Friday, February 18, 2005
No pictures, no problems
A former Iraqi detainee told Army investigators that a US soldier forced him to sign a statement that he had not been abused even though American interrogators in September 2003 had dislocated his arms, beaten his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, according to newly released internal military documents.
In addition, a sergeant at a military camp in southern Afghanistan told an Army investigator in July 2004 that his unit erased a series of digital photographs showing guards beating detainees and aiming guns at hooded prisoners. The sergeant said the pictures were deleted after photos from the Abu Ghraib prison appeared in the media, out of the unit's fear that the pictures could spark a second wave of scandal.
The disclosures provide the first evidence that in both the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of war, soldiers involved in alleged abuse incidents may have sought to suppress evidence of their actions, muddying any inquiry into how pervasive the abuse of detainees was. Other documents released yesterday also suggest that while the military has said it is investigating all allegations of abuse, it is also closing many of the investigations on the grounds that no conclusion can be reached.
''These raise the question of how many other allegations of abuse were buried in the same way," said Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking government documents on detainee abuses. ''That's very troubling because we already think that abuse was pervasive, but maybe there is a whole layer of abuse that we haven't seen."
Story.
posted by chris at 3:50 PM
The Social Security calculator
Click here to calculate how much you'd lose (or win if you're Wall Street) with Bush's plan to privatize social security. Then pass it on.
posted by chris at 1:13 PM
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Thursday, February 17, 2005
Wal-Mart country, literally
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Thursday it posted a 16.2 percent increase in profits for its fourth quarter, beating Wall Street expectations. Its earnings for the full year topped $10 billion for the first time.
Ten billion dollars. That's more than the Gross Domestic Products of many small countries.
posted by chris at 3:54 PM
Thank you, President Bush
The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.
"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."
More.
posted by chris at 1:15 PM
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Wednesday, February 16, 2005
The same damn picture
CNN posted two different stories on its website last week, one about nukes in Iran and one about nukes in North Korea. As news websites often do, they added aerial photos of the alleged nuclear power plant to further bolster the story. The thing is, though, it's the same damn picture in both stories!
posted by chris at 8:50 PM
Time served, but no vote
About 1.5 million convicted felons who have completed their sentences are still denied the right to vote, according to a report released today.
Unlike the District of Columbia and 34 states, including California, where voting rights are automatically restored to convicted felons who have completed their sentences, 14 states severely restrict or even prohibit onetime prisoners from casting ballots.
Former prisoners in those states can apply to have their voting rights restored, but few have the means to navigate the cumbersome and confusing processes to do so, says the report by the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group that studies criminal justice issues.
Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska and Virginia disenfranchise individuals with a felony conviction; eight states Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming prohibit voting based on specific criteria, such as the type or number of convictions.
Story.
posted by chris at 4:17 PM
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005
But he that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose*
Olga Alicia Tutillo is a flower worker and secretary general of the union at Rosas del Ecuador in Cayambe, Ecuador. She decribes the working conditions for flower workers in Ecuador.
Workers arrive at the plantations at 7 a.m. and stay until 3 a.m. the following morning, resting only for a few hours. After Valentine's Day, many workers are fired, and many can't find new jobs until rose production increases again for Mother's Day exports.
She goes on to describe the sicknesses that affect her and her co-workers as they are exposed to pesticides used in cut flower production in Latin America more than 100 pesticides are used, many of them highly toxic and prohibited in the US.
She also comments that out of 300 flower companies in Ecuador, only 4 have unions. Employer pressure and threats keep many workers from trying to form or join a union where they could press for better conditions and pay. She goes on to describe the discrimination of women, many of whom are illegally required to take a pregnancy test before they are hired. Pregnant woman are considered a financial drain on the companies because the woman miss work to give birth or take care of their children.
But Olga and her co-workers arent advocating that we stop buying flowers.
Instead, I hope that the next time you buy a rose, you will let the florist know that you are concerned about the health and rights of the workers, and that you would like them to make sure that the plantations they buy from comply with national laws and international labor standards.
For more information, check out the Fairness in Flowers Campaign or TransFair USA (which focuses on coffee mostly, but gives you information about the Fair Trade mission.
*Anne Bronte
posted by chris at 2:20 PM
Is education, health and law enforcement really that important?
President Bush's budget plan calls for elimination or drastic reduction 68 federal programs that he has never targeted before, including vocational-education grants, emergency medical services for children and assistance to local law enforcement agencies, according to a list the White House released [Friday].
The 68 programs are among 154 the Bush administration singled out for termination or major reduction to help restrain spending in the $2.57 trillion budget for fiscal 2006 he sent to Congress on Monday. Many of the 154 were recycled from previous budgets that Congress rejected before and they are unlikely to be accepted this year either.
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The programs proposed for elimination include big-ticket items, such as $1.2 billion for vocational education, as well as smaller services, such as the National Youth Sports Program, an $18 million effort that has provided athletics for low-income children for more than three decades. Grants for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, totaling $437 million, "are spread too thinly to support quality interventions," the report said, and would be zeroed out.
The White House targeted a $41 million college scholarship program named for one of Bush's most persistent critics, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). But even the president's own past priorities were not sacrosanct -- $496 million in education technology grants created by Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 would be wiped out because, the report said, "it is not clear that [it] has been successful in accomplishing this mission."
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Health and Human Services programs would face significant cuts. The Bush plan would kill seven Health Resources and Services Administration programs that earmark money for emergency medical services for children, hospital construction, traumatic brain injury and newborn hearing screening. Despite the national rise in child obesity, the White House wants to eliminate a $59 million media campaign to encourage children ages 9 to 13 to be more physically active, judging it redundant given similar drives by Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel.
Bush also deemed unnecessary a $6 million 10-year-old program that helps timber workers in the Northwest earn a living as logging opportunities decline and a $10 million four-year-old program that helps rural communities buy fire engines.
Among the biggest programs that would be shuttered is the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, a $626 million effort created last year to help state and local police fight violent and drug-related crime. The White House argued that it should be closed since crime is in decline and the program's importance pales in comparison with "increasing federal counterterrorism efforts and reducing the federal deficit."
And when was this list released? When do you think?
The White House released the list of program cuts in response to congressional requests, sending it to lawmakers late on a Friday afternoon, when it would receive relatively little attention heading into the weekend.
posted by chris at 2:13 PM
Empty promises
David Kuo, served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, blames Democrats, liberals and a lack of follow-through in the White House for the failure of Bush's promises to support his much-touted faith-based initiatives.
Four years ago, while visiting a small urban charity, President Bush launched the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He called it "one of the most important initiatives" of his administration.
...That day [Bush] promised more than $8 billion during his first year in office to help social service organizations better serve "the least, the last, and the lost." More than $6 billion was to go for new tax incentives that would generate billions more in private charitable giving. Another $1.7 billion a year would fund faith-based (and non-faith-based) groups caring for drug addicts, at-risk youth, and teen moms. $200 million more would establish a "Compassion Capital Fund" to assist, expand and replicate successful local programs. Legislation would ensure that reported government discrimination against faith-based social service organizations would end. A new White House Faith-Based Office would lead the charge.
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Sadly, four years later these promises remain unfulfilled in spirit and in fact. In June 2001, the promised tax incentives for charitable giving were stripped at the last minute from the $1.6 trillion tax cut legislation to make room for the estate-tax repeal that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. The Compassion Capital Fund has received a cumulative total of $100 million during the past four years. And new programs including those for children of prisoners, at-risk youth, and prisoners reentering society have received a little more than $500 million over four years--or approximately $6.3 billion less than the promised $6.8 billion.
Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced "new" programs aren't what they appear. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recently-announced "gang prevention initiative" totaling $50 million a year for three years. The obvious inference is that the money is new spending on an important initiative. Not quite. The money is being taken out of the already meager $100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund. If granted, it would actually mean a $5 million reduction in the Fund from last year.
posted by chris at 2:02 PM
Passing the buck
Even if Bush succeeds in slashing the deficit in half in four years, as he has pledged, his major policy prescriptions would leave his successor with massive financial commitments that would begin rising dramatically the year he relinquishes the White House, according to an analysis of new budget figures.
Bush's extensive tax cuts, the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit and, if it passes, his plan to redesign Social Security all balloon in cost several years from now.
His plan to partially privatize Social Security, for instance, would cost a total of $79.5 billion in the last two budgets that Bush will propose as president and an additional $675 billion in the five years that follow. New Medicare figures likewise show the cost almost twice as high as originally estimated, largely because it will mushroom long after the Bush presidency ends.
"It's almost like you've got a budget, and you've got a shadow budget coming in behind that's a whole lot more expensive," said Philip Joyce, professor of public policy at George Washington University.
By the time the next president comes along, some analysts said, not only will there be little if any flexibility for any new initiatives, but the entire four-year term could be spent figuring out how to accommodate the long-range cost of Bush's policies.
Even on their own priorities, they refuse to take responsibility.
posted by chris at 1:56 PM
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Monday, February 14, 2005
That didn't work out quite like we planned
When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.
But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.
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Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.
Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.
And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.
More.
posted by chris at 12:09 PM
"And count that kid with the rock in his hand..."
Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday has learned.
Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued. The small number of soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body armour or even documents to show they are in the police.
The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 troops who could be considered combat ready.
Did these jokers ever have a plan?
posted by chris at 10:15 AM
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