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Editorial: Where Is The Voice Of Sanity
By Paul Levy
Information Clearing House
06/13/06
A little while ago I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for awhile. He asked me what I had been up to. I told him that I was writing a book about the collective psychosis that was wreaking havoc on our planet. He asked me what made me think there was a collective psychosis going on. His question left me speechless, literally not knowing what to say. What made him think that there wasn't a collective psychosis, I wondered. You could look in any direction and find endless examples which proved that our species has gone out of our minds. There was so much overwhelming evidence for the collective psychosis that I didn't even know where to start. To see our collective madness, all we have to do is simply look at what we're doing to each other, not to mention the very planet we depend upon for our very survival. We seem to have gone so crazy that many people haven't even noticed, as our madness has become normalized, which is just further proof of our collective psychosis.
Where is the voice of the psychiatric establishment in pointing out the obvious situation: not only that our leader is mad, but that Bush's madness is a reflection of the fact that we, as a species, have fallen into a collective psychosis? In a personal conversation I had with the late Harvard psychiatrist John Mack about exactly this point, he expressed his opinion that the psychiatric community doesn't see it as their job to deal with collective pathological situations such as we are in. Amazingly, Mack was pointing to the fact that the psychiatric community doesn't see it as their responsibility to track collective psychic epidemics.
On the one hand, there is psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of the fine book Bush on the Couch. Dr. Frank has my utmost respect for his incisive psychoanalytic study of Bush, pointing out Bush's pathological condition in a lucid and indisputable manner. Frank's analysis is extremely important and very brilliant, illumining Bush's pathology in relationship to the dysfunctional family system of which he is a part. Frank points out, both in Bush's family as well as writ large on the world stage in the form of the media and his supporters, the undeniable signs of the "enabling" behavior typically seen in the disease of family alcoholism.
Frank's work has reached a very important edge, however, and is calling to be unfolded further. By viewing Bush in relationship to his family system, Frank reaches the limits of an understanding based solely on family dynamics. Like a traditional psychoanalyst, Frank considers Bush as a "separate self" existing apart from the greater unified and unifying field, that is to say the entire universe, of which he is a part. And yet, at the same time that Bush exists as a separate self who is autonomous and independent from the world at large, he is interdependently embedded in and an expression of the universe.
As long as psychoanalysis contemplates Bush as solely a "separate self," however, it is under a form of illusion, as we don't exist in isolation from each other, but rather, in relation to each other. Though Frank's analysis of Bush in his identity as a discrete, independently-existing person has tremendous value, analogous to how the mechanical models of classical physics have great general utility in understanding the workings of our world, any analysis of an object or person isolated from the universe of which they are an interconnected part is of necessity incomplete. As quantum physics points out, we simply do not exist, in the ultimate sense, as isolated entities who are separate from each other or our environment. Having reached the edge of psychoanalysis, and limited by its worldview, it is not within the scope of Frank's analysis to address the inherent psycho-spiritual condition that pervades the underlying field, both in our country and our world at large, of which Bush is merely a symbolic expression. I imagine that Frank himself would be the first to admit this, and would enthusiastically encourage others to further unfold and place his findings in a larger psycho-spiritual context.
Frank points out the unconscious collusion in the silence and collective denial towards Bush's behavior that pervades the field. Constrained by the traditional discipline that he so faithfully represents, however, it is not within Frank's purview to diagnose our species as a whole as being in the midst of a psychic epidemic.
Frank's analysis is the pinnacle of psychoanalysis, beautifully illumining Bush's pathology on the "personal" level. Because of the fact that Frank is viewing Bush as an isolated person distinct and separate from the world around him, he doesn't address the deeper level of the unifying field in which we're all interconnected and interdependent. Ultimately, we are not able to contemplate Bush's madness without looking in the mirror. Bush's madness is truly our own.
Frank's analysis of Bush's "personal" pathology inspires and places a demand on us to catapult off of his insights, like a springboard, into the higher-order of the "transpersonal" (beyond the personal) dimension. Adding a transpersonal viewpoint, which recognizes that we are fundamentally and ultimately interconnected parts of the whole, actually complements and completes Frank's analysis of Bush's "personal" psychology. Both of these perspectives, the personal and the transpersonal, are incomplete by themselves. When neither of these perspectives are marginalized, but are simultaneously viewed together as both being true, they synergistically cross-pollinate and illumine each other. The personal and transpersonal interpenetrate each other so fully that they are not two separate perspectives joined together, but are two aspects of a deeper unified field which contains and unifies them.
Seen transpersonally, the figure of Bush is a symbol which re-presents and reveals the collective psychosis that we have all fallen into. The figure of Bush is a portal which simultaneously feeds and is an expression of the collective madness that is in everyone. Bush is merely a symptom, an embodied reflection of a deeper underlying pathology that exists in the collective unconscious of humanity which is giving shape to and in-forming world events. Seen transpersonally, the figure of Bush is revealing something to us about ourselves.
We are all complicit in the madness that is playing out in our world. Shedding light on our shared responsibility for the deeper underlying psychological roots of collective world events helps us to become truly empowered agents of change in our world who can truly make a difference.
If the psychiatric establishment doesn't see it as their job to illumine the fact that we are in the midst of a collective psychosis that is potentially destroying our species, the question then arises: whose job is it? Cultural anthropologists? Sociologists? Where is the voice of sanity who is pointing out the collective madness that our species has fallen into? Who are the people who study mass psychological events? What is playing out in the world has its origins in the unconscious psyche of humanity. Whose job is it to map, articulate and shed light on the psychic origins of collective world events?
A year or so ago I received an email from an irate Jungian analyst who was very critical of my work. She expressed her outrage by saying "How dare I write about Jung if I'm not a trained and certified Jungian analyst!" It was her non-negotiable opinion that it was simply "wrong" that I should be writing an analysis of the deeper, underlying psychological roots of world events if I wasn't a professionally authorized "psychologist." I never wrote her back because I felt there was no space for dialogue with her. Now I know what I would say to her: I wouldn't write about Jung's brilliant insights that illumine and heal the pathological aspects of our current world situation if the people who's job it is to write about such things, such as herself, would simply do their job. If people such as psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and the mental health community as a whole would shed sufficient light on the collective psychosis that is potentially destroying our species, I would be happy to do other, much more fun-filled activities.
As people who recognize the insane nature of our situation, which is to be sane in a world gone mad, it is our job to come to terms and deal with the collective psychosis that is wreaking havoc on our planet. It is our job, our calling, our vocation to deal with the indisputable fact that we are being ruled by people who have fallen into a state of collective madness. It is our responsibility to deal with the fact that everyone who supports Bush in his madness: his administration, the corporate, congressional, judicial, military industrial complex, the media, the voters that allegedly put him into office, and ourselves as well if we are doing nothing about our situation, have all fallen prey to a psychic epidemic that threatens the entire planet. If we continue to insist on being under-employed by not stepping into our power and creatively speaking our true voice to the abuse of power, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
The evil that is being enacted on our planet could only happen because of a sufficient number of people who are passively standing on the sideline and doing nothing about it. Not doing anything about the evil we see being acted out in the world is to ourselves become an unwitting instrument of evil, as our in-action allows, enables, and feeds the further propagation of evil in the field. Evil is truly calling us to pick up an empowered role, whatever that is, and "act," as if we are actors in a play or characters in a dream. Recognizing our responsibility for the collective situation we find ourselves in, we access our ability to respond creatively in the world and act-ively do something about it.
Something is being revealed to us about ourselves by the fact that we are being ruled by people who are mad. Imagine, what would we do if we truly recognized that our government is being run by people who have collectively gone mad? What would we do if we realized that the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet, the person with his finger on the button, is a genuine psychopath? This is not a make believe question: How would we respond if enough of us not only recognized that our leaders were truly insane, but that we urgently needed to do something about it? What do we imagine we would do? This is a very relevant question, as this is the true nature of our current situation.
Do we go belly-up, imagining that there is nothing that we could possibly do about our insane situation? Do we imagine ourselves collapsing into impotence, being totally dis-empowered, unable to do anything about being ruled by a bunch of psychopaths? Or do we imagine that enough of us, realizing the gravitas of our situation, connect with each other and access our collective genius so that we can truly make a positive change in the world? The question is: Will the darkness that is manifesting in our world destroy our species or wake us up to our true nature? The choice, and responsibility, is truly ours.
Paul Levy, is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, which is available at his website www.awakeninthedream.com. paul@awakeninthedream.com;
[ Original ]
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Editorial: The Flag of the Corporate States of America
By Charles Sullivan
Information Clearing House
06/14/06
This, I know, is bound to be an unpopular
essay that is likely to incite intense emotions and harsh
accusations against me. Yet I feel compelled to express my
thoughts on the matter in part because the commercial media does
not allow dissenting views to be heard. Also, the majority of my
fellow citizens have been drinking the mind altering kool-aide
that distorts reality into fabulous forms that bears little
resemblance to reality. Added to the formula is the fact that so
many of us choose to live in denial rather than face the
haunting specter of American history that might prove too
disturbing for us to acknowledge.
Far too many Americans are so thoroughly indoctrinated in
popular myths and propaganda that they are unable to recognize
reality when they see it. They desperately need to cling to the
absurd myths conjured by our rulers and deny the most criminal
and unethical behavior upon which this nation was founded. Aided
by a bogus educational system, we then contort them into virtue.
Thus, murderers and robber barons are celebrated as self made
industrialists who built America into a world class power. But
as Thoreau stated, "Any truth is better than make believe."
Unlike the majority of my fellow citizens, I do not take pride
in the American flag. I do not get choked up when I see 'old
glory' flapping in the breeze. My understanding of American
history does not permit such unfounded patriotic stirrings. Too
many atrocities have been committed under the flag for me to see
any beauty in it, especially under the Bush regime. Indeed,
seeing the flag often flushes me with shame and regret. I refuse
to pledge allegiance to any flag. However, I pledge to live by a
credo of social justice that does not recognize national
borders. We are all one big family.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote, "There is no flag large enough to
cover the shame of killing innocent people." I am inclined to
agree.
For most Americans the flag stirs elements of sentimentality and
reverence. It is celebrated as a symbol of freedom and
democracy, the triumph of justice over injustice; good over
evil. But symbols of noble ideals vanish into the mist when one
critically examines the historical evidence. Millions of
innocent people have died under the flag, including those who
have carried it into battle in the belief that they were
fighting for something nobler than corporate profits (see USMC
General Smedley Butler's 1933 essay "War
is a Racket)."
To me the flag symbolizes much that is wrong with America. The
flag is used as another clever marketing ploy against the people
to manipulate and to control them, selling them a fictionalized
version of history. The flag has been used, like the idea of
patriotism, to motivate men to commit horrible crimes against
earth and humankind. Rather than conjuring images of freedom and
peace in my mind, it portrays the darkest side of human nature
such as conquest, invasion and occupation. It reveals a litany
of crimes against nature and humanity that I cannot dismiss from
memory. Critical thinking demands that one weigh the evidence
and draw one's own conclusions based upon the facts, whether
they contradict our preconceived notions or not.
I keep another flag, one that more accurately portrays the truth
about America, in the trunk of my car, which I carry at anti-war
rallies and demonstrations. Like the American flag, this pennant
is red, white and blue. In place of the fifty stars there are
corporate symbols that depict the corporate states of America.
My flag portrays the reality of what the American flag really
stands for. It is all about corporate power, global conquest,
death, destruction and oppression. What do these have to do with
democracy and freedom? What do they have to do with social
justice?
Once again the people were sold a vision that is at odds with
reality. The truth is that America is the polar opposite of
everything we have been told she is. That is why so much of the
world is aligned against us. They see us as we are, not merely
as what we pretend to be. Most of the world's 192 nations have
been the recipients of our benevolence in the form of CIA
interventions, land mines and carpet bombs.
When I see old glory fluttering in a brisk breeze I hear the
lies of an imperialist dictator named George Bush and all the
horrors they have wrought for so many echoing across the tides
of time. I recall the brazen lies of Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, and the entire neocon cabal that has
resulted in the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq, Abu
Griab, and the inhumane horrors enacted daily at Guantonimo Bay,
the massacre of innocent civilians by U.S. marines and the
attendant cover up. I see the theft of Iraqi oil by U.S. forces
handed over to oil companies and defense contractors on a silver
platter. I see the entire civilized world held at gun point,
stripped of its dignity and its freedom by the largest crime
syndicate the world has ever known. It is hard to get all puffed
up and to take pride in that.
I recall the overthrow of democratically elected governments
around the world by an imperialist nation, particularly in Latin
America; the assassination of populist leaders who refused to be
puppets for U.S. corporations. Chile's Salvador Allende'
provides an example. Visions of Columbian death squads trained
at the School of the Americas move like ghosts in my mind. They
are not to be ignored. I perceive the threatening overtures
directed at true democratic socialist governments in Venezuela
and Bolivia that I know will probably result in the eventual
assassinations of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. These threats and
violent overtures are part of a familiar historical pattern. It
is not difficult to imagine what will follow. Democracy is a
threat to corrupt power and it must be assassinated. Power in
the hands of the people will not be tolerated by the Plutocracy.
Under the red, white and blue profits matter more than people.
They always have.
The historical evidence demonstrates that populist movements and
true democracy are the avowed enemies of the corporate states of
America and the ruling Plutocracy. We have a long history of
destroying democratic, left wing governments. When has America
ever over-thrown an oppressive right wing government? Death
squads do not exist to celebrate democracy or to liberate the
oppressed.
We have troops stationed at permanent bases all over the world
and they are not fostering democracy, they are suppressing it.
These acts are committed under the banner of the stars and
stripes and given noble explanations in the commercial media.
Every day the madmen who are running the government are planning
new horrors, an endless litany of death and mayhem to be
committed in our name for corporate profits. So forgive me if I
do not pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporate states of
America. Pardon me if I do not get choked up with pride when I
see a bumper sticker that reads, "These colors don't run." Most
people, it seems to me, have no clue about the atrocities that
are being committed by their government. They do not want to
know.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and
social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia. He
welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net.
[ Original ]
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Editorial: Bush, scripted and unscripted
Thursday June 15, 2006
The Guardian
A selection of quotes, scripted and unscripted, that issued from the mouth of the "great liberator". Read them, and realise that the domestic and foreign policies of modern day America are clearly not being dictated by a commander in chief who can barely string a coherent sentence together on his own.
So who really runs America?
Scripted: The success of America has never been proven by cities of gold, but by citizens of character. Men and women who work hard, dream big, love their family, serve their neighbour. Values that turn a piece of earth into a neighbourhood, a community, a chosen nation. (June 1999, when Bush announced his candidacy)
Unscripted: Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. (August 2004)
Scripted: War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing. (Mourning service in Washington following September 11 attacks)
Unscripted: There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on. (July 2003)
Scripted: The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us. Our nation, this generation, will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. (Joint session of Congress, September 2001)
Unscripted: The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany. (May 2006)
Scripted: States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. (State of the Union Address, January 2002)
Unscripted: I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce its desire to destroy Israel. (May 2006)
Scripted: I know that some of my decisions have led to terrible loss, and not one of those decisions has been taken lightly. I know this war is controversial, yet being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences. (Oval Office speech, December 2005)
Unscripted: I would say the best moment of all [in office] was when I caught a 7.5 pound largemouth bass in my lake. (May 2006)
Original
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Land of the Free
US seen as a bigger threat to peace than Iran, worldwide poll suggests
Thursday June 15, 2006
The Guardian
- Findings also show fall in support for war on terror
- Decline in America's image 'all to do with Iraq'
George Bush's six years in office have so damaged the image of the US that people worldwide see Washington as a bigger threat to world peace than Tehran, according to a global poll.
The Washington-based Pew Research Centre, in a poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May, found more people concerned about the US presence in Iraq than about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.
The Pew Centre said: "Despite growing concern over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the US presence in Iraq is cited at least as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a danger to world peace."
The survey, carried out annually, shows a continued decline in support for the US since 1999. The US image for most of the 20th century has been relatively positive, being regularly identified with democracy, human rights and openness in spite of criticism from the left, which reached a height during the Vietnam war, and a residual suspicion in the Muslim world.
But even in the UK, Washington's closest ally, favourable ratings have slumped from 83% in 1999 to 56% this year. The pattern is similar in France, down from 62% to 39%, Germany 78% to 37%, and Spain 50% to 23%.
In Muslim countries with which the US has traditionally enjoyed a good relationship, such as Turkey - a member of Nato - and Indonesia, there have also been slumps. In Indonesia favourable ratings for the US have dropped from 75% to 30%, and in Turkey from 52% to 12%.
"It's all [because of] Iraq," Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Centre, said. He added that it was a sign of how "dangerous Iraq is to the US image" that, in spite of common cause between the US and Europeans on Iran, there had been no improvement in the American position in Europe.
Mr Doherty said: "Short-term measures do have an effect. The outpouring of US tsunami aid helped in Indonesia and India but that faded quickly, and now we see US aid for Pakistan earthquake victims only helping at the margins." Favourable ratings of the US in India dropped over the year from 71% to 56%.
He said US domestic polling indicated that Americans were well aware of how the country was perceived abroad. The US image has become a political issue, with Republicans saying it doesn't matter as long as the correct policies are being pursued overseas, while Democrats argue that repairing the country's image and relationships will be a priority for the next president in 2009.
The poll provides little comfort for Condoleezza Rice, who has worked hard at improving relations with Europe since becoming Secretary of State last year.
As part of the overall decline in US support, the survey also records a drop in support for the US-led "war on terror", even in countries such as Spain, in spite of the Madrid bombings two years ago by al-Qaida that left 192 dead. Support for the "war on terror" dropped in Spain from 26% last year to 19% this year.
Throughout the period the poll was conducted the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, intensified by hardline comments from its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeatedly in the news. Iraq, too, has been in the news on an almost daily basis, with the formation of a new Iraqi government being accompanied by fears of a civil war.
Only in the US and Germany is Iran seen as a greater danger than the US in Iraq. Public opinion in 12 of the other countries - Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China - cite the US presence in Iraq as being the greater danger. Opinion in Japan was evenly divided.
As well as Iraq and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also high on the list of issues that present a danger to world peace. Public opinion in about a third of the countries polled put it at the top of their list of threats.
In the UK, the second biggest contributor of troops in Iraq, 60% said the Iraq war had made the world more dangerous. Only 30% said it had made the world safer, and 41% of British people said the US presence in Iraq represented a great danger to world peace, with 34% citing Iran as a big threat.
By contrast, concern about Iran has almost doubled in the US over the past two years. Some 46% of Americans view Mr Ahmadinejad's government as "a great danger" to stability in the Middle East and world peace, up from 26% in 2003. The concern in the US is shared in Germany, where 51% see Iran as a great danger to world peace, against 18% three years ago.
Comment: How is it that the greatest democracy on earth is widely seen as the greatest threat to world peace? The answer is simple, American democracy is a lie. It simply does no exist. The people of the world are less hoodwinkable than Dick Cheney would like to believe.
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Bush's Speechwriter Leaving The White House
By Peter Baker
Washington Post
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Michael J. Gerson, one of President Bush's most trusted advisers and the author of nearly all of his most famous public words over the past seven years, plans to step down in the next couple of weeks in a decision that colleagues believe will leave a hole in the White House at a critical period.
Gerson said in an interview that he has been talking with Bush for many months about leaving for writing and other opportunities but waited until the White House political situation stabilized somewhat. "It seemed like a good time," he said. "Things are back on track a little. Some of the things I care about are on a good trajectory."
Since first joining the presidential campaign as chief speechwriter in 1999, Gerson has evolved into one of the most central figures in Bush's inner circle, often considered among the three or four aides closest to the president. Beyond shaping the language of the Bush presidency, Gerson helped set its broader direction.
He was a formulator of the Bush doctrine making the spread of democracy the fundamental goal of U.S. foreign policy, a policy hailed as revolutionary by some and criticized as unrealistic by others. He led a personal crusade to make unprecedented multibillion-dollar investments in fighting AIDS, malaria and poverty around the globe. He became one of the few voices pressing for a more aggressive policy to stop genocide in Darfur, even as critics complained of U.S. inaction.
"He might have had more influence than any White House staffer who wasn't chief of staff or national security adviser" in modern times, said William Kristol, who was top aide to Vice President Dan Quayle and now edits the Weekly Standard. "Mike was substantively influential, not just a wordsmith, not just a crafter of language for other people's policies, but he influenced policy itself."
"He is the best and most influential presidential speechwriter since Ted Sorenson," said Peter H. Wehner, director of White House strategic initiatives, referring to the adviser to President John F. Kennedy. "Mike is one of the key intellectual architects of the Bush presidency, whether we're talking about compassionate conservatism at home or the freedom agenda abroad."
Gerson is the latest in a series of longtime Bush aides to leave, following White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., press secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow. But newly installed Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten said in an interview that the departure is not part of his broader shakeup of the president's operation. No one is being tapped to take Gerson's most recent assignment as senior adviser.
"He's one of the few people who is irreplaceable," Bolten said. "He's a policy provoker, a grand strategist and a conscience who in many cases has not only articulated but reflected the president's heart."
Gerson, 42, said he had originally planned to leave after Bush's 2004 reelection but decided to stay when he was asked to shift from chief speechwriter to senior adviser with an office a few doors from the Oval Office. He had a heart attack in December 2004 but said his health is now fine and was not an issue in his decision. "It was never my intention to stay to the end," Gerson said.
He plans to look at writing, speaking and think-tank opportunities, with help from Robert B. Barnett, the high-powered lawyer who represents major figures such as former president Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Gerson stood out in a White House known for swagger. A somewhat slight, pale, bespectacled and soft-spoken Midwesterner, he nonetheless forged a strong bond with the outgoing, backslapping Texan president, in part through their shared conservative Christian faith. He found a way to channel Bush's thoughts, colleagues said, transforming a sometimes inarticulate president into an occasionally memorable speaker.
Gerson wrote or co-wrote every major speech Bush gave since announcing his candidacy, including convention and inaugural addresses and State of the Union messages. He crafted the two speeches after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that will probably be recorded as Bush's signal moments of national leadership: the service at the Washington National Cathedral and the address to Congress.
He crafted the State of the Union language that labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea an "axis of evil" and the inaugural address that committed the United States to "ending tyranny in our world." He came up with the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" to focus on minority education problems.
Gerson believed strongly in the "compassionate" part of Bush's "compassionate conservatism," saying he wanted to pursue liberal goals through conservative means. To that end, he helped promote the president's No Child Left Behind education initiative, the Medicare prescription drug program and grants to faith-based charities. "It's a more activist approach," Gerson said. "That was a major change from what came before."
He also pushed for a $15 billion program to combat HIV and AIDS worldwide, telling Bush in the Oval Office that they would never be forgiven if they passed up the chance. Although he kept a hand in major speeches during the second term, he became increasingly focused on Africa and traveled there four times to see Darfur and other places firsthand, returning to describe searing scenes to his White House colleagues.
While toiling for an uncommonly polarizing president, he made few, if any, enemies, even finding admirers in circles often not friendly to Republicans.
"Mike Gerson has been an important voice," said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, a global anti-poverty organization.
Although groups have grievances about how some programs have been administered, it did not redound on Gerson, said David Gartner, policy director for the Global AIDS Alliance. "He's been committed and effective," Gartner said. "To get a moral issue the kind of attention it deserves, I'm sure is not easy to do."
Comment: "Gerson is the latest in a series of longtime Bush aides to leave, following White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., press secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow. But newly installed Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten said in an interview that the departure is not part of his broader shakeup of the president's operation."
When the speechwriter who crafted Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech jumps ship, you know something is up...
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Bush signs law hiking TV, radio indecency fines
Thursday, June 15, 2006; Posted: 11:38 a.m. EDT (15:38 GMT)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush Thursday signed into law legislation that raises fines tenfold on radio and television broadcasters that violate U.S. decency standards by airing extensive profanity or sexual content.
The new law, which boosts fines to as much as $325,000 per violation from $32,500, could help congressional Republicans woo conservatives in a tough election year as they have faced ebbing support from key core constituencies.
The Christian Coalition had placed legislation to increase the fines as the No. 5 item on its 2006 legislative agenda. The new law also caps any continuing violations from an incident at $3 million.
The drive for the higher fines came when pop singer Justin Timberlake ripped off part of duet partner Janet Jackson's costume and briefly exposed her breast during the 2004 Super Bowl football halftime entertainment show aired on national television.
Television and radio broadcasters are barred from airing obscene material and are limited from broadcasting indecent material between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., times when children are likely to be in the audience.
Those restrictions do not apply to cable or satellite services. That prompted radio shock jock Howard Stern to move his show to satellite radio to avoid the federal regulations since his antics led to fines against stations that aired his show.
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Lawsuit: CIA defines who's a news outlet
By FRANK BASS
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Wednesday, June 14, 2006 · Last updated 1:57 p.m. PT
WASHINGTON -- The CIA has adopted internal rules allowing it to define what constitutes a news organization and what doesn't, a Washington-based research group contended in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The lawsuit by the National Security Archive, which operates the largest non-governmental library of declassified documents, says the spy agency has begun charging illegal search and duplication fees under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The act requires government agencies to waive fees if the request is considered to be a matter of public interest or contributes to public understanding of governmental operations. Waivers are generally granted to news organizations. Depending upon the scope of the request, search and duplication fees can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The archive has won rulings in federal district and appeals courts that require government agencies to treat it as a member of the news media. The archive shared an Emmy award last year for its work on a documentary dealing with President Nixon's 1972 trip to China, and it has won other major journalism awards.
It's also frequently clashed with the CIA. Earlier this year, the archive gave the CIA its "Rosemary Award" for the federal agency with the worst FOIA record. In its citation, the archive noted that the CIA had already begun to deny fee waiver requests based on its perception of their newsworthiness, and the archive predicted the action would "lead to wasteful re-litigation of a settled issue."
In its lawsuit, the archive said the CIA rejected immediate waivers for 42 FOIA requests over the last year, demanding in many cases to know how its requests were related to current events. The delayed FOIA requests dealt with issues such as U.S. assistance to Afghan rebels after the 1976 invasion by the Soviet Union and CIA daily briefings for the Truman White House.
The CIA told the archive that it wouldn't waive search and duplication fees because many of the requests wouldn't interest the general public. Thomas Blanton, the archive's executive director, said the response was illegal and potentially dangerous for the entire FOIA process.
"This means they get to decide what's news," Blanton said.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she hasn't heard of the CIA making similar responses to other news organizations, but she called the response "horrifying" and said it sets a bad precedent.
"It's not up to the CIA to decide what's newsworthy," Dalglish said.
A CIA spokesman said the agency would have no comment.
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Employee verification system would affect all workers, privacy experts say
By Lisa Friedman, Staff Writer
WASHINGTON - Remember the Department of Homeland Security's "no-fly'' lists that erratically flagged 3-year-old children and dozens of men named David Nelson as terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes?
Well, now privacy experts are warning America to prepare for the "no-work'' list.
As Congress debates immigration reform, experts say a little-discussed aspect of the bill, mandatory employee eligibility verification, is likely to have a colossal impact on the lives of every person in the U.S. labor market -- citizen and foreigner alike.
"Everyone who wants to work will feel this provision,'' said Tim Sparapani, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "People are just beginning to understand the implications of it, and they're big.''
The need for a nationwide system through which employers can verify whether potential workers are citizens or legal residents has been the one element of the pending immigration reform upon which Republicans and Democrats have largely agreed.
But privacy advocates say the rush to mandate widespread eligibility checks is being done with little understanding of the technical snafus that could wrongly put thousands of people out of work each year while leading to rampant discrimination.
And, they warn, the government may also begin to compile new and vast stores of knowledge on every employable man, woman and child.
Department of Homeland Security officials and advocates of the employer verification system say privacy activists are fanning overblown fears.
No personal information is stored or tracked, they maintain, and the program is devised to protect employees from being left jobless while waiting for a green light from the system.
Currently that system is called the Basic Pilot Program, and it is voluntary. About 6,000 participating employers use it annually to electronically check workers' I-9 forms against Social Security and visa info.
Should the system go national, it will have to accommodate a U.S. work force of about 144 million people.
About 57 million people, according to the Department of Labor, take new jobs each year, 13.4 million in Western states alone.
Mark Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said most Americans wrongly think they will be exempt from verification.
"Generally speaking, people who aren't in the immigrant community assume it won't affect them. But for the system to work, it has to encompass the entire American work force,'' he said.
The bills, he said, "put the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security in the middle of every employment decision in the United States.''
Under the Senate bill, employers would be required to use the system to check every new employee, while the House requires employers to check current workers as well as prospective ones.
"This is many orders of magnitude greater than what currently exists,'' Sparapani said. "As a computer network problem, that's a massive undertaking.''
Chris Bentley, spokesman for the U.S. Department Citizenship and Immigration, which oversees the program, said he is confident the Basic Pilot Program could rapidly expand if required.
"Absolutely,'' he said.
Bentley noted that the system is not a database that needs to be created, but rather an interface that can access information from the Social Security Administration and USCIS records.
Ramping up the system, then, would require money and resources to accommodate the heavy influx of new users.
Currently, when employers enter a workers' Social Security or visa number along with other identifiers such as birth date, the system either confirms an employee's eligibility or issues what is called a "tentative non-confirmation.''
Employers are required to notify workers, who then have 10 days to contest it.
During that time, employers are prohibited from firing, suspending or docking pay. Bentley also noted that employees must already be hired and working before the verification can be done, so that employees are not waiting on the wheels of bureaucracy to turn in order to feed their families.
"No one is in a holding pattern here,'' he said.
But reality does not always conform to law.
According to the UCSIS's own 2002 study, employers do use the pilot system to screen applicants. And when they receive a tentative non-confirmation, "job applicants are unlikely to be notified,'' the study found.
Moreover, 67 percent of employees who contested a non-confirmation reported being suspended, docked pay or having their job training delayed while they sorted out their records.
A 2004 agency report found that erroneous non-confirmations for foreign born workers was "unacceptably high'' and "higher than desirable'' for U.S.-born workers.
The errors, it found, are largely the result of data entry mistakes and accuracy problems with either the Social Security or USCIS databases.
"This creates burdens for employees and employers, increased verification costs for the government and led to unintentional discrimination against foreign-born persons,'' the study found.
These days the USCIS pegs the overall error rate as low as 1.4 percent.
But extrapolated to 54 million workers in a mandatory national system, and that could result in more than 750,000 people each year wrongly told they aren't eligible to work.
Sparapani likened it to DHS's no-fly list, which led to dozens of men named David Nelson being detained at airports because one man named David Nelson apparently was listed as a potential terrorist.
"I've called this system the 'no-work list,''' Sparapani said.
"Pick your common surname. It's a nightmare for the system. And imagine not being able to work and provide for your family,'' he said.
While the Senate bill provides employees with broader ability to contest and appeal their finding, the House version does not.
But accuracy could have its dangers as well.
The more information the government collects in the name of preserving accuracy and preventing identity fraud, the more information the government has on all of us, experts point out.
"It's the government creating another system of identification'' Rotenberg said.
While DHS officials maintained that no employment data is tracked or stored, Rotenberg and others predicted it someday would be. And without privacy restrictions on how the information is used, they warned, numerous agencies could potentially tap into the data at any time.
Ultimately, though, immigration experts said the employer verification program, even with its faults, is the best way to block illegal immigration.
"There are legitimate concerns in terms of privacy and the rights of individuals to access and correct their records,'' said Deborah Meyers, a senior policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute.
But, she said, "ultimately, from an immigration perspective, only an employer verification system has the potential to reduce illegal immigration to the United States, because ultimately it's the job magnet that draws illegals to the U.S.
"The deterrent has to be the inability to get a job,'' she said.
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Sweep nets nearly 2,100 illegal immigrants
By ANDREW RYAN
Associated Press
Thu Jun 15, 2006
BOSTON - A blitz by federal agents during the last three weeks captured nearly 2,100 illegal immigrants across the country in raids targeting child molesters, violent gang members and past deportees who re-entered the country.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials credited the roundup to a network of 35 fugitive apprehension teams.
"This is a massive operation," said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for immigration enforcement or ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. "We are watching the country's borders from the inside."
The crackdown, dubbed "Operation Return to Sender," kicked off May 26. An Associated Press reporter and photographer accompanied a fugitive task force as it made raids Tuesday night and early Wednesday.
A swarm of immigration agents had sped silently, headlights off, down a Boston side street and surrounded an apartment house.
"Police! Policia! Police!" Monico yelled, holding his badge to a window where someone had pulled back the curtain. "Open the door!"
Soon agents led a dazed-looking Jose Ferreira Da Silva, 35, out in handcuffs. The Brazilian had been arrested in 2002 and deported, but had slipped back into the country. He now faces up to 20 years in prison.
"This sends a message," said Daniel Monico, a deportation officer, after a successful raid early Wednesday. "When we deport you, we're serious."
The operation has caught more than 140 immigrants with convictions for sexual offenses against children; 367 known gang members, including street soldiers in the deadly Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13; and about 640 people who had already been deported once, immigration officials said. The numbers include more than 720 arrests in California alone.
More than 800 people arrested already have been deported.
ICE's 2006 budget increased the number of fugitive task forces to 52, and the Bush administration is pushing for 70 by 2007. The teams face a mounting challenge.
There are more than 500,000 "fugitive aliens" who have been deported by judges and either slipped back into the country or never left. There is often a disconnect between local and state prisons and the federal government that allows illegal immigrants to serve time and be released without being transferred to federal officials for deportation.
The government has conducted large scale sweeps from time to time, including on April 20, when Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff announced a new get-tough policy. That day, agents rounded up 1,100 illegal immigrants in 40 cities.
During the raid late Tuesday, the federal squad, which includes a Boston police sergeant detective, wore bulging bulletproof vests and stiff Kevlar gloves to protect their hands from needles, knives and rusty fences.
Badges dangled on chains around their necks as they passed around wanted posters and shined flashlights on the face of a 24-year-old Latvian man who had served prison time for assaulting a police officer.
The team moved in the dark, climbing fences and hiding behind parked cars to encircle a three-story house in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood. All at once they emerged from the shadows. A half-dozen agents filled the front porch, their knocks on the door echoing down the block. The target had moved, the agents learned, and a team split off and caught him in Weymouth, about 15 miles south of the city.
Another man caught in the recent blitz was a Salvadoran gang member who was convicted in a stabbing that left a 13-year-old boy paralyzed. Agents caught him working at Budget Rental Car at Boston's Logan Airport.
"The problems with immigration aren't going to be solved overnight," Raimondi said as the team sped toward another raid. "You start chipping away at it ... The more teams we get up and running, the more dangerous people we are going to get off the streets."
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New Jersey officials sued by federal government over phone records access
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
Wed Jun 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - The federal government sued the New Jersey attorney general and other state officials Wednesday to stop them from seeking information about telephone companies' cooperation with the National Security Agency.
The unusual filing in U.S. District Court in Trenton, N.J., is the latest effort by federal authorities to halt legal proceedings aimed at revealing whether and how often AT&T, Verizon and other phone companies have provided customer records to the NSA without a court order.
New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber, a Democrat, and other officials sent subpoenas to five carriers on May 17, asking for documents that would explain whether they supplied customer records to the NSA, the lawsuit said.
The subpoenas followed by a few days a USA Today report that the phone companies had complied with the secretive agency's request for the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The companies' deadline to respond to the subpoenas is Thursday, the federal lawsuit said.
Farber subpoenaed the phone companies for information because she suspected state consumer protection laws may have been violated if in fact the phone companies were turning over such records, Farber spokesman David Wald said.
"The phone companies were turning over information without any notice to consumers," Wald said. "We were seeking to protect the people of New Jersey."
The Justice Department said more than 20 lawsuits have been filed around the country alleging that the phone companies illegally assisted the NSA. The government says sensitive national security information would be revealed if judges allow those cases to proceed.
The American Civil Liberties Union also has filed complaints in more than 20 states, including New Jersey, asking state utility commissions and attorneys general to investigate.
In this matter, the federal government said the New Jersey officials are treading on federal turf and that the companies, if forced to comply with the subpoenas, would be confirming or denying the existence of the program.
President Bush and other top federal officials have refused to do that.
Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler also warned lawyers for the phone companies that responding to the subpoenas "would violate federal laws and executive orders."
A separate letter that Keisler, head of the department's Civil Division, sent to Farber made the same points, but it took a softer approach.
"We sincerely hope that you will withdraw the subpoenas, so that litigation over this matter may be avoided," Keisler said.
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North Dakota Primary Elections: Marine wins GF council Ward 2 race from Iraq
By Tu-Uyen Tran
Herald Staff Writer
Wed, Jun. 14, 2006
"We've got a raid going on right now, and I can't do anything for another 90 minutes. Can I call you then or is it too late?"
Thus went the e-mail from Maj. Mike McNamara from Fallujah, Iraq, replying to a request for an interview following his victory in the Grand Forks City Council Ward 2 race.
The race had been an intense one with four other candidates fighting for the same office and all of them having the advantage of being in town during the campaign.
Not that Mac, as he is often known, didn't have advantages of his own being both a local media celebrity - he's the host of "Mac Talk" on KNOX radio - and a Marine in a time when the military enjoys the most prestige it's had since World War II.
As things turned out, he had no problem wooing the voters. Mac got 49 percent of the 695 votes cast in Ward 2, the city ward with the biggest voter turnout. His closest rival was Jon Dorner, who had 19 percent of the vote.
Mac's wife, Susan, who went door-to-door on his behalf with their children and other volunteers, said no one they spoke with thought his being away was a problem. She said it would be no different than when current council members are away during meetings: They call in.
Mac is scheduled to return in 93 days, according to his Web site, VoteMcNamara.com.
Ward 2 wasn't the only race, of course, just the most intense. In Ward 4, Council President Hal Gershman was unchallenged and, in Ward 6, former council member Art Bakken is back after four year's absence. Bakken won 54 percent of 441 votes cast.
While he and his erstwhile rival Tom Potter were of different political orientations - Bakken a conservative and Potter a liberal - the two shared very similar views on the major issues.
"A lot of it is just common sense," Bakken said.
Both said they wanted to put a freeze on property taxes and both thought the city needs to explore other options for its proposed landfill, which is now in litigation.
But Bakken might not be around very long. Depending on the direction the city is going in four years, the 60-year-old said, he might just step aside and let someone younger run.
Comment: "... [Mac is] a Marine in a time when the military enjoys the most prestige it's had since World War II."
At a time when most Americans are fed up with Bush, the military is enjoying quite a lot of support from the people. General Honore rode in on his white horse to save New Orleans after Katrina, barking orders at troops and police officers to lower their weapons. National Guard troops are presently securing US borders. Hayden, a retired Navy admiral, is now running the CIA. Yes indeedy, it seems the military is on its way up the popularity ladder...
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US emergency rooms in crisis, reports find
By Maggie Fox
Reuters
Wed Jun 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - U.S. emergency rooms are understaffed, overwhelmed and could not cope with a crisis, whether a pandemic, attack or natural disaster, according to three reports released on Wednesday.
Americans rely heavily on emergency departments and emergency medical services to save their lives when sudden illness or disaster strikes, yet these services are not properly funded and often do not live up to expectations, the reports from the independent Institute of Medicine found.
"We are definitely not prepared for the onslaught we would receive today in the event of an emergency (such as) a hurricane, bioterrorist attack ... or a pandemic," Dr. Brent Eastman, Chief Medical Officer of Scripps Health in San Diego, told a news conference.
"We hope that this report will astonish the nation."
The Institute, an independent body that advises the federal government on health matters, issued three reports on the fragile status of emergency care in the United States. It noted that emergency services are the primary source of health care for many uninsured people or on evening and weekends when clinics are closed.
"Each year in the United States approximately 114 million visits to emergency department occur, and 16 million of these patients arrive by ambulance. In 2002, 43 percent of all hospital admissions in the United States entered through the ED," one of the reports reads.
LACK OF TRAINING, SUPPLIES
Despite increasing attention placed on emergency and disaster preparedness in the United States after the September 11 attacks, emergency services received only 4 percent of $3.38 billion distributed by the Homeland Security Department for emergency preparedness in 2002 and 2003, the Institute said. The report did not give figures for 2004 or 2005.
"The result is that few hospital and EMS professionals have had even minimal disaster preparedness training," one report said.
"Even fewer have access to personal protective equipment; hospitals, many already stretched to the limit, lack the ability to absorb any significant surge in casualties; and supplies of critical hospital equipment, such as decontamination showers ... ventilators, and intensive care unit beds, are wholly inadequate."
Experts say none of the complaints are new and yet little has been done to address the problem, perhaps because the U.S. healthcare system relies heavily on private enterprise.
"Hospitals must be reimbursed for the significant amounts of uncompensated emergency and trauma care they provide. To do otherwise threatens to destroy the critical emergency care infrastructure that all Americans depend on," said Dr. Rick Blum, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
The reports call for a pool of $50 million to pay for this.
State and federal governments must also work to ensure that hospitals and emergency medical services can communicate with police, fire departments and other emergency responders -- something many cannot do now.
Some of the nation's emergency medical services are municipally managed, others are privately owned. Some are organized under fire departments, while others are operated by hospitals or other medical organizations and they all need to coordinate better, the panel said.
It recommended that Congress allocate $88 million for projects to find ways to do this.
Hospitals also have to stop diverting patients to the emergency room, get patients out of the ER and into hospital rooms so they do not clog up the system, and learn to communicate with one another better, the committee said.
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Dollars and Nonsense
Senate rebuffs Bush on war budgeting
By Vicki Allen
Reuters
Wed Jun 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to force President George W. Bush to submit a budget for the
Iraq and Afghanistan wars instead of financing them in emergency bills that are pushed through Congress with minimal scrutiny.
As Congress prepared to pass an emergency bill with $65.8 billion the Pentagon urgently wanted for the wars, the Senate voted 98-0 to end the practice and make the administration lay out the wars' expected costs in its annual budget submitted to Congress in February.
The vote came on an amendment to legislation spelling out defense policies for next year that is expected to trigger a broader debate on Iraq. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said he would push an amendment calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of this year, while other Democrats are considering measures calling for a phased withdrawal.
Including the latest emergency bill, the wars' cost will reach $420 billion, said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who sponsored the amendment.
"We're adding hundreds of billions to conveniently named emergency expenditures" that do not have to be accounted for in the budget, he said.
The amendment would only apply to war spending and would allow additional emergency Pentagon spending with justification.
The House of Representatives passed its version of the defense authorization bill in May without a similar measure to end the war supplementals.
Democrats and a number of Republicans have complained that the administration has sought to conceal the mounting red ink caused by the wars and diminish Congress' role in budget decisions by rolling the war spending into periodic supplemental bills.
Because the emergency bills are not offset by spending cuts, they add to the burgeoning federal debt.
The administration has resisted putting war spending through the regular budget process, arguing that the uncertainty of war means it cannot foresee many costs.
"The White House has shown no sign that it will take the fiscally responsible course of beginning ... to budget for the cost of the wars," said Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record) of West Virginia, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee that oversees federal spending.
McCain has frequently complained that the war supplementals -- nine since the September 11, 2001, attacks -- have become vehicles for billions of dollars in spending on lawmakers' pet projects. Routine military spending also increasingly has crept into the emergency bills, he said.
Bush threatened to veto the Senate's version of the latest emergency bill that had swelled by $14 billion beyond the $94 billion Bush wanted for the wars and for rebuilding in the hurricane-ravaged U.S. Gulf Coast. But lawmakers trimmed the costs in a House of Representatives-Senate negotiation.
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Congress Gives Itself 7th Straight Pay Raise
The Boston Channel
13/06/2006
WASHINGTON -- Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday embraced a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
Lawmakers easily squelched a bid by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to get a direct vote to block the COLA, which is automatically awarded unless lawmakers vote to block it.
In the early days of GOP control of Congress, lawmakers routinely denied themselves the annual COLA. Last year, the Senate voted 92-6 to deny the raise but quietly surrendered the position in House-Senate talks.
As part of an ethics reform bill in 1989, Congress gave up their ability to accept pay for speeches and made annual cost-of-living pay increases automatic unless the lawmakers voted otherwise.
The pay issue has been linked to the annual Transportation and Treasury Department spending bill because that measure stipulates that civil servants get raises of 2.7 percent, the same as military personnel will receive. Under a complicated formula, the increase translates to 2 percent for members of Congress.
Like last year, Matheson led a quixotic drive to block the raise. He was the only member to speak on the topic.
"I do not think that it is appropriate to let this bill go through without an up or down vote on whether or not Congress should have an increase in its own pay," Matheson said.
But by a 249-167 vote, the House rejected Matheson's procedural attempt to get a direct vote on the pay raise.
The pay raise would also apply to the vice president - who is president of the Senate - congressional leaders and Supreme Court justices.
This year, Vice President Cheney, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Chief Justice William Rehnquist receive $212,100. Associate justices receive $203,000. House and Senate party leaders get $183,500.
President George W. Bush's salary of $400,000 is unaffected by the legislation.
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House, Senate Members Disclose Finances
By MARY DALRYMPLE
AP
June 14, 2006
WASHINGTON - Lawmakers caught up in ethics investigations have plenty of cash - just in case they someday face hefty lawyers' bills.
House and Senate members detailed their finances Wednesday in the midst of public and government scrutiny of certain dealings that have caused Congress' popularity to drop.
The reports require lawmakers to list last year's assets and debts, along with any income beyond the $162,100 salary for the rank-and-file House and Senate members. Rules require lawmakers to donate their speaking fees to charity and to limit gifts from any individual to $100 in a year.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., holds blind trusts worth $7.5 million to $36 million. He reported making $5 million last year from the largest, worth between $5 million to $25 million.
Frist faces a Securities and Exchange Commission insider trading investigation over selling stock in a hospital company his family founded. He denies any wrongdoing and said he ordered the sales to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as he considers running for president in 2008.
Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., founder and chairman of Blue Ridge Savings and Loan in Asheville, N.C., reported stock in a holding company for the bank worth more than $50 million. He also purchased 80 percent of a Russian bank and founded a Russian investment company.
State Democrats have called for congressional ethics and conflict of interest investigations into Taylor's banking activities and links to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in a federal bribery investigation.
Republican Tom DeLay of Texas, who resigned his House seat last week, showed his legal troubles have led him into sizable debt. DeLay reported owing $250,001 to $500,000 to four separate lawyers and law firms.
DeLay also reported individual and corporate contributions to a legal defense fund worth $588,320. He has predicted that legal bills will cost him $3 million.
Not every lawmaker under ethical scrutiny, who might amass large legal bills, can count on large bank accounts.
Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, under investigation at the Justice Department and the House ethics committee for his ties to Abramoff, reported no major assets or liabilities, nor any major outside sources of unearned income.
Ney, one of the recipients of an Abramoff golfing trip to Scotland, also reported no privately funded travel. He and his staff have said they stopped allowing any outside groups to pay for trips.
Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., under investigation by the FBI for bribery, owns two tracts of farmland in Louisiana, each worth $50,001 to $100,000. He loaned $100,001 to $250,000 each to his mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns, as well as $50,001 to $100,000 to "Jefferson Interests." His office would not provide additional details.
Jefferson also reported three major liabilities. He owes between $50,001 and $100,000 each to Dryades Bank and Noah Samara, chairman and CEO of Worldspace Satellite Radio. He also has a $15,001 to $50,000 loan from Liberty Bank of New Orleans.
The FBI claims agents found $90,000 in bribe money stashed in Jefferson's home freezer. Jefferson has not been indicted and has denied all wrongdoing in connection with a federal investigation.
Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., this week acknowledged some inaccuracies in past financial statements and amended reports dating back to 2000, but he has denied improperly benefiting from his office. He reported owning part or all of properties in West Virginia, Washington and North Carolina, and he earned rent from several of those properties.
Books proved a lucrative source of income for multiple lawmakers.
Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., earned $103,095 in royalties for "Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant President." He used the money to pay for medical care for his wife, Erma, who died in March, spokesman Tom Gavin said.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., made $872,891 from her memoir, "Living History." She has reported earning $8.7 million from the work in prior years. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., reported royalties and a book advance. He revealed that with permission of the Senate Ethics Committee, he agreed with Random House to a $1.9 million advance against royalties for writing two nonfiction books and one children's book. He intends to donate $200,000 to charity.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., received an advance of $42,500 to write a book titled, "Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics is Selling Out America." Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., earned $5,175 in royalties for a reprinting of his 2003 book, "A Call to Service."
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., received royalties worth $15,001 to $50,000 from publication of "Speaker: Lessons from Forty Years of Coaching and Politics." Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., received a partial book advance of $106,210.
Some lawmakers were lucky last year. House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, took home $2,700 in slot machine winnings. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., won an $853,492 share of a $340 million multistate Powerball lottery jackpot.
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Goldman 2nd-Qtr Net More Than Doubles, Led by Trading, M&A
Bloomberg
June 13, 2006
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's biggest securities firm by market value, said fiscal second- quarter profit more than doubled on higher revenue from trading securities and arranging mergers.
Net income climbed to $2.31 billion, or $4.78 a share, in the quarter ended May 26 from $865 million, or $1.71, a year earlier, Goldman said today in a statement. Earnings got a boost from the sale of a power plant to General Electric Co. Profit exceeded the $4.28-a-share mean estimate in a Thomson Financial survey of 19 analysts.
While Goldman's profits were its second-best ever, shares of the New York-based firm fell 3.3 percent yesterday on concern that tumbling stocks and rising interest rates will limit profit growth. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's former trading chief, is taking over as chairman and chief executive officer from Henry Paulson, who was nominated as next U.S. Treasury Secretary on May 30 after leading the firm to record profits the past two years.
"There's a low level of confidence about the sustainability of trading profits,'' said Les Satlow, who helps oversee $370 million at Salem, Massachusetts-based Cabot Money Management, which owns Goldman shares. "A lot of the areas where Goldman has been very successfully trading have been areas of the greatest pullback,'' he said before figures were released.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm, yesterday reported a 47 percent increase in second-quarter profit. The company's stock fell the most in almost four years after Lehman officials said a prolonged market decline may slow the pace of equity underwriting.
The 12-member Amex Securities Broker/Dealer Index declined 3.2 percent yesterday, the most since September 2004.
Power Plant
"Over the last couple of quarters, everything has been working,'' said Michael Hecht, an analyst at Banc of America Securities in New York, who has a "neutral'' rating on Goldman. "As markets start to soften, everything could start to fall off.''
In the first quarter, Goldman earned $2.48 billion, the most in the history of the securities industry.
The firm's biggest unit -- fixed-income, currencies and commodities, or FICC -- generated $4.32 billion of revenue, up from $1.52 billion a year earlier. That included a gain from the sale of a 940-megawatt power plant in Linden, New Jersey, to a unit of General Electric for an undisclosed sum. Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Guy Moszkowski estimated the sale would produce a $700 million gain.
Commodity prices, including those of copper, gold and zinc, reversed course in May. The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Futures Price Index of 19 commodities fell 1.4 percent in May after rising more than 5 percent in the first four months of the year.
Trading Revenue
Revenue from equity trading increased to $2.35 billion from $1.11 billion a year earlier. After advancing in the first four months of the year, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid 3.1 percent in May, the U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index declined 5 percent, Japan's Nikkei 225 dropped 8.5 percent, and emerging markets in Russia, Brazil and India fell even more.
While prices are lower, the volatility in markets is rising, providing Goldman and its competitors more opportunities to make money from trading. The Chicago Board Options Exchange SPX Volatility Index rose to 21 yesterday from an average 12.7 in the three months ended May 31. Goldman typically relies on stock trading and commissions for almost 25 percent of its revenue.
Goldman was the top adviser on takeovers completed in the past fiscal quarter, closing 65 transactions valued at $204 billion, up from 63 deals worth $92.9 billion a year earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Stock Sales
The firm also managed the most share offerings during the three-month period, arranging $24.5 billion worth of stock sales compared with $8.4 billion a year earlier, according to Bloomberg data. In fixed income, Goldman managed $28 billion of dollar- denominated bond sales, up from $19 billion a year ago.
Goldman's profit fell short of expectations in two of the past five quarters, according to Bloomberg data. Analysts, thrown off by unpredictable trading revenue, underestimated first- quarter earnings per share by more than 50 percent.
Shares of Goldman are still up almost 14 percent this year after yesterday's slide, compared with the 3.4 percent gain of the Amex Securities Broker/Dealer Index.
Only Bear Stearns Cos. has risen more of the five biggest U.S. securities firms, up 14 percent. Shares of Merrill are up 1.3 percent; Morgan Stanley is up 2.6 percent; and Lehman is down 3.2 percent.
Paulson, 60, was nominated May 30 by President George W. Bush to succeed John Snow as Treasury Secretary. His confirmation by the U.S. Senate probably will occur in the next two months.
Blankfein, a 24-year veteran of Goldman who has been president since 2003, was named on June 2 to succeed Paulson. Analysts including UBS AG's Glenn Schorr expect that Blankfein, 51, will name co-presidents. Among the leading candidates are Jon Winkelried, 46, co-head of investment banking; Gary Cohn, 45, co- head of equities as well as fixed-income, currencies and commodities trading; and J. Michael Evans, 48, a trading co-head leading Goldman Sachs Asia.
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N.Y. OKs $1.6B in bonds for 3 WTC towers
AP
June 14, 2006
NEW YORK - A state agency on Wednesday approved using $1.6 billion in tax-exempt bonds to build three office towers at the World Trade Center site.
The Empire State Development Corp. approved use of the Liberty Bonds for towers that are under private developer Larry Silverstein's control. Silverstein retained control of those towers after his lease was renegotiated earlier this year.
The federal government issued a total of $8 billion in Liberty Bonds after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to provide tax-exempt financing for downtown Manhattan rebuilding.
The city intends to issue $920.9 million in Liberty Bonds under its control to build the three towers next month.
The remaining $3.35 billion in Liberty Bonds will go to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is paying to build the symbolic Freedom Tower and another building at the trade center site.
Silverstein spokesman Bud Perrone said the developer is working with three architects on designs for the three towers and "with financing in place, will begin construction of those towers as soon as the sites are made available."
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Keeping Iraq's Oil In the Ground
By Greg Palast
AlterNet
06/14/06
Did the U.S. invade Iraq to tap its oil reserves or to make sure they stayed under the sand?
World oil production today stands at more than twice the 15-billion a-year maximum projected by Shell Oil in 1956 -- and reserves are climbing at a faster clip yet. That leaves the question, Why this war?
Did Dick Cheney send us in to seize the last dwindling supplies? Unlikely. Our world's petroleum reserves have doubled in just twenty-five years -- and it is in Shell's and the rest of the industry's interest that this doubling doesn't happen again. The neo-cons were hell-bent on raising Iraq's oil production. Big Oil's interest was in suppressing production, that is, keeping Iraq to its OPEC quota or less. This raises the question, did the petroleum industry, which had a direct, if hidden, hand, in promoting invasion, cheerlead for a takeover of Iraq to prevent overproduction?
It wouldn't be the first time. If oil is what we're looking for, there are, indeed, extra helpings in Iraq. On paper, Iraq, at 112 billion proven barrels, has the second largest reserves in OPEC after Saudi Arabia. That does not make Saudi Arabia happy. Even more important is that Iraq has fewer than three thousand operating wells... compared to one million in Texas.
That makes the Saudis even unhappier. It would take a decade or more, but start drilling in Iraq and its reserves will about double, bringing it within gallons of Saudi Arabia's own gargantuan pool. Should Iraq drill on that scale, the total, when combined with the Saudis', will drown the oil market. That wouldn't make the Texans too happy either. So Fadhil Chalabi's plan for Iraq to pump 12 million barrels a day, a million more than Saudi Arabia, is not, to use Bob Ebel's (Center fro Strategic and International Studies) terminology, "ridiculous" from a raw resource view, it is ridiculous politically. It would never be permitted. An international industry policy of suppressing Iraqi oil production has been in place since 1927. We need again to visit that imp called "history."
It began with a character known as "Mr. 5%"-- Calouste Gulbenkian -- who, in 1925, slicked King Faisal, neophyte ruler of the country recently created by Churchill, into giving Gulbenkian's "Iraq Petroleum Company" (IPC) exclusive rights to all of Iraq's oil. Gulbenkian flipped 95% of his concession to a combine of western oil giants: Anglo-Persian, Royal Dutch Shell, CFP of France, and the Standard Oil trust companies (now ExxonMobil and its "sisters.") The remaining slice Calouste kept for himself -- hence, "Mr. 5%."
The oil majors had a better use for Iraq's oil than drilling it -- not drilling it. The oil bigs had bought Iraq's concession to seal it up and keep it off the market. To please his buyers' wishes, Mr. 5% spread out a big map of the Middle East on the floor of a hotel room in Belgium and drew a thick red line around the gulf oil fields, centered on Iraq. All the oil company executives, gathered in the hotel room, signed their name on the red line -- vowing not to drill, except as a group, within the red-lined zone. No one, therefore, had an incentive to cheat and take red-lined oil. All of Iraq's oil, sequestered by all, was locked in, and all signers would enjoy a lift in worldwide prices. Anglo-Persian Company, now British Petroleum (BP), would pump almost all its oil, reasonably, from Persia (Iran). Later, the Standard Oil combine, renamed the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco), would limit almost all its drilling to Saudi Arabia. Anglo-Persian (BP) had begun pulling oil from Kirkuk, Iraq, in 1927 and, in accordance with the Red-Line Agreement, shared its Kirkuk and Basra fields with its IPC group -- and drilled no more.
The following was written three decades ago:
Although its original concession of March 14, 1925, cove- red all of Iraq, the Iraq Petroleum Co., under the owner- ship of BP (23.75%), Shell (23.75%), CFP [of France] (23.75%), Exxon (11.85%), Mobil (11.85%), and [Calouste] Gulbenkian (5.0%), limited its production to fields constituting only one-half of 1 percent of the country's total area. During the Great Depression, the world was awash with oil and greater output from Iraq would simply have driven the price down to even lower levels.
Plus ça change...
When the British Foreign Office fretted that locking up oil would stoke local nationalist anger, BP-IPC agreed privately to pretend to drill lots of wells, but make them absurdly shallow and place them where, wrote a company manager, "there was no danger of striking oil." This systematic suppression of Iraq's production, begun in 1927, has never ceased. In the early 1960s, Iraq's frustration with the British-led oil consortium's failure to pump pushed the nation to cancel the BP-Shell-Exxon concession and seize the oil fields. Britain was ready to strangle Baghdad, but a cooler, wiser man in the White House, John F. Kennedy, told the Brits to back off. President Kennedy refused to call Iraq's seizure an "expropriation" akin to Castro's seizure of U.S.-owned banana plantations. Kennedy's view was that Anglo-American companies had it coming to them because they had refused to honor their legal commitment to drill.
But the freedom Kennedy offered the Iraqis to drill their own oil to the maximum was swiftly taken away from them by their Arab brethren.
The OPEC cartel, controlled by Saudi Arabia, capped Iraq's production at a sum equal to Iran's, though the Iranian reserves are far smaller than Iraq's. The excuse for this quota equality between Iraq and Iran was to prevent war between them. It didn't. To keep Iraq's Ba'athists from complaining about the limits, Saudi Arabia simply bought off the leaders by funding Saddam's war against Iran and giving the dictator $7 billion for his "Islamic bomb" program.
In 1974, a U.S. politician broke the omerta over the suppression of Iraq's oil production. It was during the Arab oil embargo that Senator Edmund Muskie revealed a secret intelligence report of "fantastic" reserves of oil in Iraq undeveloped because U.S. oil companies refused to add pipeline capacity. Muskie, who'd just lost a bid for the Presidency, was dubbed a "loser" and ignored. The Iranian bombing of the Basra fields (1980-88) put a new kink in Iraq's oil production. Iraq's frustration under production limits explodes periodically.
In August 1990, Kuwait's craven siphoning of borderland oil fields jointly owned with Iraq gave Saddam the excuse to take Kuwait's share. Here was Saddam's opportunity to increase Iraq's OPEC quota by taking Kuwait's (most assuredly not approved by the U.S.). Saddam's plan backfired. The Basra oil fields not crippled by Iran were demolished in 1991 by American B-52s. Saddam's petro-military overreach into Kuwait gave the West the authority for a more direct oil suppression method called the "Sanctions" program, later changed to "Oil for Food." Now we get to the real reason for the U.N. embargo on Iraqi oil exports. According to the official U.S. position:
Sanctions were critical to preventing Iraq from acquiring equipment that could be used to reconstitute banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
How odd. If cutting Saddam's allowance was the purpose, then sanctions, limiting oil exports, was a very suspect method indeed. The nature of the oil market (a cartel) is such that the elimination of two million barrels a day increased Saddam's revenue. One might conclude that sanctions were less about WMD and more about EPS (earnings per share) of oil sellers.
In other words, there is nothing new under the desert sun. Today's fight over how much of Iraq's oil to produce (or suppress) simply extends into this century the last century's pump-or-control battles. In sum, Big Oil, whether in European or Arab-OPEC dress, has done its damned best to keep Iraq's oil buried deep in the ground to keep prices high in the air. Iraq has 74 known fields and only 15 in production; 526 known "structures" (oil-speak for "pools of oil"), only 125 drilled.
And they won't be drilled, not unless Iraq says, "Mother, may I?" to Saudi Arabia, or, as the James Baker/Council on Foreign Relations paper says, "Saudi Arabia may punish Iraq." And believe me, Iraq wouldn't want that. The decision to expand production has, for now, been kept out of Iraqi's hands by the latest method of suppressing Iraq's oil flow -- the 2003 invasion and resistance to invasion. And it has been darn effective. Iraq's output in 2003, 2004 and 2005 was less than produced under the restrictive Oil-for-Food Program. Whether by design or happenstance, this decline in output has resulted in tripling the profits of the five U.S. oil majors to $89 billion for a single year, 2005, compared to pre-invasion 2002. That suggests an interesting arithmetic equation. Big Oil's profits are up $89 billion a year in the same period the oil industry boosted contributions to Mr. Bush's reelection campaign to roughly $40 million.
That would make our president "Mr. 0.05%."
A History of Oil in Iraq
Suppressing It, Not Pumping It
1925-28 "Mr. 5%" sells his monopoly on Iraq's oil to British Petroleum and Exxon, who sign a "Red-Line Agreement" vowing not to compete by drilling independently in Iraq.1948 Red-Line Agreement ended, replaced by oil combines' "dog in the manger" strategy -- taking control of fields, then capping production--drilling shallow holes where "there was no danger of striking oil."1961 OPEC, founded the year before, places quotas on Iraq's exports equal to Iran's, locking in suppression policy.1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Iran destroys Basra fields. Iraq cannot meet OPEC quota. 1991 Desert Storm. Anglo-American bombings cut production. 1991-2003 United Nations Oil embargo (zero legal exports) followed by Oil-for-Food Program limiting Iraqi sales to 2 million barrels a day. 2003-? "Insurgents" sabotage Iraq's pipelines and infrastructure.2004 Options for Iraqi OilThe secret plan adopted by U.S. State Department overturns Pentagon proposal to massively in crease oil production. State Department plan, adopted by government of occupied Iraq, limits state oil company to OPEC quotas. This article is excerpted from Greg Palast's new book, "Armed Madhouse" (Dutton Adult, 2006).
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The Case of the Missing $21 Billion
By DAVE LINDORFF
Baltimorechronicle.com
15/06/2006
Who's Following the Iraq Money?
During the days of the Nixon Watergate scandal investigation, reporter Bob Woodword was famously advised by his mysterious source, Deep Throat, to "follow the money" as a way of cracking the story.
Well, there is a lot of money to follow in the current scandal that can be best described as the Bush/Cheney administration, and so far, nobody's doing it.
My bet for the place that needs the most following is the more than $9 billion that has gone missing without a trace in Iraq--as well as $12 billion in cash that the Pentagon flew into Iraq straight from Federal Reserve vaults via military transports, and for which there has been little or no accounting.
As word of massive corruption began to surface in 2003, Congress passed legislation creating an office of Inspector General, assuming that this new agency would monitor the spending on the occupation and reconstruction, and figure why all so much taxpayer money was disappearing, and why only minimal reconstruction was going on in destroyed Iraq, instead of a massive rebuilding program as intended. Bush named an old friend and supporter, Stuart Bowen, to the post--a move that should have put Congress on alert, given this administration's long history of putting cronies in positions of authority.
When the Coalition Provisional Authority was terminated in late 2004, with corruption still rampant and growing, Congress redefined Bowen's position as Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
Bowen, went to work. He uncovered some corruption in a report in early 2006 that sounded scathing enough. Bowen found cases of double billing by contractors, of payments for work that was never done, and other scandals. But he never came up with more than $1 billion or so worth of problems--a small fraction of the total amount of money that was vanishing.
Now we know why so little was done.
It turns out that Bowen was never really looking very hard.
When the Boston Globe, this past April, broke the story that President Bush has been quietly setting aside over 750 acts passed by Congress, claiming he has the authority as "unitary executive" and as commander in chief to ignore such laws, it turned out that one of the laws the president chose to ignore was the one establishing the inspector general post for Iraq. What the president did was write a so-called signing statement on the side (unpublicized of course--though it was quietly posted on the White House website), saying that the new inspector general would have no authority to investigate any contracts or corruption issues involving the Pentagon.
As the signing statement puts it:
Title III of the Act creates an Inspector General (IG) of the CPA. Title III shall be construed in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authorities to conduct the Nation's foreign affairs, to supervise the unitary executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The CPA IG shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investigations by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.
Well, since most of the missing money has been going to or through the military in Iraq, and since the president can define just about anything having to do with Iraq as "national security," that pretty much meant nothing of consequence would be discovered by the inspector general in Iraq.
Bowen simply never mentioned to anyone that he was not doing the job that Congress had intended.
You might think that the inspector general himself would have complained about such a restriction on his authority to do the job that Congress had intended, but this is a man who has a long history of working as a loyal manservant to the president. Bowen was a deputy general counsel for Governor Bush (meaning he was an assistant to the ever solicitous solicitor Alberto Gonzales). He did yeoman service to Bush as a member of the team that handled the famous vote count atrocity in Florida in the November 2000 election, making sure every vote wasn't counted, and then worked under Gonzales again in the White House during Bush's first term, before returning briefly to private practice.
Bowen simply never mentioned to anyone that, courtesy of an unconstitutional order from the president, he was not doing the job that Congress had intended.
The deception was far-reaching. When Thomas Gimble, the acting inspector general of the Pentagon, was asked in 2005 during a congressional hearing by Christopher Shays (R-CT), chair of the House government reform subcommittee, why the Pentagon had no audit team in Iraq to look for fraud, the facile Gimble replied that such a team was "not needed" because Congress had set up the special inspector general unit to do that. He conveniently didn't mention that the president had barred the special inspector general from investigating Pentagon scandals.
This would all be pretty funny except for two things.
First of all, Americans and Iraqis are dying in droves because of the chaos that the U.S. invasion and occupation have created in Iraq--a problem that that $9 billion in missing Congressionally allocated funds, and the bales of US dollars, were supposed to have solved.
Second, and I admit this is pretty speculative on my part, money being like water, it tends to flow to the lowest level, which, from a moral and ethical standpoint, would be the Bush/Cheney administration and the Republican Party machine that put them, and the do-nothing Congress that covers up for them, into office.
My guess is that a fair piece of those many billions of dollars is sloshing around back in the U.S. paying for things like Republican Party electoral dirty tricks, vote theft, bribing of Democratic members of Congress, and god knows what else.
If this seems far-fetched to anyone, remember that this administration has included a number of people who were linked to the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal, when the creative--and criminal--idea was conceived of secretly selling Pentagon stocks of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, and using the proceeds to secretly fund the U.S.-trained and organized Contra fighters who were fighting to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (Congress had inconveniently banned any U.S. aid to the Contras).
It seems to me inconceivable that this corrupt and obsessively power-mad administration would have passed up an opportunity to get its hands on some of the easy money flowing into Iraq over the course of the last three years.
Given all this, it seems almost unfathomable that Democratic Party leaders would be insisting that there would be no impeachment hearings in Congress if Democrats were to succeed in winning back Congress this November.
Given all this, it seems almost unfathomable that Democratic Party leaders would be insisting, as have Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, that there would be no impeachment hearings in Congress if Democrats were to succeed in winning back Congress this November.
What better way to follow that money than an old-fashioned impeachment hearing into why the president unconstitutionally subverted the intent of Congress in establishing an office of special inspector general for corruption in Iraq?
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Japan's central banker apologizes for scandal-tainted investment
AFP
Thursday June 15, 2006
Japan's embattled central bank chief Toshihiko Fukui has apologized for keeping a scandal-tainted investment and pledged to improve transparency as the opposition urged him to quit.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in likely his last parliamentary debate before he steps down later this year, stood by Fukui in a show of support in an often tense three-and-a-half-hour session.
Fukui has faced a torrent of criticism for putting 10 million yen (87,700 dollars) into the fund of controversial investor Yoshiaki Murakami -- arrested last week on allegations of insider trading -- and keeping it even after his appointment as governor.
The silver-haired 70-year-old, wearing a green ribbon on his suit indicating he had been summoned, told the upper house budget committee he would not personally take the profit from the investment.
"First, I want to say I am sorry for disturbing the public with this case. I apologize whole heartedly," Fukui said in parliament, which recesses Sunday.
"If there is a profit, I have no plan to use it for myself. I want to use it in a way everybody can agree on," Fukui said.
He agreed with calls to bring Japan in line with many other developed nations which require their central bank chiefs to disclose their private investments.
"We should hurriedly begin considering if there can be room for further improvement of the current rules so that they can meet the demands of our time and the future," Fukui said.
Koizumi, who appointed Fukui in 2003 and retires in September, told the committee: "I think Governor Fukui has explained himself fine."
But opposition lawmakers -- whose previous attempts to discredit the popular Koizumi have failed -- demanded Fukui's resignation and said the premier bears part of the responsibility.
"It is inappropriate for you to continue being the governor of the Bank of Japan," Tatsuo Hirano, a lawmaker of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, told Fukui.
Fukui, whose term ends in 2008, declined to respond directly, saying: "I may have to reflect on a lot of things but no matter what, I don't want to lose the spirit of supporting ambitious young people."
Top ministers and the head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange have all rushed to the defense of Fukui, who has been the toast of the markets for helping steer the Japanese economy out of more than a decade of doldrums.
Fukui, who has spent most of his career in the Bank of Japan, also advised Murakami, a former bureaucrat turned shareholder activist, after Fukui resigned in 1998 over an unrelated bribery scandal at the central bank.
Fukui only cancelled his investment contract in February, around the time Murakami came onto the authorities' radar as they investigated fraud allegations at Internet firm Livedoor.
Fukui said that when he cancelled the funding contract, "I did not imagine any violations of the law."
Murakami, who had been seen as a trailblazer for launching Japan's first aggressive takeover bid, was arrested last week on allegations, which he denies, of insider trading.
Newspapers have speculated that the scandal could weaken Fukui's position ahead of his expected decision to end the bank's five-year zero-interest rate policy, which he argues has run its course in light of the economic recovery.
Fukui appeared in parliament just after he led a policy board meeting that voted unanimously to keep interest rates effectively at zero, in line with market expectations.
The government says it is too early to end the policy as the economy remains fragile.
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Saudi to build 8-billion-dollar economic city in north
by Suleiman Nimr
AFP
Tue Jun 13, 2006
HAIL, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia unveiled plans to build a northern economic city at a cost of eight billion dollars (6.4 billion euros), the latest massive project in the oil-rich kingdom.
The city, announced by King Abdullah at a night ceremony in Hail, 720 kilometers (450 miles) north of Riyadh, will be built over 10 years and host agricultural and mineral industries, an education zone and a residential area with 30,000 housing units.
Saudi Arabia, reaping a windfall from record high oil prices, announced in December a plan to build the "King Abdullah Economic City" north of the Red Sea port of Jeddah with investments of 26.6 billion dollars.
The "Prince Abdul Aziz bin Musaed Economic City," named after the first governor of the Hail region, an agricultural area rich in mineral resources that counts some 600,000 inhabitants, will have its own airport, a railway service and a dry dock, according to a leaflet and film released at the ceremony.
The city will cost 30 billion riyals (eight billion dollars), according to a source in Rakisa Holding, the company which will oversee the project along with the Saudi investment authority SAGIA and the High Commission for Hail Development.
Some 80,000 people are expected to take up residence in the new city, which will have business and leisure centers.
Extending over 156 million square meters, it will also house 3,000 office units and a "logistical supply and services center."
The venture, whose cost was confirmed by other officials at the launch, is part of efforts to boost less developed regions of the Gulf country and was announced by the Saudi monarch after a visit to the oil-rich Eastern Province during which a number of economic projects were launched.
"The state is making sure to allocate a large part of the budget surplus to development projects in the regions which did not get their full share," Abdullah told Hail residents attending the ceremony.
The planned economic city will provide "a strong boost to development in the area," he said, adding that it will create 30,000 jobs.
Saudi Arabia posted a record budget surplus of 57 billion dollars in 2005 on the back of surging crude prices and is channeling billions into development projects.
But Riyadh is still struggling to provide work for its unemployed nationals despite a "Saudization" policy whereby employers have to hire a specific percentage of locals, and it continues to rely heavily on some six million expatriate workers, mostly poorly paid Asians.
Unofficial estimates put the unemployment rate at around 20 percent of the male population, while only 10 percent of women of working age have a job in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
During his visit to Hail, King Abdullah is also due to lay the cornerstone for the first university in the area.
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A World Gone Mad
Disabled kids said hurt in shock therapy
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
Associated Press
June 14, 2006
ALBANY, N.Y. - A state report on a Massachusetts school for the disabled said electric shocks were administered to students - sometimes as they bathed - for offenses as minor as nagging, swearing and sloppy appearance.
"Various injuries to students have been reported" at the Judge Rotenberg Center, according to the report released Wednesday by the New York Education Department.
The school in Canton, Mass., receives $50 million a year from New York state to care for and educate about 150 youths because there is no space available in New York for the intensive treatment.
The education department said in a written statement the school must "cease certain interventions that threaten the health and safety of students at the school. Failure to do so would affect its approval to serve New York state students."
The center's attorney, Michael Flammia, called the allegations "absolutely not true" and said the state ignored its own November report that determined the center was doing an excellent job. He alleged the most recent evaluation was biased and prompted by a parent's lawsuit.
Education Department spokesman Alan Ray disputed Flammia's characterization of the earlier report, saying that it found compliance only in a limited number of areas.
The Rotenberg Center provides an intensive, 24-hour program that begins with a typical school setting, but about half the residents require the "aversive therapy" of electric shock, according to Rotenberg staff. The center describes the one- to two-second shocks as similar to a bee sting.
For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave.
Some New York parents said electric shock helped improve their children's behavior. Some of the youths had repeatedly bitten themselves or slammed their heads against walls so violently there was a concern they could blind themselves.
"It all comes down to a philosophical opposition to this form of treatment," Flammia said.
Comment: "For years, the state has contracted with the facility, where autistic and other disabled students wear backpack-like devices that shock them when they misbehave."
Isn't modern medicine amazing?
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Man faces charges after stabbing 2 sons
By DEANNA MARTIN
Associated Press
Wed Jun 14, 2006
BLACKHAWK, Ind. - A man stabbed his two young sons and dragged them into a lake, leaving one dead, hours after taking them from his father-in-law's house at knifepoint, police say.
Police with search dogs were combing Dean's Lake for Katron Walker on Tuesday night when he ran out of an abandoned trailer and into the murky water, dragging his naked children with him, authorities said. Officers rescued 2-year-old Monte Walker; divers later found the body of his 4-year-old brother, Collin.
Anita Joy Smothers, who lives nearby, said she went into the water in an attempt to help the children and demanded to know where Walker had dropped Collin. "He's grinning and he goes, 'He's probably at the bottom of the lake by now,'" she said.
Police said Walker, 32, had self-inflicted stab wounds in his chest and marijuana and methamphetamine in his system. He and his younger son were hospitalized and expected to survive.
Walker faces charges of murder and attempted murder.
Despite the knifepoint abduction, it took seven hours for authorities to issue an Amber Alert. The process was slowed because Indiana does not normally issue Amber Alerts in child custody cases, police said.
Bill Bergherm, Terre Haute assistant chief of detectives, said there was not "a lot of delay" in issuing the alert. Police first had to determine whether they had enough information to issue it, he said.
Walker's wife, Theresa, had told him on Sunday she wanted a divorce and moved into a shelter with her sons, authorities said. She filed an order of protection against him Tuesday morning, saying she had received a threatening call from him, police said.
Later that day, Smothers said, she saw the boys and their father at the lake, where they had been fishing and eating hot dogs. "All day I heard them say, 'I love you, Dad,'" Smothers said.
Smothers' family called police later after seeing the Amber Alert on TV.
Authorities surrounded the lake, and Walker jumped into the water with his children, police said. Monte had neck and puncture wounds in his chest; Collin was found in 12 feet of water with his throat slashed and his chest marked with puncture wounds. The coroner said it appeared Collin had been stabbed to death.
Blood and a steak knife were found in the trailer Walker fled, investigators said.
Vigo County court records show Walker was convicted of methamphetamine possession in 2003 and placed on probation.
The Amber Alert system, created in 1996 in response to the kidnapping and death of a 9-year-old Texas girl, is designed to notify communities of children's abductions. Each state has its own rules for issuing alerts.
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Homeless man arrested for NYC stabbings
By ADAM GOLDMAN
Associated Press
June 14, 2006
NEW YORK - A homeless man was arrested Wednesday in the stabbing of four people, including three tourists, who were attacked in a 12-hour span in Manhattan.
Investigators were questioning the 21-year-old man but did not have a motive.
Two of the four victims were stabbed near a Times Square hotel; the others were attacked inside the subway system. Three were hospitalized, and police said they were expected to survive.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said the suspect admitted stabbing two Canadians, a Mexican immigrant and a young man from Texas.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said there was no evidence to suggest the man was targeting tourists. He said investigators recovered the folding knife used in at least two of the attacks when they arrested the suspect.
Charges were pending against Kenny Alexis, who had been living in a shelter.
Police said two Canadian women were each stabbed in the back about 4 a.m. by a man who had engaged them in a short conversation near the W Hotel.
Two hotel security officers tended to the women and called 911, while two doormen followed the man to a nearby McDonald's. Officers nabbed the suspect as he was leaving the restaurant, police said.
An hour earlier, a 30-year-old man was stabbed twice in the stomach a few blocks away as he and a friend waited on a subway platform in Rockefeller Center. Police said the attacker was after a cell phone.
On Tuesday afternoon, Christopher McCarthy of Houston was knifed by a man sitting across from him in a subway car on Manhattan's Upper West Side, an attack police said was random and apparently unprovoked.
McCarthy was in critical but stable condition after barely surviving the deep wound to his chest, doctors said. His father, Joe, said his son had forgiven the assailant and hopes the attacker "can get help."
Alexis also wielded the knife when a store employee confronted him about stealing two beers from a market Wednesday, the commissioner said. No one was hurt in that incident.
Despite the attacks, some tourists said New York still feels safe.
"There are a lot of police around. I don't think these stabbings are just random acts," said Scott McCoig, 24, of Detroit.
McCoig said he will still use the subway. "It's the best way to travel," he said.
The attacks drew comparisons with the 1990 killing of a 22-year-old tourist from Utah who was stabbed in a subway station while defending his mother during a robbery. Seven youths were convicted in the murder; all were sentenced to maximum terms of 25 years to life in prison.
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Violence Hits Cup Clash
Sky News
Wednesday June 14, 2006
The World Cup has been marred by its first serious violence - with fighting breaking out ahead of Germany's match against Poland.
Hundreds of hooligans have been arrested after clashing with police in Dortmund.
Trouble flared in the city centre where thousands of supporters had spent the afternoon drinking in a square.
Hundreds of riot police were deployed as thugs threw bottles at each other and the police.
There was more violence as large numbers of fans moved to a nearby giant screen televising the match.
Dortmund police spokeswoman Inspector Saskia Schneider said: "About two hours before the game some people known to be violent were about to be arrested.
"During that process police were massively attacked by the violent perpetrators.
"This whole situation spilled over to other fan groups. They got involved and started attacking each other.
Earlier, 55 Poles were arrested at the train station and in the city as a "preventative" measure.
Germany won the match 1-0 through a 90th minute Oliver Neuville goal.
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Mine blast kills 64 on bus in Sri Lanka
By Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi
Reuters
June 15, 2006
ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka - Suspected Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels killed 64 people on Thursday when mines blew up a bus in the worst attack since a 2002 truce, officials said, prompting a wave of air strikes on rebel positions.
The government said the rebels used two mines side by side, peppering the packed bus with ball bearings on an isolated road near rebel territory. At the hospital in the north central town of Anuradhapura, some mourned the loss of whole families.
"The bus was blown over," 37-year-old survivor Chintha Irangani told Reuters. She was taking her three children to a clinic. All of them died.
"There was blood and body parts everywhere. I fell unconscious. I saw my children's bodies at the hospital."
A Reuters Television cameraman said the road beside the overturned bus was covered with glass and blood. In the hospital, he saw torn and burned corpses including many women and children. Officials said 13 children were among the dead.
Most on the bus were from the island's majority Sinhalese community. The government said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) wanted to provoke an ethnic backlash against minority Tamils to support their demands for a separate Tamil homeland.
"We have to seriously consider the ceasefire agreement and possibly restructure it," government spokesman Kehilya Rambukwella told a news conference.
The Tigers denied involvement in the attack. Few have believed their denials of responsibility for similar attacks on the military. More than 500 people have died since early April, and many fear the island risks a return to civil war.
"We have no involvement whatsoever in this killing of innocent civilians," said head of the Tiger peace secretariat S. Puleedevan. "The Sri Lankan government has a responsibility to investigate law and order in their territory."
Sri Lanka's stock market closed down almost three percent on the news, with traders fearing a return to war could see Black Tiger suicide bombers hit the streets of the capital, sending investors fleeing from the $20 billion economy.
CIVILIANS IN SIGHTS
"The message coming out is that they will not stop at anything," said Jehan Perera, national director of think-tank the National Peace Council. "They are saying they will also target civilians if their demands are not met. Or they could be trying to push the government into a war."
The rebels said the government launched air raids on northeastern coastal areas of rebel territory. There were casualties, they said, but gave no further details.
The government refused to comment on any retaliation, but a military source said Israeli-built Kfir fighter bombers were being used to hit rebel targets. They were the first air strikes on the rebels since early May.
Many fear the peace process is reaching its endgame. The Tigers pulled out of peace talks in April but had agreed to talks last week in Oslo over the safety of ceasefire monitors. But on arrival, they refused to meet the government.
Mediator Norway last week wrote to both sides asking them to recommit themselves to the truce. The government replied and said it was committed, but the Tigers have yet to respond.
But diplomats say neither the government nor the Tigers have shown sufficient flexibility and fear that if violence continues the country will gradually fall back into a war that has already killed more than 64,000 people.
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WHO confirms bird flu death in Indonesia
Reuters
June 15, 2006
JAKARTA - The World Health Organization has confirmed an Indonesian girl who died last month was infected with bird flu, a health ministry official said on Thursday, bringing Indonesia's total confirmed bird flu deaths to 38.
Samples from the 7-year-old girl from Pamulang, on the outskirts of Jakarta, were sent to a WHO laboratory in Hong Kong after local tests showed that she had tested positive for bird flu. Local tests are not considered definitive.
Indonesia attracted international attention last month when the H5N1 virus killed as many as seven members of a single family in north Sumatra. Experts said there could have been limited human-to-human transmission in this cluster case.
Nyoman Kandun, a director-general at the health ministry, said the WHO laboratory's results were based on tests from fluid from the girl's lungs.
"An earlier WHO test of the girl's nasal swab and fluid from her throat had showed up negative. But then we sent another specimen of fluid from her lung membrane. And that is positive," Kandun told Reuters.
Another health ministry official had earlier said that two days before the girl died, her 10-year-old brother had also died after showing flu-like symptoms, but health officials did not manage to obtain his samples.
The family reported that a number of chickens near their house died before the children fell sick.
Indonesia has seen a steady rise in the number of human infections and deaths since its firs