June 2, 2009
The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs
By DENISE GRADY
BEREGA, Tanzania — A handwritten ledger at the hospital tells a grim story. For the month of January, 17 of the 31 minor surgical procedures here were done to repair the results of “incomplete abortions.” A few may have been miscarriages, but most were botched operations by untrained, clumsy hands.
Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.
Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.
Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die. In the United States, the figure is 11, and it is even lower in other developed countries. But Tanzania’s record is neither the best nor the worst in Africa. Many other countries have similar statistics; quite a few do better and a handful do markedly worse.
Eighty percent of Tanzanians live in rural areas, and the hospital in Berega — miles from paved roads and electric poles — is a typical rural hospital, struggling to deal with the same problems faced by hospitals and clinics in much of the country. Abortion is a constant worry.
Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women (accounting for 13 percent of maternal deaths), mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization. More than two million women a year suffer serious complications. According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Reliable figures on abortion in Tanzania are hard to come by, but the World Health Organization reports that its region, Eastern Africa, has the world’s second-highest rate of unsafe abortions (only South America is higher). And Africa as a whole has the highest proportion of teenagers — 25 percent — among women having unsafe abortions.
The 120-bed hospital in Berega depends on solar panels and a generator, which is run for only a few hours a day. Short on staff members, supplies and even water, the hospital puts a lot of its scarce resources into cleaning up after failed abortions.
The medical director, Dr. Paschal Mdoe, 30, said many patients who had had the unsafe abortions were 16 to 20 years old, and four months pregnant. He said there was a steady stream of cases, much as he had seen in hospitals in other parts of the country.
“It’s the same everywhere,” he said.
On a Friday in January, 6 of 20 patients in the women’s ward were recovering from attempted abortions. One, a 25-year-old schoolteacher, lay in bed moaning and writhing. She had been treated at the hospital a week earlier for an incomplete abortion and now was back, bleeding and in severe pain. She was taken to the operating room once again and anesthetized, and Emmanuel Makanza, who had treated her the first time, discovered that he had failed to remove all the membranes formed during the pregnancy. Once again, he scraped the inside of her womb with a curet, a metal instrument. It was a vigorous, bloody procedure. This time, he said, it was complete.
Mr. Makanza is an assistant medical officer, not a fully trained physician. Assistant medical officers have education similar to that of physician assistants in the United States, but with additional training in surgery. They are Tanzania’s solution to a severe shortage of doctors, and they perform many basic operations, like Caesareans and appendectomies. The hospital in Berega has two.
Abortions in Berega come in seasonal waves — March and April, August and September — in sync with planting and harvests, when a lot of socializing goes on, Dr. Mdoe said. He said rumor had it that many abortions were done by a man in Gairo, a town west of Berega. In some cases, he said, the abortionist only started the procedure, knowing that doctors would have to finish the job.
Dr. Mdoe said he suspected that some of the other illegal abortionists were hospital workers with delusions of surgical skill.
“They just poke, poke, poke,” he said. “And then the woman has to come here.” Sometimes the doctors find fragments of sticks left inside the uterus, an invitation to sepsis.
In the past some hospitals threatened to withhold care until a woman identified the abortionist (performing abortions can bring a 14-year prison term), but that practice was abandoned in favor of simply providing postabortal treatment. Still, women do not want to discuss what happened or even admit that they had anything other than a miscarriage, because in theory they can be prosecuted for having abortions. The law calls for seven years in prison for the woman. So doctors generally do not ask questions.
“They are supposed to be arrested,” Dr. Mdoe said. “Our work as physicians is just to help and make sure they get healed.”
He went on, “We as medical personnel think abortion should be legal so a qualified person can do it and you can have safe abortion.” There are no plans in Tanzania to change the law.
The steady stream of cases reflects widespread ignorance about contraception. Young people in the region do not seem to know much or care much about birth control or safe sex, Dr. Mdoe said.
In most countries the rates of abortion, whether legal or illegal — and abortion-related deaths — tend to decrease when the use of birth control increases. But only about a quarter of Tanzanians use contraception. In South Africa, the rate of contraception use is 60 percent, and in Kenya 39 percent. Both have lower rates of maternal mortality than does Tanzania. South Africa also allows abortion on request.
But in other African nations like Sierra Leone and Nigeria, abortion is not available on request, and the figures on contraceptive use are even lower than Tanzania’s and maternal mortality is higher. Nonprofit groups are working with the Tanzanian government to provide family planning, but the country is vast, and the widely distributed rural populations makes many people extremely hard to reach.
Geography is not the only obstacle. An assistant medical officer, Telesphory Kaneno, said: “Talking about sexuality and the sex organs is still a taboo in our community. For a woman, if it is known that she is taking contraceptives, there is a fear of being called promiscuous.”
In interviews, some young women from the area who had given birth as teenagers said they had not used birth control because they did not know about it or thought it was unsafe: they had heard that condoms were unsanitary and that birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptives could cause cancer.
Mr. Kaneno said the doctors were trying to dispel those taboos and convince women that it was a good thing to be able to choose whether and when to get pregnant.
“It is still a long way to go,” he said.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Diana Johnstone: Zionist Terrorists Destroy a Parisian Bookstore: Sarkozy looks on
July 6, 2009
The Raids on the Resistances Bookstore
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
Paris.
COUNTERPUNCH.ORG
http://counterpunch.org/johnstone07062009.html
Thousands of books drenched in cooking oil – that is the latest exploit of the Zionist fanatics who regularly attack property and people in Paris and get away with it.
In the early afternoon of Friday, July 3, five men, mostly masked, stormed into the “Resistances” bookstore located in a quiet residential neighborhood of the 17th arrondissement in northwest Paris. To the startled women working in the shop, as well as two customers, they announcing that they were from the Jewish Defense League and began ripping books off shelves and tables, dousing them heavily with cooking oil, and then smashing four computers before leaving rapidly in a waiting vehicle.
The bookstore is owned and operated by Olivia Zemor and Nicolas Shashahani, who are also the leaders of the very active militant group CAPJPO-EuroPalestine (CAPJPO stands for Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche Orient). In addition to a wide collection of books on the Middle East and other subjects, including fiction, the bookstore has a reading room and a lending library, gives courses in English and Arabic, and possesses a modest but well-attended auditorium where authors are invited to speak.
Two and a half years ago, on December 7, 2006, a similar attack squad threw teargas grenades into the bookstore as a crowd was gathering to listen to the late Israeli author Tanya Reinhart and her companion, the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai. On that occasion, Shashahani had to be treated for effects from the teargas but material damage was slight. This time, the entire shop is a shambles, with countless ruined books, and damage runs to tens of thousands of euros, according to Shashahani.
But, he stresses, this is only one in “hundreds of violent actions” carried out by the French version of the banned US Jewish Defense League in recent years. There is no reason to expect them to stop so long as they can count on indulgence on the part of French authorities and the silence of the mainstream media. The vandalism on the Resistances bookstore was reported by the French news agency AFP, but the dispatch was apparently carried only by the small tabloid Le Parisien and not by the major newspapers, much less by television. Usually, almost the only people who are informed about such events are in the politically active circles targeted for intimidation.
The general public remains ignorant of these aggressions, while it is regularly informed by television of even relatively minor acts of anti-Semitism – some of them imaginary (as the famous case a few years ago of the young woman who totally invented a story of being the victim of an “anti-Semitic assault” by blacks in the suburban commuter train in order to get attention from her family, and got the attention of everyone in France all the way up to the President of the Republic). Real “anti-Semitic acts” occur, but most are no more organized than school-yard insults. However, the publicity they receive serves to keep alive the notion that the very existence of Jews is under perpetual threat – the basic alibi used by the Jewish Defense League. The false claim that “the French government does nothing to protect Jews” is used as a pretext for aggressive “self-defense”.
As disciples of Meir Kahane, the JDL not only favors purifying an enlarged Eretz Israel of Arabs, but wants to bring the fight against Arabs and “Islamofascism” to France itself. Debate is not their style. After training in Israeli martial arts, they carry on their fight by physical means, attacking Arabs, Muslims and defenders of the Palestinian cause. The JDL is an informal group of a few hundred members, rather than a registered organization with a headquarters. The French police, adept at infiltrating every sort of political group, certainly must know who and where they are, but they seem never to be disturbed after one of their raids. Moreover, unless the aggressors identify themselves, victims cannot be sure whether they are being attacked by the LDJ or by Betar, an older Zionist youth organization founded back in 1929 by Vladimir Jabotinsky and close to Likud. Both use similar methods, and probably overlap, although the LDJ, as the more radical of the two, is said to be draining members from Betar.
In the rare cases when Zionist fanatics are actually arrested and put on trial, they are usually treated with uncommon indulgence. In December 2003, a group of pro-Palestinian students were violently attacked by the usual suspects. A Palestinian student suffered grave eye injuries. Faced with lackadaisical police, the students carried out their own investigation, leading to the conviction on September 16, 2004 of one Anthony Attal. He was given a suspended sentence of ten months.
LDJ or Betar members also have the advantage of a “sanctuary” – Israel. On October 25, 2006, a 68-year-old pro-Palestinian radical militant, Ginette Hess Skandrani, was attacked in her own home by three unknown men who beat her savagely, explaining only “you know why”. Hospitalized, her head wounds required several stitches. Last February 4, her aggressors were finally convicted and sentenced, but:
-- one of them, Ruben Colleu, was sentenced to two years in prison, of which 18 months were suspended – but he had already fled to Israel.
-- the second, Stevel Elie, was sentenced to three years in prison – but the French court had already given him permission to go to Israel “to do his military service” in Tsahal.
-- Only the third, Mike Sfez, was still around. Like Colleu, 18 months of his two year sentence were suspended, and the remaining six months could be transformed into social work.
Only recently, large squads of presumed LDJ thugs have attacked theater-goers outside a benefit for children of Gaza and attacked persons of Arab appearance on their way to a meeting of diverse groups scheduled to discuss the “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” movement.
The LDJ has its apologists in the police. On June 5, 2006, the head of the small right-wing Christian union “Action Police CFTC”, Michel Thooris, praised the LDJ and Betar for “performing a public service mission by defending people and property”. He was not publicly reprimanded by his big boss, the minister of the Interior at that time, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The double standards of Sarkozy’s tough “law and order” policy are all too obvious. His ostentatious policy switch from a certain traditional French balance in the Middle East to strong support for Israel is only likely to encourage the LDJ in its feeling of impunity. This spring, a commercially successful author, Paul-Eric Blanrue, was unable to publish his book on “Sarkozy, Israel and the Jews” in France, and was obliged to find a publisher in Belgium. Still worse, the usual French distributor of his Belgian publisher refused to distribute the book in France. His press conference in Paris was unattended by any journalist and his book, which carefully documents Sarkozy’s policy of wooing Jewish support in France by aligning with Israel and attacking the “riffraff” in the suburbs, has been ignored by French reviewers.
Even though the market is saturated, there is always room in the media, however, for laments that France’s secular tradition is threatened by the “communitarianism” of… Muslims. The ideological and violent provocations of fanatic Zionists are rarely singled out as the main cause of this disturbing trend. Of course, France’s many militant intellectual Zionists do not resort to the methods of the LDJ and Betar. But the theme of Jewish victimhood, which is constantly present in schools, in cinema, in political discourse and in the media, provides a congenial atmosphere for the pathological violence of the Jewish militias in France, and for the indulgence with which they are treated.
The situation is scarcely improved by the extreme fragmentation of the Palestine solidarity movement in France – which can be seen as just one aspect of the endemic sectarianism of the French left. The various victims of LDJ or Betar violence – such as CAPJPO, Ginette Skandrani, the comedian Dieudonné, etc., etc. – are often not on speaking terms with each other, so that even if they all profess solidarity with Palestine, there is very little or no solidarity between them.
However, one may hope that the July 3 attack on the Resistances bookstore may arouse a broader protest than other recent attacks, quite simply because of the strong connotations of destroying books. A protest demonstration has been called for the evening of Wednesday, July 8, to demand that the government finally ban the JDL, just as it has already been banned in the United States and Israel. This will be an opportunity to show solidarity in resistance to the most active form of fascism in France today.
Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr
The Raids on the Resistances Bookstore
Zionist Fanatics Practice Serial Vandalism in Paris
By DIANA JOHNSTONE
Paris.
COUNTERPUNCH.ORG
http://counterpunch.org/johnstone07062009.html
Thousands of books drenched in cooking oil – that is the latest exploit of the Zionist fanatics who regularly attack property and people in Paris and get away with it.
In the early afternoon of Friday, July 3, five men, mostly masked, stormed into the “Resistances” bookstore located in a quiet residential neighborhood of the 17th arrondissement in northwest Paris. To the startled women working in the shop, as well as two customers, they announcing that they were from the Jewish Defense League and began ripping books off shelves and tables, dousing them heavily with cooking oil, and then smashing four computers before leaving rapidly in a waiting vehicle.
The bookstore is owned and operated by Olivia Zemor and Nicolas Shashahani, who are also the leaders of the very active militant group CAPJPO-EuroPalestine (CAPJPO stands for Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche Orient). In addition to a wide collection of books on the Middle East and other subjects, including fiction, the bookstore has a reading room and a lending library, gives courses in English and Arabic, and possesses a modest but well-attended auditorium where authors are invited to speak.
Two and a half years ago, on December 7, 2006, a similar attack squad threw teargas grenades into the bookstore as a crowd was gathering to listen to the late Israeli author Tanya Reinhart and her companion, the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai. On that occasion, Shashahani had to be treated for effects from the teargas but material damage was slight. This time, the entire shop is a shambles, with countless ruined books, and damage runs to tens of thousands of euros, according to Shashahani.
But, he stresses, this is only one in “hundreds of violent actions” carried out by the French version of the banned US Jewish Defense League in recent years. There is no reason to expect them to stop so long as they can count on indulgence on the part of French authorities and the silence of the mainstream media. The vandalism on the Resistances bookstore was reported by the French news agency AFP, but the dispatch was apparently carried only by the small tabloid Le Parisien and not by the major newspapers, much less by television. Usually, almost the only people who are informed about such events are in the politically active circles targeted for intimidation.
The general public remains ignorant of these aggressions, while it is regularly informed by television of even relatively minor acts of anti-Semitism – some of them imaginary (as the famous case a few years ago of the young woman who totally invented a story of being the victim of an “anti-Semitic assault” by blacks in the suburban commuter train in order to get attention from her family, and got the attention of everyone in France all the way up to the President of the Republic). Real “anti-Semitic acts” occur, but most are no more organized than school-yard insults. However, the publicity they receive serves to keep alive the notion that the very existence of Jews is under perpetual threat – the basic alibi used by the Jewish Defense League. The false claim that “the French government does nothing to protect Jews” is used as a pretext for aggressive “self-defense”.
As disciples of Meir Kahane, the JDL not only favors purifying an enlarged Eretz Israel of Arabs, but wants to bring the fight against Arabs and “Islamofascism” to France itself. Debate is not their style. After training in Israeli martial arts, they carry on their fight by physical means, attacking Arabs, Muslims and defenders of the Palestinian cause. The JDL is an informal group of a few hundred members, rather than a registered organization with a headquarters. The French police, adept at infiltrating every sort of political group, certainly must know who and where they are, but they seem never to be disturbed after one of their raids. Moreover, unless the aggressors identify themselves, victims cannot be sure whether they are being attacked by the LDJ or by Betar, an older Zionist youth organization founded back in 1929 by Vladimir Jabotinsky and close to Likud. Both use similar methods, and probably overlap, although the LDJ, as the more radical of the two, is said to be draining members from Betar.
In the rare cases when Zionist fanatics are actually arrested and put on trial, they are usually treated with uncommon indulgence. In December 2003, a group of pro-Palestinian students were violently attacked by the usual suspects. A Palestinian student suffered grave eye injuries. Faced with lackadaisical police, the students carried out their own investigation, leading to the conviction on September 16, 2004 of one Anthony Attal. He was given a suspended sentence of ten months.
LDJ or Betar members also have the advantage of a “sanctuary” – Israel. On October 25, 2006, a 68-year-old pro-Palestinian radical militant, Ginette Hess Skandrani, was attacked in her own home by three unknown men who beat her savagely, explaining only “you know why”. Hospitalized, her head wounds required several stitches. Last February 4, her aggressors were finally convicted and sentenced, but:
-- one of them, Ruben Colleu, was sentenced to two years in prison, of which 18 months were suspended – but he had already fled to Israel.
-- the second, Stevel Elie, was sentenced to three years in prison – but the French court had already given him permission to go to Israel “to do his military service” in Tsahal.
-- Only the third, Mike Sfez, was still around. Like Colleu, 18 months of his two year sentence were suspended, and the remaining six months could be transformed into social work.
Only recently, large squads of presumed LDJ thugs have attacked theater-goers outside a benefit for children of Gaza and attacked persons of Arab appearance on their way to a meeting of diverse groups scheduled to discuss the “Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions” movement.
The LDJ has its apologists in the police. On June 5, 2006, the head of the small right-wing Christian union “Action Police CFTC”, Michel Thooris, praised the LDJ and Betar for “performing a public service mission by defending people and property”. He was not publicly reprimanded by his big boss, the minister of the Interior at that time, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The double standards of Sarkozy’s tough “law and order” policy are all too obvious. His ostentatious policy switch from a certain traditional French balance in the Middle East to strong support for Israel is only likely to encourage the LDJ in its feeling of impunity. This spring, a commercially successful author, Paul-Eric Blanrue, was unable to publish his book on “Sarkozy, Israel and the Jews” in France, and was obliged to find a publisher in Belgium. Still worse, the usual French distributor of his Belgian publisher refused to distribute the book in France. His press conference in Paris was unattended by any journalist and his book, which carefully documents Sarkozy’s policy of wooing Jewish support in France by aligning with Israel and attacking the “riffraff” in the suburbs, has been ignored by French reviewers.
Even though the market is saturated, there is always room in the media, however, for laments that France’s secular tradition is threatened by the “communitarianism” of… Muslims. The ideological and violent provocations of fanatic Zionists are rarely singled out as the main cause of this disturbing trend. Of course, France’s many militant intellectual Zionists do not resort to the methods of the LDJ and Betar. But the theme of Jewish victimhood, which is constantly present in schools, in cinema, in political discourse and in the media, provides a congenial atmosphere for the pathological violence of the Jewish militias in France, and for the indulgence with which they are treated.
The situation is scarcely improved by the extreme fragmentation of the Palestine solidarity movement in France – which can be seen as just one aspect of the endemic sectarianism of the French left. The various victims of LDJ or Betar violence – such as CAPJPO, Ginette Skandrani, the comedian Dieudonné, etc., etc. – are often not on speaking terms with each other, so that even if they all profess solidarity with Palestine, there is very little or no solidarity between them.
However, one may hope that the July 3 attack on the Resistances bookstore may arouse a broader protest than other recent attacks, quite simply because of the strong connotations of destroying books. A protest demonstration has been called for the evening of Wednesday, July 8, to demand that the government finally ban the JDL, just as it has already been banned in the United States and Israel. This will be an opportunity to show solidarity in resistance to the most active form of fascism in France today.
Diana Johnstone is author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached at diana.josto@yahoo.fr
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Obama Breaks Hearts in Appalachia
A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Friday, July 3, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070203022_pf.html
Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?
If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains - encompassing about a million acres - buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas - while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains - with their impoverished and alienated population - are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.
Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws.
And government claims of doing everything possible to halt the holocaust are simply not true. George Bush gutted Clean Water Act protections. Obama must restore them.
First, the White House should fix the "fill" rule the Bush administration adopted in 2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste dumps. Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water Act, 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred under mining waste. Obama could reverse the "fill" rule to reflect its original meaning, which forbids waste matter from being dumped into waterways.
Second, the Interior Department should strictly enforce the widely ignored "buffer zone" rule that forbids dumping waste within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams.
Third, our laws require companies to restore mined areas to their original condition. The administration should end the absurd fiction that extraction pits filled with unconsolidated rocks and rubble where trees will never grow and streams will never flow are "reclaimed."
Fourth, current law forbids the issuance of "fill" permits that will cause "significant degradation" to waterways. It is absurd for the Army Corps of Engineers to endorse the canard that filling miles of streams is not causing significant degradation. The president should require the Corps to deny and rescind permits where operations will cause downstream damage.
Fifth, the Clean Water Act requires mining operators to prove that they can restore the "function and structure" of affected streams. Operators have never been compelled to make the functional or structural analyses of the aquatic ecosystem required by the act. Obama should order his officials to stop ignoring this requirement.
Sixth, the administration should enforce the law requiring an environmental impact study for each permit when a mine "may have significant environmental impacts," individually or cumulatively. The Corps of Engineers routinely allows coal operators to escape this mandate - an illegal practice that should stop.
Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy.
President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining - then in its infancy - that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.
The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine.
Obama has the authority to end mountaintop removal, without further action from Congress and without formal rulemaking. He just needs to make the coal barons obey the law.
--------
The writer is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Friday, July 3, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070203022_pf.html
Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?
If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day - the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly - to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains - encompassing about a million acres - buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not - obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas - while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains - with their impoverished and alienated population - are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.
Obama promised science-based policies that would save what remains of Appalachia, but last month senior administration officials finally weighed in with a mixture of strong words and weak action that broke hearts across the region. The modest measures federal bureaucrats promised amount to little more than a tepid pledge of better enforcement of existing laws.
And government claims of doing everything possible to halt the holocaust are simply not true. George Bush gutted Clean Water Act protections. Obama must restore them.
First, the White House should fix the "fill" rule the Bush administration adopted in 2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste dumps. Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water Act, 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred under mining waste. Obama could reverse the "fill" rule to reflect its original meaning, which forbids waste matter from being dumped into waterways.
Second, the Interior Department should strictly enforce the widely ignored "buffer zone" rule that forbids dumping waste within 100 feet of intermittent or perennial streams.
Third, our laws require companies to restore mined areas to their original condition. The administration should end the absurd fiction that extraction pits filled with unconsolidated rocks and rubble where trees will never grow and streams will never flow are "reclaimed."
Fourth, current law forbids the issuance of "fill" permits that will cause "significant degradation" to waterways. It is absurd for the Army Corps of Engineers to endorse the canard that filling miles of streams is not causing significant degradation. The president should require the Corps to deny and rescind permits where operations will cause downstream damage.
Fifth, the Clean Water Act requires mining operators to prove that they can restore the "function and structure" of affected streams. Operators have never been compelled to make the functional or structural analyses of the aquatic ecosystem required by the act. Obama should order his officials to stop ignoring this requirement.
Sixth, the administration should enforce the law requiring an environmental impact study for each permit when a mine "may have significant environmental impacts," individually or cumulatively. The Corps of Engineers routinely allows coal operators to escape this mandate - an illegal practice that should stop.
Instead of acting to enforce these laws, administration officials indicated last month that they will allow more than 100 permits to go forward while they carefully review their regulatory options. If they act accordingly, the ruined landscapes of Appalachia will be Obama's legacy.
President Obama should go to Appalachia and see mountaintop removal. My father visited Appalachia in 1966 and was so horrified by strip mining - then in its infancy - that he made it a key priority of his political agenda. He complained that Appalachia, with our nation's richest natural resources, was home to America's poorest populations, its worst education system, and its highest illiteracy and unemployment rates. These statistics are even grimmer today as mining saps state wealth. In 1966, 46,000 West Virginia miners were collecting salaries and pensions and reinvesting in their communities. Mechanization has shrunk that number to fewer than 11,000. They extract more coal annually, but virtually all the profits leave the state for Wall Street.
The coal industry provides only 2 percent of the jobs in Central Appalachia. Wal-Mart employs more people than the coal companies in West Virginia. Last week a major study documented how coal imposes a net cost to Kentucky of more than $100 million per year. Coal is not an economic engine in the coalfields. It is an extraction engine.
Obama has the authority to end mountaintop removal, without further action from Congress and without formal rulemaking. He just needs to make the coal barons obey the law.
--------
The writer is senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Monday, June 29, 2009
David Swanson: Emperor Barack's Signing Statements
The Emperor's Seven Signing Statements
By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/43996
Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.
Look at how the latest war supplemental funding bill was passed. The Emperor's people wrote most of the bill. The Emperor combined it with the IMF banker bailout. The Emperor threatened and bribed his way to deals with enough congress members to pass it. The Emperor preemptively told other nations the bill would pass and then badgered congress with the claim that this nation (He, the nation) would be damaged if he turned out to have lied. The Emperor lied to congress members and the public that this would be the last war supplemental bill. Congress members claimed to back it because it was the last one (not that this made the slightest sense), and others openly, proudly, and obliviously declared that they were switching their votes to yes in order to please the Emperor.
When the bill came to Emperor Barack he signed it and released his sixth and only legal signing statement announcing that he'd signed it. Two days later (Fridays being the favored day for signing statements) Obama released his seventh signing statement, claiming to have signed the same bill on that day as well, but perhaps beginning to establish the precedent that "signing statements," like "executive orders," can be issued at any time. The seventh signing statement did what the first five had done: it illegally and unconstitutionally altered the law in favor of bestowing illegal powers on the Emperor. The seven statements are posted here. Here's the heart of the seventh statement:
"[P]rovisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations."
An executive would be someone who executed the laws of congress, suggesting that a different capitalized E word is actually intended, that "Executive" is now a stand-in for "Emperor." Similarly, "constitutional" in this context refers to dictionary.com's third definition of "constitution", namely "the aggregate of a person's physical and psychological characteristics." In other words, "constitutional authority" is "imperial authority" derived from the character of the Emperor. We know this because the U.S. Constitution does not create any presidential authority to conduct foreign relations (only to "receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers") but does require the advice and consent and two-thirds approval of the Senate in order to make treaties, and does give congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign nations" as well as complete power over the raising and spending of public funds, not to mention the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The sections of this latest law tossed out by Obama were ploys to win the bill's passage, including requirements that he work to strengthen labor and environmental standards at, and report to congress on the activities of, the IMF and the World Bank. Unlike an emperor, an executive would be required by the U.S. Constitution to "take Care that the Laws by faithfully executed," stated by candidate Barack Obama thus:
"I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law."
Obama's first signing statement made part of the law his right to use the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated in that bill in "new" and "far-reaching" ways that he would "initiate," as well as the understanding that an "oversight board" created by the executive branch -- rather than congress -- would oversee the activities of the executive branch, or as Obama calls it "the Federal Government."
Obama's second signing statement declared his intention to violate dozens of sections of the law he was signing, including sections providing for the spending of funds, sections related to the creation of international treaties, and sections restricting retaliation against whistleblowers.
Obama's third signing statement, on the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009," announced his intention to violate requirements in the law related to the appointment of a government commission.
Obama's fourth signing statement, on a bill creating a "Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission" threw out a requirement that the Emperor provide that commission with information.
Obama's fifth signing statement was applied to a bill that created a commission and included on it six members of congress. The signing statement declared that those six commission members Š
"will be able to participate only in ceremonial or advisory functions of [such a] Commission, and not in matters involving the administration of the act."
Is it time to stop endlessly being "shocked" by these yet? Obama, like Bush, argues in his signing statements that the sections of law he intends to violate are unconstitutional. The problem is not that either one of these presidents is necessarily always wrong or that such questions can ever be decided to everyone's satisfaction. The problem is that the Constitution requires the president to veto a bill or sign and faithfully execute it. The time to argue against the constitutionality of a provision is before a bill is passed or upon vetoing it. Such an argument can even be made upon signing a bill. It just can't be accompanied by a declaration of the power to violate the law.
Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton made innovations in the abuse of signing statements without which Bush Jr. could not have done what he did. Now Obama is further advancing the genre. At some point, of course -- as Germans once learned (and learned before nukes or climate crises were on the table) -- it can become too late to act.
--
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David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book
To receive updates from After Downing Street register at
http://afterdowningstreet.org/user/register
To subscribe to other lists go to
http://davidswanson.org/node/921
By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/43996
Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.
Look at how the latest war supplemental funding bill was passed. The Emperor's people wrote most of the bill. The Emperor combined it with the IMF banker bailout. The Emperor threatened and bribed his way to deals with enough congress members to pass it. The Emperor preemptively told other nations the bill would pass and then badgered congress with the claim that this nation (He, the nation) would be damaged if he turned out to have lied. The Emperor lied to congress members and the public that this would be the last war supplemental bill. Congress members claimed to back it because it was the last one (not that this made the slightest sense), and others openly, proudly, and obliviously declared that they were switching their votes to yes in order to please the Emperor.
When the bill came to Emperor Barack he signed it and released his sixth and only legal signing statement announcing that he'd signed it. Two days later (Fridays being the favored day for signing statements) Obama released his seventh signing statement, claiming to have signed the same bill on that day as well, but perhaps beginning to establish the precedent that "signing statements," like "executive orders," can be issued at any time. The seventh signing statement did what the first five had done: it illegally and unconstitutionally altered the law in favor of bestowing illegal powers on the Emperor. The seven statements are posted here. Here's the heart of the seventh statement:
"[P]rovisions of this bill within sections 1110 to 1112 of title XI, and sections 1403 and 1404 of title XIV, would interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the congress prior to such negotiations or discussions. I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to engage in foreign diplomacy or negotiations."
An executive would be someone who executed the laws of congress, suggesting that a different capitalized E word is actually intended, that "Executive" is now a stand-in for "Emperor." Similarly, "constitutional" in this context refers to dictionary.com's third definition of "constitution", namely "the aggregate of a person's physical and psychological characteristics." In other words, "constitutional authority" is "imperial authority" derived from the character of the Emperor. We know this because the U.S. Constitution does not create any presidential authority to conduct foreign relations (only to "receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers") but does require the advice and consent and two-thirds approval of the Senate in order to make treaties, and does give congress the power "to regulate Commerce with foreign nations" as well as complete power over the raising and spending of public funds, not to mention the power "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
The sections of this latest law tossed out by Obama were ploys to win the bill's passage, including requirements that he work to strengthen labor and environmental standards at, and report to congress on the activities of, the IMF and the World Bank. Unlike an emperor, an executive would be required by the U.S. Constitution to "take Care that the Laws by faithfully executed," stated by candidate Barack Obama thus:
"I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law."
Obama's first signing statement made part of the law his right to use the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated in that bill in "new" and "far-reaching" ways that he would "initiate," as well as the understanding that an "oversight board" created by the executive branch -- rather than congress -- would oversee the activities of the executive branch, or as Obama calls it "the Federal Government."
Obama's second signing statement declared his intention to violate dozens of sections of the law he was signing, including sections providing for the spending of funds, sections related to the creation of international treaties, and sections restricting retaliation against whistleblowers.
Obama's third signing statement, on the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009," announced his intention to violate requirements in the law related to the appointment of a government commission.
Obama's fourth signing statement, on a bill creating a "Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission" threw out a requirement that the Emperor provide that commission with information.
Obama's fifth signing statement was applied to a bill that created a commission and included on it six members of congress. The signing statement declared that those six commission members Š
"will be able to participate only in ceremonial or advisory functions of [such a] Commission, and not in matters involving the administration of the act."
Is it time to stop endlessly being "shocked" by these yet? Obama, like Bush, argues in his signing statements that the sections of law he intends to violate are unconstitutional. The problem is not that either one of these presidents is necessarily always wrong or that such questions can ever be decided to everyone's satisfaction. The problem is that the Constitution requires the president to veto a bill or sign and faithfully execute it. The time to argue against the constitutionality of a provision is before a bill is passed or upon vetoing it. Such an argument can even be made upon signing a bill. It just can't be accompanied by a declaration of the power to violate the law.
Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton made innovations in the abuse of signing statements without which Bush Jr. could not have done what he did. Now Obama is further advancing the genre. At some point, of course -- as Germans once learned (and learned before nukes or climate crises were on the table) -- it can become too late to act.
--
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Times; min-height: 14.0px}
David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book
To receive updates from After Downing Street register at
http://afterdowningstreet.org/user/register
To subscribe to other lists go to
http://davidswanson.org/node/921
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Robert Sheer: Obama's $1.5 trillion plus bailout isn't working
oreclosure Fiasco Continues:
The Bush-Obama Strategy of Throwing Billions at Banks Doesn't Work
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on June 27, 2009, Printed on June 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
It's not working. The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust. The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, "The Mortgage Bankers Association cut its forecast of home-mortgage lending this year by 27% amid deflating hopes for a boom in refinancing." The same association said that the total refinancing under the administration's much ballyhooed Home Affordable Refinance Program is "very low."
Aside from a tight mortgage market, the problem in preventing foreclosures has to do with homeowners losing their jobs. Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem. Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.
State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments--when they have jobs. Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on the banks to cover state shortfalls.
California couldn't get the White House to guarantee $5.5 billion in short-term notes to avert severe cuts in state and local payrolls, from prison guards to schoolteachers. Compare that with the $50 billion already given to Citigroup, plus an astounding $300 billion to guarantee that institution's toxic assets. Citigroup benefits from being a bank "too big to fail," although through its irresponsible actions to get that large it did as much as any company to cause this mess.
How big a mess? According to the Federal Reserve's most recent report, seven straight quarters of declining household wealth have left Americans $14 trillion poorer. Many who thought they were middle class have now joined the ranks of the poor. Food banks are strapped and welfare rolls are dramatically on the rise, as the WSJ reports, with a 27 percent year-to-year increase in Oregon, 23 percent in South Carolina and 10 percent in California. And you have to be very poor to get on welfare, thanks to President Clinton's so-called welfare reform, which he signed into law before he ramped up the radical deregulation of the financial services industry, enabling our economic downturn.
Citigroup, the prime mover for ending the sensible restraints of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, is now a pathetic ward of the state. But back in the day President Clinton would tour the country with Citigroup founder Sandy Weill touting the wonderful work that Weill and other moguls were doing to invest in economically depressed communities. It wasn't really happening then, and now millions of folks in those communities have seen their houses snatched from them as if they were just pieces in a game of Monopoly that Clinton and his fat-cat buddy were playing.
Once Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit: "In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer."
Summers is now Obama's top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the "Enron Loophole," permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having "coordinated Treasury policy" during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury's welfare program.
Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.
Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
© 2009 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
The Bush-Obama Strategy of Throwing Billions at Banks Doesn't Work
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on June 27, 2009, Printed on June 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
It's not working. The Bush-Obama strategy of throwing trillions at the banks to solve the mortgage crisis is a huge bust. The financial moguls, while tickled pink to have $1.25 trillion in toxic assets covered by the feds, along with hundreds of billions in direct handouts, are not using that money to turn around the free fall in housing foreclosures.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, "The Mortgage Bankers Association cut its forecast of home-mortgage lending this year by 27% amid deflating hopes for a boom in refinancing." The same association said that the total refinancing under the administration's much ballyhooed Home Affordable Refinance Program is "very low."
Aside from a tight mortgage market, the problem in preventing foreclosures has to do with homeowners losing their jobs. Here again the administration, continuing the Bush strategy, is working the wrong end of the problem. Although President Obama was wise enough to at least launch a job stimulus program, a far greater amount of federal funding benefits Wall Street as opposed to Main Street.
State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments--when they have jobs. Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on the banks to cover state shortfalls.
California couldn't get the White House to guarantee $5.5 billion in short-term notes to avert severe cuts in state and local payrolls, from prison guards to schoolteachers. Compare that with the $50 billion already given to Citigroup, plus an astounding $300 billion to guarantee that institution's toxic assets. Citigroup benefits from being a bank "too big to fail," although through its irresponsible actions to get that large it did as much as any company to cause this mess.
How big a mess? According to the Federal Reserve's most recent report, seven straight quarters of declining household wealth have left Americans $14 trillion poorer. Many who thought they were middle class have now joined the ranks of the poor. Food banks are strapped and welfare rolls are dramatically on the rise, as the WSJ reports, with a 27 percent year-to-year increase in Oregon, 23 percent in South Carolina and 10 percent in California. And you have to be very poor to get on welfare, thanks to President Clinton's so-called welfare reform, which he signed into law before he ramped up the radical deregulation of the financial services industry, enabling our economic downturn.
Citigroup, the prime mover for ending the sensible restraints of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, is now a pathetic ward of the state. But back in the day President Clinton would tour the country with Citigroup founder Sandy Weill touting the wonderful work that Weill and other moguls were doing to invest in economically depressed communities. It wasn't really happening then, and now millions of folks in those communities have seen their houses snatched from them as if they were just pieces in a game of Monopoly that Clinton and his fat-cat buddy were playing.
Once Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit: "In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer."
Summers is now Obama's top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the "Enron Loophole," permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having "coordinated Treasury policy" during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury's welfare program.
Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.
Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.
© 2009 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140943/
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Roger Shuler: Memo to Eric Holder: Don Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Roger Shuler's piece, below, lays out in harrowing detail the gross instances of
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
Saturday, May 9, 2009
AFP- Victor Thorn: Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story
Inconsistencies Arise in CFO Suicide Story
By Victor Thorn
Reminiscent of the ongoing microbiologist body count that AMERICAN FREE PRESS has reported on, a new wave of suicides is plaguing the financial industry, culminating in the recent death of Freddie Mac CFO David Kellermann.
The 41-year-old husband and father, described as having a life-of-the-party personality, was found dead in the basement of his $900,000 Vienna, Va. home at 4:48 a.m. on April 22. Initially, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Associated Press that Kellermann hanged himself.’
Other news agencies ran with this account, but then Sabrina Rock, a Fairfax County police spokesman, confirmed to the AP that Kellermann was dead, but she could not confirm that he committed suicide despite WUSA reporting that Fairfax police told them it was suicide.
Stranger yet, police spokesman Lucy Caldwell told All Headline News editor Linda Young via telephone on April 22 that “other people were present at the home at the time of Kellermann’s death, and that there was a gun and a gunshot wound.”
If true, this final variable is explosive for one obvious reason. How often does a suicide victim hang himself, then shoot himself; or shoot himself first, then hang himself? Considering these conflicting accounts, conspiracy theorists almost immediately began speculating.
Some compared this scenario to the murder of Vince Foster; while others claimed Kellermann became a fall guy for Sen. Christopher Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank, or the architects behind Barack Obama’s economic plan.
To determine whether this conjecture is valid, first examine Kellermann’s role at Freddie Mac. Employed at this government-sponsored mortgage firm since 1992, Kellermann served as a financial analyst, principal accounting officer, corporate controller, senior vice president, and was then finally promoted to CFO in September 2008. Loyal, driven, and working strenuously long hours, he typified the ultimate “company man.”
Unfortunately, Freddie Mac came to be recognized as a primary catalyst for the ill-fated housing bubble’s collapse where perilously risky loans led to record-setting defaults. Matthew Barakat and Alan Zibel of the Associated Press noted on April 23 that “the company lost $50 billion last year, and the Treasury Department has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.”
To make matters worse, Freddie Mac is the subject of federal investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Justice Department. The focus of their probes revolved around the accounting practices used for their 13 million mortgages. With serious doubts surfacing about the validity of Obama’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have come under increased scrutiny; especially since, as Christine Seib of the Times UK wrote in April 22, they “lend or guarantee half of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.”
The stress at Freddie Mac became so pronounced that Barakat and Zibel reported, “Last month, David Moffett, the government-appointed chief executive, resigned in frustration over strict oversight.” To complicate matters, the public’s fury over CEO bonuses directly affected Kellermann. CNBC on-air editor Charlie Gasparino summarized the situation on April 22.
“In March, Kellermann was one of a handful of senior Freddie Mac people to have received a bonus, in his case $850,000, which prompted criticism and outrage.”
The blowback alarmed Kellermann, as Clusterstock editor Joe Weisenthal documents. “Reporters and camera crews showed up at his home in an affluent Washington suburb. Fearing that someone might attack his house, his wife or their five-year-old daughter, he asked the company to provide a security detail.”
The question remains: what was Kellermann’s role in Freddie Mac’s meltdown? Being a key insider with access to highly sensitive material, did he help facilitate the accounting gimmicks that brought about his company’s demise? Or, could Kellermann have been one of the good guys who refused to perpetrate this ruse being foisted on American taxpayers? To his credit, Barakat and Zibel indicate that “Kellermann was neither a target nor a subject of the [U.S. Attorney’s] investigation, and had not been under law enforcement scrutiny.”
Freddie Mac had been subpoenaed, however, for documents relating to its accounting and disclosure improprieties. Was the entire house of cards beginning to crumble, and instead of covering it up, Kellermann instead intended to come clean? What makes this matter suspicious is that only one day prior to his death, the Associated Press reported on April 23 that “a human resources officer met with Kellermann and told him he needed a break because he had been working so hard.”
Faced with a much-needed vacation to spend time with his wife and daughter, why would Kellermann suddenly choose to kill himself? Or, was Freddie Mac clandestinely trying to push their top executive out the door in a roundabout way?
The most pressing issue on the table at this time was Freddie Mac’s first-quarter financial reports, which Kellermann proposed to release at the end of May. Matters became extremely complicated because “Freddie Mac executives recently battled with federal regulators over whether to disclose potential losses on mortgage securities tied to the Obama administration’s housing plan” (Zibel & Barakat, April 22).
The crux of this subject is now apparent. A massive battle ensued between federal regulators who were trying to cover up catastrophic economic news, and those who refused to further cook the books. Zachary Goldfarb and Jonathan Mummolo of the Washington Post provided an invaluable insight on April 23.
“Kellermann figured in several recent controversies at Freddie Mac. He and a group of company attorneys tussled with regulators in early March as the firm prepared to file its quarterly earnings report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The group insisted that Freddie Mac inform shareholders of the cost to the company in helping carry out the Obama administration’s housing recovery plan. The regulators urged the company not to do so.”
An industry veteran who wished to remain anonymous offered the following assessment for Housing Wire. “This isn’t the story of a guy who was trying to cover something up. It’s the story of a guy who was trying to do the right thing. Kellermann and his cohorts insisted on reporting Freddie Mac’s financial status as they believed it should be reported, disclosing all of its obligations.”
Was the smoking gun information held by Kellermann (and other top CEOs who’ve been “suicided” in recent months) what ultimately cost him his life?
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.
(Issue # 19, May 11, 2009)
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