BakerMuckraker
Blogs in the Month of
February - 2006
- February 28, HERE
COMES THE DELUGE
- February 23, HARBORING
DOUBTS
- February 17, THE
FUNNY PAGES
- February 15, CHENEYMANIA
- February 10, BUSBOY
TO THE WORLD
- February 07, FANTASTIC
NEW NEWS SOURCE
- February 03, WHAT
ABOUT RUPERT?
HERE COMES THE DELUGE
>FEDS TO PAY INNOCENT 9/11 DETAINEE 300G
The U.S. government has agreed to pay $300,000 to an Egyptian man who sued after he was detained for nearly a year following the 9/11 attacks and was deported but wasn't linked to terrorism, his lawyer said yesterday.
The attorney, Haeyoung Yoon, who represents Ehab Elmaghraby, said she believed it was the first settlement involving the claims of people detained after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.... <
This small news item was plucked by the New York Post from the wire services, but why can't that paper admit that facts like these rarely comport with the 'our-country-right-or-wrong' editorials from its owner, Rupert Murdoch? (Murdoch likes pillorying people like Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a dead soldier, for opposing the war in Iraq. The Australian Murdoch himself has of course valiantly served in every American conflict since the Spanish-American War)
>Elmaghraby was detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn from October 2001 to August 2002.
Elmaghraby was cleared of terrorist ties, but was deported to his homeland after pleading guilty to credit-card fraud.<
There’s no question that plenty of ne’er-do-wells have been snagged since 9/11, even if they weren’t planning to physically harm anyone. Perhaps, though, a better title might be Department of Homeowner Serenity, or some such.
WHERE DID THEY GO?
A CBS News poll now has Bush’s approval rating down at 34 percent, eight points lower than a month ago.
Even his support among Republicans took a leap off the Olympic high dive. One wonders why there isn't more of an effort to scrutinize the people (and it's almost always the same people) who just luuuv people in charge, and then gradually admit they were duped. Perhaps the three-strikes-you're-out rule could apply to the right to vote? Well, just an idea.)
>The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement….
In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.
For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall….<
Asked about his declining support among ordinary Americans, and their sense that he does not care about them, the President harrumphed (NOT): “Like I care!”
>Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low…..
Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.
In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.
More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story…. <
Well, Muckraker warned about this recently, over at TomPaine.com.
> It surely has all the elements of a thriller: One of the world’s most powerful people, a violent incident, a rugged Western location, an air of mystery, maybe a whiff of cover-up.
But even in its most tantalizing form, the superficial saga of the vice president’s off-duty mishaps pales by comparison to all we’re not learning about Dick Cheney’s official—and deliberate—transgressions.
Most of us are more interested in embarrassing dust-ups than in the ugly and complex business of carrying out the people’s will. Hence, we observe a media response which disproportionately favors the ‘sexier’ if less substantive material….<
That Muckraker! Prescient again.
>Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.
Americans were evenly split on whether or not Cheney's explanation of why there was a delay in reporting the accident was satisfactory. <
What I’d like to know is whether Cheney's own family can even stand him. They are probably just delighted every time he heads out for a spell to hook, bag or kill something.
PLEASE HELP SCOOTER!
So Scooter Libby needs our help, according to Slate.
In case you’ve forgotten, that’s Scooter Libby, Cheney’s former henchperson-in-chief, and ever- so-close friend of Judith Miller, the controversial and not always accurate former New York Times reporter who worked with Cheney, Libby, et al, to inform us of all those Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (if you require more tutorial on Miller/Cheney/Libby, see this, this, this, this and this .) Libby is now awaiting trial for allegedly lying to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak, which had something or other to do with smearing opponents of the administration's fraudulent Iraq claims:
>Scooter Libby has a Web site. He's not running for office, but the site makes it looks like he is. The lead picture on the front page shows him with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Other snapshots portray him in soft focus and at oblique angles, the kinds of images candidates use to make themselves look more huggable. Fortunately, Libby's Web designers didn't stoop to showing him with dogs and children.
The vice president's former top aide spent his career behind the scenes, which may be laudable from a policy perspective, but it's problematic now that he's in a fix. Americans didn't have much of an image of him before he was indicted on five felony counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements. The newspaper photos published since have made Libby look like he's stood in line all day at the free clinic.
The Web site is the public face of the Libby Legal Defense Trust, which is raising money for Libby's defense. "Good lawyers are very expensive," says the site. "And Scooter and his family already have made many sacrifices during Scooter's ten years of dedicated public service. Now they need our help to win this fight." ….
The soft Scooter sell is about more than just raising money. It's also about cleaning up his image for the public, the press, and potential jurors. The Web site offers a page titled "What You Aren't Hearing," with testimonials lined up like movie blurbs. The endorsements, taken from Bush and Cheney's public comments, news articles, and television chat shows, offer hints about Libby's defense that go beyond his legal team's official filings. The Web site suggests three strategies his lawyers may pursue. ….
1. Libby is a good guy..
2. Everyone forgets. ….
3. Patrick Fitzgerald is no Ken Starr….
And that’s supposed to be a compliment to Starr! (who proved himself so worthy by hounding Bill Clinton about his sex life and other equally worthy topics)
WESTERN DEMOCRATS OPPOSED TO WARMING
Hard to believe, but some Democratic governors of Western states, plus the reborn ‘Poor Ratings Terminator’, think its already warm enough out on the range, according to USA Today:
>Half a dozen Western governors impatient for more federal action on global warming are mounting state campaigns to deal with climate change on their own.
Driving their efforts are signs that harmful effects may be occurring in the West: record dry spells, millions of acres of dead forests, warmer winters, dwindling water and catastrophic wildfires....
...Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer ordered a climate change advisory board to come up with recommendations by July 2007 to cut greenhouse gases.
Arizona's climate change panel will report by June 30. Oregon and Washington plan to adopt California's limits on auto tailpipe emissions, the strictest in the nation. An Oregon task force could limit power plant emissions.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and has asked a climate team to recommend by December how to make the cuts.
...Five of the six governors are Democrats who have criticized the administration on this issue. The lone Republican is California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. California also is the world's 18th-largest producer of "greenhouse gases," which trap heat in the atmosphere.
Schwarzenegger directed a "climate action team" in June to find ways to cut emissions by 2010, with further reductions by 2020. California's climate team is to release its plan in early March. Strategies may include a gasoline surcharge for research on alternative fuels and mandatory emissions reports by industries that generate carbon dioxide.
President Bush has emphasized voluntary measures and rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty on global warming, saying mandatory cuts in emissions would hurt the economy.
Latest to join the effort is Montana, where a U.S. Geological Survey computer model says glaciers in Glacier National Park could disappear in 25 years if temperatures increase at the current rate. They could disappear by 2100 with no additional warming, the survey says.
Oregon and Washington plan to adopt California's limits on auto tailpipe emissions, the strictest in the nation. Arizona established a climate change panel to come up with an action plan by June 30.
Seven states in the Northeast pledged in December to limit emissions from power plants. This month, the California Public Utilities Commission announced plans to cap such emissions as well. Mayors in 202 cities nationwide, led by Seattle's Greg Nickels, have pledged to meet emission goals spelled out in the Kyoto treaty.<
oh, those wacky, wacky westerners. Always something starry-eyed. And just in time for Brokeback Mountain’s likely Oscars sweep.
PLEASE AUDIT -- WITHOUT DELAY!
Any of you who have been audited recently under questionable circumstances (and you know who you are) get this: A buddy of odoriferous former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, now under investigation for -- well, for his very being -- got the IRS to audit a Texas nonprofit whose research led to the DeLay probe. In other words, someone put a contract out on a legitimate group doing legitimate, public-spirited work, as a form of DeLay payback. According to the Washington Post,
>The Internal Revenue Service recently audited the books of a Texas nonprofit group that was critical of campaign spending by former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) after receiving a request for the audit from one of DeLay's political allies in the House…..
The lawmaker, House Ways and Means Committee member Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), was in turn responding to a complaint about the group, Texans for Public Justice, from Barnaby W. Zall, a Washington lawyer close to DeLay and his fundraising apparatus, according to IRS documents…..
Johnson said he was sure the IRS would follow up. "I ask you to report back your findings of each of these investigations directly to me," he told [an IRS official] in the letter, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.
The IRS sent two auditors last year to comb the 2003 books of Texans for Public Justice and an affiliated foundation that collected donations for the organization. No tax violations were found, according to a letter the IRS sent the group.
But the circumstances behind the effort -- which were uncovered by the group's director and founder, Craig L. McDonald, using the Freedom of Information Act -- prompted him to allege that the audit was an abuse of the IRS's mandate. He said there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the complaints.
"This audit was political retaliation by Tom DeLay's cronies to intimidate us for blowing the whistle on DeLay's abuses," McDonald said. "Enlisting the IRS to intimidate critics is a dirty trick reminiscent of Richard Nixon. . . . It is not a crime to report a crime, as we did with DeLay."…
The group regularly publishes detailed reports on campaign spending and corporate lobbying. It is perhaps best known for its March 2003 allegation of illegal spending by corporations during DeLay's successful 2002 campaign for a Republican takeover of the Texas legislature -- claims that culminated last year in the indictment of DeLay and two campaign aides for money laundering and conspiracy to hide corporate donations.
….In his letter, Johnson said he had "uncovered some disturbing information" about the two Texas nonprofit groups on his own, "as a member of the oversight subcommittee." …
Asked to cite specific information about the groups that the chairman had learned through his service on the oversight committee, Johnson's spokeswoman McCall Cameron said she would look into the matter but did not call back….<
Well, the way Muckraker reads this, old Sam Johnson could find himself in a spot of trouble if he claimed that he had ‘uncovered’ information about TPJ when he had not. So, perhaps the DeLay-Abramoff-et al case still has some growing room.
STOLEN QUOTE OF THE DAY
Good buddy of this blog, Steve Pizzo of www.newsforreal.com (as always, not the same as an organization the IRS presumably will not audit called www.realnews.org ), resurrected, and then commented upon, this fine quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
>“The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
And no administration in US history has spoken louder, or as often, of
its honor.
So let us count our spoons. <
Methinks, murmured Ye Olde Muckraker, we’d best check all of the cutlery. Seems that a few knives are missing, too.
HARBORING DOUBTS
With everyone weighing in on the port security debate, is it any surprise that Muckraker has something to say? Here’s today’s New York Times, with a few annoying queries from our editor.
>The Bush administration decided last month that a deal to hand over operations at major American ports to a government-owned company in Dubai did not involve national security and so did not require a more lengthy review, administration officials said Wednesday.
The decision was made by an interagency committee led by Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt. The group included officials from 12 departments and agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Justice, State and Homeland Security, as well as the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.<
The key thing here is that the Treasury Department headed up the committee. Why? Is that standard procedure? Doesn’t that suggest that the financial aspects of the transaction are the most important ones? The very decision on what department would take the lead is in itself quite important.
>In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Kimmitt said that the company, Dubai Ports World, had been thoroughly investigated by the administration, including by intelligence agencies, and that on Jan. 17 the panel members unanimously approved the transfer.
"None of them objected to the deal proceeding on national security grounds," he said.<
How would you ‘investigate’ the company? It’s a huge, well-known firm. There’s really nothing to investigate. Nobody is suggesting that it is secretly plotting to undermine the United States. This is essentially a policy issue.
>…He also said it was important "not to send mixed messages" to foreign allies around the world with whom the United States put together a coalition on the war on terror.<
Actually, the US sends mixed messages all the time to allies, even sometimes to those who are part of that ever-shifting ‘coalition.’ But some are more a part of the coalition than others. Dubai is a key staging ground for the US military and US government contractors. And Dubai is, er, in the oil business. Wonder if, say, Denmark, is planning on running any US ports?
>….An objection from any member of the interagency committee that reviewed the deal would have started, as required by law, an additional 45-day review. Such a review is being urged by governors and members of Congress.
Mr. Bush and his top aides are strongly resisting that. Even before the transfer became known, the administration's review of foreign business deals had come under criticism for not being sufficiently sensitive to national security.
In September, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the Treasury Department, as head of the interagency committee that reviews such deals, had used an overly narrow definition of national security threats because it wanted to encourage foreign investment.<
And not just any foreign investment, I’ll bet.
>The department disputed those findings, saying that the committee had used an adequate definition and that decisions had been reached by consensuses of agencies with differing interests….<
Differing interests? In the Bush Administration? Time and again, the White House has made clear that it expects every agency to be totally on board with the objectives of the White House. Anyone who thought for themselves, like Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, or his first EPA chief, Christine Todd Whitman, got the boot. The notion that, say, the EPA cares chiefly about protecting the environment, and the Treasury department about soundly stewarding the economy, is a quaint one, indeed.
>…."One thing the president did, and even after all this press coverage of this transaction, was go back to every cabinet member whose department is involved in this process and ask them, 'Are you comfortable with this deal going forward?' " [spokesman Scott] McClellan said. "And each and every one expressed that they were comfortable with this transaction going forward."<
This is even more absurd, since Bush himself is known to hardly ever seek wide counsel.
Next, Muckraker went back and re-read this article from earlier in the week from the often more aggressive New York Daily News:
>The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.
One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World _ giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.
Snow was chairman of the CSrail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.
The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.... <
By now, virtually every regulatory agency is in the hands of those being regulated. With the fox so securely running the henhouse, we might call it The Fox Government Channel.
WE’D ALL BENEFIT FROM A LITTLE CLARITY
Perhaps President Bush can explain how it all works. Then again, perhaps not, judging from the following public exchange with a woman in the audience, where the president clarifies his Medicare drug benefit: (this has been floating around the Internet, and was posted by my friend Steve Pizzo at his blog, newsforreal.com --not to be confused with Realnews.org. It is indeed real.)
>WOMAN IN AUDIENCE:"I don't really understand. How is the new plan going to fix the problem?"
Verbatim response:
PRESIDENT BUSH:
"Because the -- all which is on the table
begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are
calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise
based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts
of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that,
those different cost drivers, affecting those changing those with
personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely
to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that
make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series
of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated
based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices.
Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based
upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would
help solve the ed if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast
benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that
growth is affected, it will help on the red."<
Just to clarify then: The drivers are on the table?
CHENEY’S ITALIAN PALS
On Tuesday, on TomPaine.com, I complained that the media frenzy over Cheney’s hunting accident was so out of proportion with its interest in scrutinizing Cheney’s ongoing activities and mysterious doings that significantly impacted US actions. Among the many stories I suggested worthy of more investigation:
>Who was behind the forged Italian documents used to make false claims about Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger?<
Once again, Muckraker gets quick action. The very next day, the Wall Street Journal front-paged: (unfortunately, you have to pay to read the full article, but a web search may turn up extensive excerpts. Here’s a bit….}
>For much of the past decade, Rocco Martino floated in obscurity on the margins of the global spy game. The silver-haired Italian worked briefly for his country's military-intelligence service, was kicked out but continued to freelance with SISMI, as it is known. He scraped together a living selling intelligence tips under an ever-shifting list of aliases to other agencies or to journalists.
Then he stumbled across something that, in the charged climate following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he thought could be a hot lead: 17 telexes, memos and letters purporting to show how Saddam Hussein had acquired 500 tons of "yellowcake," a processed uranium ore, from the African nation of Niger to build nuclear weapons.
Over dinner at an upscale Roman restaurant in October 2002, Mr. Martino offered them to an Italian journalist for €10,000, or nearly $12,000.
He never got the money. The journalist concluded, correctly, that they were fakes. Still, she ended up unwittingly feeding the papers into the international intelligence machine, which turned them into part of the U.S. case for toppling Saddam Hussein.
Now, the 67-year-old Mr. Martino is at the center of a Federal Bureau of Investigation counterespionage probe, according to a senior FBI official. As they seek to determine whether a foreign country intentionally misled the U.S. intelligence community about Saddam's activities, agents are trying to answer these questions: Who created the fake intelligence in the first place, and why? Was Mr. Martino actively trying to aid the case for war? Was he a pawn for others who were?....
…His lawyer, Mr. Placidi, says his client has worked recently as a paid operative of France's intelligence service, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, or DGSE. <
Surely the French, who opposed the invasion, aren’t creating a pension plan for Martino. But this is strange. Does zat make zem Chief Inspector Dreyfus and heem Inspector Clouseau?
>According to several people who heard Mr. Martino's account, the bogus Niger documents came into his possession after a tip from his long-time handler at SISMI. The handler introduced Mr. Martino to an Italian woman working at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Mr. Martino called her "the signora." They had their first meeting in February 2000, according to people familiar with Mr. Martino's account. The purported handler couldn't be reached for comment.
….Even though [journalist Elizabetta] Burba herself didn't write about them, she unwittingly put the documents in play. As part of her attempts to corroborate the papers, she delivered the documents to the American Embassy in Rome, according to the journalist and an account of the event described by a report on prewar intelligence by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Embassy officials never commented to Ms. Burba. They did send the documents back to the State Department's intelligence arm in Washington, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR. A week later, on Oct. 16, State Department officials in Washington were distributing copies in a meeting of an interagency task force that included representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency, according to the Senate report.
…President Bush asserted in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Africa. The White House denies it relied on Mr. Martino's documents to make its claims, citing instead a British "white paper" that made a similar claim. Several members of the U.S. intelligence community say they are convinced that all intelligence referring to uranium purchases from Niger were related to Mr. Martino's documents.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in March 2003 publicly pronounced the documents to be fakes. After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that same month, the CIA acknowledged that many of the claims concerning uranium purchases in Africa were based on flawed intelligence….<
Wasn’t Italy, under the current rightist regime, an ally on Iraq? Remember, as President Bush said, it is important "not to send mixed messages" to foreign allies around the world with whom the United States put together a coalition on the war on terror. What about unmixed, albeit erroneous, messages being received from same, that were so helpful in justifying the war?
MORE KATRINA GOOFS
The nation’s medical response infrastructure for disasters apparently isn’t any better than other aspects, according to this article from Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch:
>Like millions of Americans, Dr. Eva Briggs was deeply moved by the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. Unlike many, the family physician from Syracuse, N.Y. had much-needed skills to offer the relief effort.
By Briggs' account, what she got in return was a dispiriting two-week stint in Louisiana that felt more like an inept public relations exercise than a mission of mercy. Four years after 9/11, her experience illustrates the disorganization that continues to hobble the federal medical strategy for confronting large-scale disasters. ….
…Late last year… congressional Democrats concluded that another element in the government's response to catastrophe is in critical condition: the National Disaster Medical System, a 22-year-old program that deploys paid teams to stricken areas. Despite often heroic work by doctors and other emergency responders, "their individual efforts cannot overcome the systemic problems undermining NDMS effectiveness," according to the report by the House Government Reform Committee's Democratic staff.
…[I]n his budget for the coming fiscal year, President Bush proposes giving the system just $34 million, only a fraction more than it received in 2005.
Briggs' ordeal began a few days after Katrina stuck the Gulf Coast in late August. A veteran of eight church mission trips to the Dominican Republic, where she ran a mobile medical clinic, Briggs had volunteered her services through the HHS Web site. Weeks passed without a response. On Oct. 1, an HHS employee left a voicemail message asking if she could deploy for a mission within a few days but provided the wrong call-back number. Briggs tracked him down by finding his home listing and having his family reach him at work.
She arrived at a tent city in West Baton Rouge three days later, part of a contingent of some 150 doctors and nurses. When assignments were handed out the next day, only about half were given something to do. Briggs eventually ended up with the newly formed Mobile One Medical Strike Team, which was supposed to provide roving on-the-spot care. But by that point, the immediate crisis caused by Katrina was easing. When the team showed up at shelters, residents were often already gone or about to leave. Members quickly learned to call ahead.
But even when the word was that they weren't needed, the FEMA medical director told them to go anyway to "establish a presence." In Briggs' view, that meant sticking pins in maps to provide an inflated impression of the agency's effectiveness. One revealing moment came at the end of her tour, when she accompanied her commander to return equipment to the Joint Federal Office in Baton Rouge. There they found a flow chart spelling out 11 "decision points" between the time the state sought assistance and when FEMA actually dispatched it.
….Among her biggest frustrations was that the bureaucrats in charge were not only uninterested in constructive feedback but would not provide contact information for anyone in the agency who was. …<
Brownie? Chertoffie? Bushie? Comments?
BIG HEADLINES NEEDED
Here’s a story that got only brief mention in the newspapers, but could easily have been a huge story:
A human rights group reports that of the nearly 100 cases of detainees who have died in U.S. custody, half the cases lack an announced cause of death. Thirty-four were confirmed or suspected homicides. And soldiers were punished in only 12 of the cases; the longest sentence was five months.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
AND NOW THIS: TV-TURNOFF WEEK 2006
April brings a popular event in the Muckraker Household: TV Turn-Off Week. (Actually, we often find tv a turn-off anyway. But in this case, it’s the viewer who does the turning off.)
The idea is to unhook oneself from the babble feeding machine and go out and get a life. It’s never too early to start weaning oneself. As the folks behind the creative holiday put it in an email to supporters:
>We've always known that there's a lot more at stake than just getting people off their couches: TV-Turnoff is all about saying no to being inundated with unwelcome commercial messages. Saying no to unfettered media concentration. And challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see every day on the screen. <
For more info, go to www.adbusters.org . But don’t touch that dial. We’ll be right back.
THE FUNNY PAGES
From the New York Times’ website today
>In a controversy with echoes of the Islamic anger over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the authorities in a central Russian city today ordered the closing of a newspaper that published a cartoon showing Muhammad along with Jesus, Moses and Buddha.
The cartoon, published on Feb. 9 in the official city newspaper in Volgograd, prompted some criticism and a federal criminal investigation but no public outrage. That may be, in large part, because it depicted the figures respectfully, renouncing violence, though Islamic teachings forbid any depiction of Muhammad<
And then this, from today’s Times
>A cartoon in a German newspaper likening Iranian soccer players to suicide bombers has provoked anger in Iran and an official demand for an apology.
The cartoon, published last Friday in Der Tagesspiegel, depicts Iranian soccer players with bombs strapped to their waists standing next to a group of German football players in the uniforms of the German Army, or Bundeswehr. The caption reads: "Why the Bundeswehr absolutely has to be deployed at the World Cup."
Editors at the paper and the cartoonist, Klaus Stuttmann, said the cartoon was intended as a commentary on an ongoing debate in Germany about whether the army should be used as a security force when the World Cup is held here this summer. It was not, they said, intended as a satire on Iran or even as a comment on suicide bombing.
But earlier this week, the Iranian Embassy in Berlin demanded that the paper apologize for the cartoon. On Tuesday demonstrators in Tehran threw firebombs at the German Embassy. <
Oh, and this, from today’s Times as well:
>Since the morning the cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad were republished in the student newspaper at the University of Illinois here, response has been swift and split.
Muslim students and others held a protest on the main quadrangle on Tuesday, saying they were stunned and hurt by The Daily Illini's publication on Feb. 9 of the images that had stirred so much violence and caused so much pain in other parts of the world. Some members of The Daily Illini staff said they were furious, too, and in Wednesday's editions, the publisher announced that the editor in chief and opinions page editor had been suspended, pending an investigation into how the cartoons had ended up in the paper.
"This has gotten crazy," said Acton H. Gorton, 25, the suspended editor in chief who decided to run 6 of the 12 cartoons even though he said he found them "bigoted and insensitive." Mr. Gorton received calls for his resignation but also a deluge of praise, including comments of support from students as he walked on campus. "We did this to raise a healthy dialogue about an important issue that is in the news and so that people would learn more about Islam. Now, I'm basically fired."….<
Well, better “basically fired” than firebombed. Anyway, you’re so fired, dude.
>…Shaz Kaiseruddin, a third-year law student and president of the Muslim Student Association, said she awoke to a phone call from an angry colleague.
"I was in disbelief that they would do this," Ms. Kaiseruddin, 24, said. "That our own student-based newspaper would be so ignorant and disrespectful."
Producing any image of Muhammad is considered blasphemous by many Muslims, and reproducing such anti-Muslim images, she said, revealed no understanding of the pain that would carry…..<
Great. So that’s the standard then. Thou Shalt Not Do Anything That Causes Pain in Others. From now on, no pain. Presumably starting with things like not beheading adulterous lovers?
Muckraker was planning to test the commitment to free speech by running cartoons depicting rioters in a less-than-favorable way, but the rioters and torchers sent word that would be ‘hurtful’ to them, necessitating their rioting and burning Muckraker World Headquarters. So Muckraker intends to engross himself instead this weekend in violent and sex-filled Japanese comic books.
SPECTER OF CORRUPTION?
This one in the Times was easy to miss, but rather interesting:
>Senator Arlen Specter defended himself and a member of his staff on Thursday after the disclosure that clients of a lobbyist married to the staff member had received money through the senator's actions.
Vicki Siegel Herson, who until recently was Mr. Specter's legislative assistant on the Appropriations Committee, is married to Michael Herson, a top executive of the lobbying firm American Defense International.
Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and his staff confirmed that six of Mr. Herson's clients received a total of about $50 million over the last four years through items Mr. Specter inserted into military appropriations bills in a process known as "earmarking." The earmarks were first reported Thursday in USA Today. ….
"That would be a blatant conflict of interest," Mr. Specter said. "I don't think that happened, but I am going to go back and take a look at the specifics of it."
By the end of the day, a spokesman for Mr. Specter said he had decided "voluntarily" to refer the case to the Senate Ethics Committee as well.
Many Congressional staff personnel — along with several members of Congress — are married to lobbyists. But the questions raised about whether Ms. Siegel had a role in helping her husband's clients receive millions of dollars is coming to light at time when recent scandals have drawn new scrutiny to lobbyists' influence on Capitol Hill. ….
…Mr. Specter said many Republicans were debating the issue but he also defended the practice. Eliminating defense earmarks entirely could hurt Pennsylvania companies, impair the industrial base for military work, and deprive military officials of the thinking of experienced members of the Appropriations Committee. "You have got a lot of weighty considerations," Mr. Specter added.
Mr. Specter said that "I think I knew" that Ms. Siegel's husband was a lobbyist, but that he had met him only a few times and might not recognize him "in a crowded room."
Neither Ms. Siegel nor Mr. Herson returned telephone calls seeking comment. A spokesman for Mr. Specter said Ms. Siegel joined his staff about seven years ago. Before that, she was a lobbyist for a firm with clients in the military industry. …..<
Oops. Does this maybe provide an insight into how things work on the Hill, and why big changes are needed? Keep in mind that Specter is always touted as one of the more level-headed and virtuous of the Senate Republicans.
WHO NEEDS GLACIERS, ANYWAY?
From Slate:
>The Washington Post's top story of national significance is a NASA-supported study showing Greenland's glaciers melting at twice the rate previously believed, which suggests the world's oceans might rise a whole lot faster than currently projected. "We are witnessing enormous changes," said one NASA scientist, "and it will take some time before we understand how it happened."<
Muckraker has obtained an advance copy of a revised NASA response, apparently written by a 21-year-old political appointee who got his job for pasting Bush Cheney stickers on SUVs in 2004: “With the economy growing rapidly, new populations in the West and Southwest badly need new sources of water. We think this glacier melt has great promise.”
MCCLELLAN WARNS OF FALSEHOODS
From today’s Times:
>Human rights investigators working for the United Nations called on the United States on Thursday to shut down the Guantánamo Bay camp and either try its detainees quickly or free them.
Arguing that many of the interrogation and detention practices used in Guantánamo amounted to torture, the investigators' report said those who ordered or condoned abusive practices should be brought to justice "up to the highest level of military and political command."……
…The White House promptly dismissed the report, suggesting that the investigators had based their conclusions on false information spread by terror suspects.
"I think what we are seeing is a rehash of allegations that have been made by lawyers representing some of the detainees," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Thursday.
"We know that Al Qaeda detainees are trained in trying to disseminate false allegations."<
“And believe me,” McClellan told the Muckraker Report (NOT), “I sure know what I’m talking about. I mean, when was the last time you heard a truthhood from me? Nobody’s better trained in disseminating false information than members of the White House Press Office.”
CHENEYMANIA
Blogs like this can’t avoid the subjects our readership craves, no matter how tabloid they might be. Like constant updates on our Veep’s archery skills. We understand that la Dick was actually trying to blast an apple off his friend’s head, but that’s a story for another day.
Anyway, since the particulars on the weekend hunting accident change by the hour, let me just draw your attention to a paragraph of Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh, and Brown, recently published by our friends over at the Real News Project , about the Bush Administration’s two stellar administrators at FEMA, Joe Allbaugh and the man he chose to replace him, Michael Brown.
>The gun lobby is still the nation's most powerful, as acknowledged by Dick Cheney, who addressed the National Rifle Association’s 2004 annual meeting and noted from the podium: “I’m…delighted to see my good friend, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh. Joe is here this evening. It’s always good to have a firearm if you get into real trouble—but the next best thing is Joe Allbaugh.”<
And if you've got neither a good shotgun full of birdshot, or Joe Allbaugh, the next best thing is Brownie.
A SAFE PORT FROM THE STORM?
The following could be labeled "slightly disquieting." Since the Associated Press issued this story several days ago, the deal that is referenced has gone through.
>A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.
The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
The $6.8 billion sale is expected to be approved Monday. The British company is the fourth largest ports company in the world and its sale would affect commercial U.S. port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.
DP World said it won approval from a secretive U.S. government panel that considers security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.
The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States "thoroughly reviewed the potential transaction and concluded they had no objection," the company said in a statement to The Associated Press….
The State Department describes the UAE as a vital partner in the fight against terrorism. But the UAE, a loose federation of seven emirates on the Saudi peninsula, was an important operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI concluded……
Last month, the White House appointed a senior DP World executive, David C. Sanborn of Virginia, to be the new administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Transportation Department. Sanborn worked as DP World's director of operations for Europe and Latin America.
Critics of the proposed purchase said a port operator complicit in smuggling or terrorism could manipulate manifests and other records to frustrate Homeland Security's already limited scrutiny of shipping containers and slip contraband past U.S. Customs inspectors…… <
The article focused on competing claims about whether this was cause for concern, then quoted someone from the Council on Foreign Relations, with an observation that does not seem to require a doctorate – though perhaps a dunce cap would do nicely:
>"Does this pose a national security risk? I think that's pushing the envelope," said Stephen E. Flynn, who studies maritime security at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. "It's not impossible to imagine one could develop an internal conspiracy, but I'd have to assign it a very low probability."….
“You're not going have a bunch of UAE citizens working the docks," Flynn said. "They're longshoremen, vested in high-paying jobs. Most of them are Archie Bunker-kind of Americans." <
Well, okay then. Archie’s our man. And safety's our game.
>Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI has said the money for the strikes was transferred to the hijackers primarily through the UAE's banking system, and much of the operational planning for the attacks took place inside the UAE.
Many of the hijackers traveled to the U.S. through the UAE. Also, the hijacker who steered United Airlines flight into the World Trade Center's south tower, Marwan al-Shehhi, was born in the UAE.
After the attacks, U.S. Treasury Department officials complained about a lack of cooperation by the UAE and other Arab countries trying to track Osama bin Laden's bank accounts. <
To Muckraker, the most interesting thing is not whether the UAE will help smuggle bombs and things through these ports, or whether Archie Bunker will foil the plot. It is that the administration is so happy to see vital facilities in private hands, and troubling foreign hands at that. Also, M.R. is curious about that Mr Sanborn, an executive of the UAE company, being appointed chief of the US Maritime Administration.
Could a story lurk there?
HAVE YOU HUGGED A PEDESTRIAN TODAY?
From the Muckraker Health Desk:
In her New York Times column, Jane Brody talks about the importance of creating a lifestyle where one walks a lot and interacts with others. Muckraker read the article while sitting on a park bench in New York City, and felt pretty good about himself. But one doesn’t need to enjoy mouthfuls of bus exhaust to get the full benefits.
>A 1995 study by the Transportation Department found that children's nonmotorized trips to school had declined 40 percent in the previous 20 years and that adults' trips on foot dropped 42 percent in that same period. One-quarter of all trips are a mile or shorter, yet three-fourths of them are made by car. Not surprising, the number of vehicle miles traveled rose 250 percent from 1960 to 1997. With an increasing focus on roads to accommodate sprawl, sidewalks and protected crossings were often forgotten so that even people willing to walk could not do so safely.
One major result of this failure to use "person power" is that children and adults today are fatter than ever. Diabetes rates are soaring, and an increase in hypertension and heart disease cannot be far behind. Furthermore, mounting evidence suggests that a sedentary life is bad for emotional and cognitive well-being. Then there is the pollution from motor vehicles and the stress associated with long and congested commutes that take an additional toll on health.
Currently, just a minority of Americans achieve the minimum recommended amount of physical activity — 30 minutes a day at least 5 days a week — and 60 percent get no exercise.
Impediments include lack of time (especially when hours a day are spent commuting), unsafe neighborhoods and, perhaps most important of all, no convenient and enticing place to be active.
Congress has not helped matters. Several years ago, it voted to increase financing for highways but against more money for bike lanes.
It is time to make changes, in what planners call the "built environment," to give more people the opportunity to become physically active and remain so. "It's not just a question of health. It's also quality of life," Mr. Dessauer said. "Can I walk to the store, bike to the park, see my neighbors out on the street?"
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is underwriting the $15.5 million active-living program in 25 communities to test the widely held belief that making the built environment friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists will encourage more people to become active and increase activity among those now less-than-optimally active.
Each of the 25 communities (of the 963 that applied) has received a five-year grant of $200,000 to create partnerships of programs, promotions, policy changes and physical projects like sidewalks, bike lanes and racks, speed bumps and striped crossings aimed at making the community safer and more accessible to those willing to use their feet.
The philosophy is that a holistic approach, not just education, is needed to change people's behavior. One such project is under way at the site of Denver's old Stapleton Airport that will eventually be five town centers with 30,000 residents, 35,000 jobs and 2 square miles of city parks.
The 1,500 residents of the first finished neighborhood can walk to two parks; a swimming pool; an elementary school; and a town center with a grocery store, drugstore and restaurants, as well as bus service. The sidewalks, narrow streets, parkways and greenways are links to 150 miles of Denver trails.
…..In still another project in the South Bronx, a part of the Sheridan Expressway will become a greenway where people can walk, bike and plant gardens…..
Even without the support of a major foundation, communities and individuals can do much to promote healthful activities among their fellow residents. Mr. Dessauer suggested supporting bond measures to establish or extend trails where people can walk and bike. When new housing developments are proposed, zoning requirements should include building sidewalks and safe play areas. Cluster housing, leaving a large community-accessible area in the middle, is a concept gaining acceptance in many areas……>
Another plus: when Americans get out of their cars and start talking to each other, they may find out from one another what has happened to the country they love. From the Wal-Martization of the nation to turning over the ports, there's a lot to talk about.
PAINTING US INTO A CORNER
So how to tie the two above articles together, namely, Bush Administration favors to big corporations and the matter of quality of life? Hmmm…..
Wait. I’ve got it: Let’s look at this New York Times article :
>As New York and other states grapple with the gradually tightening requirements of the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to turn over records detailing the levels of smog-causing compounds found in common household and industrial products like paints and varnishes.
Such volatile organic compounds are not only significant contributors to smog, but they have also been linked to a variety of health problems, including the rising asthma rates in cities like New York and Los Angeles.
After trying for two years to obtain the records, New York State sued the E.P.A. on Tuesday, saying that the agency has violated the Freedom of Information Act by denying the state's repeated requests for the records. State officials say they need the records to draw up a plan to comply with strict new rules on smog-forming pollution being phased in under the Clean Air Act. The records are submitted to the E.P.A. by manufacturers of paint products.
New York and California, as well as some other states on the East Coast, have stricter regulations on volatile organic compounds because they have worse summertime smog problems than other states.
In refusing to turn over the records, the E.P.A. appears to be siding with paint manufacturers, which have been battling in court to prevent state attempts to regulate their products. And the paint companies have been aided in the past by at least one influential friend, Senator George V. Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who personally appealed to the E.P.A. on behalf of Sherwin-Williams, based in Cleveland…..<
Sherwin Williams? If I recall my high school civics classes correctly, he was as big a patriot as Archie Bunker. Anyway…
>A letter he wrote in October 2004 asked the agency to heed the industry's objections to allowing some states to tighten their regulations of volatile organic compounds.
Now states are having trouble determining even what the levels of such pollutants are. Companies like Sherwin-Williams are stating that the information about the pollutants in their products, which they submitted to the E.P.A., is proprietary and represents trade secrets, an assertion that the agency has supported, according to New York's court filing.
New York officials say the information should be made public, arguing that the agency, despite a request under the Freedom of Information Act, has not made a sincere effort to determine, as required by law, whether companies were making valid claims that the data was a trade secret. …..
An E.P.A. spokesman, John R. Millett, said in a statement on Tuesday that the agency's intent "is to provide New York with all the information it is entitled to. The agency is looking into the matter in order to provide the state a final response to its request."<
John Millett? Well, if my health classes were right, Millett is good for us, so I'll go with him on that….
The stalemate is the latest in a series pitting states, including those like New York and California, which have Republican governors, against the environmental policies of the Bush administration. In one battle, automakers, with the support of the E.P.A., are suing both New York and California over state plans to aggressively regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from cars and trucks. The Bush administration has rejected such state moves. ….
The new lawsuit comes as the Bush administration has come under criticism for restricting the flow of information on issues related to smog-forming pollutants and global warming emissions. Last month, a top NASA scientist said that Bush administration officials were trying to censor his views on climate change. Last year, the administration delayed the release of a report on the gas mileage of cars and trucks until after the voting on the energy bill…. <
Checklists, everyone. Let's see: Heat the atmosphere? Done. Turn over the ports? Done. Poison people through paints? Done. Choke people on carbon dioxide emissions? Done. Have we missed anything? It's not easy providing leadership.
YAHOO ON THE YANGTSE
This from Fortune Magazine regarding hearings held today:
>Facing blistering new attacks from human rights advocates in Congress, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco (Research) argued Wednesday that they are doing more good than harm in China even as they cooperate with the repressive government there.
Appearing before Congress for the first time to discuss China, the companies said they face a stark choice -- obey draconian censorship laws or leave. China is home to more than 110 million Internet users, second only to the U.S....
All the company officials said that enabling a censored Internet to grow in China is better than having no Internet at all, or one controlled by Chinese search companies.
"The Internet is a positive force in China," said Michael Callahan, senior vice president at Yahoo, which came under harsh criticism. He said the company is "very distressed" about the fact that Yahoo had inadvertently helped China imprison at least one dissident.<
But Callahan said that human rights were less important, anyway, than teaching Chinese the delights of consumer goods and wasteful living. [No, he didn’t really say that. Just Muckraker being naughty]
>Google's censored search engine, called google.cn, "will make a meaningful -- though imperfect -- contribution to the overall expansion of access to information in China," said Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president of public affairs.
Under pointed questioning about Google's role in abetting censorship, Schrage, his voice cracking, said: "I am not ashamed of it, and I am not proud of it."
….Neither the congressional critics nor human rights activists were impressed.
They accused the tech firms of helping Chinese authorities spread disinformation and become more repressive. Several critics said that, at minimum, all the U.S. companies should move confidential information about their Chinese users out of the country, as Google has decided to do.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, who chaired the House subcommittee hearing, compared the tech company's actions to IBM's collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Smith, a New Jersey Republican, dismissed the claim by firms that they have to obey local laws.
"If the secret police a half century ago asked where Anne Frank was hiding, would the correct answer be to hand over the information in order to comply with local laws?" Smith asked. "We must stand with the oppressed, not the oppressors."
U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and a Holocaust survivor, was even sharper in his attacks.
"Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace," Lantos told the tech executives. "I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."<
Yahoo’s Callahan leaned in a little toward his interlocutor. “The answer to that,” he said, “is Ambien.”
[Um, not really. Muckraker made that part up. But you can’t make up the rest.]
BUSBOY TO THE WORLD
DEAR DIARY:
My Inbox continues to fill with intriguing-looking missives. I was particularly taken by this appeal:
>American Citizen living in Brazil is looking for a restaurant job abroad.
Please, send call me for an interview !!
CURRICULUM - WELLINSON MANTINI
HOME ADDRESS: Oswaldo da Silveira Neves St,284
ZIP CODE: 13063-470
CITY / PROVINCE: Campinas - SP
COUNTRY: Brazil
TEL: (55) 11 3242-3927
EMAIL: diretoria@crew.com.br
APPLYING FOR POSITION
1- Bus Boy
2- any Entry Level position
PROFESSIONAL DATA
PRESENT PROFESSION: Bus Boy HOW LONG: 1 Year
BRIEFLY OUTLINE PROFESSIONAL / PERSONAL GOALS:
My personal Goals would be for myself to get a good job and stay with it so I could grow in the company.
LANGUAGES: English / Spanish / Portuguese
EDUCATIONAL DATA
NAME OF THE SCHOOL: High School
YEARS ATTENDEND: 3 Years
SUBJECT/MAJOR STUDIED: Basic
EMPLOYMENT DATA
COMPANY: Green Fields
POSITION: Bus Boy
FROM / TO: 2000-2001
MANAGER: Leo TELEPHONE NUMBER: (718) 6725202 <
Now, Dearest Diary, I’ve never seen a resume from a busboy, much less from an American busboy in Brazil seeking work by randomly e-mailing the world. Nor am I clear why the name of his high school is "High School." I also haven't had a chance to call his reference.
But I like his enterprise: “My personal Goals would be for myself to get a good job and stay with it so I could grow in the company."
A cynic might say that there is no such person, that this is merely one of the more bizarre manifestations of the “Nigerian Bank Scam Letter.” (To read my investigation of that phenomenon, click here.
Personally, though, I’m a believer. And I know a nice Churrascaria for which he would be well suited. I shall e-mail them shortly.
KATRINA KAPITULATIONS
By now, everyone is surely aware that the late, great Michael Brown testified Friday before a Senate committee about his disastrous helmsmanship of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina. I’ve already said enough about Brown in my article, Unholy Trinity: Bush, Allbaugh and Brown.
So just a few thoughts from the hearing. Brown made pretty clear that Bush was in the loop as New Orleans began flooding, and he seemed to blame the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security for much of what went wrong. The only thing he didn’t do was connect the dots. If he had, he might have said: “The president, who liked me but didn’t care about the people of New Orleans, was perfectly happy to have someone like me in charge – even though my biggest prior responsibility before FEMA was trying to figure out if anyone was cheating at Arabian Horse shows.”
Unfortunately, not one of those senators thought to ask Brown how it was that Bush had selected him, out of everyone in this country, to protect Americans from natural disasters and terrorist attacks. No, they wanted his candid opinion of what had gone wrong on his watch -- and on how we might do better.
HE DON’T MEAN JACK TO ME
According to this New York Times article, Bush sure doesn’t remember the oh-so-in-trouble lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But Abramoff says the two were practically fishing buddies.
>The disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff told a magazine editor [in e-mail messages] in recent days that he had met with President Bush many times and was invited to the president's Texas ranch for a gathering of campaign contributors in 2003, the editor said Thursday….
…In one message, Mr. Abramoff is reported as saying that Mr. Bush had "one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met" and that he "saw me in almost a dozen settings and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids." It added: "Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows."…..
…The White House has tried to distance itself from Mr. Abramoff, and at a news conference last month, Mr. Bush said that while he might have had photographs taken with the lobbyist, "I don't know him." He added, "I frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy." ….
Mr. Abramoff wrote that Mr. Bush "has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met" and that his memory was one of Mr. Bush's "trademarks, though of course he can't recall that he has a great memory!"…..<
This brought to mind another time Bush and a “guy” didn’t share memories. That was Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, the commander of the Alabama Guard unit where Bush said he pulled Guard duty in 1972. “I’m dead certain he didn’t show up,” Turnipseed told reporters in 2000. Asked about this, Bush said, “I read the comments of the guy who doesn’t remember me being there, but I remember being there.”
Whatta guy. What memories!
(You can read more about what Bush did and didn’t do in Alabama in these articles I published in 2004: this one, this other one, and, not to be neglected, this one.)
MEDIA MATTRESS
Sometimes, when I start hallucinating that the media are doing a pretty good job, I read dispatches from the watchdog group, Media Matters.
Here are some headlines from a single recent e-mail:
-Abrams failed to challenge disputed assertion that domestic spy program is "very targeted" [MSNBC host Dan Abrams]
-PBS' Lehrer failed to challenge Cheney's false, misleading claims about domestic spy program [Newshour anchor Jim Lehrer]
-Fox still echoing administration's "terrorist surveillance program" label; regional newspapers follow suit [using Bush administration terminology unquestioningly]
-USA Today echoed Bush's refuted claim that congressional leaders were briefed on domestic spying
-Bozell falsely compared Bush warrantless domestic surveillance program to Clinton response to OKC bombing [syndicated columnist Brent Bozell; Oklahoma City Bombing]
And you wonder why people in this country don’t understand what is going on? Why should they? They're depending on the media. For a better idea, check out the Real News Project.
WATER CROCK!
Drinking bottled water in the US? Fuggedaboudit!
As an article on OneWorld.net notes:
….Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week….
''There is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is essential to the health of our global community…But bottled water is not the answer in the developed world, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion people who lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding existing water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to provide safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term.''
Worldwide, bottled water consumption surged to 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from 98 billion liters in 1999, EPI said in a written analysis citing industry data.
By one view, the consequences for the planet and for consumers' purses are horrifying.
''Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing--producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy,'' said Arnold. ''Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more.''
At up to $2.50 per liter ($10 per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline in the United States…..
Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances--and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders--by boat, train, airplane, and truck. This ''involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels,'' Arnold said.
…[A]lthough 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically, some Americans import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy demand for what Arnold termed ''chic and exotic bottled water.''
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ''Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,'' Arnold said.
Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year…..
…''Bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit,'' EPI said.
France's Senate, it added, ''even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.''
…. ''in a number of places, including Europe and the United States, there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water.'' ….<
Muckraker gets the best of both worlds. He drinks from bottles bearing fabulous brand names, like "Finnish Spring Mist," so everyone thinks he is cool. But he fills them from the tap.
FANTASTIC NEW NEWS SOURCE
I just checked this out. www.realnews.org. It is simply amazing. Wish I’d thought of it myself!
FOREIGN AID FOR NOLA
Federal support for rebuilding New Orleans is so inadequate that the city is turning to foreign countries for help. This from Reuters:
>Shortcomings in aid from the U.S. government are making New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city.
Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because U.S. aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet. "I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap," Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.
Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm. "France can take Treme. The king of Jordan can take the Lower Ninth Ward," he said, referring to two of the city's neighborhoods.
….Nagin said his message to President George W. Bush would be that the federal government needs to refocus on the devastated area. "We need your undivided attention over the next six months," he said. "We need backup. We need for you to make the words that you spoke in Jackson Square a reality."<
Bush’s ‘undivided attention’? Now we know Nagin is unconnected with reality.
Anyway, this foreign aid to the US neatly completes the picture of imperial decline. We are spending all our money fighting wars on foreign soil while our own heart rots.
MORE BORING HEADLINES
The headlines and endless articles on the new budget make the eyes glaze over, while the substantive analysis is buried. As Eric Umansky notes over at Slate,
>as the papers detail, the overall budget numbers are bogus, or as the Post puts it full of "heroic assumptions." Perhaps to show that the administration is on track to cut the budget in half by 2009, the budget writers omitted a few small items such as the costs of Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and dealing with the bloated Alternative Minimum Tax. Total cost of those hidden charges: about a half-trillion dollars over the next five years. Per usual, the numbers-check stories are placed prominently for easy spotting on A10 and elsewhere in the papers' nether-regions. <
THAT CARTOON IS A RIOT! (NOT)
Rather than comment on the incendiary subject of those Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, which is not necessary, this blog will merely allude to it.
Just kidding. However, the failures of many American newspapers (the Philadelphia Inquirer is an exception) to actually publish the cartoons may be seen in some quarters as capitulation to intimidation.
Let’s face it. Cartoons are meant to be intellectual provocations (unless you’re reading Marmaduke.) The papers in the Muslim world are filled with offensive caricatures of Jews and of Israelis. If you don’t like it, you complain, or boycott the paper, or whatever. Or move. You don’t cause destruction and kill people – especially because that only, paradoxically, confirms the generalization of the cartoon, however inaccurate it might or might not be.
Anyway, here’s an even more offensive response, totally mismatched to the original, but what the heck. This from CNN.com :
> An Iranian newspaper says it is going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West will apply the same principles of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide against Jews as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, The Associated Press reports.
The newspaper, called Hamshahri, said the contest would be launched on February 13 and would be co-convened by itself and the House of Caricatures, a Tehran exhibition center for cartoons.
The competition is in response to the publication, mainly in European newspapers, of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, something which is forbidden under Muslim belief.
Both the paper and the cartoon center are owned by the Tehran Municipality, which is dominated by allies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is well known for his opposition to Israel, AP reports.
….Hamshahri invited foreign cartoonists to enter the competition and said it wanted to see how open the West was to caricatures of the Holocaust.
"Does the West extend freedom of expression to the crimes committed by the United States and Israel, or an event such as the Holocaust? Or is its freedom only for insulting religious sanctities?" Hamshahri wrote, referring to the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, in a short article on its back page. <
A really forward-looking leader would propose that we start ridiculing every widely-held belief. Like, of the importance of the Super Bowl. That would really get people riled up.
BUGGER OFF
Nice summary in Slate of the Gonzales nonsense over on the Hill:
>Everybody fronts the opening day of this week's Senate hearings on the warrantless spying. The only witness so far has been Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who politely suggested that Congress bugger off. In what caused a bit of a stink, committee chair Sen. Specter chose not to have Gonzales give his testimony under oath.
Asked why the White House didn't chat with Congress before it decided to bypass the whole warrant thing, Gonzales said, "The short answer is that we didn't think we needed to, quite frankly."
A few Republican senators weren't happy about that. "In all honesty, Mr. Attorney General," Sen. Lindsey Graham said, the "argument that you're making is very dangerous."
Slate's Emily Bazelon notes that despite the occasional verbal tussle, the ground rules Specter seems to have agreed to have left the hearings neutered: "No witnesses other than Gonzales. No new details of the National Security Agency spying program that the committee was supposed to be inquiring about. No request for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program." <
You’ve heard Muckraker say it before, and you’ll hear it again: congressional oversight is a joke. An embarrassment. A scandal. Three branches of government? Pshaw. It's all one stalk of Bush.
CRIMINAL SENIORS
Proving its seriousness about homeland security, the administration is clamping down on American seniors with dangerous foreign loyalties…to Canadian drugs.
This from the Minneapolis Star Tribune via www.prorev.com