Undernews For September 26, 2009

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September 26, 2009

WORD

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. - Richard Feynman

The highest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt social order, is to tell the plain truth-- Edward Abbey

GROWING THE WAR WITHOUT END

Rick Rozoff, Global Research - Over the past week U.S. newspapers and television networks have been abuzz with reports that Washington and its NATO allies are planning an unprecedented increase of troops for the war in Afghanistan, even in addition to the 17,000 new American and several thousand NATO forces that have been committed to the war so far this year.

The number, based on as yet unsubstantiated reports of what U.S. and NATO commander Stanley McChrystal and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen have demanded of the White House, range from 10,000 to 45,000. . .

An additional 45,000 troops would bring the U.S. total to 113,000. There are also 35,000 troops from some 50 other nations serving under NATO's International Security Assistance Force in the nation, which would raise combined troop strength under McChrystal's command to 148,000 if the larger number of rumored increases materializes.

As the former Soviet Union withdrew its soldiers from Afghanistan twenty years ago the New York Times reported "At the height of the Soviet commitment, according to Western intelligence estimates, there were 115,000 troops deployed." Nearly 150,000 U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan would represent the largest foreign military presence ever in the land. . .

McChrystal's evaluation also indicates that the war will not only escalate within Afghanistan but will also be stepped up inside Pakistan and may even target Iran. . .

As to who is responsible for the thirty-year disaster that is Afghanistan, McChrystal's assessment contains a sentence that may get past most readers. It is this:

"The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)."

The last-named is the guerrilla force of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the largest recipient of hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of U.S. dollars provided by the CIA to the Peshawar Seven Mujahideen bloc fighting the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan from 1978-1992.

While hosting Hekmatyar and his allies at the White House in 1985 then President Ronald Reagan referred to his guests as "the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers."

Throughout the 1980s the CIA official in large part tasked to assist the Mujahideen with funds, arms and training was Robert Gates, now U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Last December BBC News reported: "In his book, From the Shadows, published in 1996, Mr Gates defended the role of the CIA in undertaking covert action which, he argued, helped to win the Cold War. In a speech in 1999, Mr Gates said that its most important role was in Afghanistan.

"'CIA had important successes in covert action. Perhaps the most consequential of all was Afghanistan where CIA, with its management, funnelled billions of dollars in supplies and weapons to the mujahideen, and the resistance was thus able to fight the vaunted Soviet army to a standoff and eventually force a political decision to withdraw,' he said."

Now according to McChrystal the same Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was cultivated and sponsored by McChrystal's current boss, Gates, is in charge of one of the three groups the Pentagon and NATO are waging ever-escalating counterinsurgency operations in South Asia against.

To make matters even more intriguing, former British foreign secretary Robin Cook - as loyal a pro-American Atlanticist as exists - conceded in the Guardian on July 8, 2005 that "Bin Laden was. . . a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally 'the database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.". . .

Pentagon chief Gates' 27 years in the CIA, including his tenure as director of the agency from 1991-1993, is being brought to bear on the Afghan war according to the Los Angeles Times of September 19, 2009, which revealed that "The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence 'surge' that will make its station there among the largest in the agency's history, U.S. officials say.

"When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan. . .

The dramatic upsurge in CIA deployments in South Asia won't be limited to Afghanistan. Neighboring Pakistan will be further overrun by U.S. intelligence operatives also.

On September 12 a petition was filed in the Supreme Court of Pakistan contesting the announced expansion of the U.S. embassy in the nation's capital. Pakistani media have been reporting that the United States plans to deploy a large number of marines with the plan to expand its embassy in Islamabad."

The challenge was organized by Barrister Zafarullah Khan, who "said that Saudi Arabia was also trying to get 700,000 acres of land in the country."

He was quoted on the day of the presentation of the petition as warning "Giving away Pakistani land to U.S. and Arab countries in this fashion is a threat for the stability and sovereignty of the country" and "further added that the purpose of giving the land to U.S. embassy was to establish an American military base. . .

Just as troops serving under NATO command in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan now include those from almost fifty countries on five continents, so the broadening scope of the war is absorbing vaster tracts of Eurasia and the Middle East.

America's longest armed conflict since that in Indochina and NATO's first ground war threatens to not only remain the world's most dangerous conflagration but also one that plunges the 21st Century into a war without end.

BOOKSHELF

Back issues of Life Magazine are now online at Google Books

NEW DOCUMENTARY ON DANIEL ELLSBERG

Gaea Times - Four decades after he stunned the nation by leaking the top-secret Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg walks the halls of the past in his dreams. In his sleep, he imagines that he still works as a researcher at the Rand Corp., advising Pentagon officials on policy, handling classified documents, studying the science of war. "Being at Rand was the ideal life for me," Ellsberg says, almost as an afterthought. "In my dreams, I am doing classified work, trying to solve social problems."

Over the decades, Ellsberg, 78, hasn't been welcome at Rand. He committed the most startling breach of security in the company's history, walking out on Oct. 1, 1969, with the first briefcase full of classified documents destined for public release. That bold move - and the actions that followed to get them published - are the subject of a new documentary film, "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers."

The movie had its West Coast premiere only a few blocks from Rand. Ellsberg, ever the agitator, sent college students with flyers to headquarters to urge his former colleagues to attend the screening and try to understand why he did what he did. None came. Ellsberg acknowledges that some wounds never heal. At a Rand reunion several years back, no one would shake his hand. When he tried to visit Rand, a nonprofit think tank providing analysis of public issues for government agencies, he was escorted out by security guards.

He had read the 7,000 page study of the Vietnam War known as The Pentagon Papers and became convinced that the history of U.S. involvement dating back to 1945 was a study in lies. He wanted to end the war and although to this day he does not take credit for that, he says his actions and those of other anti-war activists helped shorten the conflict.

The film by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith suggests his actions triggered the Watergate scandal and drove President Richard Nixon from office. There are audio tapes of Nixon railing against Ellsberg as a traitor in conversations with Henry Kissinger, who called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America."

The release of the classified study in The New York Times and in other newspapers triggered one of the most important First Amendment legal battles the country has ever seen and led to a powerful U.S. Supreme Court ruling for freedom of the press. Both Nixon and Kissinger were convinced that Ellsberg had more secret documents he planned to release and they launched an offensive that included a break-in at his psychiatrist's office and culminated in his espionage trial in Los Angeles.

The charges were dismissed and a mistrial declared because of "outrageous governmental misconduct," including the break-in and disclosures that the judge had met with Nixon during the trial and was offered the job of FBI director. All of it is depicted in the film, which is billed as a combination political thriller and love story. Early reviews have been positive.

LAW STUDENTS LEFT HANGING AS FIRMS CUT OFFERS

Bloomberg - Many students entering their final year at top law schools, including Harvard and New York University, haven't landed the full-time jobs they would normally have claimed by now, firms and school officials said, a reflection of the shrinking demand for legal services. The stark reality of the legal marketplace was illustrated by 2010 job offers by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the highest-grossing U.S. law firm. It projected a 50 percent cut in summer hiring, said Howard Ellin, the recruiting partner for Skadden. . . The number of first-round interviews for second- and third- year Harvard Law School students fell 20 percent this year, Mark Weber, assistant dean for career services, wrote in an e-mail, adding that it's too early to predict how many will get second interviews. At NYU, interviews plunged this school year compared with last, with callbacks for second interviews dropping "dramatically," said Irene Dorzback, dean of career services.

PITTSBURGH POLICE ABUSE AT G20 MEETING

National Lawyers Guild - National Lawyers Guild members witnessed first-hand the unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity. Police deployed chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center. Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel residents to flee the area.

Later, while some protests were ending, riot-clad officers surrounded an area at the University of Pittsburgh, creating an ominous spectacle that some described as akin to Kent State. Guild legal observers witnessed police chasing and arresting many uninvolved students.

Among other questionable tactics, officers from dozens of law enforcement agencies lacked easily-identifiable badges, impeding citizens' ability to register complaints.

Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, said: "The small, paper armband badges that law enforcement are wearing are difficult to read, and many wore black chest coverings with absolutely no identifying information. We've seen many law enforcement personnel, including Pittsburgh Police Department officers, deliberately covering up the arm IDs by rolling their shirt sleeves up over them."

Pennsylvania ACLU - The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a complaint in the United States District Court on behalf of the Seeds of Peace Collective and the Three Rivers Climate Convergence charging the Pittsburgh police with systematic attempts to harass and discourage lawful activities at the G-20 Summit. Despite a preliminary injunction ordered by the court last week ordering the Pittsburgh to allow 3RCC to hold their demonstration at Point State Park, Pittsburgh police have been engaged in a pattern of illegal searches, vehicle seizures, raids and detentions of Seeds of Peace Collective members.

The complaint alleges that the illegal searches, seizures and harassment constitute retaliation against both 3RCC and Seeds of Peace Collective over their effort to engage in constitutionally-protected political activity in Pittsburgh public spaces, and for 3RCC's lawsuit and victory in getting a federal court injunction ordering the city to allow them to use Point State Park, both of which violate the groups' Constitutional Rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The suit argues that the 3RCC and Seeds of Peace Collective face a credible threat, given the deliberate, intentional, and persistent pattern of misconduct by the Pittsburgh Police and that such misconduct will continue in the future absent judicial intervention.

Other problems demonstrators have encountered over the past few days include:

- Police told Bail Out the People that they could not canvass door-to-door without a permit in the Hill District. The City Code does not require a permit and it would be unconstitutional to have such a requirement.

- Police told Bail Out the People that they could not use amplified sound from a vehicle driving around the Hill District without obtaining a permit. The City Code does not require a permit for such activity.

- Also on Friday the police threatened to tow a food bus run by Everybody's Kitchen. The bus was legally parked on a private driveway in Point Breeze. The police claimed the bus was obstructing the sidewalk. The obstruction? The emergency ladder on the back of the bus was encroaching on the sidewalk by less than a foot. After they removed the ladder from the bus, the police demanded identification from everyone and proof of vehicle ownership.

- On Saturday, Pittsburgh police told people at CMU's outdoor camping space that all students without CMU ID's had to leave. CMU administrators arrived on the scene and countermanded that the City Police directive.

- Also on Sunday, another plaintiff in the Codepink lawsuit, G6 Billion, was told by police that they could not march through the 10th Street by-pass, below the Convention Center, because it was private property and they did not have a permit. The group was forced to march around the Convention Center. Subsequently, a police commander on the scene apologized to group leaders, saying he had not read the permit, which clearly allowed the group to march through the bypass. The property is also not "private," as it is owned by the Sports & Exhibition Authority, a government agency.

- Also Sunday, Pittsburgh Police attempted to illegally enter a dwelling belonging to the Landslide Community, on Alequippa Street in the Hill District. The police then traipsed over private property, where the group grows food, without consent or a warrant. When an ACLU lawyer showed up the police told him that they were there just to remove some tires. There were more than 20 police officers in riot gear on the scene, a curious show of force just to remove some tires.

Guardian, UK - Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances. Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents. But US security forces turned the piercing sound on their own citizens to widespread outrage. Pittsburgh officials told the New York Times that it was the first time "sound cannon" had been used publicly. . . It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

TRAD LIB OBAMA ADVISER PUSHES VALUE ADDED TAX

Bloomberg - John Podesta compared the nation's current budget crisis to the situation former President Bill Clinton faced in 1993 and said some form of a value-added tax is "more plausible today than it ever has been."

"There's going to have to be revenue in this budget," said Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama's transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt."
A so-called consumption tax would "create a balance" with European and Japanese economies and "could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness," said Podesta. Value- added taxes in Europe and Japan encourage savings by taxing consumption.

Podesta said such a tax may be regressive, but can be balanced by exempting some products and using "the money to support low-wage workers."

INDICATORS

Pew Hispanic Center - A total of 29 million Hispanics of Mexican origin resided in the United States in 2007, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Mexicans are the largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, accounting for 64% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2007.

Some 4 million Puerto Ricans resided in the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia in 2007, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. That is a slightly greater number than the population of Puerto Rico itself in 2007. Most Puerto Ricans in the United States were born in the 50 states or the District of Columbia;

Puerto Ricans are the second-largest population of Hispanic origin residing in the United States, accounting for 9% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2007. Mexicans constituted 29.2 million, or 64.3%, of the Hispanic population.

OBAMACARE: PAY AN INSURANCE COMPANY OR GO TO JAIL

Politico - Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The remarks from the committee's chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama's contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase.

Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would "take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings."

Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don't believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance.

"We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment," Ensign said. "That seems to me to be a problem."

Ensign's argument , however, wasn't persuasive to the committee -- which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate.

OUT OF GREAT ANTI-ACORN BILL LITTLE LAUGHS GROW

Politico - The Congressional Research Service has analyzed the case law surrounding last week's ACORN funding ban in the House and found the measure could be interpreted as a "bill of attainder" and, therefore, unconstitutional, according to a copy of the report obtained by Politico. A bill of attainder - which is prohibited in Article 1 of the Constitution - is a law targeted to hurt or help an individual. If a bill is regarded primarily as punitive, instead of being strictly regulatory, it could be interpreted as an attainder bill, according to legal experts.

LESS THAN HALF OF ELIGIBLE VETS HAVE GOTTEN MONEY FOR TUITION AND EXPENSES

USA Today - Nearly a month into the fall college semester, the Department of Veterans Affairs has paid benefits for fewer than half the former Iraq and Afghanistan veterans requesting under the new post-9/11 G.I. Bill, according to a VA estimate. Keith Wilson, director of the VA Education Service office, said about half of the 50,000 veterans owed money for tuition and expenses have been paid. Another estimated 60,000 veterans are waiting for money under an older version of the G.I. Bill, Wilson says. "We realize we're not meeting everybody's expectations," he says.

DOCTORS FIGHT MEDICARE CUTS

Daily Commercial - Hearts are pumping over proposed Medicare cuts to physician reimbursements for medical procedures. Some cardiologists say a proposed 11 percent reduction in cardiology services could adversely affect a patient's access to quality care and also could increase costs.
Procedures such as echocardiograms, stress tests and cardiac catheterizations could become too expensive for both patients and physicians, they say. . .

"We expect if those cuts are put in place they would severely impact the quality of care that our patients are going to receive," said Rafael L. Mulet, CEO of Cardiovascular Associates of Lake County in Tavares. "We will not be able to provide a lot of services."

The American College of Cardiology opposes the cuts. "These proposed cuts are based on the incorporation of a few esoteric pieces of data into a complex formula," stated Dr. Alfred Bove, president of the college, in a press release. "The focus on this formula completely ignores the very important issues of access that are certain to be created by these huge slashes in payment."

Cardiologists wouldn't be the only physicians affected by the proposed cuts, if they are approved. Specialists such as radiologists, chiropractors and internists would also see a decline in reimbursements for services they provide to Medicare patients. The overall cut to Medicare reimbursements is 21.5 percent.

Those cuts are calculated every year based on the changes in medical practice and the value of services. The Centers for Medicare & Medical Services use a formula to evaluate more than 7,000 procedures and determine how much to cut.

The government currently pays up to $100.27 for a cardiovascular stress test, but under the proposed change the reimbursement for that procedure falls to $61.74. That's not enough to pay for operating expenses, said Mulet. . . The radiation dose administered during the stress test alone costs $300, Mulet said. . .

Every year since 2002 there has been a proposed cut. However, each year Congress has overridden those cuts, opting for a budget increase instead.

OBAMA AND BAGRAM

Human rights lawyer Tina Foster talks to Spiegel about detainee abuses in the US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan and her disappointment with the Obama administration.

SPIEGEL: Right after taking office, US President Barack Obama announced his plan to close Guantanamo. It looked like he would reverse the human rights policies of the Bush administration. Will the detainees the US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan now be given legal rights?

Foster: Unfortunately, the US government did not change its position on Bagram when Obama took office. The government still claims that our clients are not entitled to any legal protections under US law. It maintains that even those individuals who they brought to Bagram from other countries, and have held without charge for more than six years, are still not entitled to speak with their attorney, and they are arguing now that they are not entitled to have their cases heard in US courts.

SPIEGEL: But there has been an important legal decision stating that detainees in Bagram have the right to legal representation.

Foster: The April 2 decision of Judge John D. Bates, a George Bush appointee, was that our clients were entitled to have their cases reviewed by the court. That was a huge success.

SPIEGEL: Is the Obama administration complying with the Bates decision in providing each detainee a representative?

Foster: Before we could present any evidence or proceed in their cases, the Obama administration appealed the decision to the court of appeals, and is now arguing that it should be overturned. The announcement was intended to generate a positive media spin on the "new" procedures at Bagram, which were announced at this time because the government's filing in the court of appeals was due the following day. If you look at the actual procedures, you will see that the detainees will not be given any legal representation. Instead, the Department of Defense is saying that it will send non-lawyer "representatives" to question the detainees and look into their cases. Those individuals are not officers of the court, and have no duty of confidentiality or loyalty to the detainee.

SPIEGEL: But what then is the difference between the Bush and Obama administrations?

Foster: There is absolutely no difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration's position with respect to Bagram detainees' rights. They have made much ado about nothing, in the hope that the courts and the public will not examine the issue more closely. .

SPIEGEL: Can you compare the human rights situation in Bagram with that in Guantanamo?

Foster: What most people don't realize is that Bagram has always been far worse than Guantanamo. One thing that has not been stressed enough in media accounts regarding Guantanamo is that much of the abuse that the Guantanamo prisoners suffered actually happened at Bagram. Many of our former clients were subjected to sexual humiliation and assault akin to Abu Ghraib-style torture. In terms of torture and abuse, Bagram has a far worse history than Guantanamo. There are at least two detainees who died there after being tortured by US interrogators. One of them was strung up by interrogators by his wrists, and then beaten until his legs were "pulpified," according to the military's own autopsy report. Our clients who have been released more recently report exposure to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and other torture that is still ongoing. Bagram has always been a torture chamber -- there is no way that the United States will ever be able to rid it of that reputation unless it discontinues the practice of holding detainees incommunicado and in secret.

SPIEGEL: Major General Douglas M. Stone, who was charged to investigate Bagram, has been quoting as saying that many of the detainees in Bagram are innocent.

Foster: I think General Stone's report confirms what we have learned over the years from our clients -- most of the people at Bagram are being imprisoned unjustly. General Stone reviewed the military's own records and determined that, of the 600 current detainees at Bagram, there are 400 innocent people that the US government should not be detaining. It's obvious that the procedures that the military is using to determine who to imprison and who to release are completely flawed. What is completely baffling is why these 400 innocent individuals have not been released. It doesn't make sense to hold innocent people in our custody -- it's completely counterproductive and undermines the entire war effort.

STUPID GOP HOUSE WHIP TRICKS

Brent Budowsky, The Hill - House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wins the award for why Republican favorable numbers on healthcare are barely above 20 percent. Mr. Cantor was recently asked what a woman with stomach cancer should do if she did not have the insurance to pay huge medical costs. Here is the Cantor plan for middle-income Americans who may have lost their health insurance after being laid off by a company whose CEO might be making a million dollars a year. First, she should sell all of her lifetime possessions to desperately pay humongous medical costs, with the side benefit that this would make her poor, and therefore qualify for health programs for the poor that many Republicans don't support. If this fails, Mr. Cantor advises the woman to do this: beg. The Cantor Plan envisions a middle-class woman made poor by layoffs, cancer and skyrocketing healthcare costs begging for charity as a last resort.

STUDY SHOWS CONNECTION BETWEEN TREATMENT OF GIRLS, ECONOMIC PROGRESS

CBC, Canada - Plan International finds that countries with high levels of institutional discrimination against girls and women are also the least developed, costing the world's poorest countries billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, writes CBC News. The report gives as an example Kenya, whose economy could add $3 billion annually if the country educated its girls to secondary school level. In tough economic times, however, girls in poor countries are the first to be pulled from school, as families struggle to pay for books, uniforms, and other costs. The report's global ten-point plan calls for giving girls education, better jobs, access to land or property, and leadership opportunities, among other actions

EUROPE SLASHING TROPICAL FORESTS TO SEEM GREENER

IPS - Millions of trees, especially from the developing countries of the South, are being shipped to Europe and burned in giant furnaces to meet "green energy" requirements that are supposed to combat climate change. In the last two months alone, energy companies in Britain have announced the construction of at least six new biomass power generation plants to produce 1,200 megawatts of energy, primarily from burning woodchips. At least another 1,200 megawatts of wood-fired energy plants, including the world's largest, in Port Talbot, Wales, are already under construction. Those energy plants will burn 20 to 30 million tons of wood annually, nearly all imported from other regions and equivalent to at least one million hectares of forest. "Europe is going to cook the world's tropical forests to fight climate change; it's crazy," Simone Lovera, of the non-governmental Global Forest Coalition, which has a southern officed in Asunción, Paraguay, told Tierramerica. Europe has committed to reducing its carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 in an effort to fight climate change. Biofuels and biomass energy will have key roles in achieving those goals, experts say.

RECOVERED HISTORY: ICON OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY

Johann Hari, Independent, UK - It must be exhausting to be a monarchist, forever finding ways to pretend a family of cold, talentless snobs are better than the rest of us. . . . The system of monarchy - selecting a head of state solely because of the womb they passed through, and surrounding them with sycophants from the moment they emerge - produces warped and dim people and demands that we scrape before them. What's a poor monarchist to do? They can only lavish a thick cream of adjectives - "dignity", "charm", "majesty" - over the Windsor family in the hope that some of us are fooled.

This process corrupts even the most intelligent monarchists. A strange case study is the new, authorised, 1,000-plus pages biography of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the "Queen Mother") by William Shawcross. He is a smart man: his study of the secret bombing of Cambodia by Henry Kissinger is extraordinary. Yet as a monarchist he has an impossible task. He has to present a cruel, bigoted snob who fleeced millions from the British taxpayer as a heroine fit to rule over us. His mind turns to mush. . .

The most striking aspect to Shawcross's biography is that, once she had contrived to marry, Elizabeth really didn't do anything else for the rest of her life except spend, spend, spend - our money. He has to pad out whole decades. She didn't even raise her own children: she would see them for an hour a day and get them to chant: "We are not supposed to be normal. We are not supposed to be normal." But to be fair, she did do one more thing. In her spare time, she supported far-right politics. She was a passionate defender of appeasing Adolf Hitler, lobbying behind the scenes to garner support for Neville Chamberlain. The reasons are plain: even 50 years later, she bragged to Woodrow Wyatt that she had "reservations about Jews". . . .

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon kept up her support for far-right politics throughout her life. She did everything she could to bolster the torturing, white minority tyrannies in Rhodesia and South Africa, because - as the journalist Paul Callan, who knew her, put it - "she is not fond of black folk". . . .

The defenders of Elizabeth were left claiming that her drunken inactivity was itself an achievement. WF Deedes, the late Daily Telegraph columnist and editor, claimed: "In an increasingly earnest world, she teaches us all how to have fun, that life should not be all about learning, earning and resting. In a world where we have all become workaholics, there she is... grinning at racehorses. Bless her heart." . . .

William Shawcross has won the favor of his fellow monarchists by taking this curdled life and presenting it as the best of British. It's the single most unpatriotic claim I've ever heard. If you don't think Britain can do better - far better - than this nasty leech and her stunted family, then you don't deserve to live in this Sceptred Isle.

THE STRANGE RISE OF BARAK OBAMA CONT'D

Wayne Madsen Report - WMR has obtained additional details on Business International Corporation, the CIA front company where President Obama spent a year working after graduating from Columbia University in 1983.

BIC used journalists as non-official cover agents around the world. The firm published weekly and fortnightly newsletters for business executives. . .

On February 24, WMR reported: "For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC's financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.

An informed source has told WMR that Obama's tuition debt at Columbia was paid off by BIC. In addition, WMR has learned that when Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and his adoptive father Lolo Soetoro, the 20-year-old Obama, who was known as 'Barry Soetoro,' traveled to Pakistan in 1981 and was hosted by the family of Muhammadmian Soomro, a Pakistani Sindhi who became acting President of Pakistan after the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf on August 18, 2008. WMR was told that the Obama/Soetoro trip to Pakistan, ostensibly to go 'partridge hunting' with the Soomros, related to unknown CIA business. The covert CIA program to assist the Afghan mujaheddin was already well underway at the time and Pakistan was the major base of operations for the CIA's support . . .

Through its contacts with leading liberals around the world, BIC sought to recruit those on the left as CIA agents and assets. . . .

Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, and his father, Barack Obama, Sr., met at the University of Hawaii in 1960 in a Russian-language class. . . After marrying Indonesian national Lolo Soetoro, Dunham moved with Barack Obama, Jr. to Indonesia in 1966. . . Dunham left Indonesia in 1972, returning to Hawaii with her son. Dunham periodically made trips back to Indonesia, as well as to Pakistan, while working for the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the latter commonly used by the CIA for official cover agents.

Dunham Soetoro was in Indonesia when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Barack Obama visited Lahore, Pakistan, where his mother worked as a "consultant," in 1981. . .

23 HOUSE MEMBERS VOTE TO PUNISH ACORN BUT NOT BLACKWATER

Southern Studies - Some of the same members of Congress who were quick to take action against ACORN have not been as responsive when other federal contractors have engaged in wrongdoing -- like Blackwater, the North Carolina-based private military company now known as Xe.

In October of that year, in response to the Nisoor Square massacre, the House took up a bill sponsored by Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) designed to tighten accountability for private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones. Price's legislation did not go so far as to propose cutting off federal funds to war-zone contractors involved in wrongdoing but simply proposed subjecting their employees to prosecution by U.S. courts.

On Oct. 4, 2007, following the adoption of an amendment designed to ensure the action would not interfere with U.S. intelligence, the House passed Price's bill by a vote of 389 to 30.

If we look at the list of the 30 lawmakers who voted against Price's bill, we see that 23 of them voted for cutting off funds to ACORN. In other words, 23 lawmakers were willing to hold ACORN accountable -- but not Blackwater.

BRITISH AIRLINES TO CHARGE YOU TO SIT NEXT TO YOUR CHILDREN

Boing Boing - British Airways has broken new exciting new ground in the race to make flying as awful as possible: they have announced a fee (ranging from L10-60 per passenger) for advance seat selection, explaining that this will be the only way that families and other groups traveling together can be assured that they'll be sitting next to each other. I wonder what happens if you don't pay it while flying with a two-year-old in her own seat; do they seat her at the other end of the plane from you and explain to the strangers on either side of her that they're responsible for her well-being for the duration? . . BA is billing this as a way of improving the flight "experience" because you can now be certain you'll get the seat that you want.

CAR CLAIMS BY OCCUPATION

The British insurance firm, Churchill, has examined past claims and concluded that the occupations with the most automobile claims are:

1. Computer Engineer
2. Sales Manager
3. Chef
4. Student
5. Doctor
6. Estate Agents
7. Surveyor
8. Customer Advisor
9. Hairdresser
10. Social Worker

Drivers with the lowest claim frequency are:

1. Farmer
2. Aircraft Fitter
3. Stores Personnel
4. Ambulance Driver
5. Laboratory Technician
6. Pilot
7. Caretaker
8. Agricultural Engineer
9. Green Keeper
10. Mechanical Engineer

FENDER GUITAR HIT WITH ECO FINES

Tree Hugger - Fender Musical Instruments Corp and Goodrich Aerostructures Group were both fined by the US Environmental Protection Agency for improper storage and handling of hazardous waste. . . In total, Fender received fines of $78,861 and Goodrich was fined $66,500 for several charges related to their improper storage and handling of hazardous wastes on their property. . . While guitars might seem pretty innocuous - just take some wood, cut it into a guitar shape, pull some strings tight over wooden frets and you're ready to rock. But actually, guitars go through quite a bit of shellacking and coating before they hit the stage, which often involve nasty chemicals.

Elizabeth Seward, Green Change - Some girls melt when they smell roses. I, on the other hand, melt when I walk into an acoustic room in a music store. The myriad smells from the collection of guitars is overpowering. Those intoxicating smells are, of course, particular to each wood used for each guitar. And no matter how good they all smell, some of these types of wood aren't good to use for guitar-making.

Frankly, there are a whole lot of guitars being sold each day that are made with wood from trees that are not sustainable. I don't care if you're Jimmy Page or the girl playing down the street at the coffee shop-you should be buying guitars made from sustainable materials. . .

Martin, one of my favorite guitar companies, recently released one of the greenest guitars on the market. It's called the D Mahogany 09. It's an acoustic guitar and it's made from wood that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The guitar is made of mahogany and spruce. While both types of wood are a challenge to find certified, Greenpeace joined up with Martin a few years back to make this possible. . . Gibson is another guitar company with FSC-certified woods-but most of their certified guitars are electric. Other guitar companies, like Modulus, Sound Wood, and Eco Timber are experimenting with alternative wood that are more sustainable than treasured tropical wood, like mahogany or rosewood, for their guitars. They're using non-endangered wood, like granadillo, chechen, red cedar, chakte, kok, and soma.

ARGENTINA BECOMES A WIFI HOT SPOT

Global Post - One need only take a stroll down a Buenos Aires street to smell the connectivity. The Wi-Fi logo, signaling a wireless internet connection, is everywhere: in the windows of coffee shops and bars, the glass doors of hotel lobbies and gymnasiums - even on hair salons - and virtually all of the connections are free. There is Wi-Fi at gas stations, and Wi-Fi in the subway (and it actually works). At the Obelisk, the Washingtonesque monument marking the center of the city, a recent Wi-Fi sniff found 19 stray signals - and those are just the ones that made it across the 10 lanes of traffic on each side of one of the world's widest boulevards. Argentina's next-largest town, Rosario, wants to cover every city block with free wireless internet, using a combination of Wi-Fi and long-range WiMax technologies. The mayor bragged last year that he expected Rosario to become a "digital city" before San Francisco, Calif.

WE INTERRUPT THE ACORN FRACAS FOR A FEW FACTS

Glen Greenwald, Salon - Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) pointed out that the bill passed by both the Senate and House to de-fund ACORN is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. "

Rep. Grayson . . . is currently compiling a list of all defense contractors encompassed by this language in order to send to administration officials. The President is required by the Constitution to "faithfully execute" the law, which should mean that no more contracts can be awarded to any companies on that list, which happens to include the ten largest defense contractors in America. Before being elected to Congress, Grayson worked extensively on uncovering and combating defense contractor fraud in Iraq, and I asked him to put into context ACORN's impact on the American taxpayer versus these corrupt defense contractors. His reply: "The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day during the war in Iraq."

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post - The embattled community organizing group is much in the news these days, thanks to the idiocies of a handful of now-suspended staffers having been filmed and YouTubed by a right-wing sting squad. Most of the stories present ACORN as, at best, a shady organization up to no good in America's inner cities, not to mention the nation's primary source of voting fraud.

What's been obscured amid all the polemics, or the polemics passing as news reports, is what ACORN is and does. Founded in Little Rock in 1970 as an organization agitating for free school lunches, Vietnam veterans' rights and more hospital emergency rooms, ACORN has grown in the past four decades into the nation's largest community organizing group. Based in low-income neighborhoods, it has nearly 500,000 dues-paying members, recruited by door-to-door canvassers, with chapters in 110 cities in 40 states. Nationwide, it has more than 1,000 staffers.

What are the projects on which all these staffers and members work? Raising the minimum wage, for one. ACORN conceived and led the successful initiative campaign to raise the wage in Florida in 2004 and in four more states in 2006. In the past four years, it successfully pressured seven legislatures in other states to raise their minimum wage as well.

Another major campaign has been to limit the interest and fees that banks charge homeowners. In the 1990s, ACORN spearheaded a number of legal actions, often joined by states' attorneys general, that compelled such lenders as Citigroup to change many of their practices. The group has led successful drives to outlaw the most egregious predatory lending in nine states. It also counsels thousands of inner-city homeowners and home buyers.

ACORN's third focus has been to expand the electorate. In the 2007-08 election cycle, it registered 1.3 million new voters in the nation's inner cities. This activity particularly vexed many Republican politicians, who have repeatedly accused the organization of massive voter fraud. The Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department -- its widely reported firing of U.S. attorneys for their failure to bring voter fraud indictments (all of them looked and could find scarcely any instances of same) -- stemmed from the administration's apparent desire to depress minority turnout, a goal it sought to accomplish by demonizing ACORN.

Now, how much of this would you know from following the stories about ACORN that have been running in even the best of the media? Little to nothing, as Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, and Christopher R. Martin, a professor of journalism at University of Northern Iowa, just concluded in an exhaustive study of news coverage of ACORN. Looking at the 647 stories on the group that ran in leading newspapers and broadcast networks in 2007 and 2008, they found that not only did a majority of such stories focus on allegations of voter fraud but also that 83 percent of the stories that linked ACORN to those allegations failed to mention that actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent.

"Only a handful of the stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal," Dreier and Martin note, "mentioned that actual cases of voter fraud were very rare" -- even though all three papers had covered the firings of the U.S. attorneys for their failure to find such cases. But the steady drumbeat from right-wing pundits and journalists about ACORN and voter fraud, the authors conclude, eventually set the terms of discussion even at elite mainstream media.

NON RELIGIOUS GROWING

NY Daily News - According to a new study from Trinity College, 15% of Americans don't associate with a religious denomination. . . . The study shows that the religion-free nones are most prominent in adults age 18-29, with 22% of the age bracket claiming to be without religion. The percentage of nones is expected to grow as the youth replaces an older pious generation. Researchers predict that one-quarter of Americans may be without a religion within 20 years.

MODIFIED DREAMS FROM OBAMA'S FATHER

While ghost writing is a ubiquitous activity these days, a worthy distinction can be made between those using the trade for the normal verbal garbage of politicians, corporate executives, and recently arrested celebrities and those who use such assistance to produce material of allegedly literary merit. The evidence is mounting that Barack Obama falls into the latter and far more dubious category. Interestingly, the conventional media which feasts on tales of plagiarism has totally ignored this matter.

Worldnet Daily - Andersen, in "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a Marriage," writes that Obama was faced with a deadline [for "Dreams From My Father"] with the Time Books division of Random House to submit his manuscript after already having canceled a contract with Simon & Schuster. Confronted with the threat of a second failure, his wife, Michelle, suggested he seek the help of "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers."

Obama had taped interviews with relatives to flesh out his family history, and those "oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers," writes Andersen.

The author quotes a neighbor in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where Obama and Ayers lived, who says of the two, "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together."

"It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both," the neighbor said, according to Andersen.

Andersen also has written "marriage portraits" of George and Laura Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and John and Jackie Kennedy. Among his other books are "Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve," "Barbra: The Way She Is," "Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot" and "After Diana: William, Harry, Charles, and the Royal House of Windsor."

Andersen writes: "In the end, Ayers's contribution to Barack's 'Dreams from My Father' would be significant - so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers's own writing."

Andersen concludes, "Thanks to help from the veteran writer Ayers, Barack would be able to submit a manuscript to his editors at Times Books."

EARLIER STORY
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KATIE COURIC'S SALARY GREATER THAN BUDGET OF TWO TOP NPR SHOWS

Michael Massing, Columbia Journalism Review - Katie Couric's annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve.

BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW SOCIALISM DID THIS, TOO

Political Wire - Rep. Steve King (R-IA) declared in a radio interview that same sex marriage is part of a socialist agenda to undermine "the foundations of individual rights and liberties." Said King: "Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis."

ALTERNATIVE AMERICA

10 ways the U.S. military has shoved Christianity down Muslims' throats
Steven Hill on Obama and Europe
Tom Hayden on Russ Feingold
FAIR - NY Times trashes Medicare for all

BUSH USED PATRIOT ACT WARRENTLESS SEARCH PROVISION FOR DRUG CASES - NOT TERRORISM

Huffington Post - In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn't be tipped off that they're under investigation. Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) quizzed Assistant Attorney General David Kris about the discrepancy at a hearing on the PATRIOT Act Wednesday. One might expect Kris to argue that there is a connection between drug trafficking and terrorism or that the administration is otherwise justified to use the authority by virtue of some other connection to terrorism.

He didn't even try. "This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence. It's for criminal cases. So I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris said.

"As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act," Feingold quipped, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn't have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I'm concerned about these numbers: That's not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ's website in 2005 as being necessary - quote - to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists.". .

Kris responded by saying that some courts had already granted the Justice Feingold, the lone vote against the PATRIOT Act when it was first passed, is introducing an amendment to curb its reach. "I'm going to say it's quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly break into Americans homes," he said.

DOWN EAST NOTES

What's happening near the Review's headquarters on Casco Bay, Mane. Details in the Coastal Packet.

Michael Heath, the fiery anti-gay crusader who has led the far-right Maine Christian Civic League for fifteen years, has resigned. Notice of his departure comes just 45 days away from the statewide referendum on same-sex marriage, the right Heath has most doggedly opposed. Says he Phoenix: "No one (at least no one in Maine) could be counted on to be more vitriolic, more out-there-loony-fringe, more intolerant than Mike Heath when it came to acknowledging that gay people are people too.". . . The Portland city hall tower clock, restored in 2007, is running ten minutes fast. Says one city hall worker, "Those of us who work in City Hall are very aware of the chimes, and it was discussed. I sit in my office and I listen to those chimes and it tells me when I'm late for my meeting. But since it's off, I'm early.". . . A bear was spotted passing behind Sanford Junior High School on Main Street on Tuesday afternoon. Animal Control Officer Lauren Masellas described the bear as more than 100 pounds and approximating the size of a "good huskie-looking Saint Bernard."

OBAMA TALKS ABOUT HIMSELF 1200 TIMES IN 41 SPEECHES

Dan Gainor, Fox News - In just 41 speeches so far this year, Obama has talked about himself nearly 1,200 times - 1,198 to be exact. (That breaks down to 1,121 "I"s and just 77 "me"s.) . . . Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Maryland, said Obama has had nearly three times the number of interviews either Bush or Bill Clinton had at this time in his presidency. The New York Times Caucus blog reported: "As of his seven-month in office mark in August, he had done 114 interviews, compared to 37 by former President George W. Bush and 41 by former president Bill Clinton."

BRITISH RECYCLER FINED FOR NOT PRODUCING ANY RUBBISH

Daily Mail - With its emphasis on re-using old materials or selling them as scrap, Mark Howard's bicycle shop is a model of environmental efficiency. So you might have imagined that his local council would be grateful to him for enhancing the area's green credentials. But instead the father of four has been hit with a L180 fine - because officers refuse to believe he doesn't create any commercial waste. . .Mr Howard stores surplus materials such as cardboard boxes and old pedals away for re-use, while bent steel or aluminium frames that can't be salvaged are sold for scrap.

BAD DAYS AHEAD FOR BRITISH PROFS: GOVERNMENT SAYS RESEARCH CAN'T BE 'POINTLESS'

Guardian, UK - The [British] government is to stop funding "pointless" university research, forcing academics to prove that their academic inquiry has some relevance to the real world, funding chiefs will announce today.Universities will have to show that their research influences the economy, public policy or society in order to secure the biggest research grants, the government's funding body for higher education said. The plans are contained in proposals for a new system of allocating L1.76bn in government funds for academic research every year called the Research Excellence Framework. Lecturers warned that the move would restrict academic freedom by preventing speculative "blue skies" research.

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