Undernews For May 11, 2009

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
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Editor: Sam Smith

11 MAY 2009

WORD
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. - Thomas Jefferson

Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company - Mark Twain
FLOTSAM & JETSAM

WHERE'S THE NEWS GONE?
Sam Smith

Let's put aside the issue of what's happening to the printed news media for a moment to deal with a more important question: where has the news gone?

Years ago, before the arrival of the Internet, I noticed a phenomenon around the middle of each June: the pile of mail arriving in our office suddenly declined.

The cause was fairly obvious: a drop off in news releases as public relations adjusted its efforts to the thermological nature of our culture. Which is to say, the warmer the weather, the less interested we are in what somebody else is trying to sell.

Then, of course, there's Thanksgiving and Christmas when many sorts of news disappear entirely. A foreigner arriving on such a day and watching TV could logically assume that we were a society with naught but violence and tragedy as the only visible hard news are accidents, murders and fires.

To a journalist, however, such occasions are reminders of how artificial and manipulated much news is. Over the past few months, I have begun to get that same holiday feeling about the news. Ever since Obama was inaugurated, hard news seems to have faded and we find ourselves in deep discussion over his daily activities, his wife's bare arms, other inanities and an amazing assortment of vagaries about what he is planning to do, appoint, go to, or talk about.

It is becoming ever harder to realize that we have recently added a new country to our Muslim war hit list, that job losses are increasing, that the budget is more out of balance than ever, that we will soon have as many troops in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam in 1965, that banks are getting record subsidies while ordinary folk facing foreclosure or job loss are getting minimal aid, and that "health reform" is turning into a TARP program for insurance companies.

Since the media treated Obama as the Second Coming from the beginning, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised about echoes of Christmas coverage, but all holidays have to come to end sometime. It would seem to be a good time for the media to go back to work.

While the media gave Bush a full pass on post 9/11 horrors like the Patriot Act, Gitmo and Iraq, the indifference to real news in the Obama administration extends far beyond matters of falsely purported national security. The lack of interest in Arne Duncan's planned interference in public school systems, the billions for first class high speed rail with little for coach class, rail freight or bus riders, and the highly dangerous medical records act have been left to a few eccentric journals like the Review to even mention. If the print media wants us to cry over its current problems, at least give us some real reporting to be sad at the thought of losing.

Instead, we have a media that falls without fail for various manipulations contrived by the White House, including covering each stage of an Obama decision as though it was new news, i.e.

"Obama is talking about. . . "
"Obama is consulting with. . ."
"Obama is reaching out to various groups. . . "
"Obama is planning to. . . "
"Obama is expected to announce on Monday that. . . "

And, finally, yet another repetitive front page story beginning, "Obama has announced. . . "

Not bad. A half dozen stories that lead you to an announcement that you can't quite figure out what it means anyway.

Which, of course, is intentional. Which is why we look forward to 3.5 million jobs created or "saved" by Obama, as the media treats the preservation of the status quo as news and a great achievement.

Or take the promised two trillion dollars saved by the health insurance industry over a ten year period. This in a media that doesn't even care who won the last American Idol.

As a general rule, political predictions of greater than two years should be banned entirely by the media. That might free up a little space to help people understand how we ended up in a war in Pakistan without any debate or congressional vote or when the subsidies of the Wall Street welfare fathers is going to end. After all, these were the guys who told us - with unquestioning support of the mainstream media - that free markets would take care of it all.

But as long as the media sees its role as Obama's Ryan Seacrest, it won't happen. It will just remain on a perpetual holiday.
WHY SINGLE PAYER IS OFF THE TABLE
Ralph Nader, Counterpunch - Single payer is only supported by a majority of the American people, physicians and nurses. They like the idea of public funding and private delivery. They like the free choice of doctors and hospitals that many are now denied by the HMOs.

There are also great administrative efficiencies when single payer displaces the health insurance industry and its claims-denying, benefit-restricting, bureaucratically-heavy profiteering. According to leading researchers in this area, Dr. David Himmelstein and Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, single payer will save $350 billion annually.

Yet, on Capitol Hill and at the White House there are no meetings, briefings, hearings, and consultations about kinds of health care reforms that reform the basic price inflation, indifference to prevention, and discrimination by health insurers.

There is no place at the table for single payer advocates in the view of the Congressional leaders who set the agenda and muzzle dissenters.

Last month at a breakfast meeting with reporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded to a question about health care with these revealing and exasperating words: "Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it's not going to be a single payer.". . .

Never mind that 75 members of her party have signed onto H.R. 676-the Conyers single payer legislation. Never mind that in her San Francisco district, probably three out of four people want single payer. And never mind that over 20,000 people die every year, according to the Institute of Medicine, because they cannot afford health insurance.

What is more remarkable is that many more than the 75 members of the House privately believe single payer is the best option. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, and Nancy Pelosi are among them. But they all say, single payer "is not practical" so it's off the table.

What gives here? The Democrats have the numbers and procedures to pass any kind of health reform this year, including single payer. President Obama could sign it into law.

But "it's not practical" because these politicians fear the insurance and pharmaceutical industries-and seek their campaign contributions-more than they fear the American people. It comes down to the corporations, who have no votes, are organized to the teeth and the people are not.

So, when Senator Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a large recipient of health insurance and drug company donations, held a public roundtable discussion on May 5, fifteen witnesses were preparing to deliver their statements. Not one of them was championing single payer.
REPORTER MEETS KARZAI'S BROTHER AND IT ISN'T PRETTY
Tom Lasseter, McClatchy - The ride to Kandahar airport was tense. The Afghan president's brother had just yelled a litany of obscenities and said he was about to beat me. Ahmed Wali Karzai is feared by many in southern Afghanistan, and being threatened by him, in his home, isn't something to be taken lightly. . .

I was in my third week of tracking down former Afghan officials and asking them about drugs and corruption. Several had mentioned Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's brother and the head of Kandahar's provincial council.
After talking with poppy farmers, a drug dealer and former officials in Kandahar, it was time to see Ahmed Wali Karzai. . .

He began to glare at me and questioned whether I was really a reporter.

"It seems like someone sent you to write these things," he said, scowling.

Karzai glared some more.

"You should leave right now," he said.

I stuck my hand out to shake his; if I learned anything from three years of reporting in Iraq and then trips to Afghanistan during the past couple of years, it's that when things turn bad, you should cling to any remaining shred of hospitality.

Karzai grabbed my hand and used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me, and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.

I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."

MUCH MORE
OBAMA'S HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY BAILOUT
David Sirota, Open Left - So the big news today is President Obama's press conference with the health insurance industry touting the industry's "voluntary" commitment to slashing $2 trillion off Americans' health care bills over the next decade. The New York Times reports that this voluntary announcement is motivated by the health insurance industry's "hope to stave off new government price constraints that might be imposed by Congress or a National Health Board of the kind favored by many Democrats."

My three questions are really simple:

1) If the health industry is saying it can lower costs by $2 trillion over 10 years and remain highly profitable, isn't the industry admitting that it was planning to absolutely bilk consumers, and has been bilking consumers in the past? Put another way, isn't the industry admitting that it's entire business model is based on outright profiteering?

2) Why should the American public believe the health industry is going to voluntarily do anything to cut into its profits? Health executives have a fiduciary responsibility to private shareholders to maximize profits. Voluntarily lowering those profits would violate that fiduciary responsibility. Are we really expected to believe these health executives will, out of the goodness of their hearts, violate their fiduciary responsibilities? What has actually changed to suggest that they will violate their fiduciary responsibilities and help health care consumers?

3) Isn't President Obama legitimizing voices that will use that added credibility later on to try to derail serious health care reform? Today's press conference has the President of the United States effectively saying that the health insurance industry should have a major seat at the health-reform table - and that it should be trusted. But any serious health care reform will need to take on the health insurance industry in a way that will make that industry unhappy. . .
HUGE INCREASE IN MISDEMEANOR CASES ACROSS THE U.S.
NACDL - The explosive growth of misdemeanor cases is placing a staggering burden on America's courts. Defenders across the country are forced to carry unethical caseloads that leave too little time for clients to be properly represented. As a result, constitutional obligations are left unmet and taxpayers' money is wasted.

Misdemeanor courts across the country are incapable of providing accused individuals with the due process guaranteed them by the Constitution. As a result, every year literally millions of accused misdemeanants, overwhelmingly those unable to hire private counsel, and disproportionately people of color, are denied their constitutional right to equal justice. And, taxpayers are footing the bill for these gross inefficiencies.

Legal representation for misdemeanants is absent in many cases. When an attorney is provided, crushing workloads often make it impossible for the defender to effectively represent her clients. Counsel is unable to spend adequate time on each of her cases, and often lacks necessary resources, such as access to investigators, experts, and online research tools. These deficiencies force even the most competent and dedicated attorneys to engage in breaches of professional duties. Too often, judges and prosecutors are complicit in these breaches, pushing defenders and defendants to take action with limited time and knowledge of their cases. This leads to guilty pleas by the innocent, inappropriate sentences, and wrongful incarceration, all at taxpayer expense.

This report explains, in depth, these and other problems observed in misdemeanor courts and offers recommendations for reform, while highlighting best practices from across the country. The recommendations include:

FULL REPORT
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST PLAINTIFF'S LAWYERS
Morton Mintz, Neiman Watchdog - The Washington Legal Foundation, a self-described "advocate for freedom and justice," published one of its occasional quarter-page ads in the New York Times the other day. The headline: "Bull Market for Plaintiffs’ Lawyers."

"At least one industry - Litigation, Inc. - is expanding at a fast pace," the group's chairman, Daniel J. Popeo, declared in the May 4 op-ed ad. He characterized this newly-invented industry as a "parasitic," "unregulated," "multi-billion-dollar" business in "pursuit of riches [that] restrains U.S. economic recovery."

The ad appeared under a logo, "IN ALL FAIRNESS". But fairness to those who read Popeo's rant requires some background. I have in mind the long-standing ties that he somehow overlooked between WLF and the tobacco industry.

Smoking kills about 400,000 Americans annually. The World Health Organization warned last year that 1 billion people worldwide could die of tobacco-related causes this century unless "urgent action" is taken.

It is thanks primarily to plaintiffs' lawyers who sued tobacco companies that damning, truth-telling internal documents that would otherwise have remained secret if not destroyed have surfaced in recent decades. The documents prove, among other things, that cigarette manufacturers:

- Designed ads and promotions to lure vulnerable children and adolescents into becoming smokers, thus addicting and dooming millions of them to premature death. For example, youngsters saw glamorous movie stars smoking; what they did not see was industry product-placement money changing hands in Hollywood to make this happen. . .

- Spent billions of dollars on multi-media ads proclaiming the pleasures of smoking but never mentioning the hazards-not even hazards reported to them by their own scientists. Here's a standard definition of criminal negligence: "acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at risk of injury or death (or failing to do something with the same consequences.)"

- Stifled research. A 1968 Philip Morris draft memo, for example, revealed an industry-wide "gentleman's agreement" barring cigarette companies from doing in-house biological research on the health hazards of smoking. .
MEMOS DESCRIBE SLEEP DENIAL TO BE SERIOUS TORTURE
LA Times - Though widely perceived as more effective and less objectionable than other interrogation methods, memos show [sleep deprivation is] harsher and more controversial than most realize. And it could be brought back. . .

The technique is now prohibited by President Obama's ban in January on harsh interrogation methods, although a task force is reviewing its use along with other interrogation methods the agency might employ in the future.

Because of its effectiveness -- as well as the perception that it was less objectionable than waterboarding, head-slamming or forced nudity -- sleep deprivation may be seen as a tempting technique to restore.

But the Justice Department memos released last month by Obama, as well as information provided by officials familiar with the program, indicate that the method, which involves forcing chained prisoners to stand, sometimes for days on end, was more controversial within the U.S. intelligence community than was widely known.

A CIA inspector general's report issued in 2004 was more critical of the agency's use of sleep deprivation than it was of any other method besides waterboarding, according to officials familiar with the document, because of how the sleep deprivation was applied.

The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins, according to the Justice Department memos.

Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains.

The memos said more than 25 of the CIA's prisoners were subjected to sleep deprivation. At one point, the agency was allowed to keep prisoners awake for as long as 11 days; the limit was later reduced to just over a week. . .

When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs "anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort," a May 10, 2005, memo said.

"The position is sufficiently uncomfortable to detainees to deprive them of unbroken sleep, while allowing their lower limbs to recover from the effects of standing," it said.

In the Red Cross report, prisoners said they were also subjected to loud music and repetitive noise.

"I was kept sitting on a chair, shackled by hands and feet for two to three weeks," said suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner captured by the CIA, according to the Red Cross report. "If I started to fall asleep, a guard would come and spray water in my face."
AF-PAK WAR DISPLACING A HALF MILLION PEOPLE
Al Jazeera - Tens of thousands of people have been ordered to leave Swat valley by Pakistan's military as it battles Taliban fighters in the Northwest Frontier Province. The military lifted a curfew in the Swat region for seven hours on Sunday to allow trapped civilians to get out.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Peshawar, the capital of the NWFP said a "refugee disaster is now feared".

"This is a huge humanitarian crisis; the largest number of internally displaced people in the world, and in the smallest possible time," he said.

"Even in Darfur it took a considerable amount of time for the [number of internally displaced people] to swell up."

"It is going to be very difficult to separate the Taliban from the ordinary people," Hyder said.

"The Taliban also know they are fighting a losing battle and that without the support of the people they would not stand a chance."

Tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians in the Swat valley have found themselves trapped amid worsening fighting between government forces and the Taliban.

Bodies were reported to be lying in roads, homes reduced to ruins and people left cowering with no means of escape after the military imposed curfews across the region amid the fighting.

"Anger is growing that the government did not give the citizens adequate warning to escape," Hyder reported.

"Many people are saying their government has abandoned them ... what is unfolding here is the tip of the iceberg, the worst is yet to come."

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have already fled the fighting, many ending up in refugee camps.

Hyder said there was little government help available to those who had fled.
IRAQ WITHDRAWAL: SOMETHING YOU CAN HAVE FOR ALWAYS
NY Times- The top American general in Iraq said Friday that one-fifth of American combat troops would stay behind in Iraqi cities even after the June 30 deadline that the United States and Iraq had set for the departure.

The estimate by Gen. Ray Odierno, at a Pentagon briefing, was the most specific yet for the extension of American combat operations in Baghdad and Mosul. American combat troops have largely moved out of most other urban areas in Iraq, General Odierno said.

The general declined several times to put an actual number on the combat troops who would remain in Baghdad and Mosul after June 30 because, he said, he did not know the precise number of troops there now. The 134,000 American troops in Iraq include 14 combat brigades. Those brigades number about 50,000 to 70,000 troops.
SWEDES KNEW ABOUT CIA TORTURE FLIGHTS
The Local, Sweden - The government led by former Prime Minister Goran Persson knew that Sweden was used as a transit destination for clandestine CIA flights transporting suspected terrorists, according to a report in the Expressen newspaper. The Swedish defence forces conducted a secret surveillance operation in 2005 monitoring a US government plane at Stockholm Arlanda Airport.

"The assignment to carry out this operation came from the defence ministry to the defence forces," according to an Expressen source who confirmed that the Swedish government harbored suspicions that the CIA was using so-called rendition flights to force people out of the USA against their will.

The surveillance team confirmed these suspicions and found that the CIA plane was filled with chained prisoners clad with black hoods and unable to move, the newspaper reports, citing several independent anonymous sources.

The Swedish defence forces confirmed to the newspaper that the surveillance operation took place.

"We have inspected the plane but make no further comment," Roger Magnergård, press officer at the Swedish defence forces, said to Expressen.

There is however no record of any formal protest lodged by the Swedish government to the US authorities.

Laila Freivalds, the Swedish foreign minister at the time, told the TT news agency in 2006 that the government was unaware of any CIA-backed activity in Sweden.
EMENDATION
News Observer, NC - A 16-year-old from Oxford is being held in a juvenile detention facility in South Bend, Ind., accused of making bomb threats that led officials to clear a mechanical engineering building at Purdue University.

Since the arrest March 5 of Ashton Lundeby, his mother, Annette, has said repeatedly that he is being held as a domestic terrorist under the Patriot Act. . .

David Capp, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, issued a statement that elaborated on the charge filed against the juvenile in the bomb-threat case. (Ashton's name was not mentioned because in federal court, anyone younger than 18 is considered a juvenile and the case is sealed.)

Capp said the teen was accused of making a bomb threat and has made three court appearances since the arrest, with a lawyer there each time. "The charge is unrelated to the Patriot Act," Capp's statement said.

Lundeby acknowledged that the Patriot Act connection was her interpretation.
HOW OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS HELPED CREATE THE CRISIS
Sol Picciotto, Financial Times - Banks employ large teams of highly paid people to devise transactions mainly for the purpose of avoiding tax. These activities seem to be far more profitable than the humdrum business of managing payments and channeling savings towards investment. Why?

The answer shows the close link between tax avoidance and the speculation that has fuelled financial instability for 30 years. There were clearly other causes of the current crisis but the faults of the international tax system were a big contributory factor. . .

The relaxation and final abandonment of exchange controls in the 1970s led to the blossoming of "offshore" finance and a boom in tax havens. These depend on both outright tax evasion and the exploitation of grey areas by tax avoidance. . . in recent separate surveys by the US Government Accountability Office and the Tax Justice Network, the largest user of tax havens in every country surveyed was a bank. . .

The tax authorities in the US and the UK have acepted a lax interpretation of residence and source rules, accepting that these funds are resident and their profits sourced offshore (mostly in the Cayman Islands) - even though they are effectively managed from London and New York. Not only are the funds' gains treated as realized in Cayman, and hence not taxable, but their distributions are not subject to withholding tax - a great benefit for their investors. The funds' location in a secrecy jurisdiction facilitates tax avoidance and is an open invitation to evasion. . .

This distortion of the tax system has greatly fuelled the excess of liquidity channeled into largely speculative financial transactions. The offshore secrecy system has been a main element of the opacity that has undermined corporate and financial regulation.
BREVITAS
OBAMALAND

Daily Kos - President Obama struck a blow to the abstinence-only community, cutting all of their funding streams in his new 2010 budget. Obama made it clear that our government should no longer fund these failed programs that promote misinformation, misogyny, discrimination and, of course, juggling and cinder block wielding abstinence clowns.

REASONS TO STAY AWAY FROM. . .

WISCONSIN - Where an appeals court has ruled that police can attach GPS to cars without a search warrant.

INDICATORS

Economic Policy Institute - April marked the 16th month of the current recession, matching the longest since the Great Depression. Statistics showed that while the pace of job loss is exhibiting signs of slowing-losing 539,000 in April compared to an average of 707,000 per month in the first quarter-today's labor market is still shedding jobs at a breathtaking pace. Since the start of the recession, the economy as a whole has shed 5.7 million jobs, totaling 4.2% of total employment.

DRUG BUSTS

Maine has upped the amount of marijuana possession treated a civil violation from 1.25 ounces to 2.5 ounces.

ON CAMPUS

Chronicle of Higher Education - As [college] papers have begun digitizing their back issues, their Web sites have become the latest front in the battle over online identities. Youthful activities that once would have disappeared into the recesses of a campus library are now preserved on the public record, to be viewed with skeptical eyes by an adult world of colleagues and potential employers. Alumni now in that world are contacting newspapers with requests for redaction. For unlike Facebook profiles - that other notable source of young-adult embarrassment - the ability to remove or edit questionable content in these cases is out of the author's hands. . .
Policies forbidding revisions in the absence of provable factual errors are generally derived from similar policies at professional newspapers and rooted in lofty principles. . . Aside from journalistic stands against changing history, "there's certainly no legal reason to do it," says Adam J. Goldstein, a lawyer with the Student Press Law Center. Lawsuits are sometimes threatened, he says, but rarely carried out.

FURTHERMORE. . .

A 137 pound orangutan almost escaped from an Australian zoo by short circuiting an electric fence and piling up debris to climb over a wall. Once at the top, she sat for about 30 minutes, trying to decide what to do next. Then she returned to her cage. Said zoo curator Peter Whitehead, "You're talking about an animal that's highly intelligent, We've had issues with her before in normal day-to-day operations where she tries to outsmart the keepers. She's an ingenious animal."

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