Observations on current events

Oversight, Who Needs Oversight?

NY Times: Pentagon May Be Spying with No Oversight
"Republican members of Congress say there are signs that the Defense Department may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence.
The warnings are an unusually public signal of some Republican lawmakers' concern about overreaching by the Pentagon, where top officials have been jockeying with the new intelligence chief, John D. Negroponte, for primacy in intelligence operations. The lawmakers said they believed that some intelligence activities, involving possible propaganda efforts and highly technological initiatives, might be masked as so-called special access programs, the details of which are highly classified.
'We see indications that the D.O.D. is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else,' Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.
Mr. Hoekstra said he believed that the purpose might be to obscure the extent of Pentagon intelligence activities and to keep them outside Mr. Negroponte's designated orbit..."


On Torture:

NewsHour: 82nd Airborne Accused of Iraqi War Prisoner Abuse
"Last weekend, Human Rights Watch issued a report saying U.S. soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely abused Iraqi prisoners from 2003 into 2004. The report was based on interviews with an Army captain and two unnamed sergeants in the division's first battalion. They'd been stationed at a base called mercury, near Fallujah.
The report faulted what it called a 'failure of leadership' by top military and administration officials for not issuing clear standards about allowable interrogation techniques. Today, the Washington Post published a letter from the Army captain, West Point graduate Ian Fishback, that he had written on Sept. 16 to Senator John McCain..."


Journalism and the Public's Right To Know:

The Guardian (UK) - US forces 'out of control', says Reuters chief
"Reuters has told the US government that American forces' conduct towards journalists in Iraq is 'spiralling out of control' and preventing full coverage of the war reaching the public.
The detention and accidental shootings of journalists is limiting how journalists can operate, wrote David Schlesinger, the Reuters global managing editor, in a letter to Senator John Warner, head of the armed services committee.
The Reuters news service chief referred to 'a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by US forces in Iraq,'..."

Jack Abramoff, A Man With Lots of Connections:

Washington Post: Tyco Exec: Abramoff Claimed Ties to Rove and DeLay
"Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.
Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he 'had good relationships with members of Congress,' including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
Abramoff later said 'he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove' about the issue, according to the statement by Flanigan, who oversaw Tyco's dealings with Abramoff and his firm and received reports from Abramoff about progress in the lobbying campaign. Flanigan's statement is the latest indication that Abramoff promoted himself as having ready access to senior officials in the Bush administration.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove 'has no recollection' of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns.
Abramoff was indicted last month on unrelated wire fraud and conspiracy charges and has lost his high-stakes lobbying clients. He was hired in 2003 by Tyco when the company was in turmoil. Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, promoted him as Tyco's savior on the tax issue, according to Flanigan's statement and others familiar with the process..."

Washington Post: 3 Charged in Killing Of Fla. Businessman
"Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland-style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Konstantinos 'Gus' Boulis was killed on a Fort Lauderdale street on Feb. 6, 2001. Two of the three men charged had been hired as consultants by Adam Kidan, one of Abramoff's partners in the SunCruz Casinos venture.
Anthony Moscatiello, 67, identified by authorities as a former bookkeeper for the Gambino crime family, was arrested Monday night in Queens, N.Y. Anthony Ferrari, 48, was arrested in Miami Beach. Both were charged with murder, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. James Fiorillo, 28, was arrested in Palm Coast, Fla., yesterday and charged with murder and conspiracy.
Boulis, millionaire founder of the Miami Subs sandwich chain, sold SunCruz to Abramoff and Kidan in September 2000, at a time when Abramoff was one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy in connection with a $60 million loan they obtained to purchase the casino company.
Abramoff is at the center of a federal investigation into lobbying for Indian tribes and influence-peddling in Washington. Abramoff used contacts with GOP Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and their staffs as he worked to land the SunCruz deal, interviews and court records show..."


Energy:

This is an example of how the European division of GM is active in the R&D of efficient technology, while GM in the States has no marketable product that even comes close to these MPG figures.

Green Car Congress: GM Unveils Opel Antara Twin-Turbo Diesel Concept
"With much fanfare, GM Opel introduced a new 1.9-liter, twin-turbo diesel crossover concept, the Opel Antara GTC at the Frankfurt IAA. Notably absent from the hoopla, however, was the Opel Astra GTC diesel hybrid concept GM had unveiled in January in Detroit. More on this below.
As applied, the twin-turbo, based on the popular 1.9-liter diesel ECOTEC family, dramatically increases the power and torque range of that engine family while maintaining comparable levels of fuel consumption.
The 1.9-liter twin-turbo generates 156 kW (212 hp) of power and 400 Nm of torque from 1,400 rpm—more than twice the power output of the new 74-kW entry-level 1.9-liter CDTI.
GM simulations calculate that the engine, combined with the six-speed automatic transmission, will give the Antara GTC concept a top speed of more than 210 km/h and an acceleration from zero to 100 km/h in around 8 seconds.
GM has been working on the twin-turbo technology for several years, first applying it publicly in an earlier engineering study in an Opel Vectra presented at the Essen show in November 2003. The Vectra—a smaller car than the Antara—used the same size twin-turbo engine (1.9 liters) and produced the same power and torque output, with fuel consumption of 6.0 liters/100km (39 mpg US). GM gave no fuel consumption figures for the Antara GTC...
...The Astra Diesel hybrid, based on the GM/DaimlerChrysler two-mode hybrid powertrain, used a 1.7-liter turbo diesel engine delivering 125 hp (92 kW) of power and 206 lb-ft (280 Nm) torque with two electric motors, rated at 30 kw and 40 kw, respectively. The diesel hybrid prototype delivered zippy 0–100 km/h acceleration of less than 8 seconds—but with fuel consumption of less than 4-liters/100km (58.8 mpg)—25% more fuel-efficient than the conventional diesel model with the same displacement engine..."

A Soldier's Story:

Hart Viges: 'You can't wash your hands when they're covered in blood'
"My name is Hart Viges. September 11 happened. Next day I was in the recruiting office. I thought that was the way I could make a difference in the world for the better.
So I went to infantry school and jump school and I arrived with my unit of the 82nd Airborne Division. I was deployed to Kuwait in February 2003. We drove into Iraq because Third Infantry Division was ahead of schedule, and so I didn't need to jump into Baghdad airport.
As we drove into Samawa to secure their supplies my mortar platoon dropped numerous rounds on this town. I watched Kiowa attack helicopters fire Hellfire missile after Hellfire missile. I saw a C130 Spectre gunship ... it will level a town. It had belt-fed artillery rounds pounding with these super-Gatling guns.
I don't know how many innocents I killed with my mortar rounds. I have my imagination to pick at for that one. But I clearly remember the call-out over the radio saying 'Green light on all taxi-cabs. The enemy is using them for transportation'.
One of our snipers called back on the radio saying 'Excuse me but did I hear that order correctly? Green light on all taxi cabs?' 'Roger that soldier. You'd better start buckling up.' All of a sudden the city just blew up. Didn't matter if there was an innocent in the taxi-cab - we laid a mortar round on it, snipers opened up..."

Analysis on the above story


Recovery As Opportinity:

New York Times Editorial: Cronies at the Till
"The first results are in on who is set to profit from the Katrina cleanup, and - surprise - many of the firms winning major contracts have big political connections. Congressional investigators are already looking into AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company with ties to Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour - the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. AshBritt has nabbed $568 million in contracts for trash removal. Questions have also been raised about the political connections of two other major contractors: the Shaw Group, and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Both companies have been represented by Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency - although Mr. Allbaugh says he does not help any of his clients obtain federal contracts.
And there's more. An article in yesterday's Times by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon reports that more than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by FEMA for Katrina work were awarded without bidding or with limited competition. The Times article even finds a federal employee - Richard Skinner, the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department - willing to go on the record with his concern, saying, 'We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing.'
So are we. The government is spending more than a quarter of a billion dollars every day on rescue, relief and reconstruction along the Gulf Coast. Anyone who pays taxes in America should be concerned about how the money is being spent and who is profiting. We think that when Congress appropriates money for disaster relief, the advantage should be maximized for the victims, not for the same cast of characters that have been profiting from no-bid contracts in Iraq. Kellogg, Brown & Root, Americans may recall, is the company that came up with those $100-per-bag laundry bills for work in Iraq.
All of this comes back to cronyism. The resignation of the FEMA chief, Michael Brown, was only one of the recent departures. The head of federal procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget resigned just before he was arrested on charges of lying to federal investigators, and the Pentagon's former inspector general has left for the private sector but remains the target of a Congressional inquiry..."

Democracy Now! - Headlines for September 27, 2005
"FEMA To Reimburse Religious Organizations for Hurricane Worker

FEMA announced on Monday that for the first time it would use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that helped survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Civil liberties groups called the decision a violation of the traditional boundary between church and state.

Report: FEMA Rehires Michael Brown As A Consultant

CBS News is reporting that the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, has been rehired by the agency to serve as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina. On Sept. 12 Brown announced his resignation saying 'it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.' The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that Brown is still on the payroll but claims it is just because his resignation has not taken effect yet..."

If this cronie has any relevant information that can help the government determine culpability in the Federal response, there's a means to do so that does not require writing him yet another check: subpoena him before a grand jury.

Natural Disaster As Opportunity:

Jeremy Skahill: Blackwater Down
"The men from Blackwater USA arrived in New Orleans right after Katrina hit. The company known for its private security work guarding senior US diplomats in Iraq beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene in another devastated Gulf. About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces 'join[ing] the hurricane relief effort.' But its men on the ground told a different story.
Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They congregated on the corner of St. James and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711, where Blackwater was establishing a makeshift headquarters. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater guys cleared out what had apparently been someone's apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony's railing. More than a dozen troops from the 82nd Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.
Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. 'I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte,' said one of the Blackwater guys, referring to the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. 'When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?' he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase Operation Iraqi Freedom printed on it..."

Pratap Chatterjee: CorpWatch : Big, Easy Iraqi-Style Contracts Flood New Orleans
"The day Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Robert Boh watched the dramatic pictures of the unfolding disaster on television at his in-law's house in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where his family had taken shelter. As president of the biggest construction company in New Orleans, he was confident that the hundreds of miles of levees that he and his rivals have built over the decades would hold. 'It never occurred to me,' he said, that the 17th street canal would gave way. 'I was shocked.'
The next day the phones started ringing off the hook. One of the calls was offering work to repair the levees and drain the city from the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency run by the US military. Unable to access his New Orleans offices, which had six feet of water on the first floor, Boh drove down to work in nearby Baton Rouge, to help save the city where his grandfather had founded a construction business 96 years before..."

Naomi Klein: Purging the Poor
"...New Orleans is already displaying signs of a demographic shift so dramatic that some evacuees describe it as 'ethnic cleansing.' Before Mayor Ray Nagin called for a second evacuation, the people streaming back into dry areas were mostly white, while those with no homes to return to are overwhelmingly black. This, we are assured, is not a conspiracy; it's simple geography--a reflection of the fact that wealth in New Orleans buys altitude. That means that the driest areas are the whitest (the French Quarter is 90 percent white; the Garden District, 89 percent; Audubon, 86 percent; neighboring Jefferson Parish, where people were also allowed to return, 65 percent). Some dry areas, like Algiers, did have large low-income African-American populations before the storm, but in all the billions for reconstruction, there is no budget for transportation back from the far-flung shelters where those residents ended up. So even when resettlement is permitted, many may not be able to return.
As for the hundreds of thousands of residents whose low-lying homes and housing projects were destroyed by the flood, Drennen points out that many of those neighborhoods were dysfunctional to begin with. He says the city now has an opportunity for 'twenty-first-century thinking': Rather than rebuild ghettos, New Orleans should be resettled with 'mixed income' housing, with rich and poor, black and white living side by side..."

Naomi Klein: GOP Opportunity Zone
"This is a list of 'Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices,' circulated by the House Republican Study Committee. Attributions included where available...

* Repeal or waive restrictive environmental regulations, such as NEPA, that hamper rebuilding. (Heritage Foundation)...

* Eliminate any regulatory barriers and other disincentives that block faith-based and other charitable organizations from engaging in the recovery and reconstruction process. (Orthodox Union, Heritage Foundation)...

* Streamline the environmental hurdles to building new oil refineries. (Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona)...

* Make it easier for small refineries to increase capacity. (Kansas's Tiahrt)...

* Allow more offshore oil drilling. (Texas's Poe)...

* Pay the royalties for new offshore oil drilling to the local governments nearest to shore. (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California)...

* Allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge...

* Temporarily suspend the gas tax. (Arizona's John Shadegg)...

* Permanently reduce the gas tax...

* Waive or repeal gas formulation (e.g. oxygenation) requirements under the Clean Air Act and related regulations. (Heritage Foundation)..."


Aside from these crude anti-environment policy moves, the GOP argues that the Bush Tax Cuts should be maintained at all cost. Instead, the Federal government should save elsewhere, especially in those areas the GOP hates spending money in the first place:

* $225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.

* $200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.

* $25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control

* $6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children

* $7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS

* $5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

* $3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities

* $8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.

* $2.5 billion cut from Amtrak



So-Called 'Intelligent Design':

The premise these deists wish to ram down the throats of school-aged children as 'fact' is that the universe is too complex to have not been designed by a deity. This is not only unsupported utter fantasy, but a pack of pernicious lies. What ought to be taught is that man's understanding of the universe has not yet sufficiently advanced so as to allow any sort of definitive explanation. Why is 'we simply have no idea' not a sufficient answer?

AP: Monkey Trial II Set to Begin in Pennsylvania
"Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the latest legal chapter in the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools is to unfold in federal court.
The Dover Area School District on Monday was to start defending its policy of requiring ninth-grade students hear about 'intelligent design' before biology lessons on evolution.
Dover is believed to be the first school system in the nation to require students be exposed to the concept under a policy adopted by a 6-3 vote in October 2004.
Intelligent design, a concept some scholars have advanced over the past 15 years, holds that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms. It implies that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force.
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism - a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation - camouflaged in scientific language, and it does not belong in a science curriculum. Eight Dover families are suing the school district, alleging that the policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
'The intelligent-design movement is an effort to introduce creationism into the schools under a different name,' said Eric Rothschild, a Philadelphia attorney representing the families..."


The So-Called War on Terror As An Excuse For Hegemony Over Middle East Oil Reserves:

Marjorie Cohn: Bush's Twin Masters
"George W. Bush's two masters - the neoconservatives and the right-wing Christians - were the guiding force behind his decision to invade Iraq, change its regime, and control it permanently.
The neocons' blueprint for Bush's war can be found in a 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on Post-Cold War Strategy, prepared by Paul Wolfowitz. It said, 'Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia to] preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil,'..."


On Torture:


AP: Navy Secretly Contracted Jets Used for Terror Flights by CIA
"A branch of the U.S. Navy secretly contracted a 33-plane fleet that included two Gulfstream jets reportedly used to fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
At least 10 U.S. aviation companies were issued classified contracts in 2001 and 2002 by the obscure Navy Engineering Logistics Office for the 'occasional airlift of USN (Navy) cargo worldwide,' according to Defense Department documents the AP obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Two of the companies - Richmor Aviation Inc. and Premier Executive Transport Services Inc. - chartered luxury Gulfstreams that flew terror suspects captured in Europe to Egypt, according to U.S. and European media reports. Once there, the men told family members, they were tortured. Authorities in Italy and Sweden have expressed outrage over flights they say were illegal and orchestrated by the U.S. government..."

Ethics:

NY Times Editorial: Senator Frist's Stock Sale
"...Mr. Frist's office claims that the sale was intended to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as he pursued his legislative agenda. But the emergence of this concern seems strangely convenient for a man who's been pursuing the same agenda throughout his Senate career. The Securities and Exchange Commission should look into this sale."


Wither Posse Comitatus?

William M. Arkin: Early Warning
"Today, somewhere in the DC metropolitan area, the military is conducting a highly classified Granite Shadow 'demonstration.'
Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control..."

Elections - One Pillar Of a Democratic Society:

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman: Carter/Baker Report can't face how the GOP stole America's 2004 election & is rigging 2008
"The stolen elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004 are nowhere to be found in the milquetoast Carter-Baker Report now passing for wisdom on America's broken electoral system.
And unless the public is ready to face the reality that we no longer live in a nation with credible elections, the 2008 balloting is all but over.
As investigative reporters and registered voters living in central Ohio, we witnessed firsthand the outright theft of the 2004 election. We also endured the unwillingness of the Democratic Party to face up to a carefully choreographed 'do everything' strategy that gave the presidency to George W. Bush for a second time, and which could make all elections to come virtually moot.
The just-issued report of a special commission headed by former President Jimmy Carter and Bush family consigliore Jim Baker is of little real value..."


On Torture:

Reuters: Judge Bars Release of Abu Ghraib Photos
"A day before the trial of Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier who held an Iraqi prisoner on a leash at Abu Ghraib prison, a military judge on Tuesday barred the release of photos which have already been published around the world.
At a final pre-trial hearing, Judge Col. James Pohl also expressed skepticism about the central defense argument that England, 22, was overly compliant toward authority figures and could not always make reasoned judgments for herself..."

The Noose Tightens:

NY Times: Ex-White House Aide Charged in Corruption Case
"A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year.
The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
According to court papers, Mr. Safavian, 38, is accused of lying about assistance that he gave Mr. Abramoff in his earlier work at the General Services Administration, where he was chief of staff from 2002 to 2004, and about an expensive golf trip he took with the lobbyist to Scotland in August 2002..."

Iraq:

The Independent (UK) What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn?
"One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.
The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared..."

Disaster Response:

Paul Krugman: Not the New Deal
"It's a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.
Still, even conservatives admit that deregulation, tax cuts and privatization won't be enough. Recovery will require a lot of federal spending. And aside from the effect on the deficit - we're about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort - this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?..."

How To Steal An Election:

The Brad Blog:DIEB-THROAT: 'Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known'
"In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a 'Diebold Insider' is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's 'upper management' -- as well as 'top government officials' -- were keenly aware of the 'undocumented backdoor' in Diebold's main 'GEM Central Tabulator' software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.
Pointing to a little-noticed 'Cyber Security Alert' issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who 'for the time being' is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.
'Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal,' the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. 'In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated.'
In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the matters were well known within the company, but that a 'culture of fear' had been developed to assure that employees, including technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves..."

US CERT: US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin SB04-252
"Diebold - GEMS Central Tabulator 1.17.7, 1.18
A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could a local or remote authenticated malicious user modify votes.
No workaround or patch available at time of publishing.
We are not aware of any exploits for this vulnerability."


Lies That My Government Told Me:

Boulder Weekly: 9/11 Cold Case
"A former Bush-appointed official is calling for a new, independent, scientific investigation into 9/11...
...Reynolds thinks the points he has made prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there should be a new forensic investigation into the matter, but he is disappointed with the response of the majority of Americans who dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist.
'Overall, I think it's the head-in-the-sand approach to danger,' he says. 'This is too horrible a proposition to entertain, because if you go there, the consequences are going to be so tremendous, so let's avoid these consequences and kind of live normally. That's the idea. But it's not working. You can't live normally by believing the fairytale.'
Reynolds refers back to the book Synthetic Terror, saying the government has orchestrated this farce as a way to gain the public's support and a way to keep pumping money into the military. He likens terrorism to the perceived communist threat during the Cold War.
'When you lose the Soviet Union as our big bogeyman enemy, then you have to cook up something else,' he says. 'And we have the Muslim world now. One in six in the world, isn't that great?' "

Natural Disaster As A Political Opportunity:

Wall St. Journal: Old-Line Families Escape Worst of Flood And Plot the Future
"...Some black leaders and their allies in New Orleans fear that it boils down to preventing large numbers of blacks from returning to the city and eliminating the African-American voting majority. Rep. William Jefferson, a sharecropper's son who was educated at Harvard and is currently serving his eighth term in Congress, points out that the evacuees from New Orleans already have been spread out across many states far from their old home and won't be able to afford to return. 'This is an example of poor people forced to make choices because they don't have the money to do otherwise,' Mr. Jefferson says.
Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be done..."


The Confirmation of Judge Roberts:

The Senate Judiciary Commitee should pay close attention to the actions of the Bush Administration during a key timeframe, which present a conflict of interest for the Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts. While the Administration had a case (US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, 04-5393 'Salim Ahmed Hamdan v. SecDef Rumsfeld') pending before a three-judge panel, which included Mr. Roberts, the Administration was interviewing the nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court. At the time, Justice O'Connor had not yet retired, but the Chief Justice had already disclosed his (often terminal) illness.

The case was decided 2-1 in favor of the Administration, yet Mr. Roberts failed to disclose his meetings with the Administration to the appellee's counsel. One has to wonder how the Judge would have ruled in the case, had he not been incentivized with what any US lawyer would consider the career promotion of a lifetime.

But if the Senate's past performance is an indication of what it is willing debate publicly, we won't hear a word about this.



Disaster Response:

Paul Krugman: All the President's Friends
"...The hapless Michael Brown - who is no longer overseeing relief efforts but still heads the agency - has become a symbol of cronyism.
But what we really should be asking is whether FEMA's decline and fall is unique, or part of a larger pattern. What other government functions have been crippled by politicization, cronyism and/or the departure of experienced professionals? How many FEMA's are there?
Unfortunately, it's easy to find other agencies suffering from some version of the FEMA syndrome.
The first example won't surprise you: the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a key role to play in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, but which has seen a major exodus of experienced officials over the past few years. In particular, senior officials have left in protest over what they say is the Bush administration's unwillingness to enforce environmental law.
Yesterday The Independent, the British newspaper, published an interview about the environmental aftermath of Katrina with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, whom one suspects is planning to join the exodus. 'The budget has been cut,' he said, 'and inept political hacks have been put in key positions.' That sounds familiar, and given what we've learned over the last two weeks there's no reason to doubt that characterization - or to disregard his warning of an environmental cover-up in progress.
What about the Food and Drug Administration? Serious questions have been raised about the agency's coziness with drug companies, and the agency's top official in charge of women's health issues resigned over the delay in approving Plan B, the morning-after pill, accusing the agency's head of overruling the professional staff on political grounds.
Then there's the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose Republican chairman hired a consultant to identify liberal bias in its programs. The consultant apparently considered any criticism of the administration a sign of liberalism, even if it came from conservatives..."


The Economics of Healthcare:

The Observer (UK) - Diseases of rich deprive poor of drugs
"The world's poorest people are being denied access to drugs because pharmaceutical companies are focusing their resources on diseases suffered by wealthy, middle-aged Americans, such as obesity and heart disease, a leading expert will say tomorrow.
Dr David Rhodes, the Health Protection Agency's (HPA) head of business development, will claim that spiralling costs are driving firms to invest primarily in drugs that tackle diseases of 'older Americans'.
As a result, the international market has been flooded with medicines to treat 'American diseases' such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease and cancer, while drugs to tackle tuberculosis, malaria and water-borne diseases prevalent in the poorest countries have been neglected.
Presenting his research at the HPA's annual conference tomorrow, Rhodes will show that more and more pharmaceutical companies are moving their headquarters to the US in search of profits. Once there, they pump money into treatments that help the local population to live longer..."


Voting Rights:

New York Times Editorial: Georgia's New Poll Tax
"In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia is still charging people to vote, this time with a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses - a group that is disproportionately poor, black and elderly - to pay $20 or more for a state ID card. Georgia went ahead with this even though there is not a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The law is a national disgrace..."

The So-Called War On Terror:

Washington Post: Judges Question Government's Claims on Detainee Rights
"Three federal appellate judges yesterday expressed doubts about the government's assertion that hundreds of foreign nationals imprisoned indefinitely at a US military base in Cuba have no right to challenge their detention in US courts.
The remarks from all three judges on a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came during oral arguments in the high-stakes dispute over whether the Bush administration is properly detaining prisoners at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and whether special tribunals it established are sufficient to determine the detainees' guilt or innocence.
The case stems from a June 2004 Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo Bay detainees are entitled to a 'competent tribunal' to decide whether they are indeed enemy combatants, as well as the chance to contest the charges against them..."


Disaster Response:

Paul Krugman: Point Those Fingers
"To understand the history of the Bush administration's response to disaster, just follow the catchphrases.
First, look at 2001 Congressional testimony by Joseph Allbaugh, President Bush's first pick to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, he said, would emphasize 'Responsibility and Accountability' (capital letters and boldface in the original statement). He repeated the phrase several times.
What Mr. Allbaugh seems to have meant was that state and local government officials shouldn't count on FEMA to bail them out if they didn't prepare adequately for disasters. They should accept responsibility for protecting their constituents, and be held accountable if they don't.
But those were rules for the little people. Now that the Bush administration has botched its own response to disaster, we're not supposed to play the "blame game." Scott McClellan used that phrase 15 times over the course of just two White House press briefings...
...Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.
But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.
Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff will receive presidential medals, and the next disaster will be even worse."

William Rivers Pitt: Let the Dead Teach the Living
"They have turned a gigantic warehouse into a makeshift morgue in the Louisiana town of St. Gabriel. Doctors and forensic specialists wait there for the bodies to come in, bodies with no identification, bodies that have spent days submerged in water, bodies gnawed by dogs and rats and 'gators. The doctors have posted a hand-lettered sign on the wall: 'Mortui Vivis Praecipant.' It means, 'Let the dead teach the living,'...
...What have the dead taught the living in the last two weeks? We have learned that priorities matter. We have learned that the conservative small-government model is a recipe for catastrophe. We have learned that government is sure to absolutely fail its citizens when it is run by people who hate government. We have learned that massive budget cuts and agency downsizing are not theoretical or political exercises. Before Katrina, we were learning that an irresponsible and unnecessary war in Iraq was making us less safe at home. After Katrina, we have learned exactly how unsafe we are as four years of tough talk about defending the nation has been exposed by the wind and the rain. We have learned that leadership matters, and that the absence of leadership is deadly..."

On Leadership In A Crisis:

Thomas Friedman: Osama and Katrina
"...Well, if 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.
These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending 'intelligent design' as a theology than practicing it as a policy.
For instance, it's unavoidably obvious that we need a real policy of energy conservation. But President Bush can barely choke out the word 'conservation.' And can you imagine Mr. Cheney, who has already denounced conservation as a 'personal virtue' irrelevant to national policy, now leading such a campaign or confronting oil companies for price gouging?..."

New York Times Editorial: It's Not a 'Blame Game'
"...No administration could credibly investigate such an immense failure on its own watch. And we have learned through bitter experience - the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example - that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs.
Mr. Bush signaled yesterday that we are in for more of the same when he sneered and said, 'One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game.' This is not a game. It is critical to know what 'things went wrong,' as Mr. Bush put it. But we also need to know which officials failed - not to humiliate them, but to replace them with competent people..."

William Rivers Pitt:Washing Away the Conservative Movement
"...We followed Leo Strauss's edicts to the letter, growls the seething neoconservative. Strauss, our neoconservative godfather, told us that this nation is best run by an elite that does not have to bother with the will or desires of the populace. Strauss told us we didn't even have to bother with the truth while pursuing our agenda. We are the elite, and we know best.
Somewhere, at this moment, a neoconservative is seething because his entire belief structure regarding government has been laid waste by a storm of singular ferocity. Hurricane Katrina has destroyed lives, ravaged a city, damaged our all-important petroleum infrastructure, and left every American with scenes of chaos and horror seared forever into their minds. Simultaneously, Hurricane Katrina has annihilated the fundamental underpinnings of conservative governmental philosophy.
What we are seeing in New Orleans is the end result of what can be best described as extended Reaganomics. Small government, budget cuts across the board, tax cuts meant to financially strangle the ability of federal agencies to function, the diversion of billions of what is left in the budget into military spending: This has been the aim and desire of the conservative movement for decades now, and they have been largely successful in their efforts..."

Disaster Preparedness:

Paul Krugman: Killed by Contempt
"Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.
Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.
Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a 'strange paralysis' set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.
What caused that paralysis? President Bush certainly failed his test. After 9/11, all the country really needed from him was a speech. This time it needed action - and he didn't deliver.
But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?
Does anyone remember the fight over federalizing airport security? Even after 9/11, the administration and conservative members of Congress tried to keep airport security in the hands of private companies. They were more worried about adding federal employees than about closing a deadly hole in national security..."

William Rivers Pitt: Wake of the Flood
"This will come as no surprise, but columnist Molly Ivins has again nailed it to the wall. 'Government policies have real consequences in people's lives,' Ivins wrote in her Thursday column. 'This is not 'just politics' or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.'
Try this timeline on for size. In January of 2001, George W. Bush appointed Texas crony Joe Allbaugh to head FEMA, despite the fact that Allbaugh had exactly zero experience in disaster management. By April of 2001, the Bush administration announced that much of FEMA's work would be privatized and downsized. Allbaugh that month described FEMA as, 'an oversized entitlement program.'
In December 2002, Allbaugh quit as head of FEMA to create a consulting firm whose purpose was to advise and assist companies looking to do business in occupied Iraq. He was replaced by Michael D. Brown, whose experience in disaster management was gathered while working as an estate planning lawyer in Colorado, and while serving as counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association legal department. In other words, Bush chose back-to-back FEMA heads whose collective ability to work that position could fit inside a thimble with room to spare.
By March of 2003, FEMA was no longer a Cabinet-level position, and was folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its primary mission was recast towards fighting acts of terrorism. In June of 2004, the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans was cut by a record $71.2 million. Jefferson Parish emergency management chief Walter Maestri said at the time, 'It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay,'..."

Ralph Nader: 'A Balanced Life'
"For over two years I have been saying that the Mayor of Baghdad, George W. Bush, should be paying attention to America, including its massively unmet public works needs. But the President, who scheduled five weeks in Crawford, Texas, to assure 'a balanced life,' is now finding his political status unbalanced and hanging by fewer and fewer threads.
The unfolding megadisasters in New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama have torn the propaganda curtain away from this arrogant President and is showing the American people just what results for their daily livelihoods from an administration obsessed with the fabricated Iraq war and marinated with Big Oil..."

Editor and Publisher: An Angry 'Times-Picayune' Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief, and Others, in Open Letter to President Bush
"The Times-Picayune of New Orleans on Sunday published its third print edition since the hurricane disaster struck, chronicling the arrival, finally, of some relief but also taking President Bush to task for his handling of the crisis, and calling for the firing of FEMA director Michael Brown and others.
In an 'open letter' to the president, published on page 15 of the 16-page edition, the paper said it still had grounds for 'skepticism' that he would follow through on saving the city and its residents. It pointed out that while the government could not get supplies to the city numerous TV reporters, singer Harry Connick and Times-Picayune staffers managed to find a way in.
It also cited 'bald-faced' lies by Michael Brown. 'Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach,' the staffers pointed out. 'We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry,'..."


Energy Politics:

James Ridgeway: Pumping Us Dry
"The very first thing George W. Bush did in response to Hurricane Katrina was to offer a helping hand—not to the people stranded on rooftops in New Orleans, but to his friends in the oil industry. These were the same people who gave him $52 million in his last campaign. The president released millions of barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve so the oil companies would have enough fuel to make gas and keep the country going. But the companies don't need this oil. They're already swimming in it.
Pouring more oil into the marketplace didn't reduce gasoline prices, which kept on going up, hitting $4 a gallon in some places.
While crude oil production doubtless was curtailed by the storm, the companies face a surplus, not a shortage, of crude oil. So why dump more on the market?..."



Iran:

The CS Monitor: Iran's Oil Gambit and Potential Affront to the US
"Is the biggest threat Iran poses to the United States really its nuclear ambitions - or is it petropolitics?
Last month the Iranian government quietly reaffirmed plans to create by next year a euro-denominated exchange in oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products. If successful, such an exchange could start to lap at the walls of the two existing oil exchanges - London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) - both owned by American companies.
If the billions of dollars in oil sales ever got going in euros, experts say, that could dry up the demand for dollars that the heavily indebted US economy depends on, and it could mean big trouble for the US economy. It's enough to make the Great Satan-loathing visionaries behind the Iranian regime salivate. The chances of success, however, seem quite remote - at least in the short term..."

Iraq:

Bush's shifting rationale now turns to Iraq's prize: oil

AP: Bush Gives New Reason for Iraq War: Oil
"...At [Naval Air Station North Island], Bush declared, 'We will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure' from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
'If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,' Bush said. 'They'd seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition.'"


Disaster in New Orleans:

Sidney Blumenthal: "No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming"
"...A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late..."

NY Times: Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute
"The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.
Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms.
Mr. Naomi grew particularly frustrated this year as the Gulf Coast braced for what forecasters said would be an intense hurricane season and a nearly simultaneous $71 million cut was announced in the New Orleans district budget to guard against such storms.
He called the cut drastic in an article in New Orleans CityBusiness.
In an interview last night, Mr. Naomi said the cuts had made it impossible to complete contracts for vital upgrades that were part of the long-term plan to renovate the system..."


Medicine:

New York Times: Official Quits on Pill Delay at the F.D.A.
"The director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of women's health resigned yesterday to protest the agency's decision last week to further delay approving over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill.
'I feel very strongly that this shouldn't be about abortion politics,' the director, Dr. Susan F. Wood, who is an assistant F.D.A. commissioner, said in a telephone interview. 'This is a way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and thereby prevent abortion. This should be something that we should all agree on.'
In an e-mail message to staff members, Dr. Wood wrote that she could no longer serve at the agency 'when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled.'
In the interview, Dr. Wood said that she 'doesn't find persuasive' the explanations offered Friday by the commissioner of food and drugs, Lester M. Crawford, to justify the agency's decision regarding the morning-after pill, known as Plan B. And she said the agency was unlikely to make a decision on the Plan B application 'in the foreseeable future,'..."


The So-Called War on Terror:

The Guardian (UK) - Saudi link to Beslan militant
"One of the 32 militants who seized the school in Beslan a year ago taking 1,128 people hostage was probably a Saudi called Abu Farukh.
In the first concrete evidence of foreign participation in the school siege which left 331 hostages dead, a law enforcement source, who requested anonymity, said prosecutors found a letter from Abu Farukh to his mother, who is believed to be in Saudi Arabia. 'It said goodbye to her and it was signed Abu Farukh,' the source said. The militant's full name is not known, but investigators say all the evidence points to him being of Saudi origin..."