| |
 |
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 |
It only appears that way when you have a pinhead. "He is doing great. He has big broad shoulders."
That was First Lady Laura Bush's assessment of her husband and his handling of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and September 11. In her interview with NBC's Today, Bush went on to say that the people in Louisiana "are rebuilding their lives and other people want to help them."
She was a few miles from my house when she said these things. Her husband was hammering nails at our Habitat for Humanity headquarters in a photo op that even the insulated pod people in his inner circle should have told him to avoid. I listened to the radio this afternoon--all of New Orleans' radio stations are still broadcasting out of Baton Rouge under the United Radio Broadcasters of New Orleans umbrella--and the usual conservative callers were enraged that Bush had made another trip to Louisiana to have dinner and engage in yet another shallow photo session. One of the hosts, not known for his liberal thinking or even for deep thinking, remarked that "if this is the compassionate conservative, I'd hate to see the mean-spirited jerk."
Over the last several years, Louisiana, formerly a solidly Democratic (moderate, of course) state, has become more and more conservative. The state went for Bush in 2000 and 2004. Today, though--at least in south Louisiana--there is agreement that the White House and the entire federal government let Louisiana down in the worst way. There are a few who want to blame Governor Blanco, May Nagin, or Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard, but they are becoming a smaller and smaller minority.
As for people rebuilding their lives, thousands are not. They are in other states and will never come back. Many are still living in shelters; the luckier ones have moved into the few FEMA trailers we have seen. Untold numbers of people in New Orleans and surrounding parishes have lost their businesses, just like that. Thousands more have lost their jobs. Those who have returned to New Orleans cannot shop for supplies. There are no hospitals. There is no payroll for law enforcement officers. There is no public transportation. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for. The tax base is nonexistent. And unlike other areas who have received large relief packets from the federal government, Louisiana has been told we will have to repay the money.
There is no way to really understand the devastation unless you live here. Pretending that Bush--a man so out of touch, one of his aides had to make him a DVD so he would have a clue about what happened when Katrina hit--is prepared to handle the tragedy that has befallen Louisiana is just adding insult to a region that has already suffered catastrophic injury. [MoJo Blog]
8:58:16 PM 
|
|
Published on Tuesday, October 11, 2005 by the Inter Press Service
Peruvian Farmers Move to End Terminator Seeds
by Sanjay Suri
LONDON - A group of Peruvian indigenous farmers have prepared an extensively researched counter to a Canadian move to revive 'terminator' seeds.
Terminator seeds work only once. For a new crop, farmers would have to go back to sellers. These seeds that do not regenerate like normal seeds would work hugely to the advantage of corporations, to the detriment of farmers.
A United Nations moratorium at present blocks commercialisation of terminator seeds. But a group of countries led by Canada have challenged the UN safety regulation. This has led the Convention on Biological Diversity based in Montreal to open new discussions on relaxing the moratorium on such seeds.
One of the strongest counters to the move so far has come not from experts and officials but by Peruvian, says Michel Pimbert from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) that promotes sustainable development at local levels.
After monitoring cultivation methods, about 70 indigenous leaders representing 26 Andean and Amazon communities met in a mountain village last month over two days to collate their findings and assess the damage that could be caused by terminator seeds.
''When does it happen that marginalised, excluded citizens come out and talk in this way,'' Pimbert told IPS. The Peruvian indigenous farmers came together under the Quechua-Aymara Association for Nature and Sustainable Development (ANDES) and the International Institute for Environment and Development, a general assembly largely composed of indigenous people from villages in the Andes.
''Indigenous people and marginalised groups barely have a voice when it comes to policies and legislation,'' Pimbert said. ''These were the voices of the poorest of the poor living in biodiversity hotspots.''
Officials at the Montreal institute had acknowledged that the input from the Peruvian indigenous farmers was one of the strongest they have received so far, Pimbert said.
The indigenous farmers reported that Peruvian farmers and small farmers worldwide ''are dependent on seeds obtained from the harvest as a principal source of seed to be used in subsequent agricultural cycles.''
But their findings went beyond that to examine several aspects of any change. The farmers ''evaluated the evidence and assessed the risks of terminator technology on land, spiritual systems and on women, who are their seed keepers,'' Pimbert said.
The farmers also showed that Terminator (Genetic Use Restriction Technology) would transfer sterility to and effectively kill off other crops and wider plant life, as well as increasing the reliance of farmers on big agribusiness which is already patenting seeds traditionally owned by indigenous people.
They reported that industrialised 'mono-culture' farming would benefit at the expense of tried and tested local agricultural knowledge. They warned that in Peru alone, 2,000 varieties of potato could be put at risk by Terminator technology. Peru gave the potato to the world.
''Terminator seeds do not have life,'' Felipe Gonzalez of the indigenous Pinchimoro community said in a statement. ''Like a plague they will come infecting our crops and carrying sickness. We want to continue using our own seeds and our own customs of seed conservation and sharing.''
The Swiss-based company Syngenta recently won the patent on Terminator potatoes, but under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, it cannot market these potatoes.
The submission by the Peruvian farmers will be reviewed at a conference on such agricultural technology in Granada in Spain later this year. The moratorium issue will come up at a conference on biological diversity to be held in Brazil in March next year.
''These voices and their research will be formally communicated there,'' Pimbert said. They would seek to challenge claims by academics who feel terminator technology is safe, he said.
Peruvian indigenous leaders are urging the UN to expose the dangers of Terminator technology and uphold the moratorium. They also demand that indigenous people have a say in the process equal to the influence of the agribusiness lobby.
''The UN moratorium helps to protect millenarian indigenous agricultural knowledge and the agrobiodiversity and global food security it enables,'' Alejandro Argumedo, associate director of ANDES, said in a statement. ''The rush to exploit Terminator technology for corporate profit must not be allowed to sabotage vital international biosafety polices.
© 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service
###
4:01:52 PM
|
|
Report: Libby withheld key info from investigators.. “In two appearances before the federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative’s name, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame.” (National Journal, Sub. Req’d)
[Think Progress]
1:52:03 PM
|
|
Steve Cobble: Redskins = Slur. There's just no two ways about it--for the team representing the city of our national government to continue to use the name "Redskins" in the 21st century is a slur, a slander, an offense against decency and history.
Go to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: "redskin = usually offensive; American Indian". That's pretty clear.
Or check out Dictionary.com, where it lists a couple similar definitions: "redskin = n. Offensive Slang; used as a disparaging term for a Native American" or "redskin = n. offensive terms for Native Americans".
The name's defenders argue that this is a small thing. Even more reason to change it--because it would also certainly be a trivial thing to change the name. It could be done this afternoon, with one press release.
My friends know that I have ranted about this for decades. In the wake of the movie "Dances With Wolves," back in the dark ages before the Huffington Post, I tried to write a guest column on the subject. Though it was brilliantly written, Pulitzer Prize material actually, neither the Washington Post nor City Pages was the least bit interested. (A few weeks ago, though, a Washington Post sportswriter, Mike Wise, did raise the issue in a well-written column. For those of you who have never lived in the D.C. area, and never had to endure the endless hometown hype and hysteria that passes for football season here, I should also note that it was a brave column to write.)
But since yesterday was Indigneous Peoples' Day (aka known as Columbus Day, by those who think that old Cristobal "discovered" America), today I'll join Suzan Shown Harjo and the tenacious Native American activists who have been battling on this issue for years. (For those of you new to this issue, here and here are just a couple of Ms. Harjo's articles on these issues, concerning the NCAA's recent efforts to clean up college team names; Ms. Harjo is the lead plaintiff in a suit against the Redskins' name, Harjo et al. v. Pro Football, Inc.)
This is straightforward--it's just plain wrong. It has a simple solution--change the name.
Look, we know it's wrong. The proofs are simple:
A team named the New York "Kikes" would be wrong.
A team called the San Diego "Greasers" would be wrong.
A team named the Charlotte "Coloreds" would be wrong.
A team named the Washington "Wops" would be wrong.
This does not take any brain cells to know. The heart understands it immediately.
Just as it understands that 50,000 fans doing a "tomahawk chop" is wrong. Please stop it, Atlanta.
Just as it understands that stadiums full of college kids doing war whoops along with the cheerleaders is wrong. The NCAA gets it now. So why is anyone even resisting? Surely the leaders of our enlightened educational institutions understand that what was regarded as okay in earlier times often turns out to be bad policy later on. (Any day now President Bush is going to have a "eureka" moment about the Confederate flag, right?)
Plus, eliminating this wrong would be as easy as when Abe Pollin decided that in a city full of gun violence, he could no longer in good conscience keep the team name "Bullets". So he changed it. (But then, Abe Pollin paid for his own stadium, too. Maybe they don't make owners like Abe any more...)
Look, since Dan Snyder became owner of the Redskins, he has changed everything about the team except its name. He changed the name of the stadium. He changed coaches. He got rid of players and bought new ones. He changed coaches again. He raised the prices. He changed the summer training camp locale. He changed coaches again. He charged for people to watch practice. He raised parking prices.
Everything but the name. Shame on you, Mr. Snyder. You know it's wrong, but you keep trying to turn a slander into some argument about tradition.
Join the 21st century. Take a small step for decency. No more Redskins.
A slur is a slur, even if powerful people prefer it. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
1:29:54 PM
|
|
Jason Leopold: Don't Believe the Hype; Terrorist Warnings Just Another Way White House Tries to Change Public Opinion
It's official: I'm a conspiracy theorist.
I'm probably one of thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- who believe President George W. Bush and his most senior advisers will do anything to improve the president's poll numbers just to turn the public's attention away from scandals engulfing the White House.
It's not safe to have a healthy dose of skepticism like this these days. But this has to be said: I don't believe the country is going to be attacked by al-Qaeda anytime soon. I don't care how specific the so-called threat is. I don't care how many targets have been identified. I don't care how solid this new information is. I don't buy any of it. What I do believe is whenever Bush's approval ratings start slipping the president's administration issues a terrorist warning saying an attack is imminent. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Consider the evidence.
Last year, on Memorial Day weekend, during the contentious presidential campaign between Bush and Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, right through mid-June Bush's approval ratings yo-yoed due to bad news coming out of the war in Iraq. By mid-June, 51% of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, up about four points from May, according to polling results from Zogby, Gallup and Pew.
Bush was taking a beating in the press in May and June 2004 because of the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal and the high number of American military casualties the U.S. suffered in Iraq. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, on May 26, Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference warning the public that al-Qaeda "wants to hit America hard." Ashcroft didn't release specific information because he didn't have any. He said that somewhere in this country seven al-Qaeda operatives were planning an attack. That's hardly information that warrants a press conference. His announcement didn't even elevate a change in the color coded terrorist alert system. In fact, it was all a smokescreen to change the news cycle. It worked. Bush's numbers went back up soon after Ashcroft's press conference.
However, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of days later that the Department of Homeland Security found that Ashcroft's dire warnings of an attack on American soil "had been known for some time" and "was not new or specific enough to merit an announcement or other action."
Ashcroft cried wolf on a half-dozen other occasions too; last July 4, last Christmas and right before the Super Bowl, to name a few. Those alleged terrorist threats identified banks, shopping malls, power plants and stadiums, obvious targets for a militant group that wants to rack up a high number of casualties.
So when Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced last summer that terrorists want to blow up the Citicorp building in Manhattan's financial district, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J. the threat seemed more real, more imminent, because, for the first time, we got specific information. But as far as I'm concerned, the Bush administration picked those targets out of a hat. The only way this administration can rebuild its credibility is if one of those targets is blown up or an attack is thwarted.
Why? It just so happens that every single terrorist warning was issued whenever Bush's approval ratings lagged and when bad news was coming out of the war in Iraq, such as the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction, the huge financial cost of the war and a shortage of troops. Need evidence? Check pollingreport.com and then check the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department web sites and youâo[dot accent]ll see how the terrorist warnings were issued at the same time Bush started to fall behind in the polls.
The Australian newspaper, The Age, ran a Reuters story that quoted unnamed senior U.S. officials as saying that the constant flow of terrorist warnings since March 2003 âo[ogonek]may also just be a ploy to shore up the president's job approval ratings or divert attention from the increasingly unpopular Iraq campaign.âo?
A few weeks before the Democratic National Convention, The New Republic ran a story alleging that senior Pakistani intelligence officials were pressured by members of the Bush administration to make arrests of so-called high valued terrorists during the Democratic National Convention in an attempt to boost Bushâo[dot accent]s standing in the polls during a time when John Kerry, the Democratic Presidential nominee, would have likely received a bounce in percentage points for his campaign.
The July 7, 2004 article, âo[ogonek]July Surpriseâo?, said a Pakistani official was told by a White House aid âo[ogonek]that it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July.' -- the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston."
That event actually occurred on July 29 when Reuters reported that an unidentified U.S. official confirmed that Pakistan arrested âo[ogonek]a senior al Qaeda member wanted by the United States in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africaâo? all of which lends credibility to the fact that the White House will do whatever it has to do to make sure Bush is reelected.
Hereâo[dot accent]s more proof. At the end of the Democratic National Convention in July 2004, a Newsweek poll showed Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry leading Bush in the polls 52% to 44%. Less than a week later, Ridge, Bushâo[dot accent]s Homeland Security chief, announced that al-Qaeda planned to blow up targets in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. The juryâo[dot accent]s still out on whether the latest terrorist alert coming out of New York City will improve Bushâo[dot accent]s poll numbers.
Bush has said time and time again that America is safer since the overthrow of Iraqâo[dot accent]s former dictator Saddam Hussein. But at a recent news conference, Bush told reporters âo[ogonek]America is in danger.âo? Talk about flip-flopping. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
1:28:28 PM
|
|
Harry Shearer: Gimme Something Real. Finally, five weeks along, some reporting from New Orleans that captures what New Orleanians might recognize as pieces of reality about the disaster and its aftermath: two from Sunday's NYT, a Magazine article by a native, and a fascinating (if predictable) study of what happens when New Orleans evacuees have to eat non-Louisiana food. While the text of this story is confusion and mutual animosity, the subtext I find is cause for hope--despite all the trouble, abandonment and betrayal that people may have experienced in New Orleans, it's not so easy to cut the cords to the Big Easy, especially at mealtime.
Finally, an email from a director friend, about life in the Fauborg Marigny neighborhood, just downriver from the French Quarter:
I am trying to get to editing the footage I shot in Japan, act like I am working normally, but there is so much to do to just stay alive here.
Writing about it is too hard, and there is no reason to be poetic or find a more literary way of saying Nothing Will Ever Be the Same.
I am now in residence alone, Faun having temporarily bailed out back north until the world here calms a bit. She hopes to make another attempt to rehabit this Friday. Other than work, I do not intend to leave again.
Electricity, water and sewerage now function. I climbed on the roof to reconnect some wires tangled by a broken gutter downspout, found some problems, and now have cable and internet. Supposedly the city will come back and turn gas on house-by-house. Meanwhile I cook on a propane grill outside the kitchenâo[dot accent]s back door. Much like the backyard wood fires in antebellum times. Not romantic in any case.
There is no mail or regular trash. All phone lines down in tangled heaps in the middle of streets.
There is no gasoline at this end of town. A neighbor, needing gas to escape, siphoned all the gas from my old Trooper, but he came back by yesterday to offer to pay for it. No need. I am currently using chain saw gas gallon-by-gallon when i have to drive.
There are two supermarkets now open uptown on Tchoupitoulas. About sixty blocks away. The tiny A&P in the Quarter is finally open 9-5, but is a madhouse with little food. Still I go, looking, by bicycle to save gas.
The NOPD has become a horrible, rabid, festering animal. Luckily the National Guard remain amazingly even-tempered, and have been a life-saving defense against our own cops, keeping the twisted remains of the Police Department at bay. I don't know what will happen when the Guard leaves us.
Like I don't know who is coming back. More than half the City is unlivable, and will never be again. I know now. I've seen it.
Daily life, breathing, is eerie and disconcerting. I ate a hot meal at a soup kitchen at Washington Square around the corner last night, from a group of old-time hippies called The Rainbow Coalition", and felt myself a character walking knee-deep in Steinbeck. These folks from around the country raise their own money, use their own credit cards, and just drove in and started feeding and caring for people. They have a doctor and a midwife and a big battery-fed boombox with a great collection of âo[breve]60âo[dot accent]s NOLA R&B. They do not like FEMA. They got permission from the City to do what they are doing, but the NOPD came to roust the crowd when a brass band walked into the Square to play to the hungry people who were eating. âo[ogonek]No permit.âo? Yes. âo[ogonek]No permit.âo? Luckily a Humvee of Guardsmen showed up just then âo[base "] the Coalition had been feeding them too âo[base "] and shooed the local cops away.
There are more flies than I ever experienced in the poorest parts of Mexico or India, and mosquitoes who have been feasting on the dead descend in clouds if you stop for more than a minute. i wear insect repellent from the moment i wake up until i go to bed at night.
A FEMA flier decorated my gate this morning. I opened it to find a warning to residents not to place cadavers or feces on the sidewalk for curbside collection.
A bright yellow dust coats anything non-moving. You can watch it rise from the top of the drying black mud in the streets -- the remains of the poisonous floodwaters. Death pollen, everyone calls it.
Corporate carpetbaggers are everywhere. They are taking carriage rides, as tourists, through the Armageddon movie set that is our neighborhood, drinking and raising hell as the mule-pulled carts clop and creak down streets full of rubble. The well-dressed passengers cheer and toast each other, while staring off the carriages at New Orleanians sorting through their possessions.
They are making lots of money off our misery.
The world still literally smells, sometimes in horrible five-minute streams of fetid air that cannot be avoided, and Bush is here again for photo ops.
That said, we have community. Seven people and a steady stream of friends and neighbors were over here with two chain saws and wheelbarrows last Saturday to cut and haul out the top of the ten-foot-deep pile of rubble from my patio, only to find the three huge trees at the bottom. Much bigger than we could move.
A man who house-sat during the storm at our neighborâo[dot accent]s place said he was looking out their second floor window when he saw a tornado bounce into the middle of our block, snap off the three trees like they were matchsticks and drop them pointing east-west-north, all in less than a few seconds.
It was a mess, but after a day and a half of labor we got all the other stuff to the curb just as a convoy of clean-up bulldozers and dump trucks approached. We gave them water and sandwiches and they worked hard on our block. So by Sunday morning at 10:30am i could walk -- with severe limits -- in my back yard.
The insurance adjustor came a few hours later, and though he would not discuss the tree in the front, agreed to pay to take out two of the trees in the patio completely -- the one straight down the patio and the one from the back -- and to pay for the first ten feet -- from the root ball to the first big branches -- of other. And to get the fence back up, so the cats would be safe. From him I also discovered my policy has a large "hurricane deductible", but I'll be alright.
The expressway off-ramp at Elysian Fields just twelve blocks from the house has almost three dozen boats still tied up there from when it was used as a boat ramp while the water was up. I hope that the neighborhood hardware stores may open soon, so we can get what we need without having to use gas.
But I found a way to order a fridge on-line from Sears, and have it delivered. They are saying it will be here this week, but who knows. Right now there are thousand upon thousands of duct-taped refrigerators lining every street of the City, each a crisp-edged maggot-covered monument to decay.
That's all i can say for now.
[The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
1:26:38 PM
|
|
What Americans Want In A Supreme Court Justice. Scott McClellan (10/7/05):
The President has a long record of appointing people to the bench who are strict constructionists. That’s what the American people want.
That’s not true.
53% believe the Supreme Court should base its rulings, in whole or in part, on the Constitution’s current meaning, rather than on the meaning of the document when it was originally written (the view of strict constructionists). (46% take the strict constructionist view and 1% are unsure.)
63% of the public want a new Supreme Court justice who “will keep the court about the same as it is now” or will “make the court more liberal.” (30% want it more conservative.)
59% of the public are uneasy or unsure about Bush’s picks for the Supreme Court. (41% are confident.)
One more: 65% of the American public believe Bush’s priorities for the country are not the same as theirs.
[Think Progress]
1:23:42 PM
|
|
Keeping the Poor Out. Recall that Bush, in the wake of Katrina, was able to suspend federal labor laws that require federal contractors to pay a prevailing wage.
That was bad enough.
But now it seems that not only are workers at companies with federal contracts being paid below the prevailing wage, but they are being radically underpaid. Body and Soul links to an LATimes story today which notes that some workers are only being paid $4 an hour!
Jeanne then writes:
If all you care about is putting up structures, cheap is good. If you're trying to rebuild a community, the most important thing is giving people something to come back to. Four dollars isn't it. If anybody cared about the community, they'd be paying way more than prevailing wages, and giving evacuees priority on getting the jobs. Somehow we have trained these corporations to believe that national disasters are a time for them to profit. But this gets things all wrong. A system that privileges the profit of a construction company over the basic welfare of those who will live in the area after it is rebuilt is a system that has been turned upside down. Indeed, what good will it be to rebuild that community if you underpay the very people who are supposed to live that community? [MoJo Blog]
11:35:12 AM
|
|
Taking the Offensive on Defense. In a recent interview with Salon, Sen. Russ Feingold got vocal about the mess in Iraq and the likelihood that we won't be hanging a "mission accomplished" sign over a working democracy in Iraq before it comes time to withdraw troops. Meanwhile, Robert Kuttner notes in the Boston Globe a CBS poll reporting that 64 percent of Americans "oppose Bush's conduct of the war," and hence:
[A]n antiwar candidate such as Feingold would be an odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination over bigger names disabled by their own fatal caution.
Keep your hat on Hillary, winning the nomination in 2008 will take more than a diplomatic distaste for war, Bush cronyism, and a federal disaster, or even a season of what some on the right are calling Hillary[base ']s primetime infomercial. [MoJo Blog]
11:33:04 AM
|
|
Pentagon wants new spying powers in US
Pentagon says it won't spy on 'innocent' Americans, but critics say past record shows this is false.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com
Claiming it needs greater latitude for the war on terror, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a request from the Pentagon for the right to "covertly" gather intelligence on US citizens in order to determine whether they can recruit them as informants, without telling them that they are doing so on behalf of the US government. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon said the measure, which is aimed at the Muslim community in the US, could help them fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We believe there are people in the United States who have information of value to us," said Jim Schmidli, deputy general counsel for operations at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. "That information is within different ethnic communities in this country -- recent additions to our population from distressed areas of the world, primarily the Middle East."
But civil libertarians and leaders of the Muslim community charge, however, that the Pentagon is using the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to reclaim domestic spying powers that Congress had taken away from it after those powers were abused to spy on Americans during the Vietnam era.
The intelligence committee has backed the request as part of the 2006 intelligence spending authorization bill. The full Senate will take up the bill later this month. The Pentagon's request was not included in the House version of the bill, which was passed in June. The bill will now go to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Newsweek reported recently that this is not the first time the Pentagon has asked for these powers.
The provision was included in last year's version of the same bill, but was knocked out after its details were reported by Newsweek and critics charged it could lead to"spying" on US citizens. But late last month, with no public hearings or debate, a similar amendment was put back into the same authorization bill[~]an annual measure governing US intelligence agencies[~]at the request of the Pentagon. A copy of the 104-page committee bill, which has yet to be voted on by the full Senate, did not become public until last week.
Newsweek also reported that the committee included two other controversial amendments in the spending bill: one that would allow intelligence agencies greater access to databases on US citizens, and one that would grant the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency the right not to disclose "operational files" under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Los Angeles Times reports that supporters of the bill say it gives Pentagon intelligence officers the same authority that the CIA has to approach Americans abroad. The CIA cannot spy on US citizens, but its agents "routinely approach American business executives and overseas travelers to provide information on foreign targets."
The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon defended its request for the new powers last week, saying that as the Pentagon expands its role in counterterrorism, it needs more flexibility.
"This is not about spying on Americans," [DIA general counsel George Peirce] said in an interview in which he defended legislative language approved last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ..."We are not asking for the moon," Peirce said. "We only want to assess their suitability as a source, person to person" and at the same time "protect the ID and safety of our officers." The CIA and the FBI already have such authority, he added, and the [Defense Intelligence Agency] needs it "to develop critical leads" because "there is more than enough work for all of us to do."
In a separate article, the Post reports that the idea has not been well received in the US Muslim community, or by other critics of the new power.
"This has a back-alley, dead-of-night feel to it that I don't think would be received well by the Muslim community," said Ibrahim Cooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Lisa Graves of the American Civil Liberties Union scoffed at a defense official's assertion that the proposed change would not allow for carte blanche Pentagon spying inside the United States. "That's some spin," Graves said. "The change would allow them to gather information on Americans surreptitiously. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck."
In late September, The New York Times reported that Republican members of Congress were expressing concerns that the Pentagon "may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence," John D. Negroponte.
[base "]We see indications that the [Pentagon] is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else,[per thou] Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R) of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.
Mr. Hoekstra said he believed the activities were designed to "obscure" the Pentagon's intelligence activities in order to keep them out of Mr. Negroponte's jurisdiction.
11:02:35 AM
|
|
FEMA Deadline Looming For Katrina Victims. [Ed. note: Stephen Geer works for American Progress and just returned from New Orleans.]
The few people who have returned to New Orleans are just beginning to get their lives reordered. Not a single person I spoke to during my visit had even started paperwork with their insurance companies, let alone registered with FEMA. Until they got back into the city, they didn[base ']Äôt know what to report, and those who had called FEMA couldn[base ']Äôt get through.
Worse, FEMA has a 60-day deadline for individuals to register for relief aid, like loan assistance.
To help push FEMA on this issue, we’ve set up a very simple website — www.extendthedeadline.org — that lets you send a message to FEMA asking them to extend the deadline past the current date, October 28.
This is a battle we can win, and it’s a victory that Katrina victims desperately need. Please take a minute and ask FEMA to ExtendTheDeadline.
– Steve Geer
[Think Progress]
10:56:31 AM
|
|
Bush’s Circular Logic on Miers. During an interview this morning on [base ']ÄúThe Today Show,[base ']Äù President Bush touted Harriet Miers’ credentials:
I would remind those, one, that Harriet is an extraordinarily accomplished woman who’s done a lot. As a matter of fact, she’s consistently ranked as one of the top 50 women lawyers in the United States.
Actually, The National Law Journal ranked Miers among [base ']ÄúThe Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers.[base ']Äù The specific designation is significant, because National Law Journal selected her as one of the “most influential” because of Miers’ close, personal relationship with Bush. From the National Law Journal:
1998: [base ']ÄúMs. Miers is a big wheel in the big state of Texas, where she is chair of the Texas Lottery Commission and the personal attorney of Gov. George W. Bush. She was general counsel to Gov. Bush[base ']Äôs transition team when he first became governor.[base ']Äù [[base ']ÄúThe Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers In America,[base ']Äù The National Law Journal, 3/30/98]
In other words, the National Law Journal recognized that Miers’ benefited from her connections to Bush. Now, Bush uses that designation to argue that she is qualified apart from her relationship with him. It’s the beauty of circular reasoning.
(HT: Salon War Room )
[Think Progress]
10:55:25 AM
|
|
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military WriterMon Oct 10, 7:11 PM ET
The National Guard and Reserves are suffering a strikingly higher share of U.S. casualties in Iraq, their portion of total American military deaths nearly doubling since last year.
Reservists have accounted for one-quarter of all U.S. deaths since the Iraq war began, but the proportion has grown over time. It was 10 percent for the five weeks it took to topple Baghdad in the spring of 2003, and 20 percent for 2004 as a whole.
The trend accelerated this year. For the first nine months of 2005 reservists accounted for 36 percent of U.S. deaths, and for August and September it was 56 percent, according to Pentagon figures.
The Army National Guard, Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve accounted for more than half of all U.S. deaths in August and in September [~] the first time that has happened in consecutive months. The only other month in which it even approached 50 percent was June 2004.
Casualties in Iraq have shifted toward citizen soldiers as their combat role has grown to historic levels. National Guard officials say their soldiers have been sent into combat in Iraq in numbers not previously seen in modern times [~] far more than were sent to Vietnam, where active-duty troops did the vast majority of the fighting.
Charles Krohn, a former Army deputy chief of public affairs, said the reservists are taking up the slack for the highly stressed active-duty Army.
"Decisions made years earlier made going to war in any significant way impossible without Guard and Reserve participation. But I can't imagine anyone postulated the situation we face today: We don't seem very anxious to bring back the draft and we can't get enough volunteers for a war that is not universally popular," Krohn said.
Forty-five percent of all Guard and Reserve deaths since the start of the war [~] 220 of the 487 total [~] occurred in the first nine months of 2005, according to Pentagon figures. The deadliest month was August, when 49 Guard and Reserve members died.
The mounting casualties among reservists in Iraq has been overshadowed by the attention focused on a rising overall U.S. death toll, now approaching 2,000. It complicates recruiting for the National Guard and Reserve, which often attract people who think of the military reservists' role as something other than front-line combat.
Gone are the days when the National Guard and Reserve served mainly as "rear-area" support, far from the front-line fighting.
In Iraq the front line is everywhere [~] on rural roads where Guard and Reserve soldiers drive supply trucks, at urban checkpoints, in remote villages and at major supply bases. Some units also have been attached to active-duty units with the specific mission of conducting offensive operations.
The casualties have contributed to what has been the most challenging time for the Guard and Reserve since the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. In addition to fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and helping keep the peace in the Balkans, the Guard in particular was called to action in large numbers for rescue and relief from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
At one point this year more than half of the combat forces in Iraq were National Guard.
"That's a first," said Army Maj. Les Melnyk, historian for the Pentagon office that manages the Army and Air National Guard. "The Guard can't claim that (level of combat) for World War II or World War I [~] the other major wars we fought in. Never more than 50 percent of the combat forces were Guard."
At present, of the approximately 152,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about half are reservists: 49,000 Army National Guard, 22,000 Army Reserve and 4,000 Marine Reserve, according to figures provided by those organizations.
The trend is almost certain to be reversed next year, when the active-duty Army is scheduled to make a proportionally larger contribution to the overall force. The number of National Guard brigades in Iraq, for example, is scheduled to drop next year from seven to two.
Since the Vietnam era, the military has given the Guard and Reserve more vital support functions like military police and engineers, so that any major conflict would involve more than just the active-duty force. Thus it was inevitable that a sizable portion of the force in Iraq would be Guard and Reserve; what has made the Iraq experience so different is the large numbers of reservists getting killed and wounded.
At least 300 soldiers of the National Guard, 78 of the Army Reserve and 93 of the Marine Corps Reserve, have died in the Iraq conflict. The Navy Reserve has lost 13, the Air Force Reserve three and the Air National Guard one. Together that is one-quarter of the total U.S death toll, which stood at 1,947 on Monday, by the Pentagon's count.
Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, said in an interview that the increased reliance on the Guard and Reserve in 2005 was deliberately planned to allow active-duty units like the 3rd Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division to complete a reorganization before they returned to Iraq.
"It bought us the time we needed," Lovelace said.
___
On the Net:
National Guard Bureau at http://www.ngb.army.mil
Army National Guard at http://www.arng.army.mil/
Marine Corps Reserve at http://www.marforres.usmc.mil/
Defense Department at http://www.defenselink.mil
10:54:38 AM
|
|
Sources: Tip on N.Y. subway threat was hoax. Information that led to heightened security for the New York City transit system was a hoax, government sources said today. The sources said an informant in Iraq who provided the tip had told investigators there was a terrorist plot involving New York's subway system. That informant admitted he gave false information, the sources said. Police say security measures put in place on the subway system last week are being scaled back. [CNN.com]
10:16:17 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Patricia Thurston.
|
|
|
|
|
