Monday, July 07, 2003

Fajita Justice by Jeffrey Toobin 07 Jul 03 The Bus Stop Saloon, in San Francisco, has pool tables, a pair of video-golf machines, more than half a dozen televisions, and free popcorn. It also has a prime corner location on Union Street, where its awning boasts of a 'place where friendships are formed to last a lifetime.' The Bus Stop hardly has the look of a city landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge or the City Lights Bookstore. Yet, over the past several months, the cheerful bar has become just that. It has entered local lore as the focal point of a peculiar law-enforcement scandal, one that has, in varying degrees, engulfed the city?s mayor, Willie Brown, its police chief, and its district attorney. Even by the baroque standards of San Francisco, the scandal has from the start laid oddity upon oddity. [The New Yorker] 7:57:30 PM  Google It!

Who's Paying For Your Fix? by Kate Duncan May/Jun 2003 Issue Unless your morning latte was a fair trade blend, it probably cost more than what the farmer who picked the beans earns in a day. Conventional coffee prices are at their lowest in a century, even below the cost of production. Farmers have been leaving the fruit to rot on the tree, pulling the kids out of school, abandoning the family land and pouring into the cities to find non-existent work. That’s why, as the most heavily traded commodity after oil, and the most common beverage after water, coffee is a major focus of the fair trade movement. If your morning latte was a fair trade brew, it means the person who farmed the beans is earning enough to support his family. This is all well and good, but the way fair trade is usually explained - with prices, numbers and statistics - ignores it’s lasting benefits. The true point of fair trade is the cultural, communal, and environmental stability it bolsters. A farmer who sells through fair trade is a member of a cooperative that is a vehicle for community empowerment. And not just a neighborhood watch: The people typically organized via fair trade are those whom the free market has filtered to the lowest economic stratum. Rather than maneuvering them into a position where they’re forced to take what they can get, fair trade recognizes farmers as equal partners, a platform from which they can command more control over their business and lives. 'Fair trade is a different kind of business relationship between the producer and buyer, which has been an inspiration to help these communities pull together instead of caving to the pressure of all the things trying to blow them apart,' says Monika Firl. Monika heads up producer relations for Cooperative Coffees, and as such, led half a dozen coffee roasters and me (as a grateful representative of Idyll Development Foundation, one of Cooperative Coffee’s funders) on a buying trip to farmers’ co-ops in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico in February, where we were able to see the effect for ourselves. [Clamor] 7:00:08 PM  Google It!

Pinochet Generals Admit Exhumations 03 Jul 03 Eight retired army generals in Chile have acknowledged that secret graves of people killed by the military regime were later dug up to dispose of the bodies. The generals, including members of Augusto Pinochet's military junta in power from 1973 to 1990, condemned the illegal exhumations, saying they were incompatible with the conduct of military officers. They apologised to the Chilean people and said human rights violations must never be repeated. More than 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during General Pinochet's brutal crackdown on opponents and hundreds of bodies have never been found... The bodies belonged to people who were killed inside the presidential palace during the 1973 coup. They were exhumed in December 1978 and thrown into the sea from helicopters. Human rights groups believe the corpses were removed to hide evidence of mass killings. [BBC News] 6:38:17 PM  Google It!

Highlights of the Supreme Court's 2002-2003 Term by Thomas R. Bruce and Peter W. Martin 01 Jul 03 The Legal Information Institute (LII) editorial team has created a set of pages summarizing and furnishing rich background on the important decisions of the past U.S. Supreme Court's term. They provide access to briefs, oral argument, commentary, decisions of the lower courts, and more on twenty-four key opinions. [Legal Information Institute] 5:44:22 PM  Google It!

Report Criticizes Federal Oversight of State Medicaid by Robert Pear 07 Jul 03 The Bush administration has allowed states to make vast changes in Medicaid but has not held them accountable for the quality of care they provide to poor elderly and disabled people, Congressional investigators said today. The administration often boasts that it has approved record numbers of Medicaid waivers, which exempt states from some federal regulations and give them broad discretion to decide who gets what services. But the investigators, from the General Accounting Office, said the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, had 'not fully complied with the statutory and regulatory requirements' to monitor the quality of care under such waivers. [The New York Times] 7:36:48 AM  Google It!

In Postwar Iraq, the Battle Widens by Thomas E. Ricks and Rajiv Chandrasekaran 07 Jul 03 Recent Iraqi attacks on U.S. troops have demonstrated a new tactical sophistication and coordination that raise the specter of the U.S. occupation force becoming enmeshed in a full-blown guerrilla war, military experts said yesterday. The new approaches employed in the Iraqi attacks last week are provoking concern among some that what once was seen as a mopping-up operation against the dying remnants of a deposed government is instead becoming a widening battle against a growing and organized force that could keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops busy for months. [The Washington Post] 7:31:35 AM  Google It!