Crisis Group - Gareth Evans in The Christian Science Monitor

The policy of isolating Hamas and applying sanctions to Gaza has been a predictable failure. Violence to both Gazans and Israelis is rising. Economic conditions are ruinous, generating anger and despair. The credibility of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other pragmatic forces has been grievously damaged. The peace process is in tatters.


Meanwhile, Hamas's hold on the Gaza Strip, purportedly the principal target of the policy, has been strengthened. Since Hamas assumed full control in June 2007 the already-tight sanctions, imposed following the Islamists' January 2006 electoral victory, have been tightened further. Israel – upon which Gazans depend almost entirely for relations with the outside world – even curtailed cross-border passenger and goods traffic.


Israel has hardly been alone. The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, seeking to undermine Hamas's standing, has done its part to cut off Gaza and prevent the normal functioning of government. Feeble protests aside, the international community has at best been a model of passivity.


The logic behind the policy was that by putting pressure on Hamas, they could prevent rocket launches into Israel. This would demonstrate to the Palestinian people that Hamas could not deliver and ought not be trusted. The hope was that the West Bank, buoyed by economic growth, a loosening of Israeli security measures, not to mention a revived peace process, would serve as an attractive countermodel. But the theory has not delivered on any of these counts.


Within Gaza the debate about whether the sanctions have helped or hurt Hamas's efforts to consolidate power is, for all intents and purposes, over. The Islamist movement has come close to establishing an effective monopoly on the use of force and a near-monopoly on open political activity. It has refashioned the legal and legislative systems. And it enjoys freer rein to shape society through management of the health, education, and religious sectors.


By boycotting the security, judicial, and other government sectors, the Palestinian Authority turned an intended punitive measure into an unintentional gift, creating a vacuum that Hamas has filled. The absence of any international involvement has meant the absence of leverage. The closure of the crossings has caused the private sector to collapse, eroding ordinary citizens' traditional coping mechanisms, increasing their dependence on those who govern, and weakening a constituency traditionally loyal to the Palestinian Authority.


Some will argue that the isolation policy is working because Hamas has lost popularity, which even its leaders acknowledge. But intense public frustration in the Gaza Strip cannot be the measure of success. Gazans may not be satisfied with Hamas, but their anger continues to be directed at Israel and the West, as well as at Fatah, which many see as complicit in the siege.


As the sanctions hit the most vulnerable, Hamas finds ways to finance its rule and invokes the siege to justify its more ruthless practices. Growing poverty and hopelessness are boosting the appeal of jihadi groups, particularly among Gazans under 16 years old, who make up half the population.


It's time to stop digging this hole. Maintaining extreme pressure on Hamas in the hope of undermining its rule or stopping the rockets has gone nowhere. A new direction is needed – one that attempts to stabilize the situation by engaging the movement with the immediate goal of reaching a mutual cease-fire and the opening of Gaza's border crossings.


Of course, Israel has legitimate concerns about a cease-fire, as does the Palestinian Authority about how a shift of direction would affect its credibility. Hamas will not accept an end to hostilities if the closures remain in place. To address these competing interests, the cease-fire should entail reciprocal commitments to stop all attacks, an opening of the crossings that recognizes Hamas's role while restoring a Palestinian Authority presence in Gaza, and a credible international monitoring effort to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.


While the continuation of the current policy may be easier to envision, so are its consequences. The status quo is untenable. Israel cannot be expected to accept rockets targeting its civilians. Hamas will not sit idly by as Gaza is choked.


If current trends continue, we will see increased attacks against Israeli towns and cities as well as the resumption of bombings and attacks inside Israel, like the recent ghastly murder of the eight yeshiva students. Israel will intensify its military incursions, targeted assassinations, and attacks on key installations. And the peace process will vanish entirely, discrediting pragmatic Palestinian leaders. The conflict could then spread to the West Bank or even Lebanon.


Avoiding that worst-case scenario means sharply changing policy course. Engaging Hamas may provide the Islamists with greater international recognition, but acknowledging its role also could mean increasing leverage on it. As it stands, Hamas has nothing to lose. Not surprisingly, it is behaving that way.

One million joined US jobless rolls over past year

M&C

An estimated 1.1 million people have joined the US jobless rolls over the past year, resulting in a rise in the unemployment rate to 5.1 per cent in March, the US government said Friday. The figure adds another piece to the overall contracting economic picture in the country.


Earlier this week, US central bank head Ben Bernanke said a US recession was 'possible' in the first quarter of 2008. The unemployment rate in February was 4.8 per cent. Economic growth in the last quarter of 2007 was 0.06 per cent.


The US Department of Labour said payroll employment had declined by 232,000, particularly in the construction, manufacturing and employment services branches.

Poll: 81 percent think U.S. on wrong track

China again cues up its propaganda machine

International Herald Tribune

Mao Zedong announced the tune himself, in 1927, when he wrote: "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay or painting a picture or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."


For the next half-century, China was one of the most violent places on earth, and not just because of the vicious foreign invasion and civil war that swept the country, or the ceaseless purges of supposed traitors and class enemies. There was also the matter of language, which in China has been both an underrated means of violence and a vehicle for it.


Mao's state created a propaganda system built on a crude triage: a world of heroes who were unalterably and impossibly good, and an even larger one of villains who were irredeemably, cartoonishly bad. Over-the-top became the routine in official rhetoric. Enemies were called "monsters" and "cow ghosts," "snake spirits" and "running dogs." And in one campaign after another the public was called upon to "resolutely crush" or "relentlessly denounce" them.


This was a universe of variable geometry, where people were not to reason things out on their own, but to fall in line. Today's hero could be tomorrow's villain, with no clear evidence or explanation. The sole moral compass point was the immoral leader himself, Mao, who to this day remains a sacred cow whose likeness peers out from every bank note.


In recent years, it had seemed as if this movie had been retired, but last month the production was cued up once again. The bad guy this time has been the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and the fact that outside China this villain is one of the world's most admired people has only caused the propagandists to ramp up the volume.


[..]The official slogan of the Games may be "one world, one dream," but that's not the feeling one gets listening to the state's organs. It is an ugly, wound-nursing nationalism one hears. "So strong," said the filmmaker Tang, "that there's almost no introspection, not even among Han intellectuals."

Why I Support Obama for President

As much as I wanted to see John Edwards as our next President, Barach Obama will now by my choice. Here is why, play this 37 minute speech and listen about what our country can be.

Iraq: Badr Corps Inducted into Army - Thousands fired for Mutiny

Even al-Maliki sees Sadr as winning this battle. He's drafted the other large militia into the Army to replace what was likely a lot of Sadr sympathizers and Mahdi Army members.
Informed Comment

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday honored the militias of the parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, i.e. the Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They were singled out for having fought alongside government security forces, and some 10,000 of them were inducted into the latter.


Al-Zaman points to a double standard, insofar as the government has not similarly honored, or accepted into the state apparatus, most members of the Sunni Awakening Council militias that have been fighting the Qutbist Jihadis.


The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da'wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.


If al-Zaman's reporting is correct, the scale of the mutiny is breathtaking, and helps explain why government troops did so poorly against the Sadrists-- the hearts of the thousands of them were simply not with the fight.


Al-Hayat adds details in Arabic, quoting soldiers who have been fired by al-Maliki. They say they were thrown, in Basra, into a situation where they were taking sniper fire from every direction. They had little training in street combat


Back to al-Zaman: Iraqi Interior and Defense Ministry statistics show that 923 Iraqis were killed during the month of March, a 31% increase over February, making March the deadliest month in Iraq since last August.


Meanwhile, Muqtada al-Sadr sent out a letter to his Mahdi Army fighters, praising "their patience, obedience and defense of their people and land." He asked them to redouble their efforts in confronting "a large number," though he did not say "a large number" of what. Later communiques suggest that he was referring to American troops.


Basra returned to relative calm on Tuesday. In Baghdad, clashes continued, as a curfew continued to be imposed on Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shu'la districts, which are known strongholds of the Mahdi Army.


Leila Fadel of McClatchy gets the story from Sadr City in Baghdad-- reporting on the human and political cost of last week's assault on the Mahdi Army and US-produced 'collateral damage.' Another US airstrike was called in on the civilian neighborhood of Sadr City on Tuesday morning.


Fadel reports one Sadrist saying,

We realized what kind of government we have: They are like foxes," Abu Amir said. "The Americans are our enemies, not our friends. Maliki is an agent of the Americans.

Warren Strobel and Nancy Youssef report for Mcclatchy that a significant outcome of the poor performance of Iraqi government forces is that Britain and the US will postpone further troop withdrawals.

Al Sadr Wins Again

Both bin Ladin and al Sadr seem adept at manipulating the Bush Administration into facilitating the building of their movement. Become the enemy of the US and grow in power and numbers, be permanently remembered as a fearless leader. Oh, I think Bush saw himself as a hero maker, it just didn't turn out as he planned.
csmonitor.com

On Monday, one day after the Shiite cleric's call for a truce following the battle that killed hundreds of people and wounded scores of others, several conclusions are clear. Mr. Sadr has demonstrated his power, despite the blows dealt to his movement over the past few years. The government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, thanked him profusely on Monday for his decision, but vowed that the fight would continue in Basra, where militiamen have now largely melted away from the streets, but remain very much in control of their strongholds. "It's the same old ending," says Juliana Dawood, a Basra resident, referring to previous battles with Sadr's Mahdi Army in 2004 that have finished with similar truces.


The fighting has also firmly wedged the US in an intra-Shiite struggle that has been bubbling for some time and will probably only intensify. The battle has also spawned more popular anger and frustration, especially in places like eastern Baghdad, toward both US forces and Mr. Maliki's government, which already had been teetering on the verge of collapse.


This popular anger is like an adrenaline rush for the Sadrist movement, which, in contrast to other Shiite parties, particularly the one led by rival Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, is seen as being on the side of the young, poor, and downtrodden.


Already Sadr is gearing up to capitalize on this comeback with a huge anti-American rally planned in Baghdad on April 9, the day Saddam Hussein's statue was brought down in the capital five years ago.


[..]A trail of wires led to detonation boxes inside the alleyways manned by Mahdi Army foot soldiers. One of those boxes was at the front gate of Amir Rahim's home. Some of the rockets aimed at the Green Zone over the past week were also fired from outside his home. "They will not be able to finish off the Mahdi Army," he says. "But it's us, the civilians, who are caught in the middle and just keep paying the price." He asked how he can be expected to confront these foot soldiers if hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Sadr City simply abandoned their posts or handed their weapons to the militia over the past week. He says that most of those in the police and Army have great sympathy for Sadr.


Militiamen also paraded in newly issued Humvees, which were taken from the Army in several neighborhoods, according to witnesses.