Power, Corruption, and Deceit
at Xymphora

Giving voice to his nation's anguish, the father of a kidnapped Israeli soldier begged Tuesday for a sign his son is alive.
Amy Teibel/GuardianUK 27.Jun.06

"kidnapped" "abducted" "hostage"

Soldiers who are seized by an enemy are usually considered to have been captured; along with being killed, it's an occupational hazard for a soldier. But Britain's liberal media preferred to use words that misleadingly suggested Cpl. Shalit was a victim, an innocent whose status as a soldier was not relevant to his fate. The Palestinians, as kidnappers and hostage-takers, were clearly not behaving in a legitimate manner.
That this was a deviation from normal usage, at least when applied to Palestinians, is suggested by the following report from the BBC in 2003, when Israel seized Hamas political leader Sheikh Mohammed Taha: "Israeli troops have captured a founder member of the Islamic militant group Hamas during an incursion into the Gaza Strip." This brief "incursion" included the deaths of eight Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and a child, according to the same report.

Jonathan Cook/Media Lens 30.Jun.06

Children of the empire:

Groups such as the National Heart Forum and food and health lobbyists Sustain believe controls must go beyond children's programmes.
Richard Watts of Sustain said: "The statistics show that about 70 per cent of commercials during children's viewing are for food. Of these, something like 80-100per cent are for junk.
"These are the wrong messages to send children at a time when we are seeing an increase in weight problems."
Over the past 10 years, obesity among six-year-olds has doubled and trebled among 15-year-olds. And obesity diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, are now being seen for the first time in children.

Poulter/Daily Mail 27.Mar.06
-
link Wikipedia 01.Jul.06
-
This is somehow resonant of the Iraq/Guantanamo shift that's gathering.
Now that it's over, now that the real, unspoken, mission's accomplished, we'll be allowed to see our immediate demands met.
Troops home, Guantanamo wound down.
Now that it pretty much doesn't mean anything except to the individuals directly affected.
Now that the damage has been done.
And you won't see too many people suggesting much more than that; nothing about what we should say to those whose experience of the invasion and occupation and captivity has been first-hand.
Sorry?
Too bad?
Oh well?
Not that it shouldn't happen but...
The idea that companies, which are really just men hiding behind shields of law and regulation, can be allowed, by law and regulation, to seduce children into ill health, and the best that can be done in response is an effort to prevent them from continuing to advertise directly to the young and impressionable - this is not especially comforting. Important and vital and necessary, but not comforting.

Dr. Mona El-Farra in Gaza:

"she went out ,with her pyjamas , all the residents were out in their night wear, children faces were too pale, some of them were crying hystericaly,the fume filled the place, the flat next door were largely damaged (it is the next to the building that was targeted) where a family with 6 children live, there was large fire, the fire brigades used her flat, to put off the fire, the Ministry of interior building was empty during the attack!!!! the aim was revenge and destroying of the building, I live 150 meters from Hoda place, no body is safe no one is immune"

From Gaza,with Love 01.Jul.06

Surprising news:

A judge on Friday ordered the arrest of Mexico's former President Luis Echeverria for a 1968 student massacre in a surprise move just two days before a presidential election.
The judge ruled that there was enough evidence to support the charge of genocide brought against Echeverria, 84, by special prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo.
-
Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest person, is donating about $37 billion - more than 80 percent of his fortune - to foundations run by his friend Bill Gates and by the Buffett family.
The announcement by the 75-year-old Buffett comes just days after Microsoft Chairman Gates said he would move away from his day-to-day role at the software giant to focus more on charity work, and highlights the close friendship of the world's two richest men.

round and round

...he wore a plastic bracelet bearing the slogan "Not on our watch."

Robert B. Zoellick said today that he will leave his post as the deputy secretary of state and return to the private sector to work with the New York investment bank, Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Zoellick spent about 15 months as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, focusing on a range of diverse diplomatic tasks from Sudan peace talks to strategic talks with China.
[...]
"His extensive knowledge of international affairs will be of great importance to the firm as we continue to expand our business around the world," said Lloyd C. Blankfein, president and chief operating officer of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Hauser/NYTimes 19.Jun.06
-

"He will bring much-needed credibility to the economic message to hard-working Americans," the Democrat Max Baucus said

The head of investment bank Goldman Sachs has been given the green light by the US Senate to be the country's next treasury secretary.
[...]
No opposition was voiced to Paulson during the Senate debate and his nomination has been welcomed by both Democrats and Republicans.
[...]
Paulson is a multi-millionaire, with a personal wealth estimated at $700 million and says he will sell about $500 million of Goldman Sachs stock if confirmed as treasury secretary.

Aljazeera.Net 29.Jun.06

Clarity from the State Dept.:
re: Russian diplomats

QUESTION: Could you also tell us who is physically responsible for protection of foreign diplomatic missions and foreign diplomatic personnel?

MR. ERELI: That would be the Government of -- Iraq is a sovereign country and they're responsible for that issue.

QUESTION: Do you think it needs to be beefed up because your own -- one of your own combat commanders, General Martin Dempsey, in yesterday's Pentagon briefing -- he's responsible for training new Iraqi security forces. I'm quoting from his briefing, "It's just not appropriate yet to be thinking in terms of independent anything in Iraq. They are not independent at this point in time."

Do you think it needs to be beefed up somehow?

MR. ERELI: Well, I don't know if I --

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. ERELI: I don't know if I'd link the two -- these two cases. What Dempsey was referring to, which was, broadly speaking, the training of all of Iraq's security forces -- I mean, he said we're not there yet. Well, clearly, we're not there yet.

Daily Press Briefing
Adam Ereli, Deputy Spokesman
Washington, DC
June 28, 2006
ScoopNZ

Number:

A group of 50 pro-Israel Christian tourists came under attack Wednesday from some 100 residents of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim in Jerusalem.
Three of the tourists and a police officer were wounded in the attack. They received treatment at the scene.
The tourists arrived at Mea She'arim wearing orange T-shirts with the words "Love your neighbor as yourself" printed across them.
-
...a peaceful village bearing the brunt of the Israeli occupation's policies to annex land while undermining the social and economic viability of the Bethlehem governorate. The soon to be built Apartheid wall near Al Khadr will isolate 95% of the village's lands behind the wall. The result will be to push the people of Al Khadr further towards economic ruin and poverty.
-
The Israeli Major General who conducted the government's investigation of the explosion stands by his conclusion that the Israeli military was not involved.
"The investigation focused on six artillery shells fired by the IDF," said the conservative Israel News Agency. "The army says it is certain five landed about 250 metres (820ft) from the beach where the Ghalia family were sitting. One shell apparently misfired, but the explosion which ripped through the Ghalia family's picnic was at least eight minutes afterwards, the army says."
-
Israel has carried out about a dozen air strikes in the territory in recent days as part of a larger offensive aimed at freeing a soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants in Gaza earlier in the week.
-
"Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with two cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney - he had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer...My wife has nine members of her family with cancer."
-
Ninety-five percent of the mostly Fortune 500 companies polled expect to further restrict their retiree health plans over the next five years, and 14 percent plan to stop providing coverage entirely, the survey of 163 companies by benefits consultants Watson Wyatt found.
-
It highlighted a public 2002 UN report that specifically cited the US policy of monitoring suspicious transactions.
The searches involved millions of records held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Belgium-based international cooperative that serves as a clearing house for transactions.
-
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said in a letter to Negroponte that intelligence officials at a June 21 press briefing organized by his office misled journalists about the significance of 500 munitions containing mustard and sarin nerve agents discovered since May 2004
-
"Scientists and climatologists are looking at one another and we're just stunned because no one, even in the 1990s, projected the magnitude of the storms and degree of warming in the Arctic that we are seeing," he said.
Epstein sees a clear pattern: rain has increased in the United States by 7 percent in three decades; heavy rain events of more than 2 inches (5 cm) a day are up 14 percent and storms dumping more than 4 inches (10 cm) a day rose 20 percent.
-
Saturday I joined some volunteers and helped gut the home of one of my best friends. Two months after she finished paying off her mortgage, her one-story brick home was engulfed in 7 feet of water. Because she was under-insured and remains worried about a repeat of the floods, my friend, a grandmother, has not yet decided if she is going to rebuild.
-
Just because we spend $130 billion on a bad idea doesn't mean we can ever get it to work. The latest Bush budget has $10.7 billion for Star Wars, almost twice as much as Homeland Security is spending on customs and border patrol.
The good news is that the North Korean rocket doesn't work, either. The last time they fired a long-range missile, it went 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) and could not put a payload into orbit.
-
Taking up a sensitive issue among religious conservatives, an influential government advisory panel Thursday recommended that 11- and 12-year-old girls be routinely vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices also said the shots can be started for girls as young as 9, at the discretion of their doctors.
-
In the mid-1980s, India's middle class comprised just 10 percent of the population. Today, it's larger than the entire population of the United States and is predicted to grow to 445 million by the end of this decade. For 70 years, Mohandas Gandhi's myopic vision of backward-looking socialism as a template for national advancement was accepted as revealed wisdom by a string of Indian prime ministers, starting with his acolyte, Nehru.
-
In Mexico, as many as 200,000 people gathered Wednesday for the final campaign event for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ahead of Sunday’s election.
-
Standing before stone walls of the centuries-old National Palace, populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador capped his phenomenal run for president by asking a pumped-up crowd of more than 200,000 people to help him put the poor first.

Moscow Blames U.S. for Russian Hostages Death in Iraq

"We are saying openly that it is either governmental institutions or coalition forces that are responsible for order," Safonov told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday.
[...]
First Vice-Speaker of the Russian State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, joined Safonov in blaming the coalition.
"We can see how the coalition forces are 'restoring order'," she said."Every day dozens of innocent people are dying, and now diplomats are geting killed, too. The responsibility for what is going on in Iraq lies upon those who sought mass destruction weapons here, but found nothing," she said.

uruknet/MosNews 27.Jun.06

"The next president of Mexico won't be the lackey of any foreign government," he said

More war - counterattack:

Despite its bluster, mainland China's military is far from being able to launch a massive amphibious invasion across 100 miles of sea to Taiwan's beaches. Instead, a rapid buildup of missiles in Fujian province, opposite Taiwan, would allow Beijing to crush Taiwan's will to resist by attacking its leaders, generals and command networks.
This is a one-shot strategy, because if the Taiwanese resist and the United States makes good on its commitment, as one would expect of it to maintain the credibility of its alliances in East Asia, then the mainland could face defeat.

Fullbrook/AsiaTimes 28.Jun.06

Molly Ivins:

"I say no. I say Karl Rove doesn't make timing mistakes. This administration thoroughly believes the media and the people have a collective recollection of no more than one day. Five days of cut'n'run, one day off and BAM, you get your own cut'n'run plan out there."

War:

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has not had a successful flight intercept test with its Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) system for three and a half years. In the most recent two flight-intercept tests, the interceptor never got off the ground. Nevertheless the GMD system is being deployed in Alaska and California. The MDA plans 20 or 30 more developmental flight-intercept tests before they will be ready for realistic operational testing. At the current rate of success it could take over 50 years before the system was ready to be tested under realistic operational conditions.

Phillip Coyle III

David Isenberg/Asia Times

"So the way I read the picture is that Chavez has over played his hand, and people in the region are recognizing it. But look he still has a lot of oil money and a lot of influence. But I think it's a very encouraging sign as part of the general development in this region that Latin American countries are standing up for their own democracy."

Press Conference at the General Assembly of the Organization of American States by the astonishing Robert B. Zoellick, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
ScoopNZ 07.Jun.06

"My husband died of AIDS. I knew we should use a third-leg sock"
-The programs described below illustrate some of the strategies that family planning, reproductive health, and women's organizations have developed to address various sexual health and gender issues in developing countries.

Reproductive Health Outlook (RHO)

PATH
-

Lessons learnt from the Sonagachi Project, India
-
coverage of the social, economic and political aspects of HIV and AIDS in developing countries - eldis
-
"Ten years ago, 1 percent of women in South Africa had contracted HIV; today the number is 25 percent. These women are living a nightmare, but we in rich countries are the ones who have to wake up. We need to develop prevention tools that can give women a chance to defend themselves."
Melinda Gates

"the prospects for long-term energy production in Venezuela, Ecuador and Mexico are currently at risk"

"People are just kind of weird with water"

Dept. of Unconscious Plagiarism:

This bit of sarcastic commentary would appear to have been lifted, unintentionally, from the George Saunders piece My Amendment (The New Yorker 08.Mar.04) - since reencountered in his book of short stories, In Persuasion Nation, which also contains the small masterpieces Christmas, and, most especially, 93990.
The author apologizes for any ensuant misattributed honor.

I know you are, but what am I?

Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, an organization that has received over $390,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. This afternoon on Fox, Burnett compared watching Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, to watching a movie by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to learn about Nazi Germany.
-
...leading the charge against Byrd, including Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, chief deputy majority whip and the House's only Jewish Republican; Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the Senate's third-ranking Republican.
Cantor issued a statement declaring that Byrd "should be ashamed to invoke the name of Adolf Hitler in his partisan attacks." The Virginia Republican accused Byrd of trivializing the Holocaust and of committing "a terrible offense to the American people and our way of life."

"...on May 26 U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "certified" to Congress that the Colombian government and armed forces were continuing to meet statutory criteria for fulfilling U.S. requirements related to human rights for receiving American assistance.

Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, pointed out that despite strong evidence of human-rights abuses and collusion to commit crimes, the United States had repeatedly certified that Colombia's armed forces were meeting human-rights conditions on military assistance. "This time," he said, "the United States certified Colombia's compliance with the conditions without even mentioning the alarming reports of an increase in extra-judicial executions by the army, the army's killing of 10 anti-narcotics police officers, and serious allegations of torture in military training."

Maria Cristina Caballero/Providence Journal/CommonDreams 25.Jun.06