Kirk Smith: Americas

Beware of Bush Bearing Gifts

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:09:23 GMT

07 Jul 03

Bush's commitment to provide additional funds lays down the gauntlet to European Union, and not before time. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is in dire need of money. But should we be thankful for Bush's lead on this issue? It's a debatable point. Behind the headlines - and qualified support from international NGOs for the new funds - lies a different story.

To start with, only $10 billion of Bush's pledged $15 billion is new. Second, as ActionAid has pointed out, there's no guarantee that this money will be spent over the next five years. The U.S. Congress has to sign off the funds each year, and recent history is littered with aid initiatives that slid into the sand. A recent joint report from U.S. think-tanks the Center for Global Development and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that as little as $45 million of Bush's money to fight AIDS will be spent in 2004.

There is also the question of whether the funds will be tied aid - a hallmark of U.S. official development assistance. Revealingly, the USA has said it will deliver only one third of pledged dollars through the Global Fund, with the remaining money coming as bilateral aid. The Global Fund was set up specifically to be free of the conditionality associated with tied aid and it champions the purchase of the cheaper generic drug treatments central to fighting HIV/AIDS in the least-developed countries.

The USA has in fact opened its taxpayers' chequebook to safeguard the patent rights of its powerful pharmaceutical lobby. The Bush plan states that 2 million sufferers of HIV/AIDS will be provided with drug treatments. This could be a bonanza for U.S. drug corporations whose AIDS drug sales in Africa account for just 0.2 per cent of turnover.

If other U.S. aid programmes are anything to go by, contracts to supply treatments will be offered to US pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, which reportedly rakes in profits of more than $1 million an hour. Yet overseas manufacturers of generic treatments can massively undercut the price of Western drugs. [OneWorld.net]

All Spin All The Time

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:48:42 GMT

by Russ Baker

09 Jul 03

Viva Nihilism! It must be great working in the Bush White House. Zero accountability. It's All Spin, All the Time. Nothing matters but politics, hence no unfounded claim requires correction or apology. Unless, of course, they are pushed to the end of the plank, as they were recently with the tale about Niger and nuclear materials.

Take those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. Despite the failure of the concentrated might of the U.S. military-intelligence complex to find anything that might qualify in the remotest possible way, the administration labels critics 'revisionist historians' and imperturbedly moves on. The initial assertions and touted 'discoveries' usually get more attention than does the sound of a balloon deflating. That's why polls find a sizable chunk of the American public still under the impression that WMD have been found.

Whatever Saddam's interest in WMD, the administration didn't know what he had and didn't have solid evidence to make the claims it did -- much less to launch a war over them. For those amateur 'revisionist historians' out there, here is a partial, unscientific reconstruction of the claims that fizzled. [TomPaine.common sense]

DNA Profiles Link Dope to Its Source

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:43:00 GMT

09 Jul 03

Forensic scientists in the U.S. are applying DNA fingerprinting methods to the cannabis plant. They say the technique, which is being used to create a database of DNA profiles of different marijuana plants, will help them to trace the source of any sample.

'It links everybody together: the user, the distributor, the grower,' says the database's creator, Heather Miller Coyle of the Connecticut State Forensic Science Laboratory in Meriden. 'That's the real intent of it, to show it's not just one guy with a little bag of marijuana, but it's a group of people.'

A method for spotting the tiniest traces of marijuana, based on detecting DNA unique to cannabis chloroplasts, has already been developed in the UK (New Scientist print edition, 07 Aug 1999). But the profiling method, based on the same principles as DNA fingerprinting of people, can distinguish between closely related cannabis plants (Croatian Medical Journal, vol 44, p 315).

In a case awaiting trial in Connecticut, prosecutors plan to use cannabis DNA profiles to show that two apparently separate cannabis growing operations were actually linked. The two operations, in different parts of the state appeared separate until analysis of the plants revealed that some had identical DNA fingerprints, showing that the growers were sharing material. [NewScientist.com]

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:24:53 GMT

08 Jul 03

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission), an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002, is chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.

The Commission released its first interim report on July 8, 2003.

The Commission held its third public hearing on 'Terrorism, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim World' on July 9, 2003 in Washington, DC. [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States]

Cheney Loses Ruling on Energy Panel Records

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 07:01:17 GMT

by Henri E. Cauvin

09 Jul 03

A federal appeals court yesterday rejected Vice President Cheney's bid to keep secret all the workings of his energy task force, saying sufficient safeguards were already in place to prevent the disclosure of genuinely privileged information.

The 2 to 1 ruling, by a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, does not in itself order the release of specific information, but it affirms a lower court judge's order seeking documents that would shed light on the membership of the group Cheney assembled more than two years ago to help develop U.S. energy policy. [Washington Post]

New Lords of Africa

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:05:21 GMT

by Saskia Sassen

09 Jul 03

Warlords. They have a bad name but not all they do is bad. Their basic premise is that a good gun is better than a good law. Then there is the horsetrading: you give me oil, I will get you aid for Aids treatment; horsetrading can work when bureaucrats fail. Some warlords are grubby, others are imperial: as in Liberia, the warlord can descend from the heavens and declare it's time for the old order to go. Then there is the domestic warlord: the cowboy or the caudillo, always riding something - a horse, a tank - to an unknown destination.

Although warlordism is not new, it has had to adjust to new settings, like international treaties and whatnot. And it has had to become far more complex and indirect in its horsetrading. Bush is becoming a warlord who can handle it all. Two cases come to mind. One is the current visit to Africa, where Bush wants access to oil and the installation of U.S. military bases and troops to make the region secure against terrorism. The second is the Bush administration's handling of the World Trade Organisation Doha declaration giving poor countries the right to override pharmaceutical patents in public health emergencies. [Guardian/UK]

A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 13:34:39 GMT

by Robert Scheer

08 Jul 03

They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document - now known to be a crude forgery - that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.

What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this 'evidence' of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax. [WorkingForChange]

Is Niger the Smoking Gun? Blair Under Fire as White House Rejects British Intelligence Claiming Iraq Tried to Buy Uranium

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 13:29:07 GMT

by Ben Russell and Andrew Buncombe

09 Jul 03

The White House has dealt a devastating blow to Tony Blair by rejecting as flawed British claims that Saddam Hussein attempted to buy uranium from Africa to restart his nuclear weapons programme.

The Bush administration was in full retreat yesterday with officials admitting that the allegation should not have been included in President George Bush's State of the Union address. The American admission represented the first serious split between London and Washington over the case against Saddam and exploded into a full-scale row in Westminster as Mr Blair told senior MPs that the Government was standing by its story.

Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour backbenchers demanded that Mr Blair release the intelligence behind the allegation to an independent inquiry. [Independent/UK]

Fajita Justice

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 02:57:30 GMT

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]

Who's Paying For Your Fix?

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 02:00:08 GMT

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]

Pinochet Generals Admit Exhumations

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 01:38:17 GMT

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]

Highlights of the Supreme Court's 2002-2003 Term

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 00:44:22 GMT

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]

Report Criticizes Federal Oversight of State Medicaid

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:36:48 GMT

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]

In Postwar Iraq, the Battle Widens

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 14:31:35 GMT

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]

40 Millionaires in US Senate

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 06:26:15 GMT

by Jeremy Johnson

07 Jul 03

At least 40 of the 100 US senators are millionaires, some many times over, according to financial disclosure filings submitted last month. Republicans on the list outnumbered Democrats by a narrow margin of 22 to 18. However, Democratic senators hold the top five spots on the list and eight of the top ten, according to an analysis of the forms by CNN.

These latest financial disclosures underscore the widening gap between the average American and those who claim to represent them in government. Even those congressmen who report a relatively modest net worth are pulling down a salary of $154,700, with leadership positions paying $171,900 annually.

Heading the list is the Massachusetts Democrat and presidential candidate John Kerry, with an estimated net worth of between $164 million and $211 million. He reports holdings in 75 mutual funds, along with two held jointly with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, heiress to the Heinz food company fortune. Assets that she owns independently, which other sources estimate at hundreds of millions more, are not required to be included. [World Socialist Web Site]

Billionaires for Bush

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 06:10:07 GMT

Editorial

02 Jul 03

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Laura Bush have been darting across the country these past few weeks raising money for Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. Bush, who broke all precedent in his 2000 bid by opting out of the presidential public-financing system and the spending limits it imposes, is once again pushing the envelope - and the corporate execs, lobbyists and wealthy individuals he has enriched are sending envelopes back, stuffed with checks. His operatives say he hopes to raise $170 million for next year's primaries - an obscene amount, since he will have no Republican challenger and his Democratic opponents will be held to a $45 million spending ceiling. But they're deliberately lowballing his total. Given the $101 million he raised in 1999-2000 and the unwise doubling (by the reform-hungry McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan squad) of the individual donation limit to $2,000, Bush starts with a potential funding base of $200 million or more.

Nothing like this has happened since the robber barons and the trusts united behind William McKinley's 1896 campaign. [The Nation]

Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 06:03:52 GMT

By Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus

06 Jul 03

Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq.

Wilson, whose 23-year career included senior positions in Africa and Iraq, where he was acting ambassador in 1991, said the false allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger about three years ago were used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

'It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war,' Wilson said yesterday. 'It begs the question, what else are they lying about?' [Washington Post]

Thanks to the Net, Howard Dean Hits the Big Time

Mon, 07 Jul 2003 05:33:04 GMT

by Randolph T. Holhut

06 Jul 03

DUMMERSTON, VERMONT. They aren't laughing anymore.

The people who believed that former Vermont governor Howard Dean was nothing more than a hopeless longshot for the Democratic presidential nomination now know otherwise.

That's because the political pros and the Washington press corps (or as Media Whores Online likes to call them, the 'Beltway Kool Kidz') not only underestimated Dean, they also underestimated the power of the Internet as an organizational and fundraising tool.

Dean pulled off a pair of shockers in recent days. In MoveOn.org PAC's online Democratic presidential primary, Dean crushed the rest of the field. With nearly 320,000 votes cast (or more votes than were cast in the 2000 New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary and Iowa and South Carolina presidential caucuses, combined), Dean won 44 percent of the vote. Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich was second with 24 percent and John Kerry was a distant third with 16 percent.

Considering the voters who cast ballots in the MoveOn primary (myself included) constitute a more liberal electorate than most primary states, it wasn't much of a surprise to see the rest of the field in single digits. John Edwards had only 3 percent of the vote. Dick Gephardt and Bob Graham drew less than 2.5 percent. Carol Moseley Braun (2.21 percent) outpolled Joe Lieberman (1.92 percent) and Al Sharpton finished last at 0.53 percent. [American Reporter]

Look Up Under 'Library Nanny'

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 16:22:56 GMT

by J.R. Labbe

29 Jun 03

The highest court in the land decided last week that libraries can lose government funding if they don't make it harder for patrons to view constitutionally protected material.

Say what?

The Supremes ruled that the federal government -- translation: Congress -- can withhold money from libraries that choose not to install porn blocking computer programs. Attorneys for the libraries had argued -- rightfully -- that the law will turn their clients into censors. They lost anyway. The First Amendment be damned.

Only the naive would think that government hasn't been in the business of social engineering for a long, long time. One look at the tax code reveals that Congress thinks selected behaviors are good for society, so citizens are rewarded for participating in them. Home ownership. Tithing. Not growing certain crops. Growing children.

It also is clear that government has attempted to manipulate behavior by withholding funds from legal activities that it deems unseemly. Must we revisit the issue of National Endowment for the Arts funding and the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit?

Grown people should not have to explain their reading interests to anyone, not even librarians. That much, the high court did recognize. Last week's decision instructs libraries that do install the software to be prepared to disable it 'without significant delay' upon the request of an adult user.

Unfortunately, adult users still have to go to a librarian to ask for access to the entire World Wide Web. How embarrassing.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the Constitution 'does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment.'

Can't that logic be turned around? Is there a right that guarantees you'll never be offended by anything you read or see in a public library? Methinks not. Congress and a majority of Supremes, however, think otherwise. [Star-Telegram]

U.S. Retaliates Over War Crime Immunity Demand

Sat, 05 Jul 2003 19:18:26 GMT

by Bill Vann

05 July 03

In a further bid to place U.S. officials and military personnel beyond the reach of war crimes prosecution, the Bush administration cut off military aid to about 35 countries that failed to meet a June 30 deadline for signing bilateral immunity agreements.

Washington had demanded such deals with all the countries that have signed on to the International Criminal Court (ICC), using the threat of the aid cutoff to impose its will on foreign powers that are considered U.S. allies. At least 90 have reportedly resisted the U.S. blackmail effort. The Bush administration claims that 51 nations have signed immunity agreements, seven of them 'secretly.' [World Socialist Web Site]

130 U.S. Communities Saying No to Repression

Sat, 05 Jul 2003 19:02:19 GMT

by Jim Lobe

05 Jul 03

WASHINGTON. More than 130 communities with a combined population of more than 16 million people in 26 states have passed resolutions directing local police to refrain from using racial profiling, enforcing immigration laws, or participating in federal investigations that violate civil liberties, according to a new report released on the eve of this year's Fourth of July celebrations by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The 23-page report credits Ann Arbor, Michigan, with adopting the first resolution opposing key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, thus setting off a trend that shows no sign of abating. [Common Dreams NewsCenter]

In the Land of Guantanamo

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 07:26:52 GMT

by Ted Conover

29 Jun 03

In the Land of Guantanamo: A surreal society has emerged at the tip of Cuba in which rules are the only common language and prisoners and guards alike feel marooned. [The New York Times Magazine]

There Was a Reason They Called It... The Casino Economy

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 07:02:12 GMT

by Thomas Croft

02 Jul 03

In the last three years, a 'perfect storm' of rising energy costs, record consumer and corporate debt and massive trade and current account deficits joined with unsustainable investment practices, and resulted in an economic collapse. The first recession since 1929 to be primarily caused by over-investment, these 'collateral damage' investing schemes-in overseas boondoggles and sweatshops, extreme mergers, absurd dot-coms and derivative scams-all came home to roost. Enron used all of these investment tricks and more. The corruption scandals of 2001-2 completed the melt-down. Now, the world is probably in a double-dip recession, thanks partly to the scandal and continuing international disruptions.

The problem with casino bets and Russian Roulette is that somebody always loses. [CounterPunch]

Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

Fri, 04 Jul 2003 05:12:14 GMT

by Christopher Scheer

27 Jun 03

Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of war and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been found, nor any documentation of their existence, nor any sign they were deployed in the field.

The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice, is belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.

What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the dozens of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over the past year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the bejeezus out of everybody. [AlterNet]