Undernews For May 6, 2009

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Al Jazeera - Up to 100 Afghan civilians may have been killed during an air raid by US forces during a joint operation targeting suspected fighters, a provincial governor has said.

If the claims are verified, the deaths in Farah province on the western border would be the largest loss of civilian life in a single incident since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001.

Jessica Barry, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that the organization sent a team to the region after concerned tribal leaders had contacted them seeking help.

"When [our team] went to the first two villages where these incidents took place they saw dozens of bodies. They saw graves and they saw people being buried," she told Al Jazeera. . .

Colonel Greg Julian, a US military spokesman, acknowledged that a battle had taken place, but could not say if there had been civilian deaths.
AIG BONUSES 2.5 TIMES MORE THAN STATED
Matthew Jaffe, ABC - AIG, the recipient of approximately $180 billion in government bailout aid, paid out over $454 million in bonuses company-wide in 2008, according to documents that the company submitted to Congress. The embattled insurance company, which ignited a heated controversy in March for dishing out $165 million in retention payments to employees in its troubled Financial Products division, revealed the bonuses in response to written questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.

The $454 million number is now the third different figure that AIG has disclosed for its 2008 bonuses, with each number far larger than the previous one.

On March 18, AIG CEO Edward Liddy told Cummings at the conclusion of a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing that AIG had paid out around $9 million in corporate bonuses in 2008.

"How much in bonuses -- not retention payments -- have you paid to AIG employees in 2008 and what was the range of bonuses paid?" Cummings asked Liddy.

"I'll provide you the information. I think it might have been in the range of $9 million," Liddy replied.

However, just two days later, Politico reported that AIG had revealed that they paid out $120 million to over 6,000 employees, a number confirmed at the time by an AIG spokesman.
CAN SBA HANDLE SMALL BUSINESS STIMULUS PACKAGE?
New America Media -The $787 billion stimulus package signed into law in February has reignited concerns among some small-business owners and advocates, who question whether the U.S. Small Business Administration is prepared to handle the massive expansion of lending and investment programs.

The government's goal to award almost one quarter of its contracts to small businesses should mean plenty of work for the sector that generates six out of 10 of the country's new jobs. But these days optimism is quickly replaced by frustration. That's because many entrepreneurs are skeptical these contracts will actually go to small firms. They point to widely reported cases in which large companies have obtained small-business contracts through loopholes, government mismanagement, and even fraud. . .

The SBA manages and oversees the procurement process across the federal government, including contracts tailor-made for small companies and disadvantaged and minority-owned businesses.

It negotiates small-business contracting goals with federal agencies, and then tracks their progress.

But the SBA's Inspector General and other studies have shown that management flaws have allowed large firms to receive small-business awards. A Washington Post analysis in October revealed that federal agencies made at least $5 billion in mistakes in their procurement reports, listing companies such as Lockheed Martin and Dell Computer as small. (The firms denied it was their fault).
AS AMERICA SHRINKS, CHINA GROWS
Dilip Hiro, Tom Dispatch - In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a new world order is emerging -- with its center gravitating towards China. The statistics speak for themselves. The International Monetary Fund predicts the world's gross domestic product will shrink by an alarming 1.3% this year. Yet, defying this global trend, China expects an annual economic growth rate of 6.5% to 8.5%. During the first quarter of 2009, the world's leading stock markets combined fell by 4.5%. In contrast, the Shanghai stock exchange index leapt by a whopping 38%. In March, car sales in China hit a record 1.1 million, surpassing the U.S. for the third month in a row.

Recognizing that its time has indeed come, Beijing has decided to play an active, interventionist role in the international financial arena. Backed by China's $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, its industrialists have gone on a global buying spree in Africa and Latin America, as well as in neighboring Russia and Kazakhstan, to lock up future energy supplies for its ravenous economy. At home, the government is investing heavily not only in major infrastructure, but also in its much neglected social safety net, its health care system, and long overlooked rural development projects -- partly to bridge the increasingly wide gap between rural and urban living standards. . .

What is the secret of China's continuing success in the worst of times? As a start, its banking system -- state-controlled and flush with cash -- has opened its lending spigots to the full, while bank credit in the U.S. and the European Union still remains clogged up, if not choked off. Therefore, consumer spending and capital investment have risen sharply. .

While China's Communist leaders have responded with a familiar range of fiscal and monetary tools like adjusting interest rates and money supply, they have achieved the desired results faster than their capitalist counterparts. This is primarily because of the state-controlled banking system where, for instance, government-owned banks act as depositories for the compulsory savings of all employees.

MUCH MORE
THE REAL DEFENSE BUDGET
Winslow Wheeler, Counterpunch - For decades, the media have taken their descriptions of the size of the defense budget straight from the Pentagon's annual press release - without even rudimentary double-checking. This year, they will cite the top-line dollar amount at $534 billion . . .

That number ignores an additional $6 billion the Pentagon will get in "mandatory" appropriations, mostly for personnel-related expenses. The data are available from the Office of Management and Budget, but its press releases are more complicated.

Some, but not all, of the news articles will also ignore the additional $130 billion sought to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Barring last-minute changes to the numbers by Gates and OMB, the correct amount for the president's request for the Pentagon in 2010 will be $670 billion.

The articles will also leave out the money being sought by the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons and other appropriations, such as for the Selective Service and the National Defense Stockpile. Again, not in the DOD press release. Add another $22 billion.

Consider the human costs of current and previous wars in the Department of Veterans Affairs - surely, a legitimate defense cost. Add $106 billion.

Also consider the Department of Homeland Security: Add $43 billion.

What about the military and economic aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, gifts and loans to Israel and others, U.N. peacekeeping costs, and all the rest from the State Department? Add $49 billion.

Also, there is an account buried in the Department of the Treasury to help pay for military retirement. Add about $28 billion.

Each year, we pay interest on the national debt. People disagree, sometimes strenuously, on how much is DOD's share. About 20 percent of federal spending goes to the Pentagon: That's another $57 billion.

Add it all together, and you get $974 billion - almost $1 trillion.

If you want to know how much we spend for defense in a generic sense, you can about double the $534 billion many articles will report.
RFK JR. BLASTS OBAMA AS 'INDENTURED SERVANT' OF COAL INDUSTRY
ABC News - "Clean coal is a dirty lie," says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it "indentured servants" of the coal industry. Despite a series of expensive false starts and failures, President Obama proposed $3.4 billion in stimulus legislation to fund continued research on "clean coal" projects.

"Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes, it does not exist," says former Vice President Al Gore.

The coal industry has been running a multi-million dollar advertising blitz to promote the theory that coal can be made clean, using one of Obama's campaign speeches in its television commercials.

"You can't tell me we can't figure out a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States and make it work," says Obama in the commercial, which ends with on-screen words: Yes We Can.

The "clean coal" theory is that coal's dangerous global warming gas, carbon dioxide, can be captured and sent by pipeline to be buried deep in the earth.

"It is the dirtiest of all fuels that we know of," said Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club, which says talk of "clean coal" is designed to put off efforts to wean the country off coal.
CREDIT CARD COMPANIES ABUSE BUSINESSES AND CUSTOMERS WITH HIGH TRANSACTION FEES
Stacy Mitchell, New Rules - As Congress and the Obama administration consider legislation to rein in abusive practices by credit card issuers, the focus so far has been on the interest and other fees that consumers pay directly. Little attention has been given to the $48 billion in fees that credit card companies extracted from merchants last year. Largely invisible to the public, these fees, which amount to $427 per household, are ultimately passed on as higher prices to all consumers, whether they use plastic or not.

These fees, known as interchange, are set by the credit card processors: Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, which together control 93% of all card transactions in the United States.

Businesses that want to accept credit cards have no other choice but to pay these fees. Unlike many other countries, the U.S. does not regulate interchange fees and federal law prevents retailers from banding together and bargaining collectively. Only Wal-Mart has had enough market clout to negotiate with MasterCard and Visa, and then only with the aid of a lawsuit. Independent businesses are largely at the card companies' mercy.

Not surprisingly, interchange fees have soared. Although the exact rate charged on any given transaction varies widely depending on many factors, including the size of the business and the type of card, the average interchange fee in the U.S. is now about 2% of the value of the sale - two to six times the regulated rates imposed on Visa and MasterCard in Australia and much of Europe. . .

Issuing credit cards has become a highly concentrated industry. The top four card issuers - Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Capital One - account for more than 70% of all cards in circulation. . .

For independent businesses, credit card fees can rival or even exceed their profits. Kathy Miller, fifth-generation owner of a general store in Elmore, Vermont, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, on a $10 gasoline sale, she makes 49 cents in profit and pays 47 cents in credit card fees.

Many countries have brought antitrust suits against the card processors or otherwise used their regulatory authority to limit interchange fees. The list includes Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

In April, the European Union reached a settlement with MasterCard in a case alleging that its cross-border interchange fees were anticompetitive. That settlement brought the weighted average for credit card interchange fees down to 0.3%. (Earlier action against Visa similarly lowered its rates.)
CRASH TALK
New America Media - From Los Angeles to Sacramento, the economic downturn is claiming a mounting toll of casualties among California's small business entrepreneurs. The chief culprit is the credit crunch, with traditional lenders-the banks-shutting down access to loans-even to existing business owners with healthy credit scores.

Increasingly, alternative lenders, usually nonprofit community agencies, are filling the void. They are making the loans to keep established businesses alive, and to aid the growing number of start-ups that are sprouting as the unemployed turn to self-employment as a way to survive. And for the smallest of small businesses, family and friends are often the bank of first resort. . .

Together, Latinos, Asians and African Americans account for about 16 percent of all small business owners in California, compared to 8 percent nationwide. These entrepreneurs also tend to be low-income and have fewer resources to cushion their business in lean times. . .

A wave of small business failures is contributing to Los Angeles' 12 percent unemployment rate. . .

Reuters - U.S. home values posted a year-over-year decline of 14.2 percent to a Zillow Home Value Index of $182,378, resulting in a total 21.8 percent drop since the market peaked in 2006, according to Zillow's first-quarter Real Estate Market Reports, which encompass 161 metropolitan areas and cover the value changes in all homes, not just homes that have recently sold. . . Declining home values left 21.9 percent of all American homeowners with negative equity by the end of the first quarter, Zillow said.
MASSACHUSETTS POLICE TAPPING INTO PRIVATE DATA OF CELEBRITIES
Boston Globe - Police from communities across the state have repeatedly tapped into the state's criminal records system to improperly access information on celebrities and "high-profile citizens," according to a scathing audit released yesterday that also branded the system as obsolete and flawed.

Law enforcement personnel looked up personal information on Patriots star Tom Brady 968 times - seeking anything from his driver's license photo and home address, to whether he had purchased a gun - and auditors discovered "repeated searches and queries" on dozens of other celebrities such as Matt Damon, James Taylor, Celtics star Paul Pierce, and Red Sox owner John Henry, said two state officials familiar with the audit.

The Criminal Offender Record Information system, with its massive databases of criminal records, driving histories, car ownership, and Social Security numbers, is intended to provide police and prosecutors with complete portraits of individuals who have been arrested or brought into the court system. Reports are available to other users such as landlords and some employers conducting background checks on prospective tenants and job seekers. Access is supposed to be restricted to authorized law enforcement users, who are specially trained.

But the yearlong review by state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci depicts a system repeatedly accessed by users "without any apparent work-related justification."

Such unauthorized use could be considered fraud under federal law, and "disciplinary action, up to and including dismissal and/or criminal prosecution" could follow misuse of the system, DeNucci's audit said. . .

Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, said he was stunned by the misuse of the system. "Anyone caught socially surfing that important law enforcement asset should be stripped of their right to use it," he said. "It's outrageous."
16 YEAR OLD HELD WITHOUT TRIAL, OTHER RIGHTS, UNDER ILLEGAL PATRIOT ACT
WRAL, NC - Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby's bedroom in his mother's Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.

But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.

The family was at a church function that night, his mother, Annette Lundeby, said.

"Undoubtedly, they were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats," Lundeby said.

Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.

"I was terrified," Lundeby's mother said. "There were guns, and I don't allow guns around my children. I don't believe in guns."

Lundeby told the officers that someone had hacked into her son's IP address and was using it to make crank calls connected through the Internet, making it look like the calls had originated from her home when they did not.

Her argument was ignored, she said. Agents seized a computer, a cell phone, gaming console, routers, bank statements and school records, according to federal search warrants.

"There were no bomb-making materials, not even a blasting cap, not even a wire," Lundeby said.

Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.

Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.

"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. . .

"They're saying that 'We feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we're going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States," said Dan Boyce, a defense attorney and former U.S. attorney not connected to the Lundeby case.

Critics of the statute say it threatens the most basic of liberties.

"There's nothing a matter of public record," Boyce said "All those normal rights are just suspended in the air."

In a bi-partisan effort, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., last month introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives a bill that would narrow subpoena power in a provision of the Patriot Act, called the National Security Letters, to curb what some consider to be abuse of power by federal law enforcement officers. . .

Because a federal judge issued a gag order in the case, the U.S. attorney in Indiana cannot comment on the case, nor can the FBI. . .

"Never in my worst nightmare did I ever think that it would be my own government that I would have to protect my children from," Lundeby said. "This is the United States, and I feel like I live in a third world country now."
19 MILLION TONS OF DRUGS DUMPED INTO NATION'S WASTE STREAM EACH YEAR
Washington Post - The average American takes more than 12 prescription drugs annually, with more than 3.8 billion prescriptions purchased each year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The most commonly cited estimates from Environmental Protection Agency researchers say that about 19 million tons of active pharmaceutical ingredients are dumped into the nation's waste stream every year.

The EPA has identified small quantities of more than 100 pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in samples of the nation's drinking water. Among the drugs detected are antibiotics, steroids, hormones and antidepressants. Last year, [it was] reported that trace amounts of drugs had been found in the water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas; water piped to more than a milllion people in the Washington area had tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

The EPA does not require testing for drugs in drinking water and has not set safety limits on allowable levels. While the minute quantities now being detected appear not to pose an immediate health risk, according to federal authorities, "there is still uncertainty about their potential effects on public health and aquatic life" over the long term, the EPA's water chief, Benjamin Grumbles, told a Senate committee last year. But the impact of long-term exposure of drugs on humans as well as on other species is less clear. Hormone-disrupting pharmaceuticals, for example, are one possible cause of a high incidence of "intersex" fish in the Potomac River basin: male smallmouth bass producing eggs, females exhibiting male characteristics.

Until recently, federal guidelines recommended that surpluses of highly toxic medications be flushed down the toilet; the same advice applied to drugs with a high potential for abuse or "diversion" -- the industry's word for what happens, for example, when kids help themselves to the OxyContin or Percocet in their parents' medicine cabinet. For other drugs, consumers have been directed to adulterate the medication by mixing it with an unpalatable substance -- such as cat litter or coffee grounds -- and put it out with the household trash.

But this spring, concerns about pharmaceuticals in the water supply led the Office of National Drug Control Policy to amend its advisory, telling consumers to avoid flushing unless the label or patient information specifies that method of disposal. The new guidelines still describe the cat-litter method of putting drugs in the trash, but they also encourage consumers to make use of community drug take-back programs.
RECOVERED HISTORY: ROBERT RUBIN COMES TO TOWN
Sam Smith, Shadows of Hope, 1994 - Early in the [Clinton] administration, the new national economic advisor Robert E. Rubin wrote numerous clients of his former firm, Goldman Sachs, inviting them to stay in touch. Rubin, who had been one of Wall Street's "four horsemen" of leveraged takeover arbitrage, and who would shortly submit a financial disclosure form listing an estimated income in 1992 of $26.5 million from his GS partnership, wrote:

"I hope I can continue to rely on your interest and support as I move from Broad Street in New York to Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC., and would be grateful for whatever suggestions you would offer. "

The story appeared on the front page of the New York Times. The Times quoted a federal lawyer who declared: "It doesn't strike me that there's anything there that would raise any kind of specter of a violation of law or regulation." A former Bush Administration ethics official, while insisting on anonymity, told the Times: "Assuming severance of all financial ties, there is no legal prohibition to dealing with former clients and employers, but we always tried to negotiate a grace period of a year or so" before resuming contact.

By Washington standards the exculpatory quotes of the anonymous federal and Bush administration officials had cleared Rubin and the story died.
UN REPORTS TORTURE IN IRAQ PRISONS
Jeremy Scahill, Antiwar - A new UN human rights report examining Iraq shows that torture of prisoners by Iraqi authorities is widespread and accountability is nonexistent. "The lack of accountability of the perpetrators of such human rights abuses reinforces the culture of impunity," the UN bluntly states. The 30-page report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, examined conditions in Iraq from July to December 2008. . .

UN investigators said it was of "particular concern" that a senior Iraqi police official complained that the Iraqi government's pending ratification of the Convention Against Torture would "not be helpful," stating, "How are we going to get confessions? We have to force the criminals to confess, and how are we going to do that now?" . . .

The UN says, "There are no documented cases to this day where an official of the Minister of Defense has been held accountable for human rights abuses." That is exactly the situation within the U.S. Department of Defense (and Justice and CIA and White House for that matter. . .

As of December 2008, there were 41,271 people being held in prisons throughout Iraq, 15,058 of them in the custody of the U.S.-controlled "Multi-National Forces." The UN found that "many" of the prisoners "have been deprived of their liberty for months or even years in overcrowded cells" and expressed concerns "about violations of the minimum rules of due process as many did not have access to defense counsel, or were not formally charged with a crime or appeared before a judge."

While the report primarily focused on Iraqi run prisons, it notes that in U.S.-run prisons "detainees have remained in custody for prolonged periods without judicial review of their cases." And remember, the U.S. is in the process of turning over more prisoners to Iraqi custody.
HOMELAND SECURITY EXTREMIST DICTIONARY WITHDRAWN
Washington Times - The same Homeland Security Department office that categorized veterans as potential terrorists issued an earlier report that defined dozens of "extremists" ranging from black power activists to abortion foes. The report was nixed within hours and recalled from state and local law enforcement officials.

Whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Cubans and Mexicans, along with tax-hating Americans were among several political leanings listed in the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" that came out of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis in late March. . .

Black separatism was defined as a movement that they said advocates the establishment of a separate nation within the U.S., and its members "advocate or engage in criminal activity and plot acts of violence directed toward local law enforcement" to advance their goals. Black power is a "term used by black separatists to describe their pride in, and the perceived superiority of the black race," the report said.
CHRYSLER DEAL: END OF PROTECTIONISM FOR AMERICA'S TOP MANAGEMENT
Dean Baker, Truthout - At the end of the day, the new Chrysler is still likely to be producing most of its cars in the United States. What the new company will be getting from abroad is technology and top management.

This big story was so easily missed because it runs against one of the main myths that our elites have cultivated about the US economy: that the country has a "comparative advantage" in highly skilled labor. In this story, the United States will continue to lose manufacturing and other "less-skilled" jobs as its economy becomes more concentrated in highly skilled sectors.

This story was convenient for our elites because it meant that the decline of manufacturing was a necessary, if sometimes painful, part of a natural economic progression. It also justified the growing inequality in US society that benefited not just Wall Street bankers and CEOs, but also millions of doctors, lawyers, economists, and other highly educated workers. These people took their six-figure salaries as a birthright, even as the pay of less educated workers stagnated or declined. . .

Trade agreements like NAFTA were explicitly designed to remove any barrier that made it difficult to export manufacturing goods to the United States, thereby placing US manufacturing workers directly in competition with their much lower paid counterparts in the developing world. Most of these restrictions had nothing to do with tariffs. Instead the key issues were rules protecting investment in the developing world along with limits on the ability of the US to exclude imports through safety or environmental regulations.

The economists and the media somehow failed to notice that professionals were intentionally sheltered from international competition and instead just trumpeted them as the winners in the global economy. . .

The end result of this protectionism for those at the top is a bloated overpaid sector of top managers, which is what we saw at Chrysler. If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel.
IDEA MILL: POLITICIANS AS GARDENER RATHER THAN ARCHITECT
Lynne Williams is running for Maine governor as a Green Independent. From a speech at the 25th anniversary of the Maine Green Independent Party, the oldest Green Party in the U.S.

Lynne Williams - About a year or so ago I was interviewed by a reporter for the Ellsworth American and he asked me what I would like Mainers to know about the Greens. I responded that I would like people to understand that we are more than just environmentalists, that we understand economics and that most of all we understand the natural interconnection between the economy and ecology. It is revealing that both words - economy and ecology - have the same Greek root, oikos- which means house. Ecology means the study of our house, and economy means the management of our house - house being mother earth.

We are transitioning into a difficult period of reduced resources and the necessary reduced expectations. . . We need to create a new definition of progress as well as an understanding that traditional growth is by its very definition unsustainable. Given these limits, it is time to begin moving away from the quantitative definition of growth and progress and towards the qualitative. Clean air, adequate and safe water, fertile soil, universal access to single payer health care, chemical-free food and renewable non-polluting energy sources must be considered basic human rights and growth in those areas is sustainable.

Yet what we as a society call growth typically has little to do with improving quality of life, but rather with production that is wasteful, luxurious, dangerous, intentionally obsolescent, unnecessary, or all of the above. Even the 'green movement' is all about production, not reduction, where increased production of so-called green products, from energy saving light bulbs to wind turbines, is encouraged. However, the problem is not the nature of the product but the expansion of production. It is not the products that must change but the process that must change.

For example, we do need radical transformation in our energy systems, but that transformation - whether to wind, solar, geothermal - must be community created, owned and operated. We need communities to determine their transportation needs, devise solutions to meet those needs and then the state must provide necessary support. We must produce only sustainable and recyclable goods and encourage green architecture through incentives.

We need to transform food production and distribution by defending local food sovereignty, eliminating polluting industrial agribusiness, and creating sustainable agricultural systems. . .

The key to this is democratic decision-making about economic development. We need a participatory model, where initiatives percolate from the ground up, not from the top down. Liberalism is about social management, but we are about social liberation. Monopoly capitalism derives profit from exploitive extraction of surplus value from natural resources and human resources. This is the intersection of labor and ecology, which is a natural partnership that we must pursue, by working closely with labor to defeat monopoly capitalism. . .

What we need from a governor is not a series of statist power grabs, but rather a grand vision of how every town and city in this state can come together to meet all of the challenges that are on the horizon over the next decade. As governor, I would be a gardener, not an architect, planting seeds throughout the state and letting them grow, rather than designing the master plan and imposing it on the landscape.

A year ago we had forced school consolidation, but the administration had greatly underestimated the response of the school districts, particularly those in rural Maine. Resistance emerged, along with anger that, without any input whatsoever, Augusta was mandating what local communities needed to do with their local schools. Not to be deterred from its apparent goal of eliminating any semblance of home rule, the administration passed - once more without public hearings throughout the state – the expedited wind power ordinance, which benefits corporate development of industrial wind farms, rather than community consensus-based projects whereby benefits accrue to the community and its residents. Towns throughout the state, including Lincoln, Roxbury, Dixmont, and Freedom, only a few examples, immediately rose up to resist the actual, or possible, unwelcome intrusion of massive industrial wind farms into their communities.

We do need to move towards the utilization of renewable energy sources. But such energy projects must be community initiated and controlled. Vinalhaven, for example, has begun developing one such project. The community - not some out-of-state corporation - decided to erect wind turbines on the island. The electricity produced by the turbines will power the island. Any surplus power will be credited to the accounts of the island. These are the types of projects that we must support. .
U.S. TROOPS PUSHED CHRISTIANITY IN AFGHANISTAN

VIDEO
"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down"

Al Jazeera - The US's highest ranking military officer has said it is not the US military's position to promote any specific religion, after Al Jazeera revealed footage of troops apparently preparing to convert Afghans to their Christian faith.

"From the United States' military's perspective, it is not our position to ever push any specific kind of religion, period," said Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Monday.

The US military has also confiscated Bibles that Christian US soldiers in Afghanistan had apparently intended to give to local Muslims, a military spokesman told Al Jazeera.

In addition, some of the soldiers who appeared in the video have also been reprimanded, US government and military officials told Al Jazeera's James Bays.

The video, shot about a year ago, appeared to show military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages.

In one recorded sermon, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells soldiers that, as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him".

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.

"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business.". . .

Ahmed Shah Ahmedzai, a former Afghan prime minister, told Al Jazeera from Kabul: "This is a complete deviation from what they [the US military] are supposed to be doing.

"I don't think even the US constitution would allow what they are doing . . . it is completely against all regulations.

The footage shot by Brian Hughes, a documentary maker and former member of the US military who spent several days in Bagram near Kabul, was obtained by Al Jazeera's Bays, who has covered Afghanistan extensively.

It is not clear if the local language Bibles were distributed to Afghans In other footage captured at Bagram, Sergeant Jon Watt, a soldier set to become a military chaplain, said during a Bible study class: "I also want to praise God because my church collected some money to get Bibles for Afghanistan. They came and sent the money out."
EVANGELICALS SUBVERTING MILITARY
Crooks & Liars - After revelations that some American soldiers were given Bibles and encouraged to "hunt people for Jesus," the Pentagon on denied allegations that the U.S. military allows its personnel to seek the conversion of Afghans to Christianity. But while the copies of the New Testament translated into Pashtun and jaw-dropping video from Bagram may seem like exceptions that prove the rule of American prohibition on proselytizing by the military, they are just the latest episodes in the disturbing rise in influence of Christian conservatives in the United States armed services.

As Jeremy Scahill detailed in the Huffington Post, the incidents first reported on Al Jazeera are an affront both to the U.S. military code of conduct and America's Afghan allies:

"The center of this evangelical operation is at the huge US base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the US military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners."

In a video obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast Monday, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him."

"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down," he says.

"Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That's what we do, that's our business."

As it turns out, that has indeed been the business of Christian conservatives in the U.S. armed services since 9/11. In word and deed, evangelicals in recent years have aggressively boosted their visibility and influence within the American military.

An early warning came in 2003 in the guise of Lt. General William Boykin.

Boykin, who later became a deputy under secretary of defense, claimed during speeches to prayer groups and breakfasts that militant Islamists sought to destroy America ''because we're a Christian nation.'' General Boykin also explained to evangelical audiences that Muslims worship an ''idol'' and not ''a real God.'' While President Bush expressed his disagreement (noting Boykin "''didn't reflect my opinion" and "it just doesn't reflect what the government thinks"), Boykin remained on the job.

The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs has been a hotbed of evangelical activism - and controversy. While cadets in 2004 distributed leaflets at dinner place settings for a screening of "The Passion of the Christ, football coach Fisher DeBerry displayed a sign in the team's locker room proclaiming, "I am a Christian first and last. I am a member of Team Jesus Christ." In May, 2005, Lutheran minister and Captain MeLinda Morton was removed from her post after warning evangelical Christians were trying to "subvert the system" in trying to win converts among cadets at the Academy. A June 2005 study at USAFA described other incidents of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing, and concluded:

"Additionally, some faculty members and coaches consider it their duty to profess their faith and discuss this issue in their classrooms in furtherance of developing cadets' spirituality."

In the wake of the Brady report and complaints from Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder Mike Weinstein (himself a graduate of the Academy), the Air Force in October 2005 moved to withdraw a "code of ethics" document which permitted chaplains to evangelize military personnel who were not affiliated with any faith. ("I will not proselytize from other religious bodies," it read, "but I retain the right to evangelize those who are not affiliated.") Still, even that minor restriction produced an avalanche of opposition from Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition and other groups which protested that the new guidelines abridged "the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith."

Undaunted, the push to proselytize in the U.S. military continues. In 2007, an inspector general's report highlighted ethics violations among current and former officers, including two major generals, for appearing in uniform for a promotional and fundraising video for the evangelical group Christian Embassy. As the Washington Post noted, the report "offers a vivid picture of how inappropriately intertwined Christian Embassy had become with Pentagon operations by the time the video, with its extensive scenes inside the Pentagon, was filmed in 2004." Nonetheless, the New York Times reported earlier this year that military personnel were shown videos featuring football's Terry Bradshaw professing his Christian religion as part of an official military production dealing with depression, suicide and "the importance of faith."

The aggressive campaign for military converts is producing a climate of fear and intimdation in the armed forces. Specialist Jeremy Hall sued the Army after a superior officer interrupted his meeting for atheists and free-thinkers by proclaiming, "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" In another case, Army Specialist and Iraq Purple Heart recipient Dustin Chalker filed a lawsuit after being subjected to a mandatory ceremony that began and ended with a Christian prayer. As he put it:

"The Army enforces policies against racism and sexism, but doesn't bat an eye at these kinds of religious discrimination. Why is it acceptable that soldiers are unable to serve this nation without attending state-led religious practices they find offensive and false?"
READER COMMENTS
Excerpts from readers' comments

PORN STAR RUNNING FOR SENATE

Maybe after we get some porn star politicians we can start electing scientists and atheists. I'll take anything just so long as we get rid of the lawyers.

LIBRARIES SELLING BOOKS

Libraries are not, and cannot be, archival repositories of books. A library uses its fixed resources (in money, personnel, and space) to house a collection which is useful to its patrons. It's silly to complain about a library discarding books. How else would they ever have room for anything new? The librarians and administrators are the ones responsible for choosing and maintaining the collection. That's their call. If you think the collection should move in a different direction, send a letter to the librarian--you'll probably be pleasantly surprised with a coherant and reasoned response. This "outrage" is just dumb. - Boffin

FEDERAL JUDGE PUNISHES TEACHER FOR CALLING CREATIONISM 'NONSENSE'

But it's still okay to bash atheists, Muslims gays, and socialists. It must be so hard being a Christian. Poor guys need all the help they can get.

COULD IT BE FACTORY FARM FLU?

NPR here in Washington DC had a section in which they pitched an "Animal Right Activist from PETA" making the case for the connection vs. a scientist from the University of Maryland arguing against it. The person from PETA made a compelling case; the scientist basically said that there was not enough evidence. . .

Two interesting things regarding this: one, the information is getting out, second the media in all its wisdom, puts PETA, and an "animal rights activist" against a "respectable" professor from the University of Maryland. I wonder which side NPR is on. - Tamal 10
BREVITAS
RECOVERED HISTORY

James Taranto, Wall Street Journal - [In 1970] liberal Democrats had mounted a strong campaign against Judge Carswell, a member of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Florida, contending that he was too "mediocre" to deserve a seat on the nation's highest court. When Senator [Romand] Hruska addressed the Senate in March 1970, speaking on Judge Carswell's behalf, he asked why mediocrity should be a disqualification for high office. "Even if he were mediocre," Mr. Hruska declared, "there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos."

MONEY & WORK

HOW TO NEGOTIATE YOUR SALARY

HEALTH & SCIENCE

CTV, Canada - An injection for men appears to be just as effective at preventing pregnancy as the birth control pill, finds new research that could revolutionize contraception. In testing in China, only one man in 100 fathered a child while on the injections, the study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reports. The contraceptive is a form of testosterone that is injected into the buttocks once a month. It works by temporarily blocking sperm production. Chinese researchers injected 1,045 healthy Chinese men aged 20 to 45 years with a 500 mg of testosterone undecanoate in oil, once a month for 24 months. All of the study participants had had at least one child and all their female partners, aged 18 and 38 years, also had normal reproductive function. They found the contraceptive was almost 99 per cent effective, with a failure rate of only 1.1 per 100 men.

DRUG BUSTS

NBC Los Angeles - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that California should study other nations' experiences in legalizing and taxing marijuana, although he is not supporting the idea. . . At a news conference about public safety funding, the governor was asked whether it's time to legalize marijuana in light of a new Field Poll that said 56 percent of registered voters support legalizing and taxing marijuana to raise revenues. "I think it's not time for that, but I think it's time for debate," Schwarzenegger said. "All those ideas of creating extra revenues, I'm always for an open debate on it. We ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana. What effect did it have on those countries? Are they happy with the decision?"

POLICE BLOTTER

New Orleans Times Picayune - Jeremy Don Kerr has sued the New Orleans Police Department in U.S. District Court over a May 2008 incident in which he says a uniformed officer threatened to arrest him for wearing a black pinstriped skirt, hemmed two inches above the knee, instead of pants to Municipal Court. . . In a civil-rights lawsuit filed last month, Kerr describes himself as "a heterosexual male of Scottish ancestry" who was made a victim of discrimination by his choice of attire. . . Officer Glen Tate demanded that Kerr explain why he was in a skirt, Kerr says, asking at one point if he was a woman. "He said, 'Are you going to make me arrest you and find out?' " Kerr recalled. "He threatened to take me out of the courthouse and put me in Orleans Parish Prison over a simple choice of attire.". . . Kerr began wearing skirts in 2003 after a friend suggested he'd look as if he were in a kilt. He prefers a skirt when dancing at clubs along Frenchmen Street or strolling New Orleans neighborhoods. He finds skirts more comfortable than pants, and wears them with button-down oxfords or T-shirts. . . He has been kicked out of restaurants and barred from bars over his clothing choice, which he points out is a practice that began thousands of years ago. . . "I'm a straight man, " Kerr said. "A lot of people seem to believe if I'm in a skirt it must mean that I'm gay. It's a choice in clothing style. One hundred years ago women could only wear dresses and skirts, and men could only wear pants."

Times Leader - An Arkansas man who police said stole food and clothing from a family in Plains Township while secretly living in their attic pleaded guilty to several charges Tuesday. Stanley W. Carter, 21, pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary, two counts of criminal trespassing and two counts of receiving stolen property . . . Carter was arrested on Dec. 26 after police said he had been staying in the attic for about a week and entering the home, owned by Stacey Ferrance, by going through a hatch in the ceiling when she and her family were out. Police said once in the home, Carter stole food, clothing and Christmas presents, including a laptop computer he used to write his own "Stanley Christmas list."

FURTHERMORE. . .

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