A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture in 2004, became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News.
Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.
After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.
[OE]USAF Struck Syrian Nuclear Site[base ']. The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.
The sources were quoted as saying [...] [CommonDreams.org » Headlines07]
5:27:14 PM comment []
A federal judge ruled today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior intelligence officials [base "]will be subpoenaed to discuss their conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists[per thou] who [base "]are accused of receiving classified information from a now-convicted Pentagon official and relaying it to an Israeli official and the press.[per thou] If Rice ultimately testifies in court, the case [base "]could offer a behind-the-scenes look at the way U.S. foreign policy is crafted.[per thou]
N-plant worker stopped with bomb. A contract employee of an Arizona nuclear plant was stopped at a plant entrance Friday with an explosive device in his truck, officials told CNN.
Don't Blame Immigrants for Tuberculosis. Steve Mitchell of ScienceNOW Daily News reports: "The national debate over illegal immigrants in the United States has sparked fears among health authorities about the spread of diseases, such as tuberculosis, but a new study indicates that those concerns are overblown. Researchers in Norway analyzed more than a decade's worth of tuberculosis cases and found that infected immigrants pose little risk of spreading the disease to the general population." [t r u t h o u t]
5:20:18 PM comment []
US Health Care Comes Up Short in Survey of Seven Nations. Reuters Reporter Maggie Fox writes: "Americans spend double what people in other industrialized countries do on health care, but have more trouble seeing doctors, are the victims of more errors and go without treatment more often, according to a report released on Thursday." [t r u t h o u t]
5:19:40 PM comment []
US: Toxins Threaten to Uproot Entire Town. Inter Press Service reporter Mark Weisenmiller writes: "Today, Tallevast is home to about 250 people ... Unbeknownst to residents, an underground leak had released beryllium into water wells in the village. And when the defense company Lockheed Martin Corp. bought the plant and discovered the problem in 2000, it failed to inform the people of Tallevast for another three years." [t r u t h o u t]
5:18:36 PM comment []
US Army Contracting Alarms Panel. The BBC News reports that: "An independent panel has strongly criticized the way the US Army manages contracts to supply its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan." [t r u t h o u t]
5:16:43 PM comment []
Reading my morning paper, I note two things: Mariane Pearl says, "Celebrities are doing the job of journalists," and blogger James Boyce wonders why the American media has deserted us --specifically, in regard to the bloodbaths in Burma.
Where to begin?
I read A Mighty Heart. Thank you Daniel Pearl. I will tell my grandchildren about you someday. Mariane, I reach my arms out to you where ever you are, wanting to hold you close. Danny was a hero-brave until the ruthless-hateful-end, and you dear one are a heroine. You wrote your story without hatred or malice. With that you disarmed the enemy. You obviously have seen enough hate and misunderstanding to last many life times and you clearly know, as Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
It is true celebrities are telling the stories after they are written. Celebrities are not embedded journalists as you and your dear Danny were. You were embedded in the truest sense of the word. The two of you did not act a part, you lived smack in the middle of one of the most dangerous areas of the world after 9/11 and tried to find out who was responsible for it. That is braver than holding any gun and firing.
What Danny Pearl did throughout his career was what all good journalists do. It is what keen intelligence is about. It's making contacts and following leads, and sometimes the lead is a trap. That's just one reason good journalism is dangerous. I still struggle to inhale when I think of Mariane and Danny Pearl together. I feel sick at heart when I think of Danny Pearl's end and the two of them now apart. It seems that Danny was ahead of everyone after 9/11 - certainly the C.I.A. What we all understand now is that Pakistan is a breeding ground for terrorists, and in some respects, the most dangerous country in the world for Americans. Danny Pearl was learning who the terrorists were faster than the C.I.A. That's why embedded journalists are essential to understanding our global politics, and it's another reason he wasn't found soon enough to save his life. He was moving in un-charted territory. His bravery was astounding.
When a journalist is embedded, there is no amount of propaganda in any country that can hold back the bonds of friendships made and walls broken down. That leads to understanding. Who--What--When--Where-- is easy, WHY is hard. Understanding WHY is what leads to peace. Danny Pearl tried to write the WHY stories. Ironically, one reason national and local news have pulled reporters out of hot spots around the world was Daniel Pearl's killing.
After Daniel's death, I was preparing to try, like so many journalists, to get into Afghanistan. My boss at the time was a reporter, not a sales person and he believed living in the Bay Area, with a community of more Afghans outside of Afghanistan than anywhere else in the world, we had an obligation to be there. The insurance company did not agree. We were told by Cox Broadcasting that it would take millions of dollars up front to insure me. I could not go.
In today's Media corporations, it all gets down to money. Can the station still sell commercials without the coverage from Afghanistan? Yep, you bet your chador it can. If you throw in some celebrity news instead of tragic stories around the world, the ratings might even go up.
What about responsibility for informing the public? If the media corporations don't inform but instead create more chaos because there are no first hand accounts--this fragile democracy I fear will become even more uninformed, more fragmented, more racist, more homophobic, more xenophobic and celebrity obsessed.
Daniel Pearl complained in one of his emails that a clearly biased story was making news in Pakistan. It was explosive in content and was reported as fact in the Pakistani news. Are we really so far away from the same thing? Without reporters on the scene, there are no objective eyes. There is no objective voice. There is mis-information that could lead to World Wars swirling around our lives in cyberspace and in newspapers and on the mostly corporate owned airwaves. Brave embedded reporters like Danny and Mariane can give us perspective, but they also risk their lives doing it.
Reporters also ask themselves-- if I risk my life to inform the world, will it make a difference? Will the world care or will Americans turn on their computers and read the celebrity news before they read a first hand account of what's happening in Burma, or Pakistan, or Iraq. Perhaps Americans are so overwhelmed they will tune out the news all together. It's work these days to keep a democracy alive. Knowledge and participation takes more and more time. But, what is the alternative?
If it does not contribute to the bottom line, it is not important to most media corporations. When the Rupert Murdoch's of this world own The Wall Street Journal I'm afraid this fragile democracy is screwed. Watch the documentary Out Foxed.
Then encourage and contribute to non-profit news organizations.
With the presidential primary less than 2 months away here, it wasn't surprising to hear the latest presidential campaign ad to hit the airwaves in New Hampshire, my home state. What caught my attention, though, was that it's an attack ad on health care by a candidate who has yet to propose any meaningful solutions himself.
It seems that presidential candidate Mayor Giuliani has resorted to scare tactics and misleading information to try to win support for his health care policies in New Hampshire.
It's no coincidence he's raising the issue here. Health care is on the minds of Republican, Democratic and Independent voters across the state. In 2002, New Hampshire for Health Care, part of Americans for Health Care, a project of SEIU, opened its doors and received a tidal wave of concern about the health care crisis in our country. For the past five years, we've been working with Health Care Voters - people who have pledged to only vote for candidates who make health care reform a top priority - to get candidates to talk about how they will fix the health care crisis when campaigning through the state. Our purple "I'm a Health Care Voter" t-shirts dot nearly every presidential event with 67,000 Health Care Voters and growing.
So when a presidential campaign talks health care, he or she had better know what they're talking about. Giuliani either doesn't know - or even worse, doesn't care - if he uses false information in his bid to attract support for his campaign.
On Monday, a new radio ad from the Giuliani campaign that debuted in New Hampshire raised the ire of thousands of Health Care Voters across New Hampshire. The radio ad "Chances" addresses Mayor Giuliani's battle with prostate cancer. It has a good start, with Giuliani talking about having prostate cancer five or six years ago; voters in New Hampshire have been sharing their own health care stories for months now to make candidates understand the health care crisis that is facing everyday Americans. But then it takes a sharp veer off course.
"My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44% under socialized medicine."
Turns out 44 percent is actually 74.4 percent -- a tremendous difference of 30%, and a very misleading statement to present to New Hampshire voters.
As early as the day the ad was released -- Monday, October 29th -- ABC News reporter Rick Klein reported that "the data Giuliani cites comes from a single study published eight years ago" and "is contradicted by official data from the British government."
As reporters asked more questions, the Giuliani campaign refused to admit their mistake.
When we issued a call for the ad to be taken down, his campaign still refused.
But we're not backing down. The next time Mayor Giuliani is in town we intend to deliver the message that we expect the campaigns to present strong, accurate statistics when making the case for how they will ensure access to quality, affordable health care for every American.
Health Care Voters will be there to call on him to remove the ad, and to remind him that 67,000 people intend to vote for a Health Care President - one who presents real facts, and doesn't use falsehoods to deflect attention from the lack of any personal ideas about how to fix the health care crisis.
John J. Thyng, Jr.
State Director
New Hampshire for Health Care
It looks as though Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming attorney general, having secured the support of Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumer. Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former Truthdigger of the week) Pat Leahy, on the other hand, plans to vote no, because [base "]No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.[per thou]
AP via MSNBC:
Once viewed as a sure thing, Mukasey[base ']s nomination was threatened during hearings last month in which he repeatedly refused to say whether he considers the simulated drowning interrogation technique known as waterboarding to be a form of torture.
Torture is considered a war crime by the international community and waterboarding has been banned by the U.S. military, but CIA interrogators are believed to have used the technique on terror detainees as recently as a few years ago.
Mukasey has called waterboarding personally [base "]repugnant,[per thou] but said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture. He also said he thought it would be irresponsible to discuss it since doing so could make interrogators and other government officials vulnerable to lawsuits.
My new nationally syndicated newspaper column is out today, and it focuses on the Toxic Trade report the Campaign for America's Future (where I am a senior fellow at) put out this week. Read the column here or go listen to the replay of my regular Friday morning interview about the column with 760AM Denver radio host Jay Marvin (I do this interview about my column every Friday morning with Jay, who is really one of the best progressive radio hosts in the country).
As the column notes, there has been some pretty significant progress on this issue following the report. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) passed legislation through a Senate committee that would significantly strengthen the Consumer Products Safety Commission (The Project on Government Oversight unfortunately notes that a big whistleblower protection from the Senate bill has been taken out of the House version). The Progressive States Network (which I am on the board of) sent out a Stateside Dispatch to thousands of state legislators letting them know what they can do in their states to address the problem with toxic imports.
Calls for the resignation of CPSC head Nancy Nord - formerly with the Chamber of Commerce - are increasing. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) both called for her resignation on CAF's press conference call on Tuesday. Then, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for Nord's resignation, and labor leaders like Leo Gerard have chimed in with strong arguments explaining precisely why Nord is such a problem. The Washington Post this morning added fuel to the fire, running a front-page story about how Nord is taking lavish junkets paid for by the industries she's supposed to be regulating. No wonder she is actually opposing more resources and authority for her own commission - from the golf courses in Hilton Head, she probably thinks everything is A.O.K.
Just this week's pressure alone has had real-world effects. Check out the New York Times today:
"Chinese regulators said Thursday that they had suspended the export licenses of more than 750 toy companies because of quality control problems, according to the state-controlled media. The government said an additional 690 toy factories in southern China, the world's largest toy manufacturing region, had been ordered to renovate or improve their facilities. The move was announced just days after American legislators moved to strengthen consumer protections and impose tougher penalties on companies that sell tainted or hazardous goods, including goods imported from China." (emphasis added)
Two question now remain:
1. Will the bills strengthening the CPSC ultimately passes Congress or will they get gutted by corporate lobbyists?
Go read the full column here - and stay tuned in the coming weeks to see what happens. And if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site.
