Gorilla Radio for Monday, May 9th, 2005

Gorilla Radio for Monday, May 9th, 2005

John Rae is the president of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, and he’s touring the country to bring awareness to the often neglected needs of Canada’s blind and vision impaired.

Judith Koltai is the Founder and Animateur of the Cassandra Project, an effort to document and understand what makes a Cassandra.

Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all the good things to do in and around Victoria this week

Chris Cook produces and hosts, Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 102FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca And, check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com

GR 03-01

Close your eyes and imagine for a moment how many aspects of your life are determined by vision. For thousands of Canadians, this is no exercise. Nearly two-hundred years have passed since the invention of Braille, the familiar reading and writing symbols developed for the instruction of the blind, and yet finding Braille material is still a difficult and frustrating challenge. John Rae is the president of the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, and he’s touring the country to bring awareness to the often neglected needs of Canada’s blind and vision impaired. John Rae in the first half.

And; being sighted is not the same as seeing. As old as human civilization itself, the role of the Seer has been an integral element for survival. Kings, Emperors, Caesars, and Presidents have all sought the advantage of foreknowledge, using the talents of psychics and scientists to see better what’s coming down the road. Like their coal mine canary counterparts, these Cassandras ring alarms others miss, or choose to ignore. Judith Koltai is the Founder and Animateur of the Cassandra Project, an effort to document and understand what makes a Cassandra. Judith Koltai in the second half.

And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all the good things to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, John Rae bringing light to the blind.

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the mainstream media.

Some past guests include: Nahla Abdo, M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, William Blum, Eric Blumrich, Kristina Borjesson, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, William A. Cook, David Cromwell, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Glen Ford, Susan George, Al Giordano, Stan Goff, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Robert Jensen, Tom Jackson, Ron Jacobs, Dahr Jamail, Diana Johnstone, John Kaminski, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Wayne Madsen, Linda McQuaig, Mark Crispin Miller, George Monbiot, Mykeru, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Sheldon Rampton, Scott Ritter, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, Michael C. Ruppert, Bert Sacks, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Jaggi Singh, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, John Stauber, Ben Tripp, Grant Wakefield, Bernard Weiner, Robert Anton Wilson, Katherine Yurica, Mickey Z., and many others.

Tale of "al- Qaeda" Number Three Capture So Much "Number Two"

It seems the salivating never ceases in network fastasy land; over the weekend, the super-patriots in Big Media have been furiously spinning the most recent fairie tale of a "Coalition" success in the War on Terrortm to whit: the capture of the Number 3 man. Does it need mentioning, this latest tale is as spurious as the innumerable others preceding it? -{ape}

And just in from Juan Cole at JuanCole.com: A case of misidentification?

You may remember thePakistani barber who protested his picture being displayed as one of al-Qaeda's main man operatives. Now, Professor Cole posits: western confusion with the complexity of Arab names may be behind al-Libbi's meteoric promotion within the mythical terror organization.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
south_asia/4512885.stm

Kurt Nimmo
May 08, 2005

Abu Faraj al-Libbi: “Flotsam and Jetsam” of an Illusory al-Qaeda

As it turns out, the “Al-Qaeda kingpin” Faraj al-Libbi is a nobody in the illusory world of al-Qaeda terrorism, according to a story in the Sunday Times today. European intelligence experts are scratching their heads at Bush’s pronouncement the arrest of al-Libbi is a “a critical victory in the war on terror.” Abu Faraj al-Libbi “was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as ‘among the flotsam and jetsam’ of the organization.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Abu_Faraj_al-Libbi

Moreover, al-Libbi was not included in the State Department’s “rewards for justice,” as reported widely in the corporate media (and mentioned here yesterday). I speculated that the Libyan has nothing to do with al-Qaeda and was set-up by the Pakistanis to take a fall in a plot to assassinate Pervez Musharraf. It appears this is closer to the truth than all the nonsense appearing in the corporate press here in the United States. “The only operations in which he is known to have been involved are two attempts to assassinate Pervez Musharraf,” write Christina Lamb and Mohammad Shehzad Islamabad for the Sunday Times. “He was never more than a regional facilitator between Al-Qaeda and local Pakistani Islamic groups.”

Lamb and Islamabad speculate on the hype surrounding al-Libbi’s arrest: “Some believe al-Libbi’s significance has been cynically hyped by two countries that want to distract attention from their lack of progress in capturing Bin Laden, who has now been on the run for almost four years.” It should be noted that the United States and Pakistan worked together in the 1980s to create what they would ultimately call “al-Qaeda.”

So important was the continued existence of a spook-created Islamic terror network (generically called “al-Qaeda” for propaganda purposes), Pakistan “secretly ran a major training camp” in Afghanistan in the 1990s (one of several camps constructed with CIA money), according to US intelligence documents. Pakistani agents “encouraged, facilitated and often escorted Arabs from the Middle East into Afghanistan,” well after the Soviets were defeated and had departed. (See Frankenstein the CIA created). It is well-known (outside of the corporate media) that this Islamic terror network was put to use in the Balkans and elsewhere (see U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars by Isabel Vincent, National Post).

Aftab Khan Sherpao, Pakistan’s interior minister, attempted to put the best face on the revelation that al-Libbi is a nobody by stating that his capture “will have made [Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri] very apprehensive. Whether big fry or small fry, they’re on the run, I can tell you that.”

And they will be on the run forever because the United States and Pakistan have a vested interest in not apprehending terrorists (it will be difficult to catch Osama because he is dead) and making sure terrorists (those retained by the CIA-ISI) pose an open-ended threat for the indeterminable future (or for a least a generation or two, as Cheney tells us). So long as terrorism—devised, organized, and unleashed by the CIA (remember, the Afghan mujihadeen operation was declared to be the CIA’s most successful in its long and sordid history)—is useful in scaring the dickens out of gullible Americans, and can be used to pick their pockets and dismantle their civil liberties, it will remain viable bedtime story, even if the “terrorists” they apprehend are nothing more than al-Qaeda wannabes or coffee gofers and copy boys, as a source quoted by the Sundays Times indicates al-Libbi was.

In the meantime, expect the Bush echo chamber, otherwise known as the corporate media, to drop the al-Libbi story like a hot potato, or at least shift it to the back pages. Expect, as well, the average American consumer, who has the memory of a person suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, to forget about al-Libbi in record time, while remarkably retaining the impression that Bush and Crew are “making progress” in the bogus war against a manufactured terrorism.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/
timeline/people/musharraf.jpg

May 07, 2005

Is Abu Faraj al-Libbi a Musharraf Patsy?

Authorities in Pakistan have arrested “18 people thought to be part of the terrorist network of Abu Faraj al-Libbi,” who is billed as numero tres in the big bad al-Qaeda “network,” according to CNN. “In the course of the effort to seize the people, agents learned some of those detained were planning to assassinate President Pervez Musharraf, the officials said.” Abu Faraj al-Libbi was arrested earlier this week in Mardan, a town 30 miles north of Peshawar, after doing something no serious terrorist would do—he attempted to make a call on his cell phone. “A military intelligence agent said on condition of anonymity that Pakistani authorities received a tip after U.S. agents intercepted a cell phone call al-Libbi had made,” reports the Associated Press. It would seem the feared Osama bin Laden is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his search for holy warriors.

“It was only through the interrogation of a number of suspects—arrested between January and August last year—that the Pakistani authorities started taking note of [al-Libbi’s] presence in the [al-Qaeda] hierarchy,” explains the BBC. “Every time we interrogate a militant linked to al-Qaeda, al-Libbi’s name pops up,” a Pakistani security official told the BBC. So important was the capture of al-Libbi, he figured prominently on a poster of “Most Wanted Terrorists” in Pakistan and a 20m rupees ($340,000) bounty was placed on his head (the U.S. subsequently offered $1 million), not exactly a small chunk of change in Pakistan where more than 30 percent of the population survives on less than a dollar a day. Considering this, and the fact al-Libbi should have been relatively easy to spot due to the fact his face is disfigured by a skin disorder (luecoderma), the Libyan remained free to serve as Osama’s “international operations planner,” or so we are told.

So-called “president” Musharraf (after a “bloodless” coup in 1999, Musharraf held a “referendum” and declared himself “president,” even though the majority of Pakistani political groups boycotted and voter turnout was less than 30 percent) “directly blamed [al-Libbi] for financing and supervising two attempts on his life in December 2003″ in Rawalpindi. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, contradicting his boss, denied “that security forces have foiled another planned attack on the life of President General Pervez Musharraf,” according to an item appearing today on Pakistan Link. It should also be noted that Mushtaq Ahmed (a former Pakistani air force official), said to be an al-Libbi associate (and thus al-Qaeda) involved in the alleged Musharraf assassination plan and re-captured on May 5, had mysteriously escaped from prison after receiving a death sentence handed down for the earlier Musharraf assassination plot (this would be something like John Hinckley escaping from St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital and attempting to shoot Reagan again).

Is it possible al-Libbi and Ahmed have little if anything to do with al-Qaeda and are instead involved with an effort to get rid of Musharraf? “Musharraf has major problems in the form of rebellion in Sindh, Balochistan and now we also hear in Pakistani Punjab,” writes Balaji Reddy for the India Daily. “He has done everything to shut the mouth of democratic opposition,” behavior obviously not uncharacteristic for a military dictator who fancies himself democratically elected. Although Indians complaining about Pakistanis should be taken with a grain of salt, the theory holds up under scrutiny, especially considering “Pakistan has been a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism and the hunt for bin Laden,” as CNN puts it, a hunt that is more public relations stunt than an actual sincere effort to get rid of al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, a man Bush told us some time ago no longer concerns him. Instead, al-Libbi is the terrorist du jour in the shadow of Bin Laden, a victory for the home team (in a media sense, anyway), and his capture serves both Bush and Musharraf, the latter who needs all the traction he can gain as millions of Pakistanis desperately attempt to get rid of him.

A Tale of Two Americas

I wrote this a few months back; the U.S. military released secondary findings on the investigation into what actually happended the night Pat Tillman died. My December article is pretty much indicative of what they came up with. - {ape}

Two Americans, Two Americas

Two National Football League stars walk away from the game at the height of their lucrative careers for reasons that illustrate the divide in today's America.

Two Americans, Two Americas
C. L. Cook
Dec. 5th 2004

Red Team, Blue Team

There's been much written, in the wake of the recent U.S. elections, of the split in the American political psyche. Some have extrapolated this division to the spiritual sphere, making of it a struggle to find the soul of the nation. The twin tales of the departure from the NFL of star players, Pat Tillman and Ricky Williams serve as analogues of a nation seeking its identity.

Pat Tillman came from a military family. After the 9/11 attacks against America, he began to view football as irrelevant in the broader scope of the nation's affairs. He and his brother, Kevin, a former football professional himself, joined the elite Army Rangers because, in Pat's words,

"A lot of my family has gone and fought wars, and I really haven't done a damn thing."

The brothers were assigned to the same unit, and initially sent to Iraq, before a subsequent transfer to Afghanistan. O­n April 22nd, 2004, they were ambushed while o­n patrol and Pat Tillman was killed.

The army was quick to award Tillman the Silver Star, and released a glowing account of the fatal encounter and Pat's heroism that would later prove to be mostly fiction. The truth was: Tillman's death was the culmination of a series of incompetent decisions made by superiors along the chain of command, compounded by equipment failure. Ultimately, he was killed by "friendly-fire," or in civilian terms, shot by his own side.

Some, o­n the anti-war, anti-empire side of the American bifurcation, used the lies told by the Pentagon, and the media's shameless jingoistic lionization of Tillman, to impugn his character and the accounts of his courage under fire, (completely untrue), while others went so far as to question the intelligence of the man who swallowed the Bush line o­n the "War o­n Terror" whole and ultimately died for a lie (less completely untrue).

Tillman believed he was serving the interests of his country, but he was no dummy. He graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State, while playing football, in less than four years. His friends say he was a voracious reader, and loved to discuss conspiracy theories. Whether he had come to doubt Washington's veracity, or entertain the greatest conspiracy theory of them all before the end is an open question.

Ricky Williams was a Heissman Trophy-winning star Running Back for the Miami Dolphins making millions a year, and o­n pace to break every record in the book. Then he decided to walk away. He'd been troublesome for the Dolphins, failing numerous drug tests for marijuana, and facing fines and suspension from the league. His drug use hadn't always been a problem for the NFL, though.

While recovering from an injury, doctors (and drugs-making giant Glaxxo SmithKline) convinced Williams his aversion to crowds of autograph seekers was due to a condition they called, "social anxiety disorder," or (SAD). He was quickly signed o­n as a "celebrity patient" for Glaxxo's new miracle cure for shyness, Paxil and began making the media rounds promoting the anti-depressant. But the drug didn't sit well with Williams, so he gave it up in favour of weed.

He wasn't shy about the benefits of leaf, saying it was "ten times better than Paxil" and should be made legal. The NFL didn't agree. Just weeks before the 2004 season began, still facing fines and censure, Ricky Williams walked, saying,

"I've realized, both o­n a psychological and physical level, that the things we do in football don't bring more harmony to your life. They just bring more disharmony."

Since his departure, Williams has gone o­n a world-wide odyssey, travelling through Asia, Europe, Australia, and finally home to California, in an effort to find his own path. He's gone vegan, enrolled in a course teaching the ancient Indian holistic medicinal practice, Ayurveda, and, even though faced with law suits from the league and savage attacks by the press, says he's never been happier. At his now defunct website, RunRickyRun.com, he wrote:

"I wish athletes today could have the same impact o­n social reform as they did when he [Jim Brown] was playing. When the likes of Ali, Malcolm X and Jim Brown all sat in the same room and discussed their views o­n America. Nowadays, it seems all some of us are interested in is how much money we can make. I love playing football, and I love making money, but I am starting to realize that those aren't the o­nly reasons God has given me so much talent."

Out of the game for good, Williams won't have the soap-box of professional sport to effect the kind of change he had envisioned, but his Ricky Williams Foundation continues to raise money to educate under-privileged kids in America.

We'll never know what positive contributions Pat Tillman could have made to his country.

Both these Americans, bright, driven, independent, and courageous will fade from the national consciousness, but together they represent the deep divisions of that country in a time when the need for existential soul-searching has never been more relevant.

End Note: The Washington Post published a story today, May 23, '05 detailing Tillman's parent's response to the Army cover-up of the cause of his death.

Chris Cook produces and hosts the public affairs program, Gorilla Radio, heard weekly o­n CFUV Radio, University of Victoria.
http://cfuv.uvic.ca

Run Ricky Run: Football, Pot, and Pain
Fred Gardner
Counterpunch.org
Aug. 7/8, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner08072004.html

Ricky Williams at Holistic Medicine School
Associated Press
Nov. 24th, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6562580/

In the Kill Zone: The Unnecessary Death of Pat Tillman
Steve Coll
The Washington Post
Dec. 5th, 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120604Y.shtml

Pat Tillman and Ricky Williams
Dec., 5th, 2004
Mickey Z.
http://www.mickeyz.net

The Runaway
Chris Jones
Esquire Magazine
Dec. 2004 Volume 142, Issue 6
http://www.esquire.com/features/
articles/2004/041104_mfe_ricky.html

Former Dolphin Star Goes for Ayurvedic Medicine
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/
dolphins/sfl-rickyphgal04,0,5297408.photogallery?coll=sfla-dolphins-front

Ding-a-ling Ring for the Bush Coterie

Global Eye


Ring Them Bells

Chris Floyd
May 6, 2005

An occupational hazard of dissidence in the Age of Bush is the unavoidable necessity of belaboring the obvious. Again and again, you must ring the same bell; over and over, you must repeat the same blatant fact: that George W. Bush and his minions are lying hypocrites with blood on their hands.

But what can you do? Each week -- each day -- brings fresh confirmation of this damning truth. And until the American people redeem their lost national honor by rising up in their millions -- taking to the streets with the patriotic cry, "These murderous jackals no longer represent us!" -- the Bush crimes will go on, and must be documented. So grab the bell-rope: Here we go again.

Last week saw a bumper crop of death-dealing hypocrisy, as the freedom-lovin', terrorist-fightin' he-men of the Bush Regime were caught in flagrante delicto with some rough trade indeed: genocidal rape-fiends, diabolical flesh-boilers and tyrannical peddlers of violent, ignorant religious extremism. And no, it wasn't a meeting of the Republican National Committee.

First the Bushists rolled out the red carpet for one of Osama bin Laden's former partners, Sudan's intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gosh was Osama's designated minder in the 1990s, when the ex-CIA ally was comfortably ensconced in Sudan. Gosh is also accused -- by members of his own government -- of directing military attacks on civilians in Sudan's Darfur region, where the janjaweed militia is carrying out a government-backed "ethnic cleansing" program of rape, pillage and murder against the region's black Muslims. At least 400,000 have died in the carnage, with 2 million more driven into exile.

Last year, the Bush Regime itself officially declared the Darfur despoliation a "genocide," and called Gosh's gang of terrorist-coddling goons "an extraordinary threat" to America's national security. But that was before the 2004 election, when Bush had to drag his "compassionate conservative" crapola out of mothballs for a few months to mollify soccer moms distressed at the pictures they saw on CNN of those poor little Ewoks dying in -- where was it? Biafra? Burundi? Rwanda? Rangoon? Once Bush had his teeny-tiny mandate in hand, it was back to business.

That's oil business, of course. Sudan has become one of the chess pieces in the "Great Game" of petropolitics, as the "full spectrum dominators" of the Bush Regime plant their "military footprints" all over the globe in a relentless crusade to stem the inexorable rise of China and India as rivals to "the world's only superpower." It just so happens that China has become the leading player in Sudan's burgeoning oil industry, securing fat concessions in choice fields. Gosh and his goon squads gorge on these oil profits to fuel their mass terrorism in Darfur. Now Bush wants a piece of that action; and if he has to abet the murder of a few hundred thousand desert darkies to get it, who cares? Certainly not those soccer moms, now fretting about high gas prices for their SUVs: "Get us more cheap oil, Georgie, pronto!"

And so Bush has bedded down with Gosh, who for his part is happy to swap a minor league privateer like Osama for a big-time state terrorist with unlimited resources. Gosh was flown to Washington for high-level "consultations" with his new partners in the CIA -- just as the Sudanese government was announcing that "abundant" oil reserves have been found in Darfur, the Sudan Tribune reports. At the same time, Bush moved -- secretly -- to gut legislation that would freeze financial assets of the genocidists and increase international protection for Darfur's people, The New York Times reports. Happy coincidences all around!

Meanwhile, the killing in Sudan goes on. Just days before Gosh's extra-special visit, the janjaweed launched a "senseless and premeditated attack" in Darfur, "burning everything in their paths and leaving in their wake total destruction," Amnesty International reports. What's more, Bush's new allies in Khartoum knew the attack was coming and deliberately blocked African Union peacekeepers from intervening. But the cries of the raped and dying never reached Washington, where Gosh and the Bushists were happily plotting "joint security operations" -- and no doubt divvying up the new Darfur oilfields.

How is such two-faced cynicism possible? It's easy: The Bushists don't regard the people of Darfur as human beings. They're just counters in the game of greed and power, to be shifted or discarded as the need arises.

The same holds true for the people of Uzbekistan, now being abducted, tortured and boiled alive by Bush buddy Islam Karimov. Last week, Bush's "strategic relationship" with the Uzbek Boiler was laid bare in rich detail by The New York Times. Bush has lavished more than $500 million on Karimov's marauding security services. In return, he tortures Bush's own uncharged, "rendered" prisoners, while providing the Pentagon with a big ole "footprint" for dominating Central Asian oil.

Bush capped Hypocrisy Week by strolling hand-in-hand with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah: de facto ruler of the fiercest religious tyranny on earth; mentor to the Taliban; fount of corruption, bribery and baksheesh and longtime Bush Family business partner. With his embrace of the hereditary despot, Bush gave the lie to months of high-flown jive about lighting "fires of freedom" in the Middle East. As always, Bush's real message to those longing for liberty, at home and abroad, was clear as a bell: "Tough luck, suckers."

Annotations


Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to US War on Terrorism
Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2005

Oil Found in Sudan's Darfur
Sudan Tribuine, April 16, 2005

Sudan Becomes US Ally in 'The War on Terror'
The Guardian, April 30, 2005

Sudan: Continuing Human Rights Violations
Amnesty International, April 13, 2005

Great Gaming Around in Khartoum
The Financial Express, July 21, 2004

Oil Underlies Darfur Tragedy
Zaman, July 7, 2004

Oil and the Civil War in Sudan
Yale Insider, June 28, 2002

US Recruits a Tough Ally to Be a Jailer
New York Times, May 1, 2005

Day 113 of President's Silence
New York Times, May 3, 2005

So We Turn a Blind Eye to Genocide, Again
International Herald Tribune, April 18, 2005

China's Oil Imports From Sudan Draw Controversy
Voice of America, July 21, 2004

Zoellick's Appeasement Tour
American Prospect, April 29, 2005

Hypocrisy on Darfur
International Herald Tribune, April 7, 2005

Sudan's Final Solution
New York Times, June 19, 2004

The Wahhabi Movement
Northfield Mt. Hermon School

The Good and the Bad: Islam and Wahhabism
National Review, Nov. 18, 2002

Gordo on Steroids? Arnold's California Budget Cuts

Gordo on Steroids? Arnold's California Budget Cuts




http://www.governor.ca.gov/
govsite/images/gov_AS.jpg


There's little, to distinguish the Governator from our own dear Gordo. Save for their, er physical dimensions, the two are philosophical twins: Take money from the disabled? Hasta la vista, crip! Cut wages for healthcare workers? You'll be back, nursie! Tinker with the law? Guilty! With our own mini-Arnold ready for a sequel in B.C., a look at Arnold's "End of Days" budget in California could provide a prequel for what British Columbians can expect of a Gordon Campbell re-run. -{ape}

http://www.cbp.org/whatsnew.htm

http://www.carpentersunionbc.com/
Media/politicos/gordovoodoo.jpg

Governor's Plan to Restructure MEDI-CAL is Finacially Risky
and Could Undermine Access to Affordable Health Coverage
California Budget Watch
May 2005



http://www.cbp.org/
images/header_table_01.gif

Governor Schwarzenegger has proposed a multi-pronged plan to restructure the Medi-Cal Program, which provides health coverage to 6.6 million Californians with low incomes and limited resources. The Administration plans to seek waivers, including two Section 1115 waivers, from the federal government to implement key components of the plan.

The restructuring plan could have a range of impacts, including threatening California’s financial ability to provide Medi-Cal services by capping federal funding for certain Medi-Cal services and bene. ciaries.

This report analyzes five components of the plan, including proposals to impose premiums, restructure the safety-net hospital financing system, and shift more Medi-Cal beneficiaries into managed care.

KEY FINDINGS This report finds that:

• Section 1115 waivers would cap federal funding for certain Medi-Cal services and beneficiaries. The Administration would have to obtain a Section 1115 waiver to impose premiums on more than 500,000 Medi-Cal bene. ciaries and is planning to proceed under Section 1115 to restructure the state’s safety-net hospital financing system. In both cases, the federal government would provide no more than a fixed amount of funds for the beneficiaries or services subject to the waiver – regardless of California’s actual expenditures – rather than paying a fixed percentage of Medi-Cal costs. Currently, the federal government pays half the costs of Medi-Cal expenditures, whether such costs are higher or lower than
projected.

• Section 1115 funding caps would shift more of the financial risk for Medi-Cal from the federal government to California. Section 1115 funding caps would restrict California’s ability to meet its residents’ needs in the event of an unanticipated occurrence such as an epidemic, a natural disaster, or the availability of a new drug or technology. If one or more of these events occurred, federal funds would not automatically increase to cover the costly hospital services or the needs of beneficiaries subject to the caps. Consequently, California
would have to pay all the costs that exceed the caps or reduce costs by scaling back benefits, increasing beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs, and/or reducing reimbursement rates paid to Medi-Cal providers.

• The Governor’s proposal to impose premiums on more than 500,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries could reduce enrollment of eligible persons in Medi-Cal and increase other state costs. More than 90,000 children and adults without disabilities, elderly individuals, and people with disabilities could lose Medi-Cal coverage under this proposal. While the state may realize short-term savings due to lower Medi-Cal enrollment, costs would likely be shifted to other parts of California’s health care system to the extent that individuals who leave Medi-Cal seek alternative sources of care, such as in clinics or emergency rooms.

• The Governor’s proposed restructuring of the current safety-net hospital financing system could have a signi. cant impact on hospitals’ ability to serve the state’s Medi-Cal and uninsured populations. The federal government has raised several concerns with the state’s hospital financing proposal. The outcome of the negotiations with the federal government will be critical to California’s safety-net hospitals and to the state’s health care system.

• The Governor’s proposal to cap adult dental bene. ts at $1,000 per year could prevent some beneficiaries from obtaining appropriate and timely dental care and increase Medi-Cal costs per beneficiary. The state may realize short-term General Fund savings due to lower dental benefit costs. However, capping dental benefits could increase other Medi-Cal health care expenditures. For example, untreated dental needs could lead to other health problems that would require more costly Medi-Cal services.

• The Governor’s proposal to shift more than 800,000 Medi-Cal bene. ciaries, including children and people with dis-abilities, to Medi-Cal managed care plans poses significant
implementation issues to ensure that beneficiaries, particularly seniors and people with disabilities, maintain access to services.

• The Governor’s proposal to allow a centralized contractor to process certain Medi-Cal applications for children would not result in faster enrollment and could add new administrative requirements that would increase costs.

• California can improve the Medi-Cal Program without negatively affecting beneficiaries. For example, California could simplify Medi-Cal eligibility rules to reduce the paper-work burden on Medi-Cal beneficiaries and counties.

BACKGROUND

In January 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger released a proposal to restructure the Medi-Cal Program, which provides health coverage to 6.6 million Californians who have low incomes and meet other eligibility criteria. The Governor proposes to restructure the program “in order to advance the twin imperatives of maintaining health care coverage to eligible Californians, while containing costs and maximizing operational efficiencies.”

Key Components of the Governor’s Restructuring Plan

This report examines key components of the Governor’s Medi-Cal restructuring plan, including proposals to:

• Impose monthly premiums on more than 500,000 children and adults without disabilities, seniors, and people with disabilities;

• Restructure the state’s safety-net hospital financing system;

• Establish an annual cap of $1,000 for dental services for adults, except for services required by the federal government;

• Expand the use of managed care for children, families, elderly individuals, and people with disabilities; and

• Process certain Medi-Cal applications for children through a centralized contractor, rather than through county welfare offices.

The Governor’s Proposals Could Have a Range of Impacts

In assessing the Governor’s proposal, the state should weigh the potential impacts of each component on the state’s overall health care delivery and financing system. For example, the waiver required to implement premiums could shift more of the financial risk for Medi-Cal from the federal government to California, since the waiver would cap the amount of federal funds that California receives for Medi-Cal beneficiaries subject to the waiver. Currently, the federal government pays half the cost of Medi-Cal expenditures, whether such costs are higher or lower than projected.

For more, please see:

California Budget Project
http://www.cbp.org/2005/0505_medicalrestructure.pdf
921 11th St., Ste. 502
(916) 444-0500
Sacramento, CA 95814-2820
FAX (916) 444-0172

Dealing the Dirt on Enron

Hollywood Does Enron:
A Review of The Smartest Guys in the Room
HEATHER WILLIAMS


http://www.uncoveror.com/enron.jpg


CounterPunch.org
Weekend Edition
May 7 / 8, 2005

For armchair prophets who declared half a decade ago that share prices were bound to rise forever and make the whole world rich, watching Producer/director Alex Gibney's new documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is bound to be like looking at snapshots of a party with where they got drunk with strangers, put lampshades on their heads, and ended up unconscious on the couch with their wallets gone and the house trashed.

In the fog of morning-after regret there is the echo of the gibberish of the night before: The Dow Jones was going to hit 20 thousand! Stock market prices weren't inflated because this was a "market renaissance!" Globalization would float all boats! Why, in the New Economy, workers wouldn't need unions because they'd all be wealthy shareholders!

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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, adapted from Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's book by the same name, rightly rekindles a public discussion about the price the world paid for general credulity about the notions of ever-rising markets based on the virtues of corporate self-maximization. Although it seems incredible given the magnitude of the financial scandals that have in the last two decades gutted public utilities, pension funds, credit unions, workers' personal savings, and a significant number of treasuries and national banking systems around the world, the public has still never fully come to grips with the implications of these debacles.

Making a serviceable film about a corporate scandal that everyone ought to have seen coming might seems a straightforward task. The moral story Big Business Gone Bad after all is a fable of right over wrong that even the most docile members of the mass media have mastered. For those who didn't cut their teeth in the 1980s and 1990s on BCCI's arms deals, Michael Milken's insider trading, Chase Manhattan's handling of Raul Salinas' drug and bribe money, the plundering of the Savings and Loans, the untoward bailouts of investment banks caught in the East Asian Financial Crisis, the Federal Reserve's intervention in the hedge fund world of Long Term Capital Management, the new century brought us plenty more graft, lies, and hapless workers cheated out of billions at Worldcom, Tyco, Halliburton, and finally Enron.

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Given that head start, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room does more with its subject matter than anyone has done before. While righteous pundits at CNN or the Lehrer Report featured tired pieces about the decline in corporate ethics or the need for greater vigilance at the Securities and Exchange Commission--with the underlying inquiry being that of how on earth could the executives at Enron have gone so far astray--Gibney's film suggests that there was nothing about Skilling, Lay, Fastow, or any of the other principals that was, in corporate terms, particularly nefarious. The film points out that executives at Enron were ambitious, to be sure, determined to make big profits, little concerned about their employees and eager to cut out the competition, but that none had any grand plan to scuttle the corporation and run away with billions in cash.

In fact, despite the self-consciously macho culture of the corporation, in which employees were charged yearly with voting up to 15 percent of the workforce Survivor-style out of the corporation, the film suggests through close-ups of the traders that most of the people who took home the millions were former high school dorks. One doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, for example, at an interview with Charles Wickman, a former trader whose rubbery broad face lends him an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Potatohead, recalling his motivations at the corporation: "If I'm going to my boss's office to talk about compensation, and if I step on some guy's throat and that doubles it, then I'll stomp on that guy's throat."

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The visuals are entertaining and well-assembled: workers in rumpled suits carrying their pink slips and desk effects in cardboard boxes with the steel-and-glass Enron skyscraper gleaming behind them; naked strippers and champagne; corporate jets and luxury cars emitting the coiffed figures of now-infamous executives Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and Ken Lay, shots of dad and son Bush and their industry colleague Dick Cheney sending their Enron friends their best wishes in personal video greetings. Between theses images, the film relies smartly on a mixture archival footage and solid, smart interviews with journalists who wrote book-length accounts of the scandal, ex-Enron people, and various other players in the drama, including a hapless Gray Davis in lights-out California.

Beyond its elegance, the film's strongest point is its ambiguity. Like a mystery novel with the last chapter torn out, Gibney's film never offers the viewer a clear answer as to who or what was to blame for the Enron fraud. Was it Ken Lay, who built the company and was known to tolerate misconduct and graft among in the upper ranks at times? Perhaps, but Lay would have been nowhere without his right-hand man Jeff Skilling, who figured out how to make fictive profits with so-called mark-to-marketing treatment, which enabled the accountants to put down projected future profits as current assets. But then the film reminds us that Skilling could never have done what he did without a cooperative Securities and Exchange Commission to legalize his accounting scheme or an eager Arthur Andersen to conjure the fictive profits and make yearly losses into gains and please the shareholders.

Skilling also needed the magic of Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow who, for $45 million in skimmed-off fees, set up shell corporations where Enron could hide $30 billion dollars in debts from its investors. And because Enron was doing little in the energy industry in the 1990s that was actually bringing in revenue, it was clearly the Wall Street brokers who were recommending the stock to their clients and keeping the share prices booming and the cash flowing to Enron were more than minor players. But then, the same analysts point out self-righteously that if they asked too many questions about Enron, their bosses in the brokerages and financial groups threatened their jobs because parent companies stood to lose lucrative investment banking deals with Enron, who, after all, was leading the market in derivatives. And all of this would have been impossible to maintain if Enron's savage securities traders hadn't been able to define the derivatives market in gas and oil futures in the first place by finding loopholes in new deregulation laws big enough to drive a truck through, and that of course was the fault of visionless politicians who blithely handed public trusts to the private sector in the name of efficiency.

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The chain of deferred culpability that so strongly links the boardroom to the halls of government gives the film great narrative strength, but it also suggests one false conclusion, which is that Enron achieved what it needed politically through the Bush family and the Republican party. This may be convenient four years after the exit of Democrats from the White House, but it obscures the reason why Enron or any of the other corporate scandals that broke after January 2001 did not become campaign issues in the last election cycle. The California deregulation bill that infused a faltering Enron with no less than 5 billion dollars in extorted rates was after all passed in 1996 by an Assembly controlled by Democrats. Likewise, the Bush Administration who was blamed for not putting an end to the California energy crisis did in fact cap prices after five months in June 2001. The Clinton Administration, by contrast, stood by for nineteen months of energy gaming between May 1999 and January 2001.

The Democratic Party was just as whorish as the Republican Party when it came to Enron's money, just a little less pricey. Between 1999 and 2000, the Republican Party took in about $1.1 million from Enron in soft money contributions, but the Democratic Party was happy to take in $532,000. Enron also saw clear to grease the campaigns of 70 Senators in 1989-2001, including 27 Democrats.

Given the constraints of a two-hour film, the fairest statement may be that an account of the Enron's fall ought to supplemented at some point by a prequel that shows something about how such a corporate behemoth rose in the first place. Such a cinematic sibling would feature the cast of characters in the Clinton administration who could not do enough for Enron, domestically or internationally, or a set of powerful New Democrats working with Joe Lieberman who bent over backwards to do what they could for Enron and took plenty of their money and legislative suggestions.

The prequel would also feature Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright's State Department bullying public officials in Mozambique, Brazil, and Argentina into accepting Enron's terms on pipelines, or turning a blind eye while Enron-backed thugs in Maharashtra, India beat up citizens who were protesting the $3.2 billion gas plant going up their front yards. Perhaps there might be an interview with Mack MacLarty, Clinton's advisor and turned Enron project director who helped run political interference for the company when its projects were turned down by the World Bank, who considered them unviable.

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Thanks to a Democratic White House, Enron instead got $2.4 billion in loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Of these loans, U.S. taxpayers would eventually mop up $1 billion in unpaid debts left by the corporation after it went bankrupt. Finally, there may be footage somewhere of Enron executives attending meetings of the World Trade Organization, where Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was happy to help Enron and its accounting partner Arthur Anderson help dictate the content of the General Agreement on Trade and Services, which, not incidentally, helped export and standardize Arthur Anderson's creative accounting methods to the rest of the world.

After leaving public office, the esteemed Mr. Rubin would later go to work for Citigroup and use his connections at Treasury to try and bail out Enron in mid 2001. Then there's the odious role of neoliberal environmental groups, such as NRDC, which shilled for the deregulation of electric utilities and lobbied on behalf Enron's raid to acquire local power companies such as Portland General Electric. NRDC's energy guru Ralph Cavanagh told the skeptical residents of Oregon that Enron was a company they could "trust."

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These very significant omissions aside, the film does what a film should do: it puts the mega-corporation back in the spotlight and suggests that the demise of Enron and the disappearance of 60 billion dollars in equity ought not to have shocked anyone and will likely happen again with a similar cast of characters. Detailing the decade-long chronology of Enron's rise, the film makes it clear that the company's collapse was actually years overdue, and all its deceptions were orchestrated with complicity of all the major players in the market and most of the agencies charged with overseeing corporate activities. In so doing, Gibney actually manages to lay out a compelling logical framework for a colossal scandal that we have yet to fully process.

Heather Williams is an Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College; hwilliams@pomona.edu

Blair's Florida?

Watching the Spring birds fly before the Olympic Mountain Range on my horizon just now, I wondered: "How could so many Britons support Tony Blair; at this late date?" It's not like their Americans!

Then, I came upon this.... -{ape}

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Electoral Fraud Widespread In UK Election
by Various • Friday May 06, 2005 at 02:12 PM

As was the case in the US in 2004, it appears that this vote was also rigged. I'd cling desperately to power if I had committed War Crimes, too. I just hope the British People won't sit idly by and watch this happen like the Americans have. Not while Fascism is again on the march.

Brown's in charge
BILL JACOBS AND IAN SWANSON

CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown emerged from yesterday’s General Election as the real British Prime Minister.

Although Tony Blair was celebrating a historic and unprecedented third successive Labour victory, it was clear that much of his power had ebbed to his Downing Street neighbour.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=488822005

Blair declared winner in Sedgefield amidst reports of fraud
http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/90/36/

20,000 missing votes heighten Birmingham postal fraud fears
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19809-1600 737,00.html

Postal vote to be probed
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=488522005

BEGG SEAT POLL PROBE
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=1548 6025&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=begg-seat-p oll-probe-name_page.html

Postal voting fraud is widespread, Straw told
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n ews/2005/05/06/nelecstraw.xml

Police ordered to stop investigating vote rigging in Blair's constituency
http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/82/36/

‘Taint’ in polls to mother of parliament
There are charges that many votes have been stolen. Political parties are set to demand that suspect results should be overturned.
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may62005/ foreign174556200555.asp

John Humphrys claims his postal vote was stolen
By Louisa McLennan, Times Online

The radio journalist John Humphrys and television presenter Mariella Frostrup have complained that they were prevented from voting yesterday due to alleged failures with the postal voting system.

Mr Humphrys, the presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, revealed that he had gone to the polling station, only to be told that he couldn’t vote because someone had already applied for a postal vote in his name.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,19809-1600 918,00.html

Voting fraud exposed in Bethnal Green and Bow
http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=762

New postal vote safeguards urged
Postal votes were requested by around five million voters
Election watchdogs have demanded new safeguards to prevent postal voting fraud which they say has undermined confidence in the electoral system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/f rontpage/4520893.stm

Of course, they'll pretend to be concerned about the NEXT election, and leave this one be ...

Berlusconi Reveals Planned Italian Retreat from Iraq

Berlusconi Reveals Planned Italian Retreat from Iraq

Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi admits Italy's Iraq withdrawal "timeline." His announcement comes a day after he defiantly denied Italian troop deployments would be effected by the heavily criticized "no fault" findings of American investigators looking into the March shooting of journalist, Giuliana Sgrena and Italian secret agent, Nicola Calipari in Iraq. {-ape}

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Lost in the Translation:
Mixed Messages on Italian Iraq Pullout

C. L. Cook
May 6, '05

Will he Stay, or Will he Go?

While Britain's Guardian newspaper is reporting Silvio Berlusconi's commitment yesterday to "stay the course" in Iraq, today, AGI, an Italian news service with close ties to the PM's office says Berlusconi has revealed a withdrawal timeline for Italian troops now in Iraq. The embattled Mr. Berlusconi wouldn't give further details, but said he had discussed the timeline with the Iraqi leadership, Tony Blair and George Bush.

Berlusoni has been under tremendous pressure to quit Iraq. Italians have consistently rejected the invasion and subsequent occupation and ignoring public opinion has cost the Prime Minister dearly. His tremulous coalition government was crucified in last month's mid-term elections, losing 11 of 13 ridings, forcing Berlusconi to dissolve the government and forge a new, far weaker ruling coalition. Now, loud calls from prominent Italian politicians from both within the coalition and without appear behind today's withdrawal announcement. It's now just a matter of time, or timeline, before the Anglo-American alliance loses another partner.

Italians, already bitter about Berlusconi's arrogance and his close allegiance to George Bush, were outraged last month by American pronouncements on the infamous U.S. military attack against prominent journalist, Giuliana Sgrena and the man sent to Iraq to negotiate her release from insurgent kidnappers, Nicola Calipari. The pair and their secret service driver came under heavy fire from an American squad stationed on the road to the Baghdad airport. The offical results of a joint Italian-American military inquiry into the incident have worsened the situation, with the overwhelming reaction by Italians being calls of "Whitewash."

Though Italy's military contingent in Iraq is relatively small, approximately three thousand strong, the symbolism of fractures appearing in the so-called, "coalition of the willing" can only embolden the resistance, who are now mounting almost 200 attacks daily against the occupiers and their Iraqi collaborators. And with recruitment in the U.S. falling short of it's goals in each of the last three months, finding feet to fill those Italian boots on the ground lost could prove more significant than the numbers suggest.

Tony Blair's re-election rebuke in Britain, too should have the Bush camp worried. Though securing another majority mandate, Blair is fully aware of the unpopularity of his Iraq adventure, as are his fellow New Labour members. There's already talk of a leadership challenge.

All in all, not a good week for the trilateral partners in conquest.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as a contributing editor to the progressive news site, PEJ.org.

You can check out his blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com

A Muted Blair: Lies! What Lies?

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MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
May 5, 2005

MEDIA ALERT: BURYING THE LEGAL ADVICE FOR WAR - PART 2

The crucial, deceptive importance of the idea that journalists can and should report ‘objectively’ was made all too clear last week.

As discussed in Part 1 of this Media Alert, on April 28, the press published the Attorney General’s March 7, 2003 advice on the legality of war with Iraq. Peter Hennessy, a professor of political history at London University, commented:

"The whole thing reeks. Even if the prime minister wins handsomely on polling day this will stain him and his premiership as long as people remember it, just as Anthony Eden's name is forever associated with the Suez crisis." (‘Revealed: the government's secret legal advice on Iraq war,’ Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, April 28, 2005)

The following day, this astonishing exposé of government lying and criminality was simply dropped by the broadcast media. There was not one substantive discussion of the legal advice on BBC 18:00 News, the ITN 18:30 News, or the Channel 4 19:00 News. The issue was almost completely invisible in the days that followed.

Senior lawyers have not been called into TV studios to examine the possibility that Blair, Goldsmith and others might be tried, and jailed, by the International Criminal Court. Government insiders have not been invited to challenge the claim that the Attorney General’s reservations, doubts and caveats were discussed in full, point by point, with his cabinet colleagues.

Why? The BBC’s Andrew Marr and ITN’s Nick Robinson were candid in explaining that the two main parties were keen to move on from Iraq - both Labour and the Tories feared the issue was generating votes for the Liberal Democrats. Therefore, apparently, it was also appropriate for the media to move on.

This is a good example of how the media establishment works with the political establishment to limit public debate. American media analyst, Robert McChesney, notes that early last century the rise of ’professional journalism’ entrenched massive media bias masquerading as ‘objectivity‘.

A key bias involved the media regarding “anything done by official sources, for example government officials and prominent public figures, as the basis for legitimate news”. (McChesney, in Kristina Borjesson, ed., Into The Buzzsaw - Leading Journalists Expose The Myth Of A Free Press, Prometheus Books, 2002, p.367)

As a result: “If the elite, the upper 2 or 3 per cent of society who control most of the capital and rule the largest institutions, agree on an issue then it is off-limits to journalistic scrutiny.” (Ibid, p.369)

This is why the public is psychologically strangled by media discourse. It is why the horror inflicted on Iraq was almost completely ignored in media election coverage before being forced onto the agenda by an insider leak in the penultimate week of campaigning.

Media Tenor research institute analysed the content of the news coverage of political figures on the evening news broadcasts of BBC1, BBC2, ITN and ITV between April 1-15. The analysis shows that foreign politics - including the Iraq conflict - accounted for only 1.2% of all information on ITN news, with only a slightly greater share on BBC1 (1.4%) and ITV (1.7%). (‘Economy dominates news while Iraq coverage slows down,’ www.mediatenor.com, April 22, 2005)

It is why a racist debate on the perils of immigration dominated election coverage in one of the world's richest societies running the third largest economy. It is why the near-identical business-friendliness of the leading parties was not a subject for impassioned criticism and debate. It is why the corporate domination of political, economic and cultural life - a catastrophe that has tripled obesity in children in under ten years - was not an issue for discussion.

With the world falling apart before our eyes, it is why the climate catastrophe was simply ignored as someone else‘s problem.

It is not that this is what people want. Broadcast magazine compared ratings for BBC and ITV bulletins before and after the election was called. For the three weeks before the election was announced, BBC One's Six O'Clock News had an average of 4.7 million viewers, which has since slipped to 4.5 million. ITV Evening News bulletin has dropped from 4.6 million to 4.4 million, while its later broadcast has also lost an average of 200,000 viewers since before the election campaign.

Conor Dignam, editor of Broadcast, claimed: "For all their efforts to 'connect' with viewers, broadcasters are experiencing the same problem as the politicians - TV audiences are simply finding the campaign a bore." (‘Election news “proves a turn-off”', http://news.bbc.co.uk, April 28, 2005)

In truth, it is agony to follow media election coverage, not because it is trivial and boring, but because it is fundamentally insane. Media debate is a form of state-corporate incarceration with individual members of the public treated as political battery hens - the limited scope, honesty and rationality of the debate would be deeply offensive to any sane human being. That this form of cultural madness is then passed off as ‘jolly good fun’ by the media’s grinning Oxbridge battery farmers merely adds insult to insanity.

The reality of mainstream media reporting is that individual journalistic rationality - the common sense view of what is humanly important - is subordinated to a ‘higher‘, ‘professional’ end, which, in reality, is the chosen agenda of the upper 2 or 3 per cent of society who “control most of the capital and rule the largest institutions“.

This is why conformity is not a cause of concern in media journalism; it is a badge of professional credibility. When media executives wear identically severe black rectangular glasses, when they deliver ‘pieces to camera’ with the exact-same stilted emphasis (lampooned by comedians like Brass Eye’s Chris Morris, and always absurd at a decade’s remove), when reporters’ photos glare with the same stern expression at the reader, this conformity is rooted in the dogma of ‘objective‘ and ’professional’ standards that are in fact all hopelessly biased in favour of powerful interests. Actually they are coded signals indicating obedience.

The beauty of ‘objective professional standards’ is that they rationalise the abdication of personal responsibility for thinking for ourselves and caring for others while vast sums are pocketed. Journalists imagine they are paid so well for selling their extraordinary talent. In fact state-private power does not care much for talent - souls are the required resource.

Just as the priests of earlier times insisted they were mere conduits for the ‘Word of God’ - with which no mere mortal could possibly presume to argue - so corporate journalists insist they are acting as a passive medium for the transmission of 'objective' Truth. The very term ‘media’ is deceptive.

In his 2004 autobiography, My Trade, the BBC’s political editor, Andrew Marr, wrote:

"Gavin Hewitt, John Simpson, Andrew Marr and the rest are employed to be studiously neutral, expressing little emotion and certainly no opinion; millions of people would says that news is the conveying of fact, and nothing more." (Marr, My Trade, Macmillan, 2004, p.279)

Nothing could be further from the truth.


SUGGESTED ACTION

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Write to Andrew Marr
Email: andrew.marr@bbc.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, BBC news director
Email: helenboaden.complaints@bbc.co.uk

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Email: roger.mosey@bbc.co.uk

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The Ritual Murder of God's Banker

Roberto Calvi
http://www.ecomancina.com/
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The Ritual Murder of God's Banker
by ape
Cinquo de Mayo, '05

Twenty-three years ago, Italian financier-extraordinaire Roberto Calvi disappeared. Calvi was the Vatican's main money man, thus known as "God's Banker." That a man of Calvi's prominence simply evaporated created a storm of media interest, both in Italy and beyond. But the buzz created by his Rapture-like vanishing was nothing next to the astonishing circumstance of his discovery. Calvi was located, hanging by the neck, his pockets filled alternately with cash and bricks, beneath London's Blackfriar's Bridge. Last week, Italian authorities made four arrests of suspects in the Roberto Calvi murder.

Blackfriar's Bridge - London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/

june/19/newsid_3092000/3092625.stm

In 1983, the Financial Times' correspondent in Italy, Rupert Cornwell wrote "God's Banker: An Account of the Life & Death of Roberto Calvi." It's an account of power, religion, greed and perversion; stories that ring strangely familiar in today's corpo/political milieu. - {ape}

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The Nuclear Fundamentalists

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Nuclear Fundamentalism and the Iran Story
NORMAN SOLOMON
May 5th, 2005

San Francisco, California- Years from now, when historians look back at agenda-building for a missile attack on Iran, they should closely examine a story that took up the USA's most coveted space for media spin -- the upper right corner of the New York Times front page -- on the first day of May 2005.

Under the headline "Threats Shadow New Conference on Nuclear Arms," the lead article in the Sunday edition set a tone that was to echo in U.S. media during the next several days. The review conference for the Non-Proliferation Treaty "was meant to offer hope of closing huge loopholes in the treaty, which the United States says Iran and North Korea have exploited to pursue nuclear weapons," the Times reported. "Instead, the session appears deadlocked even before it begins, according to senior American officials and diplomats."

But the Times could have led off by pointing out that "huge loopholes in the treaty" have been exploited by the United States and a few other countries to maintain their nuclear-arms dominance. And, instead of resorting to fuzzy euphemisms, the story could have clearly reported that the U.S., Japanese and French governments are so committed to the commercial nuclear power industry that they still insist on promoting it -- and further boosting nuclear arms proliferation in the process.

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For more than five decades now, U.S. government leaders -- along with countless reporters and pundits -- have insisted that the split atom can be wondrous rather than just ominous. In a speech to the United Nations in December 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed a commitment to "atoms for peace." He portrayed nuclear power as redemptive: "The United States pledges before you -- and therefore before the world -- its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma -- to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life."

One-third of a century later, the New York Times was in the midst of a protracted crusade on behalf of the Shoreham nuclear power project on Long Island. In July 1986, Jack Newfield wrote in the Village Voice that he had counted 22 different times when the New York Times had editorialized in favor of the Shoreham nuclear plants during the previous 40 months. As it happened, members of the Times board of directors also sat on the boards of nuclear-invested utilities and banks.

http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/
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Grassroots activism was often successful when it challenged the utilities seeking to generate more electricity with atomic power. Along the way, activists pointed out that nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons share the same basic fuel cycle. And the anti-nuclear movement warned that fervent efforts to export nuclear power technology all over the globe would lead to the development of atomic weapons in more and more countries. But enormous media campaigns on behalf of the nuclear power industry are still with us.

http://www.citizen.org/images/
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On May 4 -- despite the dangers of catastrophic reactor accidents, the horrendous folly of creating massive amounts of atomic waste, and the proven role of nuclear power technology in nuclear weapons proliferation -- a New York Times editorial contended "there is mounting evidence that damage from global warming may dwarf any environmental risk posed by nuclear power. It is therefore critical to keep nuclear power as part of the nation's energy mix." Such commentaries encourage us to believe that widespread conservation and renewable resources aren't viable, as if the only real choices are a radioactive future or an overheated globe.

This kind of nuclear fundamentalism is exactly what has smoothed the way for countries to acquire nuclear weapons technologies -- and in some cases nuclear bombs -- in recent decades. Like an institution run by religious fanatics, the New York Times still cannot let go of its corporate faith in the great god nuclear power.

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These days, there is ugly irony in the emergence of Jimmy Carter as an advocate for nuclear sanity. In 1979, when the Three Mile Island nuclear power disaster occurred in Pennsylvania, President Carter went out of his way to flack for the atomic-energy industry. And like his predecessors and successors in the Oval Office, he pushed nuclear power on people in many other countries. Now Carter is singing a somewhat different tune. In an oped piece that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on May 2, he warned: "Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programs in all three states."

Meanwhile, Carter is suitably adamant about the importance of not allowing nuclear test explosions. "The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honored," he wrote in the same article, "but the United States is moving in the opposite direction." You wouldn't know it from Carter, or from the U.S. media, but his administration chose to jettison the appreciable prospects that a comprehensive test ban could have been locked into place a quarter-century ago.

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When I visited the State Department early in the fourth year of the Carter presidency, an arms-control specialist asked me to turn off my tape recorder before he talked about ways that top officials at the government's nuclear weapons labs were successfully sinking the test-ban efforts. Several months later, in October 1980, I summed up the situation in a Nation magazine article: "While proclaiming a desire to halt the nuclear arms race, the U.S. government has been quietly undermining chances for the most far-reaching disarmament treaty on the horizon -- a comprehensive international ban on atomic bomb tests. The latest round of talks in Geneva ended in failure -- with the United States' tactics of delay drawing criticism from other delegations. And no wonder: The Carter administration has caved in to the nuclear-weapons laboratories, which want to continue to test bombs and are opposed to a meaningful agreement that will stop the spread of nuclear weapons."

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In 2005, it's bad enough that such history is scarcely on the U.S. media radar screen, while propaganda looms larger for an attack on Iran either by the Pentagon or by the U.S.-backed Israeli government. But in the present day, the hypocrisy of Washington's righteous finger-pointing toward Iran is extremely dangerous. Carter has it right when he now calls the United States "the major culprit" in erosion of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: "While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating 'bunker buster' and perhaps some new 'small' bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states."

The odds are good that if the Pentagon doesn't launch a major missile attack on Iranian facilities in the next year or so, the Israeli government will -- with a wink and nod from President Bush. Yet, unlike Iran's government, Israel is not even a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. With a nuclear bomb stockpile now estimated at more than 200 warheads, Israel is fueling the nuclear arms race in the Middle East. But, from the White House to Capitol Hill to newsrooms across the United States, the Israeli nuclear arsenal draws scant mention let alone criticism.

A former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq who previously served as Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Butler, astutely wrote on May 1 in the Sydney Morning Herald that the U.S. government "can be expected to seek to draw attention away from its policies and actions by attempting to insist that the most significant issue at the review conference should be the potential breakout by Iran and North Korea." Butler added: "In this context, it was remarkable to see the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, during his recent visit to President George Bush's Texas ranch, call on the U.S. to take urgent steps against Iran's nuclear weapons program -- the intelligence on which is quite divided. Neither side made any reference to the world's largest clandestine nuclear weapons program -- Israel's."

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The person who has done more than anyone else to inform the world about that nuclear weapons program, Mordechai Vanunu, left his job as a technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility before spilling the beans to the Sunday Times of London in 1986. The Israeli government promptly sent agents to kidnap Vanunu from Rome and take him back to Israel. As a result, Vanunu spent 18 years behind bars, mostly in solitary confinement. Since his release in April 2004, the Israeli authorities have imposed a travel ban along with other restrictions on Vanunu -- and they're threatening to put him back in prison if he keeps talking to journalists.

If Vanunu were Iranian instead of Israeli, the U.S. press would be hailing him as a hero instead of giving him short shrift.

Like almost every other mainstream U.S. media outlet, the New York Times has provided little coverage of Vanunu, so the American public has scant knowledge of his real-life experience with truth and consequences. Likewise, the Times has little to say about Washington's extreme hypocrisies while the newspaper and the government denounce certain other countries for their nuclear programs.

But the New York Times has not skimped on coverage that adds to momentum for a military attack on Iran. And evidently the newspaper of record is just getting started.

Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," will be published in early summer. His columns and other writings can be found at: www.normansolomon.com

And On....

The Bush crimes will go on
Deadly Hypocrisy is Business as Usual
By CHRIS FLOYD

05/04/05 - - An occupational hazard of dissidence in the Age of Bush is the unavoidable necessity of belaboring the obvious. Again and again, you must ring the same bell; over and over, you must repeat the same, blatant irrefutable fact: that George W. Bush and his ghastly minions are lying hypocrites with blood on their hands.

But what can you do? Each week--each day--brings fresh confirmation of this damning truth. And until the American people redeem their lost national honor by rising up in their millions--taking to the streets with the patriotic cry, "These murderous jackals no longer represent us!"--the Bush crimes will go on, and must be documented. So grab the bell-rope: here we go again.

Last week saw a bumper crop of death-dealing hypocrisy, as the freedom-lovin', terrorist-fightin' he-men of the Bush Regime were caught in flagrante delicto with some rough trade indeed: genocidal rape-fiends, diabolical flesh-boilers and tyrannical peddlers of violent, ignorant religious extremism. (And no, it wasn't a meeting of the Republican National Committee.)

First the Bushists rolled out the red carpet for one of Osama bin Laden's former partners, Sudan's intelligence chief Salah Abdallah Gosh, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gosh was Osama's designated minder in the 1990s, when the ex-CIA ally was comfortably ensconced in Sudan. Gosh is also accused--by members of his own government­ of directing military attacks on civilians in Sudan's Darfur region, where the Janjaweed militia is carrying out a government-backed "ethnic cleansing" program of rape, pillage and murder against the region's black Muslims. At least 400,000 people have died in the carnage, with 2 million more driven into exile.

Last year, the Bush Regime itself officially declared the Darfur despoliation a "genocide," and called Gosh's gang of terrorist-coddling goons "an extraordinary threat" to America's national security. But that was before the 2004 election, when Bush had to drag his "compassionate conservative" crapola out of mothballs for a few months to mollify soccer moms distressed at the pictures they saw on CNN of those poor little Ewoks dying in--where was it? Biafra? Burundi? Rwanda? Rangoon? Once Bush had his teeny-tiny mandate in hand, it was back to business.

That's oil business, of course. Sudan has become one of the chess pieces in the "Great Game" of petropolitics, as the "full spectrum dominators" of the Bush Regime plant their "military footprints" all over the globe in a relentless crusade to stem the inexorable rise of China and India as rivals to "the world's only superpower." It just so happens that China has become the leading player in Sudan's burgeoning oil industry, securing fat concessions in choice fields. Gosh and his goon squads gorge on these oil profits to fuel their mass terrorism in Darfur. Now Bush wants a piece of that action; and if he has to abet the murder of a few hundred thousand desert darkies to get it, who cares? (Certainly not those soccer moms, now fretting about high gas prices for their SUVs: "Get us more cheap oil, Georgie, pronto!")

And so Bush has bedded down with Gosh, who for his part is happy to swap a minor league privateer like Osama for a big-time state terrorist with unlimited resources. Gosh was flown to Washington for high-level "consultations" with his new partners in the CIA--just as the Sudanese government was announcing that "abundant" oil reserves have been found in Darfur, the Sudan Tribune reports. At the very same time, Bush moved--secretly--to gut legislation that would freeze financial assets of the genocidists and increase international protection for Darfur's people, the New York Times reports. Happy coincidences all around!

Meanwhile, the killing in Sudan goes on. Just days before Gosh's extra-special visit, the Janjaweed launched a "senseless and premeditated attack" in Darfur, "burning everything in their paths and leaving in their wake total destruction," Amnesty International reports. What's more, Bush's new allies in Khartoum knew the attack was coming and deliberately blocked African Union peacekeepers from intervening. But the cries of the raped and dying never reached Washington, where Gosh and the Bushists were happily plotting "joint security operations"--and no doubt divvying up the new Darfur oilfields.

How is such two-faced cynicism possible? It's easy: the Bushists don't regard the people of Darfur as human beings, unique individuals of infinite worth and intrinsic value. They're just counters in the game of greed and power, to be shifted or discarded as the need arises.

The same holds true for the people of Uzbekistan, now being abducted, tortured and boiled alive by Bush buddy Islam Karimov. Last week, Bush's "strategic relationship" with the Uzbek Boiler was laid bare in rich detail by the New York Times. Bush has lavished more than $500 million on Karimov's marauding security services, In return, he tortures Bush's own abducted, uncharged, "rendered" prisoners, while providing the Pentagon with a big ole "footprint" for dominating Central Asian oil. Again, the individuals being served up for Tashkent gumbo don't matter; only the game is important.

Bush capped Hypocrisy Week by strolling hand-in-hand with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah: de facto ruler of the fiercest religious tyranny on earth; mentor to the Taliban; global propagator of the vicious Wahhabi distortion of Islam; fount of corruption, bribery and baksheesh; longtime Bush Family business partner. With his warm embrace of the hereditary despot, Bush gave the lie to months of high-flown jive about lighting "fires of freedom" in the Middle East. As always, Bush's real message to those longing for liberty, at home and abroad, was clear as a bell:

"Tough luck, suckers."

Chris Floyd is a columnist for The Moscow Times.

Visit his website http://www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com