America In The Third World
Seemingly unrelated articles and editorials; religion, torture, infringement of liberty, theft of public lands, regulation of the internet —American citizens and free folks all over the world are in the fight of their lives. The values we hold most dear are threatened from all sides, including most assuredly, the economic benefits of free enterprise: $9.50 an hour here in Spokane, Washington is about as much as you can hope to earn. Outsource call centers for America Online, and other multi-national companies represent the hiring sources available to the majority of our population.
College is no longer a viable option for most of our high school graduates, so they gravitate to these call centers where they sit for 8+ hours per day with highly regulated 10-minute breaks and half-hour lunches and no opportunity to gain more than another day in the sweat shop atmosphere of any outsource call center in any third-world country anywhere in the known universe.
Approaching lockstep conformity for survival they are increasingly forced into tighter and tighter control by the bosses who fight as if they were administrators in the largest corporations for the one dollar more per hour that they are paid to make sure that conformity is enforced.
Spokane employees are for the most part simple people from what has been an agrarian economy: in other words, farmers’ kids—and the children of the working class—working poor folks to whom $9.50 an hour represents the rent on a cookie-cutter apartment, Walmart clothes for their babies, and perhaps a junker car that is often less than safe transportation. A lot of these kids of the working poor can’t afford the requisite insurance on these same crap cars and so incur heavy fines from the county and state police who hawk the area of the parking lots at shift change in order to issue tickets which these kids can’t pay.
According to the article today in The Washington Post, workers for Delphi in Lockport, New York who are currently making $28.00 per hour are being cut to $9.50 per hour. Predictably, the move toward third-world-izing of America is going forward with absolutely no intervention by Bush and Cronies for the betterment of our country. Instead, these so-called Americans are making sure that the richest stay rich and the poor become even poorer.
The savings and loan debacle of the 1980’s comes to mind: when these formerly high-paid Delphi workers can no longer afford their mortgages, who benefits? When these formerly high-paid Delphi workers can no longer afford car payments, boat payments, whatever—who benefits? Why, Bush and Cronies, of course.
When America is nothing but a land of sweatshops and our people no longer have the pride that high wages bring and the high morale that comes with pride, will we still be able to rise up to defeat these criminals in the White House? Will our votes become even more meaningless than they are now?
We did not vote Bush and other Republicans into office to see our way of life and our country destroyed. We did not vote Bush and other Republicans into the White House complicit in our own demise as a nation of comfortable people to be treated as, and forced into, the mold of third-world-poverty-stricken-masses yearning to be free and rich.
We ARE free and we intend to stay that way. Freedom is primarily economic: the freedom to take our families on vacations, the freedom to live in our own homes, the freedom to buy a new car occasionally rather than watching the richest 1% drive past in limousines while our children do without and without the hope of escaping the grinding poverty of a third world nation. In other words, the freedom of Hope...
Despots be warned: Americans will not tolerate what you are doing to this country: you have been able to hide behind our complacency for a very long time.
We are awakening to your criminal and despotic activities and we will bring you to your knees and into our prisons.
Justice will prevail.
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washingtonpost.com
Group Trains Air Force Cadets to Proselytize
By Alan CoopermanWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, November 12, 2005; A06
A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers, according to a confidential letter to supporters.
The letter makes clear that the organized evangelization effort has continued this year despite an outcry over alleged proselytizing at the academy that has prompted a Pentagon investigation, congressional hearings, a civil lawsuit and new Air Force guidelines on religion.
"Praise God that we have been allowed access by the Academy into the cadet areas to minister among the cadets. We have recently been given an unused classroom to meet with cadets at any time during the day," the husband-and-wife team of Darren and Gina Lindblom said in the Oct. 11 letter to their donors.
Following allegations of religious intolerance at the academy, the Air Force issued interim guidelines in late August that caution senior officers against discussing their faith with subordinates. But the guidelines do not limit "voluntary, peer to peer discussions," and they do not say whether Air Force officials can provide office space or other assistance to professional missionaries who train cadets to evangelize among their peers.
The Lindbloms' letter was made public by Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy alumnus who was a White House lawyer in the Reagan administration. He has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Air Force of violating the First Amendment's establishment clause by fostering evangelical Christianity over all faiths.
Weinstein, who has been joined in the suit by four recent graduates of the academy, said that some other religious groups are allowed onto the academy's campus, but only during certain hours and under close supervision by Air Force chaplains.
"The only group that gets 24/7 unrestricted access to cadets is this fundamentalist, born-again Christian group," Weinstein charged.
The Lindbloms are not chaplains hired by the military. They are private, full-time ministers assigned to the Air Force Academy by the Navigators, a Colorado-based group whose motto is: "To know Christ and to make Him known." It began in 1933 as a ministry to sailors and now has missionaries in 104 countries, according to its Web site.
Reached by telephone at their home in Colorado Springs, the Lindbloms declined to comment on their letter or their missionary work.
Lauren Libby, senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Navigators, said the Lindbloms were assigned to the academy earlier this year, replacing a previous young couple. He said the Navigators have placed full-time staff members at the academy for more than a decade. "We're there as a spiritual resource to cadets," he said. "We've had a very good experience there."
Libby also said that the Navigators are following the Air Force guidelines, which have been criticized as infringing religious freedom by more than 70 members of Congress and several Christian lobbying groups, including Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. "Those are the guidelines, and we honor them," Libby said.
In their letter, the Lindbloms referred several times to the guidelines and to Weinstein's lawsuit, saying that "we are vitally aware we are in the front lines of a spiritual battle."
They included photos of the Navigator Cadet Ministry Team, a group of cadets who "have shown an interest in receiving training and development to have a personal ministry among their peers at the Academy," the letter said.
"Please pray for unprecedented wisdom for Gina and me as we coach these cadets to live among the lost, sharing the Gospel in the midst of this current climate. We must be so careful. Yet we do not wish to squelch the passion of men like Daniel," a cadet who has vowed to "impact the lives of 200 men with the Gospel" before he graduates, Darren Lindblom wrote.
In a postscript, they said, "We respectfully request that you not share this letter publicly. Due to the lawsuit recently filed, the contents of this letter are confidential."
A spokesman for the Air Force Academy said the Navigators are one of 19 outside religious groups -- including Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic and Mormon organizations -- that hold voluntary meetings on Mondays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in a program known as SPIRE, for Special Program in Religious Education.
The groups are invited on campus at the request of cadets, and each is assigned a room, but only for that 90-minute period once a week, said the spokesman, John Van Winkle. "They can't just use the room whenever they want. That would be a violation of the memorandum of agreement they have to sign," he said.
Asked about the Lindbloms' assertion that they recently were given a classroom to "meet with cadets at any time during the day," Van Winkle said he would check. He called back to amend his statement, saying the academy's chaplains had set aside an extra room that any SPIRE group could use for counseling cadets at other times.
Weinstein said the academy was "furiously spinning." He said he had been told by people on campus, whom he declined to identify, that the room was Fairchild Hall 2D11, in the academy's main classroom building, and that only the Navigators have been using it. Van Winkle said he did not know the room number or which other groups had used it.
The Rev. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain who resigned in June over the religious climate at the academy, said the Navigators "used to have an informal agreement that they could meet cadets in the library." But because that location was "too visible," she said, they were told this year not to use it anymore.
Morton said the SPIRE program, which is limited to a few hours a week, should not be confused with the Lindbloms' efforts to be in continual contact with cadets throughout the week. "This Navigator thing is a whole different thing," she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart12nov12,0,4816382.story?track=tothtml
Wal-Mart, Its Foes Turn to Religion
The retailer urges clergy to visit and to serve on committees. The other side plans sermons.
By Abigail GoldmanTimes Staff WriterNovember 12, 2005Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its critics have been fighting for the hearts and minds of the American public, through advertising, media outreach, worker testimonials and public debate. Now the two sides are fighting for souls.The world's largest retailer and its adversaries are hoping to sway religious leaders to their respective causes, seeking to use the clergy's powerful influence to reach flocks that may not respond to mere public relations or media-driven pitches.Wal-Mart has quietly reached out to church officials with invitations to visit its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to serve on leadership committees and to open a dialogue with the company.Across the aisle, one of the company's chief foes, Wal-Mart Watch, this weekend is launching seven days of anti-Wal-Mart consciousness-raising at more than 200 churches, synagogues and mosques in 100 cities, where leaders have agreed to sermonize about what they see as moral problems with the company."They are each probing for weaknesses behind enemy lines," said Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of history at UC Santa Barbara and editor of the forthcoming book "Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism." "The liberals are trying to go into the churches even in conservative Republican neighborhoods. And then Wal-Mart goes into black churches and poor neighborhoods and says, 'Look, on this question, you should be with us because we provide jobs.' "Wal-Mart Watch's religious efforts are part of the group's Higher Expectations Week, a series of nationwide events at churches, clubs, colleges and other organizations that highlight criticism of the retailer. The activities include free screenings of Robert Greenwald's recently released documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," a critical look at how the company, the largest private employer in the U.S., treats workers.Wal-Mart declined to comment on its outreach to clergy. But church leaders from around the country said the retailer had contacted them to encourage their support — or to respond to their criticism — of the company.The Rev. Ron Stief, director of the Washington office of the United Church of Christ, said a Wal-Mart representative telephoned him about six weeks ago after he criticized the company in a church newspaper article about Greenwald's documentary. After years of writing letters to the company to complain about Wal-Mart's conduct, Stief said, he finally received an invitation to Bentonville."They wanted me to come see their side of it," he said. Stief said he hoped to take the retailer up on the offer after he and other church members see the film.The Rev. Clarence Pemberton Jr., pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, said a Wal-Mart representative attended Tuesday's regular meeting of about 75 Baptist ministers in that city."It appeared that what he was trying to do was to influence us or put us in opposition to this film that is coming out and will be in the churches," Pemberton said, referring to the documentary. "It was implied very strongly that it was about some sort of cash rewards for people who would become partners with Wal-Mart and what they were trying to do."Bishop Edward L. Brown, a regional leader of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, said a Wal-Mart representative attended a CME bishops meeting last spring in Memphis, Tenn."They are reaching out, no question about that," Brown said. "They were trying to give their point of view, to do damage control."And the Rev. Ira Combs of the Greater Bible Way Temple of Jackson, Mich., told the Jackson Citizen Patriot last week that Wal-Mart recruited him to be part of a national steering committee of community leaders that would meet in Washington to "develop responses to issues raised by the company's critics."Combs, who told the paper that he was a Wal-Mart supporter and might have been chosen because he is active in the Republican Party, did not return calls seeking comment.Lichtenstein of UC Santa Barbara said he was not surprised that Wal-Mart was hoping to influence church leaders. Through its community grants, the company already gives money to many local church projects. Wal-Mart Watch, in reaching out to churches, has opened a new front in its campaign, hoping to win converts among those who are not natural allies of labor and environmental activists, the mainstays of the group's support."In order to make the impact we wish to make, we need to have breadth and depth of supporters, and we've been discovering that one way of developing that is with communities of faith," said Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Tracy Sefl. "The notion of justice, fairness and opportunity is a message that is powerful from the pulpit and is a message that really transcends simply talking about the stores in familiar ways."In preparation for this weekend, the group distributed a 16-page Faith Resource Guide, which outlines how to link a moral lesson about Wal-Mart to the assigned biblical texts for services in the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths. The guide also describes portions of the Koran that might be applicable to a discussion about Wal-Mart for Muslims, who do not use weekly assigned texts.A Muslim theologian, for example, suggests using this teaching from the Koran: "Men shall have the benefit of what they earn, and women shall have the benefit of what they earn" (Koran, 4:32). The Rev. Frank Alton of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown said he could not recall ever sermonizing about a specific company in his 10 1/2 years in his pulpit. But asking his 250 members to consider the ethical implications of Wal-Mart, he said, was worth making an exception. "They are a leader, and they are multiplying around the world — they have a responsibility as a leader and an innovator and pioneer to set a standard since others are following them," Alton said. "They are destroying community, which is a value of Jesus; they are exercising greed, which is against the values of Jesus; and they are promoting a culture of greed and extending a culture of poverty, which are against the values of Jesus."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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November 12, 2005
Editorial
Postcards From a Tax Holiday
PepsiCo recently followed in the footsteps of Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer and other big American corporations by initiating layoffs - even as it takes advantage of a huge tax break that was supposed to generate cash for hiring.
The tax break, passed by Congress last year as part of the American Jobs Creation Act, lets American companies bring foreign-held profits back to the United States this year at a discount of up to 85 percent off the normal tax rate. So far, nearly 100 companies have announced repatriations totaling more than $200 billion, all of which will be eligible for the cut-rate of 5.25 percent, instead of the usual top rate of 35 percent. As its critics warned at the outset, the so-called tax holiday has proved to be a bigger gift to shareholders than to employees and job seekers.
PepsiCo, for instance, plans to give pink slips to 200 to 250 employees in its Frito-Lay unit a few weeks before Christmas. The company expects that the severance payments for laid-off workers and other belt-tightening measures will cost up to $85 million in 2005. But the company will save several times that amount in taxes this year by repatriating up to $7.5 billion in profits it has stashed abroad. So in effect, the Frito layoffs, like those at other companies with repatriated profits, are supported by taxpayers.
And that's not the only way that investors benefit from the tax holiday that was billed as a way to create more opportunities for workers. A recent report in The Wall Street Journal documented that even as American companies were repatriating huge sums under the cut-rate regime, they were using more cash than ever to buy back their own stock. Reducing the number of shares outstanding gives each remaining shareholder a bigger ownership stake in the company. Hewlett-Packard has announced a repatriation of $14.5 billion, layoffs of 14,500 workers and stock buybacks of more than $4 billion for the first half of 2005, about three times the size of its buybacks in the period a year earlier.
Since stock repurchases are not a legal use of repatriated funds, companies are claiming that the convergence of big buybacks and huge repatriations is a mere coincidence. Be that as it may, Congress wrote the law in a way that gives companies tremendous leeway to them spend profits as they fit.
Companies cannot be blamed for doing whatever is allowed to cut taxes, increase profits and reward shareholders. The real villains are members of Congress who use phony labels like "job creation" - and, more recently, "economic growth" - to justify excessive tax cuts that increasingly serve to concentrate wealth among the few.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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washingtonpost.com
An Industrial Town Stares Change in the Face
Woes of Auto Parts Maker Threaten Wages
By Sholnn FreemanWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, November 12, 2005; A01
LOCKPORT, N.Y. -- Like a lot of people in town, Pam Mondello can feel the American dream slipping from her grasp.
Mondello, a 39-year-old plant worker, is worried about a big pay cut following the bankruptcy filing of Delphi Corp. last month. The auto parts supplier, as part of its reorganization, wants to slash the wages of thousands of factory workers around the country to as little as $9.50 an hour. Mondello, with bills to pay and three teenage children, is stunned that Delphi thinks it can get away with such a drastic cut.
"It's a slap in the face when they are paying $28 now," Mondello said. "We expect some kind of pay cut. But don't make us live in poverty."
To the 3,800 plant workers of Lockport, a class war is underway in the auto industry. Many of them believe Delphi's bankruptcy was orchestrated by auto executives to permanently smash the pay scale of working people. There is a sense here that nobody is holding the people in top management accountable.
"Corporate America has invested heavily overseas with money they should have put in my pension," said Michael Fredericks, a 53-year-old worker who started at the Lockport plant when he was 19. He is furious that his pay and pension are in jeopardy after working on the line for most of his 34 years at Delphi. "That's McDonald's and Burger King wages," he said of the new pay proposal. "It's not going to work. No one is going to do that. We fought too hard to get what we have."
The Delphi question isn't hanging over just Lockport. Delphi is the largest auto parts company in the United States. It employs more than 50,000 people in the United States and Canada. Even before it emerges from bankruptcy protection, Delphi is intensifying the national debate about health care policy, the waning might of the United States in heavy industry and the role of labor unions in the fast-moving global marketplace.
More immediately, if Delphi and its workers don't craft a deal on pay, pensions and benefits, a costly strike looms over the auto industry. The mere discussion of a Delphi strike is already hammering General Motors Corp., Delphi's largest customer, and adding to the worries of investors that GM will ultimately follow Delphi into bankruptcy. A Delphi strike could close down assembly lines at other manufacturers, including Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., two big Delphi customers.
Anderson Economic Group LLC, an auto industry consulting firm based in Lansing, Mich., has estimated the economic impact of Delphi's bankruptcy at $10 billion in 2007 alone, under the most optimistic assumptions. The figure includes lost income of Delphi workers and retirees and the impact to Delphi's suppliers. Taxpayers stand to lose close to $4.8 billion, including the possible assumption of Delphi's unfunded pension obligations. The consulting firm expects Delphi to cut at least 12,500 jobs. Any of its 31 plants could be closed as part of a reorganization.
The job losses and plant closings have set off alarms in political offices in Washington and around the country. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), who represents Lockport, has met with Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao to talk about Delphi's plight. Last month, Delphi chief executive Robert S. Miller Jr. met with a group of congressmen to defend his reorganization strategy. He's also been called in to meet with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). After the meeting, Clinton called on the Bush administration to convene a national summit on the crisis in the auto industry. Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) and executives from Toyota and Ford have also sought a national summit to discuss policy initiatives that address the ills of the auto industry.
Industry executives say the problem is simple: Because of global competition, the U.S. automakers can no longer afford the generous wages and benefits that workers have won over decades of labor struggle and success at bargaining tables in Detroit. To reduce costs, auto parts companies have sped up efforts to scale back operations in the United States and Western Europe while expanding in Mexico, Honduras, the Philippines, India, Thailand, China and Eastern European countries.
'I Take Pride in My Work'
Delphi workers in Lockport are represented by United Auto Workers Local 686. The union hall, a redbrick schoolhouse that dates to the 1890s, is a major center of activity in the community of 22,000. On a recent Friday evening, a charity group that supports mentally ill adults held an auction upstairs in the hall. In the restaurant downstairs, Delphi workers stood around the bar and relaxed at tables, enjoying the hall's regular Friday night fish fry. Outside on the hall's front steps, people were enjoying the air, mingling in clusters. Some were from the union. Others had come by for the auction.
The attendees of the auction explained that Lockport is a place where there are slim pickings for employment and that decent jobs pay less than half of what Delphi workers are getting. "They make too much money," one of them whispered out of earshot of the Delphi workers hanging around the other end of the steps.
Mondello, the Delphi worker, leaned toward the door with her young niece by her side. She lives just outside of Lockport -- out in the country, where it's a little quieter. Mondello, a working mother, was dressed in jeans and a sweater, hair cut to shoulder length. "I love my job," she said. "I take pride in my work and my job. I know a lot of people there do."
She said her standard of living has gone up drastically since she started at Delphi five years ago. This Christmas, she is taking her family to Arizona to visit her teenage son, the first time she's been able to afford the trip. Her daughter gets a $1,500 scholarship from Delphi to attend Buffalo State College. Mondello has bought three cars since starting at the plant; the last one was her first new car. "I've never been able to buy a brand-new car, and I won't if I only make $9 or $10 an hour," she said.
Mondello is trying to remain calm about the future. It helps that she's been through this before. From 1994 to 1999, she had a job making saw blades before the company closed up and moved to the South. She then worked as an assistant manager at a Yellow Goose convenience store. She wonders if she'll lose her job in the reorganization. Right now, she's trying to live by the upbeat motto "Life is too short to dwell on the bad things."
A Heritage in Doubt
For nearly all of its history, Lockport's fortunes have been heavily tied to America's industrialization, brought to town when the Erie Canal opened in 1825. The canal was the country's major infrastructure project of its era, forging trade links between the east and west by connecting the port of New York City to Chicago and the other ports of the Great Lakes.
Lockport gets its name from the canal locks near Main Street, which raise and lower boats along two 25-foot steps as they pass through the city. Industries came and went, some slowly dying out as businesses moved overseas or new technology made the old ways obsolete. Today, the Lockport section of the canal is a tourist attraction.
The Lockport auto parts plant goes back to 1910, and most people in town refer to it as "Harrison's," after Herbert Champion Harrison, who was one of the first to apply the assembly line system used to cheaply mass-produce cars to the process of making parts.
Today, the Lockport plant falls under Delphi's thermal and interior systems division. Workers make radiators and condensers, vent and duct work that sits mostly underneath the dashboard. Delphi says 90 percent of the parts built at the plant go into GM-built vehicles. Local officials estimate that the facility pumps as much as $500 million into the Lockport area annually. Six hundred smaller companies in the region count on Delphi as a customer of their products.
Delphi was created in 1995 as the consolidated parts division of GM. The division was spun off into a stand-alone company in 1999. The deal was supposed to allow GM to refocus on designing and assembling cars and trucks. Delphi would be free to focus on making parts and pursuing contracts from other automakers. Delphi has struggled to make a profit, accumulating $5.5 billion in losses since 2000, $1.5 billion of which was in the first three quarters of this year.
Miller, the Delphi chief executive, says the labor costs that Delphi inherited at the time of its spinoff leave it at a substantial competitive disadvantage, particularly as more auto parts production moves overseas into countries where labor is cheap. In frank language, Miller has said workers can't be blamed for pursuing the American dream. He said the companies have made promises of job security, health care and retirement pensions that they simply can no longer afford to pay. "All of us have been caught short by fast-changing economics," he said.
In Lockport, the season of canal pleasure boaters is coming to a close. The lock keepers will soon drain the canal locks. Last week, Mondello was gearing up for another Saturday shift at the plant. At work, she sees no signs of GM or Delphi cutting back. GM is ratcheting up production for a new line of sport-utility vehicles, using parts built at the Lockport facility. The extra work on weekends makes Mondello and other workers skeptical of Delphi's cry of insolvency. "There's been no slowdown," she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248143_mining12.html
Bill would open public land
Thousands of acres could be privatized
Saturday, November 12, 2005
By ROBERT MCCLURESEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
More than 50,000 acres of old mining claims in Washington -- including some inside Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks -- could be converted to private land under legislation expected to pass the U.S. House next week.
The proposal also would open up millions of acres in Washington's national forests -- and more than 350 million acres across the West -- to be newly privatized under a revision of the 1872 Mining Law tucked into a 184-page budget bill.
Critics who have dissected the language of the bill say it would make it easy to use a law passed 133 years ago to speed development of ski resorts, golf courses and the like in the backcountry today.
"It could be the biggest privatization of public lands in a hundred years," said John Leshy, a law professor considered one of the nation's experts on the mining law, who worked to limit its effect as a Clinton administration official. "This is all written in terms of mining claims, but it's really a real estate development law."
A major criticism of the 1872 law has been that it allows mining companies to take gold, platinum, silver and other valuable minerals off public land for free. Stung by public protests, the mining industry has long said it would be willing to pay a fair royalty when the law is updated.
But the legislation by pro-mining House members makes no provisions for such payment.
Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said her group did not draft the legislation but understands Congress' intent.
"A royalty would in effect be an added cost," Raulston said. "The U.S. is a high-cost producer of almost all these metals on federal land, and we've been increasingly dependent on international sources for metals we need."
The legislation was written by the House Resources Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., wants rural towns to turn land that has been mined into useful developments.
"The important thing here is that we're trying to provide sustainable economic development," said Matt Streit, a spokesman for the Resources Committee.
Critics, though, note that the bill would allow someone to claim 20 acres, perform $7,500 of work on it -- easily blown through in a consultant's study or some drilling work -- and then sell the land for development.
"They could turn it over to real estate speculators, foreign companies -- whoever wants to buy it," said Dusty Horwitt, an analyst for the Environmental Working Group, which makes its points through data-crunching.
EWG has analyzed all the nation's mining claims and said there are 50,632 acres covered by them in Washington. The two top holders are Canadian firms, Vancouver-based Teck Cominco with 7,830 acres and Toronto-headquartered Kinross Gold Corp. with 3,292.
Mining claims abound in Washington's backcountry. The North Cascades in particular are shot through with them.
Under the bill, much of the land managed by the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management could again be converted to private land. In 1995, that practice was halted by Congress, which has renewed the ban annually in budget legislation.
That ban was sparked by abuses in which some claims became ski resorts, housing subdivisions, hotels and even a brothel, in Nye County, Nev. The legislation under consideration would legalize that activity, critics say, although proponents say that would not happen.
"It's not realistic or honest to claim that mining companies will suddenly turn into real estate speculators ... and apply for a patent (privatizing the land) only to sell the land for a hotel or other business development," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., chairman of the House Resources energy and mineral resources subcommittee. He said local governments' tax base would expand through the privatization of land, providing money for schools and other needs.
A 1999 National Academy of Sciences study said about 363 million acres managed by the government would be in play if the conversions to private land were authorized again.
The bill would not allow new mining claims inside national parks or national forest areas declared wilderness. But it would allow old claims to be converted into private land.
In the past, the National Park Service has used provisions of federal land management laws to keep miners at bay in pristine areas, including Shi-Shi Beach, the stunning shoreside portion of Olympic National Park. The provisions used to battle miners there and elsewhere would be reversed or eased under the bill.
"They want to give away the taxpayers' gold," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and a member of the Resources Committee. "If somebody went to Fort Knox and took gold out, they'd be in jail for the rest of their lives. But in national forests, people can take gold (under the bill) and be considered friends of the Republican Party."
A Seattle-area Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, is portrayed by environmentalists as a "swing vote" in the mining controversy. But Reichert probably won't be doing much to stop the mining provision. He already went against the Republican House leadership to remove from the pending legislation a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"There are other parts of the bill we're going to work on, but you can only do so much," said Mike Shields, Reichert's chief of staff. "There are some things that Dave likes about the bill. He's going to vote for it."
The bill seeks to help balance the federal budget, in part by cutting spending and in part by increasing revenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the mining provisions would raise about $326 million over 10 years. That compares with a projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit over the next five years.
The budget bill expected to pass the House next week would still have to be meshed with the Senate's version of the same legislation. It remains unclear how senators might react to the mining-law provisions, but environmentalists say a budget bill is no place to debate mining policy.
"This isn't even a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's a werewolf in wolf's clothing," said Roger Flynn of the Western Mining Action Project.
This story includes information from The Associated Press and P-I Washington correspondent Charles Pope. P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com.
© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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November 12, 2005
Editorial
Playing With Fire
It certainly is a relief that the Senate is finally getting around to doing the job it so shamefully refused to do four years ago, after the 9/11 attacks: requiring the administration to follow the law and the Geneva Conventions in dealing with prisoners taken by the military and intelligence operatives.
But what started as an admirable attempt by Senator John McCain to stop the torture and abuse of prisoners has become a tangle of amendments and back-room deals that pose a real danger of undermining the sacred rule that the government cannot just lock people up forever without saying why. On Thursday, the Senate passed a measure that would deny foreigners declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants" the right to a hearing under the principle known as habeas corpus, which dates to Magna Carta.
Instead, the measure would mandate an automatic review by a federal court of the status of the inmates now at Guantánamo Bay and any future prisoners of that kind. It would exclude coerced confessions from that review, and place important new controls over Guantánamo operations.
These safeguards, proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has shown real courage in condemning prisoner abuse, are long overdue. Mr. Graham, a former military lawyer, also proposed the exemption to habeas corpus, arguing that it had never been meant to apply to prisoners of war, let alone to foreign terrorists. He says Guantánamo inmates are clogging the courts with petitions that hamper efforts to get vital intelligence.
Mr. Graham is a careful and principled senator who argues eloquently for his measure. The Senate should adopt his proposal for a federal court review of detentions, preferably by a huge margin, and the House should follow suit. We'd love to see Congress then defy the inevitable veto threats from the White House, driven by Vice President Dick Cheney, who is still skulking around Capitol Hill trying to legalize torture at the C.I.A.'s secret prison camps around the world. But we cannot support Mr. Graham in trying to rewrite the habeas corpus law.
Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation. Do they really have anything left to say?
The habeas petitions are not an undue burden. And in any case, they are a responsibility that this nation has always assumed to ensure that no one is held prisoner unjustly.
Senator Graham argues that the 9/11 attacks were an act of war, not a crime for American courts to judge, and he is trying to put antiterrorist operations back under the Geneva Conventions. Mr. McCain's amendment banning torture, abuse and cruelty has the same goal, and we share it. But the administration shredded the Geneva Conventions after 9/11 and cannot be trusted to follow them now.
There will be amendments and counteramendments in the Senate next week. In the end, the right coalition of senators may actually pass valuable new rules for "unlawful combatants." But they are sure to draw the fierce opposition of the White House, which is hardly likely to agree to an automatic federal court review of its detention policies.
The danger is that the House may do the administration's bidding and produce a bill that strips away the good parts of the Graham amendment, leaving the dangerous parts, and that such a version may be approved behind closed doors during a House-Senate conference.
The problem in creating one exemption to habeas corpus, no matter how narrow, is that it invites the creation of more exemptions. History shows that in the wrong hands, the power to jail people without showing cause is a tool of despotism. Just consider Natan Sharansky or Nelson Mandela. The administration hates that sort of comparison, so we wonder why it keeps inviting it. Just the other day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said with a sneer that the Guantánamo prisoners on hunger strikes had gone "on a diet where they don't eat" for publicity.
We'd rather see the Senate delete the suspension of habeas corpus from Mr. Graham's measure now. Some constitutional principles are too important to play around with.
· Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-rutten12nov12,0,2534395.story?track=tothtml
REGARDING MEDIA
Duty under siege
The Judith Miller soap opera shuddered to an all-too-appropriate close this week in the all-but-inevitable forums — on the talk shows and the Internet.
Tim RuttenRegarding MediaNovember 12, 2005Call it the final installment of "Desperate Reporters."The veteran New York Times reporter served 85 days in a federal lockup for refusing to name a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to a clutch of Washington reporters. As it turned out, Miller's source was former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. He is under indictment for his alleged part in a whispering campaign designed to discredit Plame's husband, the former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had gone public with charges that the Bush administration distorted intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's purported attempts to obtain material for a nuclear weapon.Within days of Miller's release from jail, the details of her decidedly irregular dealings with Libby became public, and her image underwent a public meltdown unmatched since Dorothy sloshed the Wicked Witch of the West with that bucket of water. Wednesday, the New York Times announced that the 57-year-old Miller had "agreed" to retire, and the paper published a letter to the editor in which she replied to her own editors' and colleagues' criticisms.By Thursday night, Miller — every inch the genially unflappable onetime Hollywood High drama student — was on Larry King's CNN talk show deftly deflecting her avuncular host's deferential questions, while just as deftly avoiding the usual questions phoned in from his viewers. Meanwhile, the Times' publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., was taking the chattering classes' version of the high road on Charlie Rose's PBS program. (Morale problem? What morale problem?)The morbidly curious who want the fullest possible explication of Miller's side of this whole murky narrative can go to her personal website, www.judithmiller.org. These days, the Web is where yesterday's personalities and controversies can transcend their 15 minutes of fame. Personal websites are the side chapels of cyberspace, where ego-fueled votive candles keep flickering vigil before the icon of self-regard.Unfortunately, the wreckage of this tatty little melodrama has obscured a point that should never have been lost. From day one, the conduct of Judith Miller the individual journalist and what was done to her and to the other reporters involved by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald were entirely — indeed, necessarily — divisible issues.Because federal law does not grant journalists the same protection against being compelled to reveal confidential sources recognized by nearly all the 50 states, Miller, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and NBC's Tim Russert are going to have to testify at Libby's trial. Because the government's case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former aide turns on the contradictions between what Libby and these reporters told the grand jury about their conversations, Libby's defense attorneys will not be bound by any of the limitations Fitzgerald accepted to obtain their testimony. On cross-examination, these journalists turned reluctant prosecution witnesses are likely to be grilled on every aspect of their reportage, published or unpublished.It's hard to imagine a more chilling prospect for a free press, but one did arise this week, all but obscured in the gossipy penumbra cast by the Miller melodrama.On Nov. 2, the Washington Post's Dana Priest revealed that the CIA has been running a secret prison system in which alleged Al Qaeda members and their allies are held without legal sanction and tortured. These so-called "black sites" are a critical component in the Bush administration's covert attempt to legitimize torture as an instrument of state policy.Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told Editor & Publisher's online edition that Priest's article was "an incredible piece of journalism that informed the public about questionable behavior by government officials."Two of the administration's leading congressional allies — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — don't agree. Tuesday, they ordered an official inquiry into whether what they termed Priest's "egregious disclosure" could have "long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences."You bet it will, for the torturers and, maybe for Priest, if she now is dragged in front of a congressional committee and threatened with contempt unless she reveals her sources.In the mordant calculus of human suffering, the urge to persecute journalists for the pseudo-crime of informing the public cannot be equated with the Bush administration's adoption of torture as an instrument of state policy. Both affront our common-sense notions of what is decent for a similar reason.In the years since Sept. 11, the notion has taken root in some circles, particularly inside this administration, that because American power is virtuous, it need not subject itself to limits or restraint. If some loathsome Islamo-fascist creep won't tell you what you think you want to know, torture him until he does. If some reporter tells inconvenient truths about what's going on in your secret prisons, drag her into a star chamber and grill her about where she got her facts and, if she doesn't answer, jail her until she does.Lost in all this heedless self-righteousness is one of the fundamental things that makes the American system and Al Qaeda's utterly inimical to one another: Osama bin Laden and his accomplices believe that the sanctity of their desired end justifies any means to achieve it. Hence, the sequence of outrages that treat with equal contempt the innocent lives of office workers in lower Manhattan and wedding guests in an Amman hotel.We Americans always have believed that there are things we cannot do, even in the pursuit of our highest ideals. We have enshrined that crucial inhibition in the social arrangement we call the rule of law and, more important, in our individual consciences. It is part of the particular American genius that we are an obsessively "can-do" people who reflexively acknowledge the notion of restraint. It's why we stop at traffic signals, even in the middle of the night, and accept the results of elections, no matter how close or bitter.It's why we feel a sense of revulsion when we read that the executive branch of our government now operates secret torture chambers and that the only response of its congressional allies to that revelation is an attempt to silence the journalistic messenger who told us what was going on.Americans instinctively know that what people or politicians say they're going to do isn't really as important as it seems. Real life is chaotic and punctuated with the unforeseeable, so even the best intentioned people and governments seldom, if ever, get the chance to do precisely what they say they're going to do. It's one of the reasons no sensible person pays attention to party platforms.In the end, what's really important about individuals, institutions and governments is the one thing they actually can control — and that's what they won't do, like torture people or jail journalists for doing their jobs.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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washingtonpost.com
Keep the Internet Free
By Arch PuddingtonSaturday, November 12, 2005; A25
Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS's existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information.
Although many are under the impression that the Internet is unregulated, this is not entirely the case. There are a number of technical issues -- such as the allocation of the dot-com or dot-net designations or the country codes that are attached to e-mails -- that must be determined by a central entity. This job is currently handled by an American nonprofit: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). With an international staff on three continents, ICANN has met its mandate in a way that all agree has been fair and nonpartisan.
While ICANN functions on a charter from the Commerce Department, the U.S. government has followed a strict hands-off policy; ICANN's actions are transparent and decisions are made only after extensive consultation with Internet companies, governments, techies and freedom-of-expression organizations. ICANN has contributed to the unique nature of the Internet as a creative and innovative means of communication that links people and ideas across national boundaries -- for the most part outside the control of government.
But demands are growing for the "internationalization" of Internet governance. To this end, a number of countries are pressing to remove oversight from ICANN and place it under the auspices of a new organization that would be part of the U.N. system. Advocates of this arrangement make no claims that the current system is flawed. Instead, they focus on the supposed "injustice" or "inappropriateness" of a system overseen by an American agency. And there is an ulterior motive behind the clamor for change.
In a Nov. 5 op-ed column in The Post, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that a U.N. role in Internet governance would be benign and would concentrate on expanding the Internet into the developing world. But while Annan's intentions are no doubt well-meaning, the same cannot be said for the coalition of U.N member states making the loudest noise for change. Among them are regimes that have taken measures to control their citizens' access to the Internet and have championed global controls over Internet content. These include some of the world's most repressive states: Cuba, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Other governments have weighed in to support U.N. oversight, either out of anti-Americanism, a reflexive commitment to international governance or a belief that Internet content needs to be reined in.
Although U.N. officials deny any intention to broaden ICANN's mandate, past U.N. experience suggests that a limited mission can gradually expand into unanticipated territory under the relentless pressure of determined member states. Some of the most shameful U.N. episodes -- particularly regarding freedom issues -- have occurred because the world's democracies were outwitted by a coalition of the most repressive regimes -- the very coalition that is taking shape over Internet control. Working with determination and discipline, this alliance of dictatorships has already left the U.N. Human Rights Commission a shambles, something that Annan himself has deplored.
In this emerging contest, the position of the European Union is particularly disappointing. Initially aligned with the United States in support of Internet freedom, the E.U. recently went wobbly and proposed creation of a "forum" to govern the Internet, something different from ICANN though not under U.N. control -- this to the delight of Cuba and China.
Compounding the problem is the choice of Tunisia, a country with a woeful record of press freedom violations, as the WSIS conference's host. On Freedom House's global index of press freedom, Tunisia ranks near the bottom, right along with Iran and Saudi Arabia -- 173rd of 193 states. It is particularly zealous in restricting Internet content and has mobilized security forces to block Web sites, monitor e-mail and conduct surveillance of Internet cafes.
The United States delegation has pledged to stand firm in defense of ICANN while proposing a plan to allow more global discussion and debate on Internet issues. This is a good starting place; even better would be a decision by the European Union to align itself with the United States.
It is no secret why Iran, China and Cuba are lobbying so desperately to replace ICANN: The Internet has proven a potent weapon against state repression. In an age of media concentration, it has contributed mightily to democratization of the means of communication. It nullifies totalitarian schemes to monopolize the airwaves; in the age of the Internet, the total control portrayed by George Orwell in "1984" is simply impossible in all but the most hermetically sealed countries.
Given the stakes involved, it is incumbent on the world's democracies to stand firm against efforts to undermine this critical instrument of free ideas.
The writer is director of research at Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties worldwide.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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College is no longer a viable option for most of our high school graduates, so they gravitate to these call centers where they sit for 8+ hours per day with highly regulated 10-minute breaks and half-hour lunches and no opportunity to gain more than another day in the sweat shop atmosphere of any outsource call center in any third-world country anywhere in the known universe.
Approaching lockstep conformity for survival they are increasingly forced into tighter and tighter control by the bosses who fight as if they were administrators in the largest corporations for the one dollar more per hour that they are paid to make sure that conformity is enforced.
Spokane employees are for the most part simple people from what has been an agrarian economy: in other words, farmers’ kids—and the children of the working class—working poor folks to whom $9.50 an hour represents the rent on a cookie-cutter apartment, Walmart clothes for their babies, and perhaps a junker car that is often less than safe transportation. A lot of these kids of the working poor can’t afford the requisite insurance on these same crap cars and so incur heavy fines from the county and state police who hawk the area of the parking lots at shift change in order to issue tickets which these kids can’t pay.
According to the article today in The Washington Post, workers for Delphi in Lockport, New York who are currently making $28.00 per hour are being cut to $9.50 per hour. Predictably, the move toward third-world-izing of America is going forward with absolutely no intervention by Bush and Cronies for the betterment of our country. Instead, these so-called Americans are making sure that the richest stay rich and the poor become even poorer.
The savings and loan debacle of the 1980’s comes to mind: when these formerly high-paid Delphi workers can no longer afford their mortgages, who benefits? When these formerly high-paid Delphi workers can no longer afford car payments, boat payments, whatever—who benefits? Why, Bush and Cronies, of course.
When America is nothing but a land of sweatshops and our people no longer have the pride that high wages bring and the high morale that comes with pride, will we still be able to rise up to defeat these criminals in the White House? Will our votes become even more meaningless than they are now?
We did not vote Bush and other Republicans into office to see our way of life and our country destroyed. We did not vote Bush and other Republicans into the White House complicit in our own demise as a nation of comfortable people to be treated as, and forced into, the mold of third-world-poverty-stricken-masses yearning to be free and rich.
We ARE free and we intend to stay that way. Freedom is primarily economic: the freedom to take our families on vacations, the freedom to live in our own homes, the freedom to buy a new car occasionally rather than watching the richest 1% drive past in limousines while our children do without and without the hope of escaping the grinding poverty of a third world nation. In other words, the freedom of Hope...
Despots be warned: Americans will not tolerate what you are doing to this country: you have been able to hide behind our complacency for a very long time.
We are awakening to your criminal and despotic activities and we will bring you to your knees and into our prisons.
Justice will prevail.
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washingtonpost.com
Group Trains Air Force Cadets to Proselytize
By Alan CoopermanWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, November 12, 2005; A06
A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers, according to a confidential letter to supporters.
The letter makes clear that the organized evangelization effort has continued this year despite an outcry over alleged proselytizing at the academy that has prompted a Pentagon investigation, congressional hearings, a civil lawsuit and new Air Force guidelines on religion.
"Praise God that we have been allowed access by the Academy into the cadet areas to minister among the cadets. We have recently been given an unused classroom to meet with cadets at any time during the day," the husband-and-wife team of Darren and Gina Lindblom said in the Oct. 11 letter to their donors.
Following allegations of religious intolerance at the academy, the Air Force issued interim guidelines in late August that caution senior officers against discussing their faith with subordinates. But the guidelines do not limit "voluntary, peer to peer discussions," and they do not say whether Air Force officials can provide office space or other assistance to professional missionaries who train cadets to evangelize among their peers.
The Lindbloms' letter was made public by Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy alumnus who was a White House lawyer in the Reagan administration. He has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Air Force of violating the First Amendment's establishment clause by fostering evangelical Christianity over all faiths.
Weinstein, who has been joined in the suit by four recent graduates of the academy, said that some other religious groups are allowed onto the academy's campus, but only during certain hours and under close supervision by Air Force chaplains.
"The only group that gets 24/7 unrestricted access to cadets is this fundamentalist, born-again Christian group," Weinstein charged.
The Lindbloms are not chaplains hired by the military. They are private, full-time ministers assigned to the Air Force Academy by the Navigators, a Colorado-based group whose motto is: "To know Christ and to make Him known." It began in 1933 as a ministry to sailors and now has missionaries in 104 countries, according to its Web site.
Reached by telephone at their home in Colorado Springs, the Lindbloms declined to comment on their letter or their missionary work.
Lauren Libby, senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Navigators, said the Lindbloms were assigned to the academy earlier this year, replacing a previous young couple. He said the Navigators have placed full-time staff members at the academy for more than a decade. "We're there as a spiritual resource to cadets," he said. "We've had a very good experience there."
Libby also said that the Navigators are following the Air Force guidelines, which have been criticized as infringing religious freedom by more than 70 members of Congress and several Christian lobbying groups, including Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition. "Those are the guidelines, and we honor them," Libby said.
In their letter, the Lindbloms referred several times to the guidelines and to Weinstein's lawsuit, saying that "we are vitally aware we are in the front lines of a spiritual battle."
They included photos of the Navigator Cadet Ministry Team, a group of cadets who "have shown an interest in receiving training and development to have a personal ministry among their peers at the Academy," the letter said.
"Please pray for unprecedented wisdom for Gina and me as we coach these cadets to live among the lost, sharing the Gospel in the midst of this current climate. We must be so careful. Yet we do not wish to squelch the passion of men like Daniel," a cadet who has vowed to "impact the lives of 200 men with the Gospel" before he graduates, Darren Lindblom wrote.
In a postscript, they said, "We respectfully request that you not share this letter publicly. Due to the lawsuit recently filed, the contents of this letter are confidential."
A spokesman for the Air Force Academy said the Navigators are one of 19 outside religious groups -- including Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic and Mormon organizations -- that hold voluntary meetings on Mondays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in a program known as SPIRE, for Special Program in Religious Education.
The groups are invited on campus at the request of cadets, and each is assigned a room, but only for that 90-minute period once a week, said the spokesman, John Van Winkle. "They can't just use the room whenever they want. That would be a violation of the memorandum of agreement they have to sign," he said.
Asked about the Lindbloms' assertion that they recently were given a classroom to "meet with cadets at any time during the day," Van Winkle said he would check. He called back to amend his statement, saying the academy's chaplains had set aside an extra room that any SPIRE group could use for counseling cadets at other times.
Weinstein said the academy was "furiously spinning." He said he had been told by people on campus, whom he declined to identify, that the room was Fairchild Hall 2D11, in the academy's main classroom building, and that only the Navigators have been using it. Van Winkle said he did not know the room number or which other groups had used it.
The Rev. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain who resigned in June over the religious climate at the academy, said the Navigators "used to have an informal agreement that they could meet cadets in the library." But because that location was "too visible," she said, they were told this year not to use it anymore.
Morton said the SPIRE program, which is limited to a few hours a week, should not be confused with the Lindbloms' efforts to be in continual contact with cadets throughout the week. "This Navigator thing is a whole different thing," she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart12nov12,0,4816382.story?track=tothtml
Wal-Mart, Its Foes Turn to Religion
The retailer urges clergy to visit and to serve on committees. The other side plans sermons.
By Abigail GoldmanTimes Staff WriterNovember 12, 2005Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its critics have been fighting for the hearts and minds of the American public, through advertising, media outreach, worker testimonials and public debate. Now the two sides are fighting for souls.The world's largest retailer and its adversaries are hoping to sway religious leaders to their respective causes, seeking to use the clergy's powerful influence to reach flocks that may not respond to mere public relations or media-driven pitches.Wal-Mart has quietly reached out to church officials with invitations to visit its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., to serve on leadership committees and to open a dialogue with the company.Across the aisle, one of the company's chief foes, Wal-Mart Watch, this weekend is launching seven days of anti-Wal-Mart consciousness-raising at more than 200 churches, synagogues and mosques in 100 cities, where leaders have agreed to sermonize about what they see as moral problems with the company."They are each probing for weaknesses behind enemy lines," said Nelson Lichtenstein, professor of history at UC Santa Barbara and editor of the forthcoming book "Wal-Mart: The Face of 21st Century Capitalism." "The liberals are trying to go into the churches even in conservative Republican neighborhoods. And then Wal-Mart goes into black churches and poor neighborhoods and says, 'Look, on this question, you should be with us because we provide jobs.' "Wal-Mart Watch's religious efforts are part of the group's Higher Expectations Week, a series of nationwide events at churches, clubs, colleges and other organizations that highlight criticism of the retailer. The activities include free screenings of Robert Greenwald's recently released documentary, "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," a critical look at how the company, the largest private employer in the U.S., treats workers.Wal-Mart declined to comment on its outreach to clergy. But church leaders from around the country said the retailer had contacted them to encourage their support — or to respond to their criticism — of the company.The Rev. Ron Stief, director of the Washington office of the United Church of Christ, said a Wal-Mart representative telephoned him about six weeks ago after he criticized the company in a church newspaper article about Greenwald's documentary. After years of writing letters to the company to complain about Wal-Mart's conduct, Stief said, he finally received an invitation to Bentonville."They wanted me to come see their side of it," he said. Stief said he hoped to take the retailer up on the offer after he and other church members see the film.The Rev. Clarence Pemberton Jr., pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia, said a Wal-Mart representative attended Tuesday's regular meeting of about 75 Baptist ministers in that city."It appeared that what he was trying to do was to influence us or put us in opposition to this film that is coming out and will be in the churches," Pemberton said, referring to the documentary. "It was implied very strongly that it was about some sort of cash rewards for people who would become partners with Wal-Mart and what they were trying to do."Bishop Edward L. Brown, a regional leader of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, said a Wal-Mart representative attended a CME bishops meeting last spring in Memphis, Tenn."They are reaching out, no question about that," Brown said. "They were trying to give their point of view, to do damage control."And the Rev. Ira Combs of the Greater Bible Way Temple of Jackson, Mich., told the Jackson Citizen Patriot last week that Wal-Mart recruited him to be part of a national steering committee of community leaders that would meet in Washington to "develop responses to issues raised by the company's critics."Combs, who told the paper that he was a Wal-Mart supporter and might have been chosen because he is active in the Republican Party, did not return calls seeking comment.Lichtenstein of UC Santa Barbara said he was not surprised that Wal-Mart was hoping to influence church leaders. Through its community grants, the company already gives money to many local church projects. Wal-Mart Watch, in reaching out to churches, has opened a new front in its campaign, hoping to win converts among those who are not natural allies of labor and environmental activists, the mainstays of the group's support."In order to make the impact we wish to make, we need to have breadth and depth of supporters, and we've been discovering that one way of developing that is with communities of faith," said Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Tracy Sefl. "The notion of justice, fairness and opportunity is a message that is powerful from the pulpit and is a message that really transcends simply talking about the stores in familiar ways."In preparation for this weekend, the group distributed a 16-page Faith Resource Guide, which outlines how to link a moral lesson about Wal-Mart to the assigned biblical texts for services in the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths. The guide also describes portions of the Koran that might be applicable to a discussion about Wal-Mart for Muslims, who do not use weekly assigned texts.A Muslim theologian, for example, suggests using this teaching from the Koran: "Men shall have the benefit of what they earn, and women shall have the benefit of what they earn" (Koran, 4:32). The Rev. Frank Alton of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown said he could not recall ever sermonizing about a specific company in his 10 1/2 years in his pulpit. But asking his 250 members to consider the ethical implications of Wal-Mart, he said, was worth making an exception. "They are a leader, and they are multiplying around the world — they have a responsibility as a leader and an innovator and pioneer to set a standard since others are following them," Alton said. "They are destroying community, which is a value of Jesus; they are exercising greed, which is against the values of Jesus; and they are promoting a culture of greed and extending a culture of poverty, which are against the values of Jesus."
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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November 12, 2005
Editorial
Postcards From a Tax Holiday
PepsiCo recently followed in the footsteps of Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer and other big American corporations by initiating layoffs - even as it takes advantage of a huge tax break that was supposed to generate cash for hiring.
The tax break, passed by Congress last year as part of the American Jobs Creation Act, lets American companies bring foreign-held profits back to the United States this year at a discount of up to 85 percent off the normal tax rate. So far, nearly 100 companies have announced repatriations totaling more than $200 billion, all of which will be eligible for the cut-rate of 5.25 percent, instead of the usual top rate of 35 percent. As its critics warned at the outset, the so-called tax holiday has proved to be a bigger gift to shareholders than to employees and job seekers.
PepsiCo, for instance, plans to give pink slips to 200 to 250 employees in its Frito-Lay unit a few weeks before Christmas. The company expects that the severance payments for laid-off workers and other belt-tightening measures will cost up to $85 million in 2005. But the company will save several times that amount in taxes this year by repatriating up to $7.5 billion in profits it has stashed abroad. So in effect, the Frito layoffs, like those at other companies with repatriated profits, are supported by taxpayers.
And that's not the only way that investors benefit from the tax holiday that was billed as a way to create more opportunities for workers. A recent report in The Wall Street Journal documented that even as American companies were repatriating huge sums under the cut-rate regime, they were using more cash than ever to buy back their own stock. Reducing the number of shares outstanding gives each remaining shareholder a bigger ownership stake in the company. Hewlett-Packard has announced a repatriation of $14.5 billion, layoffs of 14,500 workers and stock buybacks of more than $4 billion for the first half of 2005, about three times the size of its buybacks in the period a year earlier.
Since stock repurchases are not a legal use of repatriated funds, companies are claiming that the convergence of big buybacks and huge repatriations is a mere coincidence. Be that as it may, Congress wrote the law in a way that gives companies tremendous leeway to them spend profits as they fit.
Companies cannot be blamed for doing whatever is allowed to cut taxes, increase profits and reward shareholders. The real villains are members of Congress who use phony labels like "job creation" - and, more recently, "economic growth" - to justify excessive tax cuts that increasingly serve to concentrate wealth among the few.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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washingtonpost.com
An Industrial Town Stares Change in the Face
Woes of Auto Parts Maker Threaten Wages
By Sholnn FreemanWashington Post Staff WriterSaturday, November 12, 2005; A01
LOCKPORT, N.Y. -- Like a lot of people in town, Pam Mondello can feel the American dream slipping from her grasp.
Mondello, a 39-year-old plant worker, is worried about a big pay cut following the bankruptcy filing of Delphi Corp. last month. The auto parts supplier, as part of its reorganization, wants to slash the wages of thousands of factory workers around the country to as little as $9.50 an hour. Mondello, with bills to pay and three teenage children, is stunned that Delphi thinks it can get away with such a drastic cut.
"It's a slap in the face when they are paying $28 now," Mondello said. "We expect some kind of pay cut. But don't make us live in poverty."
To the 3,800 plant workers of Lockport, a class war is underway in the auto industry. Many of them believe Delphi's bankruptcy was orchestrated by auto executives to permanently smash the pay scale of working people. There is a sense here that nobody is holding the people in top management accountable.
"Corporate America has invested heavily overseas with money they should have put in my pension," said Michael Fredericks, a 53-year-old worker who started at the Lockport plant when he was 19. He is furious that his pay and pension are in jeopardy after working on the line for most of his 34 years at Delphi. "That's McDonald's and Burger King wages," he said of the new pay proposal. "It's not going to work. No one is going to do that. We fought too hard to get what we have."
The Delphi question isn't hanging over just Lockport. Delphi is the largest auto parts company in the United States. It employs more than 50,000 people in the United States and Canada. Even before it emerges from bankruptcy protection, Delphi is intensifying the national debate about health care policy, the waning might of the United States in heavy industry and the role of labor unions in the fast-moving global marketplace.
More immediately, if Delphi and its workers don't craft a deal on pay, pensions and benefits, a costly strike looms over the auto industry. The mere discussion of a Delphi strike is already hammering General Motors Corp., Delphi's largest customer, and adding to the worries of investors that GM will ultimately follow Delphi into bankruptcy. A Delphi strike could close down assembly lines at other manufacturers, including Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., two big Delphi customers.
Anderson Economic Group LLC, an auto industry consulting firm based in Lansing, Mich., has estimated the economic impact of Delphi's bankruptcy at $10 billion in 2007 alone, under the most optimistic assumptions. The figure includes lost income of Delphi workers and retirees and the impact to Delphi's suppliers. Taxpayers stand to lose close to $4.8 billion, including the possible assumption of Delphi's unfunded pension obligations. The consulting firm expects Delphi to cut at least 12,500 jobs. Any of its 31 plants could be closed as part of a reorganization.
The job losses and plant closings have set off alarms in political offices in Washington and around the country. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), who represents Lockport, has met with Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao to talk about Delphi's plight. Last month, Delphi chief executive Robert S. Miller Jr. met with a group of congressmen to defend his reorganization strategy. He's also been called in to meet with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). After the meeting, Clinton called on the Bush administration to convene a national summit on the crisis in the auto industry. Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) and executives from Toyota and Ford have also sought a national summit to discuss policy initiatives that address the ills of the auto industry.
Industry executives say the problem is simple: Because of global competition, the U.S. automakers can no longer afford the generous wages and benefits that workers have won over decades of labor struggle and success at bargaining tables in Detroit. To reduce costs, auto parts companies have sped up efforts to scale back operations in the United States and Western Europe while expanding in Mexico, Honduras, the Philippines, India, Thailand, China and Eastern European countries.
'I Take Pride in My Work'
Delphi workers in Lockport are represented by United Auto Workers Local 686. The union hall, a redbrick schoolhouse that dates to the 1890s, is a major center of activity in the community of 22,000. On a recent Friday evening, a charity group that supports mentally ill adults held an auction upstairs in the hall. In the restaurant downstairs, Delphi workers stood around the bar and relaxed at tables, enjoying the hall's regular Friday night fish fry. Outside on the hall's front steps, people were enjoying the air, mingling in clusters. Some were from the union. Others had come by for the auction.
The attendees of the auction explained that Lockport is a place where there are slim pickings for employment and that decent jobs pay less than half of what Delphi workers are getting. "They make too much money," one of them whispered out of earshot of the Delphi workers hanging around the other end of the steps.
Mondello, the Delphi worker, leaned toward the door with her young niece by her side. She lives just outside of Lockport -- out in the country, where it's a little quieter. Mondello, a working mother, was dressed in jeans and a sweater, hair cut to shoulder length. "I love my job," she said. "I take pride in my work and my job. I know a lot of people there do."
She said her standard of living has gone up drastically since she started at Delphi five years ago. This Christmas, she is taking her family to Arizona to visit her teenage son, the first time she's been able to afford the trip. Her daughter gets a $1,500 scholarship from Delphi to attend Buffalo State College. Mondello has bought three cars since starting at the plant; the last one was her first new car. "I've never been able to buy a brand-new car, and I won't if I only make $9 or $10 an hour," she said.
Mondello is trying to remain calm about the future. It helps that she's been through this before. From 1994 to 1999, she had a job making saw blades before the company closed up and moved to the South. She then worked as an assistant manager at a Yellow Goose convenience store. She wonders if she'll lose her job in the reorganization. Right now, she's trying to live by the upbeat motto "Life is too short to dwell on the bad things."
A Heritage in Doubt
For nearly all of its history, Lockport's fortunes have been heavily tied to America's industrialization, brought to town when the Erie Canal opened in 1825. The canal was the country's major infrastructure project of its era, forging trade links between the east and west by connecting the port of New York City to Chicago and the other ports of the Great Lakes.
Lockport gets its name from the canal locks near Main Street, which raise and lower boats along two 25-foot steps as they pass through the city. Industries came and went, some slowly dying out as businesses moved overseas or new technology made the old ways obsolete. Today, the Lockport section of the canal is a tourist attraction.
The Lockport auto parts plant goes back to 1910, and most people in town refer to it as "Harrison's," after Herbert Champion Harrison, who was one of the first to apply the assembly line system used to cheaply mass-produce cars to the process of making parts.
Today, the Lockport plant falls under Delphi's thermal and interior systems division. Workers make radiators and condensers, vent and duct work that sits mostly underneath the dashboard. Delphi says 90 percent of the parts built at the plant go into GM-built vehicles. Local officials estimate that the facility pumps as much as $500 million into the Lockport area annually. Six hundred smaller companies in the region count on Delphi as a customer of their products.
Delphi was created in 1995 as the consolidated parts division of GM. The division was spun off into a stand-alone company in 1999. The deal was supposed to allow GM to refocus on designing and assembling cars and trucks. Delphi would be free to focus on making parts and pursuing contracts from other automakers. Delphi has struggled to make a profit, accumulating $5.5 billion in losses since 2000, $1.5 billion of which was in the first three quarters of this year.
Miller, the Delphi chief executive, says the labor costs that Delphi inherited at the time of its spinoff leave it at a substantial competitive disadvantage, particularly as more auto parts production moves overseas into countries where labor is cheap. In frank language, Miller has said workers can't be blamed for pursuing the American dream. He said the companies have made promises of job security, health care and retirement pensions that they simply can no longer afford to pay. "All of us have been caught short by fast-changing economics," he said.
In Lockport, the season of canal pleasure boaters is coming to a close. The lock keepers will soon drain the canal locks. Last week, Mondello was gearing up for another Saturday shift at the plant. At work, she sees no signs of GM or Delphi cutting back. GM is ratcheting up production for a new line of sport-utility vehicles, using parts built at the Lockport facility. The extra work on weekends makes Mondello and other workers skeptical of Delphi's cry of insolvency. "There's been no slowdown," she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248143_mining12.html
Bill would open public land
Thousands of acres could be privatized
Saturday, November 12, 2005
By ROBERT MCCLURESEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
More than 50,000 acres of old mining claims in Washington -- including some inside Mount Rainier, Olympic and North Cascades national parks -- could be converted to private land under legislation expected to pass the U.S. House next week.
The proposal also would open up millions of acres in Washington's national forests -- and more than 350 million acres across the West -- to be newly privatized under a revision of the 1872 Mining Law tucked into a 184-page budget bill.
Critics who have dissected the language of the bill say it would make it easy to use a law passed 133 years ago to speed development of ski resorts, golf courses and the like in the backcountry today.
"It could be the biggest privatization of public lands in a hundred years," said John Leshy, a law professor considered one of the nation's experts on the mining law, who worked to limit its effect as a Clinton administration official. "This is all written in terms of mining claims, but it's really a real estate development law."
A major criticism of the 1872 law has been that it allows mining companies to take gold, platinum, silver and other valuable minerals off public land for free. Stung by public protests, the mining industry has long said it would be willing to pay a fair royalty when the law is updated.
But the legislation by pro-mining House members makes no provisions for such payment.
Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said her group did not draft the legislation but understands Congress' intent.
"A royalty would in effect be an added cost," Raulston said. "The U.S. is a high-cost producer of almost all these metals on federal land, and we've been increasingly dependent on international sources for metals we need."
The legislation was written by the House Resources Committee, whose chairman, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., wants rural towns to turn land that has been mined into useful developments.
"The important thing here is that we're trying to provide sustainable economic development," said Matt Streit, a spokesman for the Resources Committee.
Critics, though, note that the bill would allow someone to claim 20 acres, perform $7,500 of work on it -- easily blown through in a consultant's study or some drilling work -- and then sell the land for development.
"They could turn it over to real estate speculators, foreign companies -- whoever wants to buy it," said Dusty Horwitt, an analyst for the Environmental Working Group, which makes its points through data-crunching.
EWG has analyzed all the nation's mining claims and said there are 50,632 acres covered by them in Washington. The two top holders are Canadian firms, Vancouver-based Teck Cominco with 7,830 acres and Toronto-headquartered Kinross Gold Corp. with 3,292.
Mining claims abound in Washington's backcountry. The North Cascades in particular are shot through with them.
Under the bill, much of the land managed by the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management could again be converted to private land. In 1995, that practice was halted by Congress, which has renewed the ban annually in budget legislation.
That ban was sparked by abuses in which some claims became ski resorts, housing subdivisions, hotels and even a brothel, in Nye County, Nev. The legislation under consideration would legalize that activity, critics say, although proponents say that would not happen.
"It's not realistic or honest to claim that mining companies will suddenly turn into real estate speculators ... and apply for a patent (privatizing the land) only to sell the land for a hotel or other business development," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., chairman of the House Resources energy and mineral resources subcommittee. He said local governments' tax base would expand through the privatization of land, providing money for schools and other needs.
A 1999 National Academy of Sciences study said about 363 million acres managed by the government would be in play if the conversions to private land were authorized again.
The bill would not allow new mining claims inside national parks or national forest areas declared wilderness. But it would allow old claims to be converted into private land.
In the past, the National Park Service has used provisions of federal land management laws to keep miners at bay in pristine areas, including Shi-Shi Beach, the stunning shoreside portion of Olympic National Park. The provisions used to battle miners there and elsewhere would be reversed or eased under the bill.
"They want to give away the taxpayers' gold," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and a member of the Resources Committee. "If somebody went to Fort Knox and took gold out, they'd be in jail for the rest of their lives. But in national forests, people can take gold (under the bill) and be considered friends of the Republican Party."
A Seattle-area Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, is portrayed by environmentalists as a "swing vote" in the mining controversy. But Reichert probably won't be doing much to stop the mining provision. He already went against the Republican House leadership to remove from the pending legislation a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"There are other parts of the bill we're going to work on, but you can only do so much," said Mike Shields, Reichert's chief of staff. "There are some things that Dave likes about the bill. He's going to vote for it."
The bill seeks to help balance the federal budget, in part by cutting spending and in part by increasing revenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the mining provisions would raise about $326 million over 10 years. That compares with a projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit over the next five years.
The budget bill expected to pass the House next week would still have to be meshed with the Senate's version of the same legislation. It remains unclear how senators might react to the mining-law provisions, but environmentalists say a budget bill is no place to debate mining policy.
"This isn't even a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's a werewolf in wolf's clothing," said Roger Flynn of the Western Mining Action Project.
This story includes information from The Associated Press and P-I Washington correspondent Charles Pope. P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com.
© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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November 12, 2005
Editorial
Playing With Fire
It certainly is a relief that the Senate is finally getting around to doing the job it so shamefully refused to do four years ago, after the 9/11 attacks: requiring the administration to follow the law and the Geneva Conventions in dealing with prisoners taken by the military and intelligence operatives.
But what started as an admirable attempt by Senator John McCain to stop the torture and abuse of prisoners has become a tangle of amendments and back-room deals that pose a real danger of undermining the sacred rule that the government cannot just lock people up forever without saying why. On Thursday, the Senate passed a measure that would deny foreigners declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants" the right to a hearing under the principle known as habeas corpus, which dates to Magna Carta.
Instead, the measure would mandate an automatic review by a federal court of the status of the inmates now at Guantánamo Bay and any future prisoners of that kind. It would exclude coerced confessions from that review, and place important new controls over Guantánamo operations.
These safeguards, proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has shown real courage in condemning prisoner abuse, are long overdue. Mr. Graham, a former military lawyer, also proposed the exemption to habeas corpus, arguing that it had never been meant to apply to prisoners of war, let alone to foreign terrorists. He says Guantánamo inmates are clogging the courts with petitions that hamper efforts to get vital intelligence.
Mr. Graham is a careful and principled senator who argues eloquently for his measure. The Senate should adopt his proposal for a federal court review of detentions, preferably by a huge margin, and the House should follow suit. We'd love to see Congress then defy the inevitable veto threats from the White House, driven by Vice President Dick Cheney, who is still skulking around Capitol Hill trying to legalize torture at the C.I.A.'s secret prison camps around the world. But we cannot support Mr. Graham in trying to rewrite the habeas corpus law.
Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation. Do they really have anything left to say?
The habeas petitions are not an undue burden. And in any case, they are a responsibility that this nation has always assumed to ensure that no one is held prisoner unjustly.
Senator Graham argues that the 9/11 attacks were an act of war, not a crime for American courts to judge, and he is trying to put antiterrorist operations back under the Geneva Conventions. Mr. McCain's amendment banning torture, abuse and cruelty has the same goal, and we share it. But the administration shredded the Geneva Conventions after 9/11 and cannot be trusted to follow them now.
There will be amendments and counteramendments in the Senate next week. In the end, the right coalition of senators may actually pass valuable new rules for "unlawful combatants." But they are sure to draw the fierce opposition of the White House, which is hardly likely to agree to an automatic federal court review of its detention policies.
The danger is that the House may do the administration's bidding and produce a bill that strips away the good parts of the Graham amendment, leaving the dangerous parts, and that such a version may be approved behind closed doors during a House-Senate conference.
The problem in creating one exemption to habeas corpus, no matter how narrow, is that it invites the creation of more exemptions. History shows that in the wrong hands, the power to jail people without showing cause is a tool of despotism. Just consider Natan Sharansky or Nelson Mandela. The administration hates that sort of comparison, so we wonder why it keeps inviting it. Just the other day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said with a sneer that the Guantánamo prisoners on hunger strikes had gone "on a diet where they don't eat" for publicity.
We'd rather see the Senate delete the suspension of habeas corpus from Mr. Graham's measure now. Some constitutional principles are too important to play around with.
· Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-rutten12nov12,0,2534395.story?track=tothtml
REGARDING MEDIA
Duty under siege
The Judith Miller soap opera shuddered to an all-too-appropriate close this week in the all-but-inevitable forums — on the talk shows and the Internet.
Tim RuttenRegarding MediaNovember 12, 2005Call it the final installment of "Desperate Reporters."The veteran New York Times reporter served 85 days in a federal lockup for refusing to name a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to a clutch of Washington reporters. As it turned out, Miller's source was former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. He is under indictment for his alleged part in a whispering campaign designed to discredit Plame's husband, the former U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had gone public with charges that the Bush administration distorted intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's purported attempts to obtain material for a nuclear weapon.Within days of Miller's release from jail, the details of her decidedly irregular dealings with Libby became public, and her image underwent a public meltdown unmatched since Dorothy sloshed the Wicked Witch of the West with that bucket of water. Wednesday, the New York Times announced that the 57-year-old Miller had "agreed" to retire, and the paper published a letter to the editor in which she replied to her own editors' and colleagues' criticisms.By Thursday night, Miller — every inch the genially unflappable onetime Hollywood High drama student — was on Larry King's CNN talk show deftly deflecting her avuncular host's deferential questions, while just as deftly avoiding the usual questions phoned in from his viewers. Meanwhile, the Times' publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., was taking the chattering classes' version of the high road on Charlie Rose's PBS program. (Morale problem? What morale problem?)The morbidly curious who want the fullest possible explication of Miller's side of this whole murky narrative can go to her personal website, www.judithmiller.org. These days, the Web is where yesterday's personalities and controversies can transcend their 15 minutes of fame. Personal websites are the side chapels of cyberspace, where ego-fueled votive candles keep flickering vigil before the icon of self-regard.Unfortunately, the wreckage of this tatty little melodrama has obscured a point that should never have been lost. From day one, the conduct of Judith Miller the individual journalist and what was done to her and to the other reporters involved by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald were entirely — indeed, necessarily — divisible issues.Because federal law does not grant journalists the same protection against being compelled to reveal confidential sources recognized by nearly all the 50 states, Miller, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and NBC's Tim Russert are going to have to testify at Libby's trial. Because the government's case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former aide turns on the contradictions between what Libby and these reporters told the grand jury about their conversations, Libby's defense attorneys will not be bound by any of the limitations Fitzgerald accepted to obtain their testimony. On cross-examination, these journalists turned reluctant prosecution witnesses are likely to be grilled on every aspect of their reportage, published or unpublished.It's hard to imagine a more chilling prospect for a free press, but one did arise this week, all but obscured in the gossipy penumbra cast by the Miller melodrama.On Nov. 2, the Washington Post's Dana Priest revealed that the CIA has been running a secret prison system in which alleged Al Qaeda members and their allies are held without legal sanction and tortured. These so-called "black sites" are a critical component in the Bush administration's covert attempt to legitimize torture as an instrument of state policy.Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told Editor & Publisher's online edition that Priest's article was "an incredible piece of journalism that informed the public about questionable behavior by government officials."Two of the administration's leading congressional allies — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — don't agree. Tuesday, they ordered an official inquiry into whether what they termed Priest's "egregious disclosure" could have "long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences."You bet it will, for the torturers and, maybe for Priest, if she now is dragged in front of a congressional committee and threatened with contempt unless she reveals her sources.In the mordant calculus of human suffering, the urge to persecute journalists for the pseudo-crime of informing the public cannot be equated with the Bush administration's adoption of torture as an instrument of state policy. Both affront our common-sense notions of what is decent for a similar reason.In the years since Sept. 11, the notion has taken root in some circles, particularly inside this administration, that because American power is virtuous, it need not subject itself to limits or restraint. If some loathsome Islamo-fascist creep won't tell you what you think you want to know, torture him until he does. If some reporter tells inconvenient truths about what's going on in your secret prisons, drag her into a star chamber and grill her about where she got her facts and, if she doesn't answer, jail her until she does.Lost in all this heedless self-righteousness is one of the fundamental things that makes the American system and Al Qaeda's utterly inimical to one another: Osama bin Laden and his accomplices believe that the sanctity of their desired end justifies any means to achieve it. Hence, the sequence of outrages that treat with equal contempt the innocent lives of office workers in lower Manhattan and wedding guests in an Amman hotel.We Americans always have believed that there are things we cannot do, even in the pursuit of our highest ideals. We have enshrined that crucial inhibition in the social arrangement we call the rule of law and, more important, in our individual consciences. It is part of the particular American genius that we are an obsessively "can-do" people who reflexively acknowledge the notion of restraint. It's why we stop at traffic signals, even in the middle of the night, and accept the results of elections, no matter how close or bitter.It's why we feel a sense of revulsion when we read that the executive branch of our government now operates secret torture chambers and that the only response of its congressional allies to that revelation is an attempt to silence the journalistic messenger who told us what was going on.Americans instinctively know that what people or politicians say they're going to do isn't really as important as it seems. Real life is chaotic and punctuated with the unforeseeable, so even the best intentioned people and governments seldom, if ever, get the chance to do precisely what they say they're going to do. It's one of the reasons no sensible person pays attention to party platforms.In the end, what's really important about individuals, institutions and governments is the one thing they actually can control — and that's what they won't do, like torture people or jail journalists for doing their jobs.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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washingtonpost.com
Keep the Internet Free
By Arch PuddingtonSaturday, November 12, 2005; A25
Delegates from around the world will gather next week in Tunisia for what is known as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Few people are aware of WSIS's existence, its mission or the purpose of this conference. That is unfortunate, since the principal agenda item calls for a wholesale change in governance of the Internet that could lead to a significant setback for global freedom of information.
Although many are under the impression that the Internet is unregulated, this is not entirely the case. There are a number of technical issues -- such as the allocation of the dot-com or dot-net designations or the country codes that are attached to e-mails -- that must be determined by a central entity. This job is currently handled by an American nonprofit: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). With an international staff on three continents, ICANN has met its mandate in a way that all agree has been fair and nonpartisan.
While ICANN functions on a charter from the Commerce Department, the U.S. government has followed a strict hands-off policy; ICANN's actions are transparent and decisions are made only after extensive consultation with Internet companies, governments, techies and freedom-of-expression organizations. ICANN has contributed to the unique nature of the Internet as a creative and innovative means of communication that links people and ideas across national boundaries -- for the most part outside the control of government.
But demands are growing for the "internationalization" of Internet governance. To this end, a number of countries are pressing to remove oversight from ICANN and place it under the auspices of a new organization that would be part of the U.N. system. Advocates of this arrangement make no claims that the current system is flawed. Instead, they focus on the supposed "injustice" or "inappropriateness" of a system overseen by an American agency. And there is an ulterior motive behind the clamor for change.
In a Nov. 5 op-ed column in The Post, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that a U.N. role in Internet governance would be benign and would concentrate on expanding the Internet into the developing world. But while Annan's intentions are no doubt well-meaning, the same cannot be said for the coalition of U.N member states making the loudest noise for change. Among them are regimes that have taken measures to control their citizens' access to the Internet and have championed global controls over Internet content. These include some of the world's most repressive states: Cuba, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Other governments have weighed in to support U.N. oversight, either out of anti-Americanism, a reflexive commitment to international governance or a belief that Internet content needs to be reined in.
Although U.N. officials deny any intention to broaden ICANN's mandate, past U.N. experience suggests that a limited mission can gradually expand into unanticipated territory under the relentless pressure of determined member states. Some of the most shameful U.N. episodes -- particularly regarding freedom issues -- have occurred because the world's democracies were outwitted by a coalition of the most repressive regimes -- the very coalition that is taking shape over Internet control. Working with determination and discipline, this alliance of dictatorships has already left the U.N. Human Rights Commission a shambles, something that Annan himself has deplored.
In this emerging contest, the position of the European Union is particularly disappointing. Initially aligned with the United States in support of Internet freedom, the E.U. recently went wobbly and proposed creation of a "forum" to govern the Internet, something different from ICANN though not under U.N. control -- this to the delight of Cuba and China.
Compounding the problem is the choice of Tunisia, a country with a woeful record of press freedom violations, as the WSIS conference's host. On Freedom House's global index of press freedom, Tunisia ranks near the bottom, right along with Iran and Saudi Arabia -- 173rd of 193 states. It is particularly zealous in restricting Internet content and has mobilized security forces to block Web sites, monitor e-mail and conduct surveillance of Internet cafes.
The United States delegation has pledged to stand firm in defense of ICANN while proposing a plan to allow more global discussion and debate on Internet issues. This is a good starting place; even better would be a decision by the European Union to align itself with the United States.
It is no secret why Iran, China and Cuba are lobbying so desperately to replace ICANN: The Internet has proven a potent weapon against state repression. In an age of media concentration, it has contributed mightily to democratization of the means of communication. It nullifies totalitarian schemes to monopolize the airwaves; in the age of the Internet, the total control portrayed by George Orwell in "1984" is simply impossible in all but the most hermetically sealed countries.
Given the stakes involved, it is incumbent on the world's democracies to stand firm against efforts to undermine this critical instrument of free ideas.
The writer is director of research at Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that monitors political rights and civil liberties worldwide.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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