America Weeps

HuffPo Update: Inside the box

UPDATE & RELATED: UN reports sez 'shut down Gitmo'Link includes link to report download. "The report will be presented to the UN Commission of Human Rights, which authorised the report, at its next session in Geneva on 13 March." (BBC)






From The Sydney Morning Herald

The photos America doesn't want seen
Shame. Shame. Not just on the men and women who did this, and the leaders who allowed it, but most of all, shame on us for looking the other way. It took an Australian paper to get this out into the sunshine.

By Matthew Moore

February 15, 2006
MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Tonight the SBS Dateline program plans to broadcast about 60 previously unpublished photographs that the US Government has been fighting to keep secret in a court case with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Although a US judge last year granted the union access to the photographs following a freedom-of-information request, the US Administration has appealed against the decision on the grounds their release would fuel anti-American sentiment.

Some of the photos are similar to those published in 2004, others are different. They include photographs of six corpses, although the circumstances of their deaths are not clear. There are also pictures of what appear to be burns and wounds from shotgun pellets.

The executive producer of Dateline, Mike Carey, said he was showing the pictures leaked to his program because it was important people understood what had happened at Abu Ghraib.

Seven US guards were jailed following publication of the first batch of Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004.

Mr Carey said he could not explain why the photographs had not yet been published, as he thought it was likely that some journalists had them.

"It think it's strange, maybe they think its more of the same."

Election funny business

Outcome of Florida's 2004 presidential election questioned by watchdog group

By Brian Skoloff
The Associated Press
February 23, 2006, 6:16 PM EST

WEST PALM BEACH -- An examination of Palm Beach County's electronic voting machine records from the 2004 election found possible tampering and tens of thousands of malfunctions and errors, a watchdog group said Thursday.

Bev Harris, founder of BlackBoxVoting.org, said the findings call into question the outcome of the presidential race. But county officials and the maker of the electronic voting machines strongly disputed that and took issue with the findings.

Voting problems would have had to have been widespread across the state to make a difference. President Bush won Florida -- and its 27 electoral votes -- by 381,000 votes in 2004. Overall, he defeated John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory.

BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.

Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.

``I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race,'' Harris added. ``But with that said, there's no way to tell who the votes should have gone to.''

Palm Beach County and other parts of the country switched to electronic equipment after the turbulent 2000 presidential election, when the county's butterfly ballot confused some voters and led them to cast their votes for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The Supreme Court halted a recount after 36 days and handed a 537-vote victory to Bush.

Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper procedures.

``Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained,'' said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor. ``All of these circumstances are valid reasons for concern, but they do not on face value substantiate that the machines are not reliable.''

Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the company's machines worked properly. Sequoia's machines are used in five Florida counties and in 21 states.

``There was a fine election in November 2004,'' Shafer said.

She said many of the errors in the computer logs could have resulted from voters improperly inserting their user cards into the machines. The remaining errors would not affect the vote results because each unit has a backup system, she said.

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections, said she was not aware of the report and had no comment.

Harris said one machine showed that 112 votes were cast on Oct. 16, two days before the start of early voting, a possible sign of tampering. She said the group found evidence of tampering on more than 30 machines in the county.

However, Harris said it was impossible to determine what information was altered or if votes were shifted among candidates.

___

What's the big deal about the UAE and US Ports?

Click on headline for this HuffPo's solid deconstruction why this is a big deal.


In a nutshell:

"A year after Bin Ladin served formal notice of his intention to kill Americans anyhow, anywhere, the CIA appropriately tracked his whereabouts and was prepared to take him out, but was denied the opportunity because of the presence of high-level UAE officials who were socializing with the head of Al Qaeda. Worse, when the United States alerted the UAE of their displeasure with these contacts, the UAE's response was to tip off Bin Ladin and further thwart our efforts to kill him."

And then there's secret deals between the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. (AP via Yahoo!)....

... Bob Dole is a lobbyist for the Dubai state-owned company. (RN&O)...

... a proper review may have been bypassed. (AP via Sun-Sentinel)...

...and it's bringing together Republicans and Democrats together against the Bush White House (AP...

Court Allows Church's Hallucinogenic Tea

I got a feeling Roberts is going to be A-OK.

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A small branch of a South American religious sect may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a ritual intended to connect with God, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In its first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the government cannot hinder religious practices without proof of a "compelling" need to do so.

This is a very important decision for minority religious freedom in this country," said lawyer John Boyd, who represents about 130 U.S. members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal who live in New Mexico, California and Colorado.

The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of the sect, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.

A trial judge found the government's evidence that the drug is harmful was equal in weight to information provided by the sect that said its method of use in tea is not.

Roberts, in writing the opinion for the court, said the government had failed to prove that federal drug laws should outweigh the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Congress passed in 1993 to prohibit burdening a person's exercise of religion.

The Bush administration had argued that the drug in the tea not only violates a federal narcotics law but a treaty in which the United States promised to block the importation of drugs including dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT.

See Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, 04-1084

Port issue pulls together GOP and Dems

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

President Bush's marquee issue, the war on terror, is being turned against him by Democrats and rebelling members of his own party in an election-year dustup over a deal that allows an Arab company to manage major U.S. ports.

People in both parties are suggesting it's another case of Bush seeming to be tone deaf to controversy — on top of government eavesdropping, Katrina recovery and Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

The storm is forcing the president to choose between losing face with the Arab world and embarking on what would be his first veto battle with the GOP-led Congress. And it has enabled Democrats to seemingly outflank him on a key GOP issue: national security.

Has Bush lost his way politically — or at least his touch?

"In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO — but HELL NO," conservative Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., wrote Bush in a terse letter on Wednesday that she also posted on her Web site.

No matter that no American port is actually being sold, Bush faces a spreading rebellion among Republicans, Democrats and port-state governors.

"I think somebody dropped the ball. Information should have flowed more freely and more quickly up into the White House. I think it has been mishandled in terms of coming forward with adequate information," said Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y.

At issue: Bush's strong defense of an arrangement that would put a government-owned United Arab Emirates company in charge of major shipping operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

The deal transferring port management from a British firm to Dubai Ports World has already been approved by both companies and an adminstration review panel.

Despite Bush's assertion that UAE has been one of the most helpful Arab countries in the war on terror, both Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois threatened legislation to put the deal on hold. Bush, in turn, vowed to cast his first veto — if necessary — to stop any such attempt.

"It's a strange thing for Bush to have slipped into, given the savvy you expected from this administration, with a vice president who spent over a decade on Capitol Hill," said Princeton University political scientist Fred Greenstein. "It seems as if his people would have seen that there was potential for trouble, and at least done their homework on the Hill."

Although a veto showdown could still be avoided, port-deal opponents were optimistic they could muster the two-thirds majorities needed to override one. "This deal doesn't pass the national security test. I think it is a mistake," said Rep. Jim Saxton (news, bio, voting record), R-N.J., chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism threats.

Bush learned about the arrangement himself only in recent days amid increasing news coverage, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

While Bush had struck a defiant tone on Tuesday in back-to-back sessions with reporters on Air Force One and outside the White House, McClellan on Wednesday acknowledged Congress should have been briefed earlier "given all the attention that has been focused on this and given the fact that it has been mischaracterized."

The phrase "tone deaf" to describe Bush's interaction with Congress was uttered by lawmakers as politically different as Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joseph Biden, D-Del.

The Dubai Ports deal "is not a national security issue," suggested GOP consultant Rich Galen. "It is an issue of this administration having a continuing problem with understanding how these things will play in the public's mind and not taking steps to set the stage so these things don't come as a shock and are presented in their worst possible light."

With Bush's ratings stuck at about 40 percent, the incident is one more major distraction to his efforts to focus on his second-term domestic agenda.

Syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham was among the conservatives criticizing the deal, asking on her Wednesday program, "How do we know people they're hiring are passing background checks?"

The dispute brought to mind a 1999 flap when conservatives admonished the Clinton administration for acquiesing on Panama's awarding of a contract to a China company, Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, to run ports at both ends of the Panama Canal.

But then, almost all the criticism was from Republicans. Now, it's bipartisan.

"I think there are certain things you have to be really worried about. And one of them is port safety," said Robert O. Boorstein, a senior national security adviser in the Clinton White House.

"You have to call it an increbile tin ear that this administration could do that, with nobody stopping and saying, `excuse me?' said Boorstein, now with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.

Shhh...no leaking or else

UPDATE (March 6ish)

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006; A01

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information,
has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government
sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation
inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters
could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security
Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from
the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that
led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic
surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence
officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies
also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing
even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources
familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether
to approve tougher penalties for leaking.

In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have
already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in
July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case
in Lodi, according to the newspaper.

Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the
incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against
leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense
relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging
reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information,
and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business
risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill
Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I
don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like
the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be
promoting abroad."

below posted back in Feb

Reprint from Secrecy News email blast

CLASSIFICATION LAWS APPLY TO EVERYONE, JUDGE SAYS

>
> In a startling pronouncement that can only heighten tensions between
> the press and the government, a federal judge said last week that
> the laws governing classified information apply to anyone who is in
> receipt of such information, including reporters who are the
> recipients of "leaks."
>
> "Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into
> unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by
> the law," said Judge T.S. Ellis III. "That applies to academics,
> lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."
>
> Judge Ellis's statement came at the conclusion of a sentencing
> hearing for Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst who was
> charged along with two former officials of the American Israel
> Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with felony violations of the
> Espionage Act.
>
> The extraordinary claim that mere possession of classified
> information triggers legal obligations leads to absurd conclusions,
> particularly since anyone who reads the daily newspaper comes into
> "unauthorized possession of classified information."
>
> More importantly, it serves to discourage investigative reporting of
> illegal government activities that happen to be classified.
>
> The provisions of the Espionage Act to which Judge Ellis was
> referring are "in many respects incomprehensible," wrote Harold
> Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. in their definitive1973 study "The
> Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information,"
> Columbia Law Review, May 1973, vol. 73, pp. 929-1087 (Secrecy News,
> 10/19/05).
>
> Judge Ellis's statement was first reported in "Sentence in Franklin
> case sends chill through free-speech community" by Ron Kampeas,
> Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 24.

> Lawrence A. Franklin was sentenced January 20 on three felony
> counts: conspiracy to communicate national defense information to
> persons not entitled to receive it; conspiracy to communicate
> classified information to an agent of a foreign government; and the
> unlawful retention of national defense information. See this
> January 20 news release from the Department of Justice.
>
>
> The prosecution of the two former AIPAC officials who were charged
> with Franklin, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, raises press freedom
> issues with even greater urgency since neither of them, unlike
> Franklin, held a security clearance.
>
> Their attorneys last week filed motions to dismiss the case, but
> those motions are sealed pending a security review.

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? ~ V.I. Lenin

Cartoon Violence

Breaking down Katrina Myths, Popular Mechanics-style

Props to HuffPo for promoing this story

Hella work from the Popular Mechanics team, who spent four months to break this down. Click on Headline to link to the full article. It includes stuff that picks apart bullshit from both the left and the right.

Here's some excerpts...

"Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall."


"Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall. Its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it. Katrina's peak sustained wind speed at landfall 55 miles south of New Orleans was 125 mph; winds in the city barely reached hurricane strength."

"According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the Atlantic is in a cycle of heightened hurricane activity due to higher sea-surface temperatures and other factors. The cycle could last 40 years, during which time the United States can expect to be hit by dozens of Katrina-size storms. Policymakers--and coastal residents--need to start seeing hurricanes as routine weather events, not once-in-a-lifetime anomalies."

"Both public officials and the press passed along lurid tales of post-Katrina mayhem: shootouts in the Superdome, bodies stacked in a convention center freezer, snipers firing on rescue helicopters. And those accounts appear to have affected rescue efforts as first responders shifted resources from saving lives to protecting rescuers. In reality, although looting and other property crimes were widespread after the flooding on Monday, Aug. 29, almost none of the stories about violent crime turned out to be true."

"Anarchy in the streets? "The vast majority of people [looting] were taking food and water to live," says Capt. Marlon Defillo, the New Orleans Police Department's commander of public affairs. "There were no killings, not one murder." As for sniper fire: No bullet holes were found in the fuselage of any rescue helicopter."

"MYTH: "The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that ... went wrong."--Michael Brown, former FEMA director, Sept. 27, 2005
REALITY: When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. ... Tragic exceptions: hospital patients and nursing home residents."

This blogger has a different take on debunking Katrina myths.

And, an earlier post is here.