— Theodore Roosevelt
(See “Mines and Bitter Communities”, below.)
— John Muir
A groundbreaking research project has mapped the US government’s global kidnap and secret detention programme, shedding unprecedented light on one of the most controversial secret operations of recent years.
The interactive online project – by two British universities and a legal charity – has uncovered new details of the way in which the so-called extraordinary rendition programme operated for years in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to avoid detection in the face of growing public concern.
The Rendition Project website is intended to serve as a research tool that not only collates all the publicly available data about the programme, but can continue to be updated as further information comes to light.
Data already collated shows the full extent of the UK’s logistical support for the programme: aircraft associated with rendition operations landed at British airports more than 1,600 times.
Although no detainees are known to have been aboard the aircraft while they were landing in the UK, the CIA was able to refuel during operations that involved some of the most notorious renditions of the post-September 11 years, including one in which two men were kidnapped in Sweden and flown to Egypt, where they suffered years of torture, and others that involved detainees being flown to and from a secret prison in Romania.
The database also tracks rendition flights into and out of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Islands, and suggests that flight crews enjoyed rest-and-recreation stopovers on the Turks and Caicos Islands. Both are British overseas territories.
The Rendition Project is the result of three years of work, funded by the UK taxpayer through the Economic and Social Research Council, by Ruth Blakeley, a senior lecturer at the University of Kent, and Sam Raphael, a senior lecturer at Kingston University, working with Crofton Black, an investigator with the legal charity Reprieve.
“By bringing together a vast collection of documents and data, the Rendition Project publishes the most detailed picture to date of the scale, operation and evolution of the global system of rendition and secret detention in the so-called war on terror,” said Blakeley.
Raphael said: “The database makes a major contribution to efforts to track CIA rendition flights, and provides the clearest picture so far of what was going on. It also serves as an important tool for investigators, journalists and lawyers to delve into in more detail.”
Black added: “The Rendition Project lays bare the inner workings of the logistics network underlying the US government’s secret prison programme. It’s the most accurate and comprehensive resource so far published.”
The data includes details on 11,006 flights by aeroplanes linked to the CIA’s rendition programme since 2002. Of those, 1,556 flights are classed as confirmed or suspected rendition flights, or flagged as “suspicious”, depending on the strength of the supporting evidence surrounding each.
The researchers have also confirmed 20 “dummy” flights within the data: flight paths logged with air traffic controllers, but never taken. Instead, the planes took a different route to different airports along the way, to pick up or drop off a detainee. About a dozen more flight paths are marked as possible dummy flights.
The website also weaves together first-hand testimony of detainees of their mistreatment within the secret prisons; the layout and conditions of the facilities; the movements of detainees across the globe; and documents that detail outsourcing to corporations that offered logistical support, from flights to catering and hotel reservations. In some cases, it is unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.
The project also brings to light new information on the methods used to avoid detection of rendition flights, particularly as journalists became aware of the programme. The project highlights “tarmac transfers” – occasions on which two planes involved in rendition met on remote airfields. The researchers believe these occasions were used to transfer detainees from one plane to another, making their rendition route far more difficult to track.
Among the prisoners who appear to have been switched from one aircraft to another in this way is Abu Faraj al-Libi, who is currently being held at the Guantánamo detention camp in Cuba. After being captured in Pakistan in May 2005, he appears to have been flown to Afghanistan, where he was switched to another aircraft and taken to Bucharest.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/17556-us-global-kidnapping-illustrated
Why does the government give the big banks a better deal than it gives students?
It’s [a] question so perfect that people can’t stop talking about it.
The first standalone bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) would not only prevent student loan rates from doubling, it would cut them down to the same rate the Fed charges banks to borrow money overnight for the next 12 months. And the idea has taken off like wildfire, with more than 400,000 people signing on to support the legislation.
Many – including Campaign for America’s Robert Borsage, who calls it “a subsidy in America’s future” – are praising Warren’s temporary proposal as a perfect short-term bailout for graduates who are suffering disproportionately in our slow recovery.
But “serious” policy minds aren’t pleased, and are trying to trigger a backlash against Warren’s proposal.
“Sen. Warren’s proposal should be quickly dismissed as a cheap political gimmick,” writes the Brookings Institution’s Matthew M. Chingos and Beth Akers. [And mind you, Brookings is a supposedly liberal think tank. -- Editor]
“With that mix of populist rhetoric and subterfuge, Senator Warren stands to whip up a mob of angry students (and pundits) who will demand that the government drop the interest rate on student loans to 0.75 percent,” Yahoo! Finance’s Jason Delisle. “Good luck reasoning with a mob.”
Getting a mob interested in student loan debt is exactly what Warren intended to do – and it’s working.
With more than one trillion dollars in student loan debt, the economy is increasingly stifled by the burden on young people coming to age in the midst of the Great Recession. Immediate and decisive action is necessary.
“According to the Federal Reserve Board of New York, the share of student loan balances 90 or more days delinquent surged to 11.7 percent in the last two quarters—three percentage points higher than the same time last year—elevating student loans, for the first time, to the ignominious distinction of having a worse repayment rate than credit cards,” writes The Century Foundation’s Benjamin Landy.
And now New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand has a longer-term fix in mind that could help students at the expense of private lenders, according to the Huffington Post:
Debtors with high interest rates on their federal student loans would refinance into cheaper loans under proposed legislation to be unveiled this week, in a move that would lower borrowers’ burdens and potentially hurt private lenders and investors.
The plan sponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) would force the U.S. Secretary of Education to automatically refinance most government loans carrying interest rates above 4 percent into fixed, 4-percent loans. Roughly 9 of 10 federally backed loans would be affected, saving nearly 37 million borrowers billions of dollars in annual interest payments.
“At a time when corporations, homeowners and even local governments are refinancing at historically low interest rates and saving millions of dollars, students and families who take out loans to pay for college are getting left behind,” Gillibrand said. “Ensuring that our graduates are not saddled with unmanageable debt by keeping interest rates low is just common sense.”
The Center for American Progress estimates that Gillibrand’s bill would save borrowers about $14.5 billion off their student loan payments, boosting U.S. economic activity by $21.7 billion.
And thanks to Warren’s incredibly popular proposal, a simple financing bill seems moderate and entirely sensible.
The new senior senator from Massachusetts has effectively shifted the debate from whether we should help students to how much should we help them.
Native American tribal elders from Bad River and Red Cliff held a drum ceremony this weekend calling upon the spirits to offer guidance in their fight against a proposed iron mine in northern Wisconsin.
Deep in the woods along the Potato River, a small group of tribal elders, members and non-native people gather around a drum created to protect the Bad River community from the proposed iron mine in the Penokee Hills.
Surrounded by the smell of burning sage, Red Cliff Tribal Legend Teller Tony DePerry leads a prayer in his native tongue.
It was then time to sing, with DePerry ad-libbing songs he says are borrowed from the spirits.
“One of the things that I’ve been hearing — that the drum was talking about — is we’ve got to stop the ignorance, the disrespect, the dishonor and the displaying of ownership because you know, we don’t call it ownership, we call it sharing: we call this land our home.”
DePerry says with these ceremonies non-native people can experience how sacred nature is to them and why they fear how the mine might affect them.
Bad River Tribal Elder Bing Lemieux says the spirits told him in a dream to make this drum to protect his community from the mine.
“We were told to make this and this is how we fight now. We’re calling in more than us and we do have other people now who are beginning to think like us and wanting to take care of our environment rather than tear it up.”
Lemieux says he and other tribal people are disappointed with lawmakers in Madison for not listening to them.
And, while some will fight the mine through protest or civil disobedience, he says they’ll continue their resistance through education, prayer and song.
1+-Minute Audio and Photo: http://news.wpr.org/post/indian-tribal-elders-hold-drum-ceremony-opposing-iron-mine
At the same time, populist politicians, grassroots activists, and numbers-based wonks are lining up behind a new idea: expanding Social Security benefits.
The vast majority of Americans think Social Security benefits should be increased, and the wealthy should pay more in taxes to do it. Now, people in power are starting to agree.
Red and purple state senators like Mark Begich (D-AK) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) have introduced bills that would expand Social Security benefits by as much as $800 per recipient, per year. They accomplish this by changing the way benefits are calculated and by finally making millionaires and billionaires pay the same rate of Social Security taxes the rest of us pay.
What’s more, respected analysts like Ezra Klein and the New America Foundation have directly confronted the long-time consensus in Washington, D.C., by making the case for expanding Social Security benefits.
More than 100,000 people have already signed a petition from Social Security Works endorsing Sen. Harkin’s bill.
This is all just the beginning. The tide has turned, and now we are on offense.
Keep fighting,
The crowd inside the state North Carolina Legislative Building has grown larger each Monday as has the number of demonstrators arrested by General Assembly police.
The Rev. William Barber, the head of the state NAACP and chief architect of the weekly Moral Monday demonstrations in the capital city, watched from behind the police line on Monday evening as demonstrators united in message to the GOP-led General Assembly waited to be walked out by the approaching officers.
The chanting, songs and political speeches that had rumbled through the second-floor rotunda were muted by the repeated zip, zip, zip of General Assembly police pulling out plastic ties to bind the wrists of the protesters.
Rep. John Blust, a Republican from Guilford County, peeked in on the demonstration and had words for the organizers within earshot.
“People have the right to voice their opinions, but they don’t have the right to force them on others,” Blust said before walking away.
After Blust had gone down an office corridor that law enforcement officers said was off limits to the public, Barber responded to a small group nearby watching the arrests.
“The reality is you shouldn’t be arrested for praying in the General Assembly,” Barber said noting the many clergy in the crowd. He described the growing demonstrations as “a movement” that had national implications.
The demonstrators offered wide-ranging and sweeping complaints – from the decision to overturn the Racial Justice Act to the changes, to the public education systems that direct more public money to private schools, to the refusal to expand the federal Medicaid program and more.
“If you change the South, you change the nation,” Barber said.
Since April 29, nearly 160 people have been arrested while protesting at the Legislative Building. The first Moral Monday demonstration brought 17 arrests, the next brought 30, then 49. This week, General Assembly police took nearly 60 protesters to the Wake County Detention Center, where they will be jailed briefly and given a date to appear in court. The official number of arrests Monday was not available at press time.
The first wave of protesters are scheduled to appear in Wake County court on June 24, but lawyers representing some of them plan to challenge the authority of the General Assembly police to charge the demonstrators with trespassing, disorderly conduct and failure to disperse during a peaceful demonstration.
The courts will be asked to weigh whether the demonstrators’ First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably and petition their lawmakers were violated by a General Assembly police force citing building rules not encoded in state statute as their basis for arrest.
Jeff Weaver, chief of the General Assembly law enforcement agency, said his aim is public safety. He gives the demonstrators a brief time inside the building to voice their concerns, then calls out that they have five minutes to disperse or risk arrest.
Sara Loeppert, a Raleigh resident, watched from a third-floor balcony as officers walked the arrested demonstrators toward an elevator below. She, like many in the crowd, had come not only to voice her opposition to the new direction the Republicans are taking the state, but to support those who were arrested.
“It’s a moral obligation as a Christian to defend people who are poor, to defend people from these callous laws they’ve passed,” Loeppert said. “I think more ministers need to be promoting this from the pulpit.”
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/17545-is-north-carolina-the-next-wisconsin
MILWAUKEE – Today the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced major new citations against Palermo Villa, Inc. Members of the Palermo Workers Union expressed alarm over the continued disregard for the safety of workers at the Milwaukee pizza factory, anger at the revelation that Palermo’s covered up years of injuries dating to 2008, and concern for potential dangers to the broader community. Click here to view the OSHA citations.
The news comes in the immediate aftermath of a reported amputation at the factory on May 7th, involving a 21-year old Burmese man who lost three fingers, in yet another machinery accident at Palermo’s.
“Dangerous working conditions at Palermo’s drove us to seek union recognition and the ability to address safety issues without fear of reprisal,” said Cesar Hernandez, a Palermo Worker Union member who previously suffered a partial amputation at the factory.
“Union representation would enable workers to establish our own workplace safety committees and address the safety issues that we know are serious, even if Palermo’s is unwilling to do so.”
The new citations issued by OSHA carry fines totaling $38,500. These include seven “serious” violations and one “Other-than-serious” violation for process safety violations surrounding the ammonia refrigeration system. OSHA defines a “serious” violation as existing “when the workplace hazard could cause an accident or illness that would most likely result in death or serious physical harm”.
Ammonia is a deadly gas that in large quantities can cause mass casualties. It is often used in food production for refrigeration and freezing. Palermo’s refrigeration system was expanded in 2011, according to the citations.
“Palermo’s is located less than a mile from Miller Park,” said Hernandez. “It’s of great concern that the surrounding community could be threatened with potentially catastrophic safety hazards.”
In addition to the numerous citations, the OSHA letter exposed that Palermo’s hid information about injuries that should have been provided. In a cover letter to Giacomo Fallucca that accompanies the OSHA citations, dated May 17, 2013, OSHA criticized the Palermo’s president and CEO for redacting injury details from a federally required injury log for the period between 2008 and 2011.
OSHA called upon Fallucca specifically to “immediately provide the original requester copies of the un-redacted OSHA logs.”
“Everyone who was injured earned the right to at least have what happened to them investigated and analyzed, rather than swept under the rug as though these injuries never happened,” said Steve Sallman, a health and safety specialist with the United Steelworkers.
“Furthermore, the tragic amputation earlier this month may have been prevented if Palermo’s had not suppressed employees’ lawful efforts to address health and safety issues by forming a union.”
OSHA is now the second federal agency to find Palermo’s guilty of violating federal law. The National Labor Relations Board found in November 2012 that Palermo’s threatened and retaliated against workers who sought union recognition and ordered 11 workers reinstated with back-pay, but Palermo’s has yet to comply with this order.
There are various reasons you might not care about the Obama administration’s spying on journalist James Rosen and labeling him a “co-conspirator and/or aider and abettor” in an espionage case.
Liberals may not be particularly bothered because the targeted journalist works for Fox News. Conservatives may not be concerned because of their antipathy toward the news media generally. And the general public certainly doesn’t have much patience for journalists’ whining.
But here’s why you should care — and why this case, along with the administration’s broad snooping into Associated Press phone records, is more serious than the other supposed Obama administration scandals regarding Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service. The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.
To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based. Guns? Privacy? Due process? Equal protection? If you can’t speak out, you can’t defend those rights, either.
Beyond that, the administration’s actions shatter the president’s credibility and discourage allies who would otherwise defend the administration against bogus accusations such as those involving the Benghazi “talking points.” If the administration is spying on reporters and accusing them of criminality just for asking questions — well, who knows what else this crowd is capable of doing?
When Rosen and I covered the Bush White House together a decade ago, I knew him as a scrappy reporter who had a fascination with Watergate trivia. He later wrote a sympathetic biography of John Mitchell, Nixon’s disgraced attorney general. Now he’s learning just how abusive a Justice Department can be, from an administration that has launched more leak prosecutions than all previous administrations combined.
My Post colleague Ann E. Marimow, who broke the Rosen story, obtained the affidavit by FBI agent Reginald Reyes seeking access to Rosen’s private e-mails. In the affidavit, Reyes stated that “there is probable cause to believe that the reporter has committed or is committing a violation” of the law against national security leaks. The affidavit detailed how the FBI had monitored Rosen’s comings and goings from the State Department and tracked his various phone calls with the suspected leaker, analyst Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.
The administration snoops had spied on Rosen enough to know of his Watergate hobby: his Gmail address named for the Nixon aide who installed the secret taping system, and Rosen’s “clandestine communications plan” (a modern-day version of Bob Woodward’s fabled flowerpot) in which an e-mail containing one asterisk meant Rosen should contact Kim.
Rosen’s supposed crime? Reyes got his evidence from an e-mail from the reporter: “I want to report authoritatively, and ahead of my competitors, on new initiatives or shifts in U.S. policy, events on the ground in [North Korea], what intelligence is picking up, etc. . . . I’d love to see some internal State Department analyses. . . . In short: Let’s break some news, and expose muddle-headed policy when we see it, or force the administration’s hand to go in the right direction, if possible.”
That is indeed compelling evidence — of good journalism.
And how did Rosen commit this crime? Kim told investigators Rosen is a “very convincing, persistent person” who “would tell me I was brilliant and it is possible I succumbed to flattery.”
Only in this Justice Department could flattery get you a prison term.
President Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, told reporters that there must be a “balance” between a free press and leaks that “can endanger the lives of men and women in uniform and other Americans serving overseas.”
True, but the 2009 reports that prompted the probe confirmed what was already conventional wisdom, that Kim Jong Un was likely to replace his father, Kim Jong Il, as North Korea’s leader, and that there were worries that North Korea would respond to new sanctions by launching a third nuclear test. As it happens, the intelligence was wrong, and Pyongyang didn’t launch another test at the time.
Carney told the White House press corps Tuesday that Obama doesn’t think “journalists should be prosecuted for doing their jobs” (perhaps he could remind the FBI of that), and the administration has renewed its support for a media shield law (a welcome but suspicious gesture, because the White House thwarted a previous attempt to pass the bill).
If Obama really is “a fierce defender of the First Amendment,” as his spokesman would have it, he will move quickly to fix this. Otherwise, Obama is establishing an ominous precedent for future leaders whose fondness for the First Amendment may not be so fierce.
Elders and chiefs of at least 10 sovereign nations walked out of a meeting with U.S. State Department officials in Rapid City, South Dakota, on Thursday May 16 in which the government was attempting to engage in tribal consultation over the Keystone XL pipeline.
Deeming the meeting “invalid,” leaders of the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Association – attendees included the Southern Ponca of Oklahoma, Pawnee Nation, Nez Perce Nation, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Ihanktonwan Dakota Yankton Sioux, Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and Crow Creek Sioux Tribe – said they would meet only with President Barack Obama to discuss the pipeline.
The Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association is made up of the 16 tribal chairmen, presidents and chairpersons in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska who have joined to defend treaty rights, according to the group. In January they along with other tribes signed the International Treaty to Protect the Sacred Against the Tar Sands.
Keystone XL would carry up to 800,000 barrels daily of viscous crude known as bitumen from the Alberta oil sands of Canada for 1,700 miles down to the Gulf of Mexico coast in Texas. Obama is slated to make a decision on the $7 billion project sometime this year, perhaps as early as the end of summer.
The chiefs join the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), which two weeks ago released its public comments on the pipeline’s draft environmental assessment report, recommending that the Obama administration reject the pipeline proposal from TransCanada if certain concerns could not be adequately addressed.
The state department received more than a million public comments by the April 22 deadline, which was coincidentally Earth Day, most of them against the project.
The government’s own Environmental Protection Agency has weighed in against the environmental draft report, which was released on March 1. On April 22 the EPA objected to the review, saying more study was needed of greenhouse gas emissions, the potential effect of spills, and the route through ecologically sensitive territory, the Washington Post reported.
They contended that tribes had not been consulted as the report stated they had, and took issue with the report’s assessment that the pipeline would have little to no impact on climate change.
“The standard for consultation with indigenous nations is described as ‘government to government,’ and that standard must not be treated lightly,” said Jennifer Baker, a Denver-based attorney who works with the Great Plains tribes, to Native News Network after the chiefs’ walkout. “The duty to engage with tribes in this manner stems from treaties and the constitution, and it has been expanded upon through court decisions and executive orders.”
Consultation or no, the Native leaders who left the meeting issued a statement objecting on multiple grounds.
“On this historic day of May 16, 2013, ten sovereign Indigenous nations maintain that the proposed TransCanada/Keystone XL pipeline does not serve the national interest and in fact would be detrimental not only to the collected sovereigns but all future generations on planet earth. This morning the following sovereigns informed the Department of State Tribal Consultation effort at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, SD, that the gathering was not recognized as a valid consultation on a ‘nation to nation’ level,” they said.
The chiefs who walked out were the Southern Ponca, Pawnee Nation, Nez Perce Nation, and members of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires People), including Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, Ihanktonwan Dakota (Yankton Sioux), Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Oglala Sioux Tribe, Standing Rock Tribe, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.
“Eventually all remaining tribal representatives and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers left the meeting at the direct urging of the grassroots organization Owe Aku,” the chiefs said in their statement. “Owe Aku, Moccasins on the Ground, and Protect the Sacred are preparing communities to resist the Keystone XL pipeline through Keystone Blockade Training.”
On March 14, 2009, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Nina Buckhalter gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She named the child Hayley Jade. Two months later, a grand jury in Lamar County, Mississippi, indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming that the then-29-year-old woman “did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence.”
The district attorney argued that methamphetamine detected in Buckhalter’s system caused Hayley Jade’s death. The state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on April 2, is expected to rule soon on whether the prosecution can move forward.
If prosecutors prevail in this case, the state would be setting a “dangerous precedent” that “unintentional pregnancy loss can be treated as a form of homicide,” says Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a nonprofit legal organization that has joined with Robert McDuff, a Mississippi civil rights lawyer, to defend Buckhalter. If Buckhalter’s case goes forward, NAPW fears it could spur a wave of similar prosecutions in Mississippi and other states.
Mississippi’s manslaughter laws were not intended to apply in cases of stillbirths and miscarriages. Four times between 1998 through 2002, Mississippi lawmakers rejected proposals that would have set specific penalties for damaging a fetus by using illegal drugs during pregnancy. But Mississippi prosecutors say that two other state laws allow them to charge Buckhalter. One defines of manslaughter as the “killing of a human being, by the act, procurement, or culpable negligence of another”; another includes “an unborn child at every stage of gestation from conception until live birth” in the state’s definition of human beings.
The cause of any given miscarriage or stillbirth is difficult to determine, and many experts believe there is no conclusive evidence that exposure to drugs in utero can cause a miscarriage or stillbirth. Because of this, prosecuting Buckhalter opens the door to investigating and prosecuting women for any number of other potential causes of a miscarriage or stillbirth, her lawyers argued in a filing to the state Supreme Court—”smoking, drinking alcohol, using drugs, exercising against doctor’s orders, or failing to follow advice regarding conditions such as obesity or hypertension.” Supreme Court Justice Leslie D. King also raised this question in the oral arguments last month: “Doctors say women should avoid herbal tea, things like unpasteurized cheese, lunch meats. Exactly what are the boundaries?”
Laws that criminalize hurting or killing fetuses are pitched as ways to protect pregnant women from abuse but are often used to prosecute those same women, NAPW says. The group has documented more than 400 cases across the country in which these laws have been used to detain or jail pregnant women … Earlier this year, Mississippi’s neighbor to the east, Alabama, set its own precedent for prosecuting pregnant women for drug use. In January, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld convictions against two women—Amanda Kimbrough and Hope Ankrom—for “chemical endangerment” of a child, under a 2006 law that was written to punish people who expose children—not fetuses—to illegal drugs. Kimbrough gave birth prematurely to a baby boy who died shortly thereafter; she was charged after testing positive for meth. Ankrom gave birth to a healthy baby boy, but she was charged after he was found to have marijuana and cocaine in his system.
In Mississippi, Diaz-Tello says, “we’re trying to avoid another ruling like Alabama.” The decision in Buckhalter’s case is expected to influence a second pending case in the state against Rennie Gibbs, a young woman charged with “depraved heart murder” after a experiencing a stillbirth in 2006, at age 16. A medical examiner claimed a small amount of cocaine, found during the autopsy, caused the death. Gibbs’ case is supposed to go before a trial court later this year.
Buckhalter’s lawyers contend that both Buckhalter and Gibbs are collateral damage in the abortion wars in Mississippi, one of the most anti-abortion states in the country. A 2011 state ballot measure there would have granted full rights to fertilized eggs, making all abortions illegal all the time. That measure failed, but abortion foes have pledged to try again in 2015, and lawmakers are working hard to close the state’s last remaining abortion clinic. Charging a woman with manslaughter for using drugs while pregnant is just a backdoor way of establishing legal “personhood” for fetuses, says Diaz-Tello.
But as McDuff pointed out in oral arguments before the Supreme Court last month, even the state’s law defining homicide as including the killing of a child at “every stage of gestation” includes a specific exemption for women seeking a legal abortion. If a woman can legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy, he argued, how can she be jailed for unintentionally ending a wanted one?
Perhaps the most perverse impact of prosecuting Buckhalter, her lawyers say, is that it could lead to more abortions …
Read the Rest: Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages | Mother Jones.
SUGAR LAND, TX—Shortly after reports surfaced today that the Boy Scouts of America had voted to lift its ban on gay youths, local homosexual child Max Lovell, 14, told reporters that he was looking forward to joining the organization and finally being ridiculed for another thing.
“This is great. I get made fun of every day for being gay, but now I’ll be called a dork, too,” said the enthusiastic Lovell, who is routinely taunted for being homosexual but will now endure everything from light ribbing to vicious name-calling based on his affiliation with the outdoor-preparedness youth group. “It’s perfect because I’ve been looking for a second thing to get mocked for, and Boy Scouts seems like a great fit. I think it’ll really open me up to a whole new batch of cutting insults.”
Lovell added that he also “can’t wait” to see what his peers will do when he joins the eighth-grade marching band in the fall.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/gay-kid-excited-to-be-made-fun-of-for-second-thing,32562/
Remember the phrase “good union job”? In contrast to the contingent fragile world of retail, service and fast food, a good union job is the sort union coal miners have. At least that’s what thousands of veteran union miners thought, until suddenly last summer, they discovered that just like some Walmart sub-contractee, a boss they’d never worked for was trying to break their contract.
Contracts are the heart of “good union jobs.” The work may not be glamorous, but the contract gives workers a fair shake. Through collective bargaining, they’re able to cut a deal, and in the case of coal miners, that deal is a matter of life and death. Talk to any miner’s wife and she’ll tell you she worries every minute he’s underground, but once he hits the surface, and if he makes it to retirement, at least he and the family will have “Cadillac” coverage. That’s what they’ve won, in exchange for spending their lives digging rock out of the underside of a mountain in the dark, so the rest of us can run our factories, or turn our lights on.
Living wages, basic safety protections, and guaranteed quality healthcare for life. That’s the deal the union fought for, and after 120 years in existence, complete with coalfield wars from Colorado to Harlan County, that’s the deal the venerable United Mineworkers of America was able to extract from American coal companies.
As union leaders explained in a recent informational video, the UMWA extracted decades of those contracts with Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. The companies signed, the miners worked, and the contracts, and the profits piled up, until we hit era of extreme corporate hubris, which is to say, the turn of this century.
At the same time that companies like Apple and Google were figuring out how to avoid paying tax by moving to tiny exotic islands (or Ireland), and banks and mortgage companies were coming up with derivatives and bundled assets, big coal companies, like Peabody and Arch found that by spinning off smaller companies they could rearrange their responsibilities and their liabilities. One of those smaller companies was Patriot Coal. In 2007 The Patriot Coal Corporation was created by Peabody and acquired all the company’s union operations east of the Mississippi. By 2012, Patriot had acquired most of the union mines of Arch Coal too. Their sort of coal mining was in decline, but they sure had a lot of those retired miners’ contracts — and a lot of liability – for thousands of retirees, who’d never worked a day in their life for Patriot.
To no ones surprise but the miners’ and their families, in July 2012, Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy and announced its intention to modify its collective bargaining agreements. The company said it was responding to market declines and trying to survive. Just like Google and Apple, Peabody and Arch say everything they did was legal. The union accused Peabody and Arch of intentionally setting up a shell to dump their union pensions. Now a federal judge in Patriot’s hometown of St Louis has until May 29th to decide if Patriot’s bankruptcy plan is valid.
Jim Hall is a retired union miner. Twenty-four years ago, when the Pittston Coal company tried to stop paying retiree health benefits, he and his wife along with thousands of other UMWA families went on strike on behalf of their fathers and uncles and the generation before them. “I was working then. The struggle was about the retirees,” said Hall last month. “Now I’m retired and I know what it means to need good healthcare. I’ll do anything the union asks me to.” “And so will I” said Shirley. The couple has already traveled out of state from their home in Castlewood VA, to join a Patriot protest.
”What’s at stake at Patriot is the union,” says Jan Patton, now approaching her 90s, a miner’s widow in Clincho VA. “I know what a difference the union makes because I watched what my father and grandfather went through before they had one.”
This spring, their benefits on the chopping block once more, miners and their supporters have been lying down in the streets again, but this time in front of the federal court house in St. Louis. The protests are barely registering in the media.
Cecil Roberts, the President of the UMWA, who was a leader in the Pittston strike was one of a dozen protestors arrested in St. Louis in the latest peaceful protest Monday. Rev. Lewis was arrested in a protest late last month.
“In comparison to 1989, I looked over the crowd and saw people much older, weaker, in a weaker environment, economically and in terms of movements,” said Lewis who was recently part of a fact finding mission by religious leaders which produced a report, “Schemes from the Board Room.”
If the plan is approved, the report estimates that more than 23,000 retired miners and their families, will lose their benefits and that lifetime guarantee. The company’s proposing a trust fund instead — it’ll start at $15 million and go up to a maximum of $300 million. That, says the United Mineworkers of America is miserably inadequate. It also sets a dangerous precedent.
What’s happening in St. Louis doesn’t look like a coal-field war but the same things are at stake: reciprocity, respect, fair play. If the companies can break the UMWA, heaven help the fast food workers.
Did you know that Apple Computer has become a foreign entity? Did you know that it’s more Irish than anything else, at least as far as taxes are concerned? Or that it pays very little in income tax, even though its products wouldn’t exist if it not for U.S. taxes?
Apple products were designed in the United States by U.S.-educated individuals and entrepreneurs. (Even Steve Jobs, who famously dropped out of college, said he came up with essential elements of Apple’s product design by auditing courses at Reed College.)
The company’s logo is an apple, which may or may not have been inspired by the Beatles-owned company of the same name. But since then the image has become synonymous with two iconic qualities of this country’s Silicon Valley: creativity and entrepreneurial drive. And what’s more American than apple pie?
Now that the world has seen its tax payments, maybe Apple should change its logo to a shamrock.
(You can tell Apple to pay its fair share of taxes by signing this petition we’re co-sponsoring with Americans for Tax Fairness.)
Who put the “Mac” in “MacBook”?
Even though only 4 percent of its workforce is based in Ireland, and only a small percentage of its profits are earned in that country, Apple recorded 65 percent of its worldwide profits there. Many other “American” companies are also taking advantage of Ireland’s lax tax laws, including Google, Facebook, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup.
We now know that, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “Apple used technicalities in Irish and U.S. law to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion over the past four years.” Sen. Carl Levin described Apple’s bookkeeping as the product of “alchemy” and “ghost companies,” and that’s certainly true as far as the United States is concerned.
A Senate panel concluded that Apple negotiated a deal with the Republic of Ireland whereby it would declare earnings there and pay an ultra-low rate of 2 percent. That arrangement sits atop a corporate tax filing in which, as The New York Times reports, Apple assigns more than $100 billion in profits to overseas subsidiaries.
As the Times also reports, Apple created an entity called Apple Operations International and incorporated it in Ireland. But despite the fact that this entity is purportedly based on the Emerald Isle, it “keeps its bank accounts and records in the United States and holds board meetings in California.”
Apple Operations International gets all the benefit of being an American company, and collects the lion’s share of profits for one of the most profitable companies in the world. And yet it pays a tax rate of only 2 percent.
Man, talk about the “Luck of the Irish”!
OSX-pats
It was a big deal when it looked as if a foreign company might take over Yahoo! But Apple’s expatriation happened without a whisper.
Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a foreign “principal” is defined as “any entity organized under the laws of a foreign country or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.” And if Apple’s a foreign corporation, shouldn’t its lobbyists be forced to report their activities under the Foreign Agents Act?
As a U.S. government website explains
“The purpose of (the Act) is to insure that the U.S. Government and the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.”
That’s worth noting the next time President Obama calls somebody like Tim Cook – or speaks with the CEOs of other non-American companies – to discuss “deficit reduction” with them.
After all, our middle-class economic crisis isn’t Ireland’s problem.
The Evading of the Green
Deal or no deal, even the Irish Apple may be too slippery for that nation’s tax collector. Adds the Times: “Apple Operations International has not filed a tax return in Ireland, the United States or any other country over the last five years.” To invert the old Beatles song, when it comes to taxes Apple is “not here, not there, not anywhere.”
CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook (complain that they can’t “repatriate” their earnings to the United States because our taxes are too high. And yet, remarkably, the Times reported today that much of that money is already here.
“Multinationals based in the United States,” writes the Times, “now hold more than $1.6 trillion in cash classified as ‘permanently invested overseas.’” Permanently overseas? Apple’s $100 billion in offshore profits is managed in Reno, tracked by accountants in Austin, and stored in New York banks.
That’s called having your apple and eating it, too.
unGrateful
U.S. tax dollars funded the creation of the Internet and the many of the design breakthroughs that drive Apple’s tax products. American taxpayers underwrite the agencies that protect Apple’s U.S. assets. They educated most of its workers in Reno, Austin, and New York. They’re paying for the police departments and other agencies that protect Apple’s offices and keep the people inside them safe and healthy.
Too bad Apple Inc. isn’t pulling its weight for all these expenses. You are. Individual taxpayers paid more than $1 trillion in federal income tax in 2011, while corporations paid only $181 billion. Remember those figures the next time they tell you we can’t afford to provide the government services that have helped Americans for generations.
We’re footing the bill for their almost unimaginable success – and the imbalance is getting worse.
Lone Star State of Mind
After Apple made the politically-motivated decision to manufacture one of its product lines (only one) in the United States, it chose Texas as the location. That tells us even more about Apple’s patriotism and loyalty, since Texas is an anti-union state (they call it “Right to Work,” when “Right to Be Underpaid” is more like it) with lax regulatory enforcement.
What’s more, at least one reliable report says there’s a decent chance that the Texas factory will be owned and operated by FoxConn.
That’s right: Apple’s Texas plant could be owned and operated by the Chinese company that was so lax in its safety procedures – with Steve Jobs’ knowledge and approval – that workers there died horribly in fires.
Will manufacturing one of its product lines in the U.S. make Apple an American company again? Hardly. Toyota manufactures nine models here: the Avalon, the Camry, the Camry Hybrid, the Corolla, the Sequoia, the Sienna, the Solara, the Tacoma and the Tundra.
That’s one down, eight to go, before Apple catches up with its inarguably Japanese counterpart.
An Apple Repair We Can Afford
Senators were eager to express their enthusiasm for Apple’s products yesterday, and why not? They’re beautifully designed. I use a couple myself. But Apple’s a for-profit entity. It’s no more generous to its customers than it is to the taxpaying public at large, without whom it couldn’t exist.
If you’ve ever tried to repair an iPhone you know exactly what I mean. The Wall Street Journal says that “Apple earns almost as much from its customers’ butterfingers as it does through corporate tax loopholes.”
Tim Cook is almost certainly telling the truth when he says that Apple complies with all appropriate tax laws. (We’re not so sure he’s right when he says that Apple complies with the “spirit” of those laws, but since that’s intangible and unquantifiable we won’t quibble.)
The law itself is the problem. That’s why we find ourselves in agreement with Sen. John McCain, who said, “We don’t have to wait and have a grand bargain. It’s a cop-out. We all know there are loopholes that are outrageous.”
Closing those loopholes is one Apple repair we can’t afford not to make.
Under Another Flag
We’re not trying to red-bait or vilify Apple or any other multinational company when we say they’re no longer American corporations. We don’t mean they’re “un-American” in the subversive, treacherous, Sen. Joe McCarthy sense. It’s just time to recognize reality: They fly under no flag but their own.
Don’t blame executives like Cook, either. Their fiduciary duty compels them to place profits over people – or patriotism. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit: They’re not bad, their charters are just drawn that way.
We should treat Apple and other formerly American multinationals as neutral entities with whom we can cooperate at times for our mutual benefit. We should encourage them to invest in the United States and hire American workers, as we do with other non-American corporations.
What we shouldn’t do is treat them as U.S. corporations. The very concept is probably obsolete in the multinational arena.
iBorrow
In a final irony, Apple – which is hoarding $145 billion in cash – borrowed $17 billion last month. Why would a company with that much money on hand choose to go billions of dollars into debt?
One reason for the indebtedness is that it’s yet another legal way to avoid paying taxes. But here’s what really gets the Irony Meter trembling: As the New York Times Dealbook blog notes, Apple issued this debt because it was able to obtain “interest rates that hovered near the low-cost debt of the United States Treasury.”
Investors are essentially paying the United States government to borrow their money, because the U.S. Treasury is still one of the safest places to park your money on the planet. Apple’s rates, as you can see from the above, are nearly as good. When debt is this cheap, it’s fiscally irresponsible – literally – not to borrow.
And what was the President calling Tim Cook about? Ways to avoid borrowing more money. That’s how off-kilter our economic debate has become. At these rates the United States government should be smart enough to do what Apple is doing: Borrowing money to fortify its future.
Bringing Apple Back Home
Our government will have more of the money it deserves someday, too, if Apple becomes an American corporation again.
We can’t wait for Tim Cook to do that. In fact, it would be fiscally irresponsible for Cook or any other executive to voluntarily give up more of his company’s income than is legally required. It’s up to our leaders, not corporate executives, to fix this problem.
Let’s hope that yesterday’s Senate hearing means that the process has finally begun.
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130522/apple-pie-is-american-but-apple-computer-isnt-not-anymore
– Chris Hedges
(See “Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide”, below.)
