yeow
Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), calls the cut, "indefensible and disgraceful."
"New York City has been attacked twice and is doing more than any other city in the country to defend itself and our nation," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, DHS and the administration have declared war on New York City, and I am going to fight this as hard as I possibly can."
NY Governor George Pataki: "They are claiming that they are doing more allocations based on threat-based analysis but I don't think that's the case."
31 May 2006
"Best Friends Forever": Ken Lay and George W. Bush
a friendly reminder of just how close Bush was to Kenny Boy and the crooks at Enron.
Katrina: "the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history"
so says the Independent Levee Investigation Team, commissioned by the University of California-Berkeley and the National Science Foundation. The team's DRAFT final report can be found here.
30 May 2006
Darfur: We're still NOT DOING ENOUGH
Still a Genocide
There should be no ambiguity about Darfur.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006; A16
IT'S BEEN MORE than three weeks since a Darfur peace accord was signed, bringing hope for an end to the genocide in Sudan's western territory. Since then the news has been terrible. The two rebel factions that refused to sign the peace deal have continued to snub it. Violence between rebel factions has generated blood-curdling attacks on civilians. Human Rights Watch has reported fresh evidence of atrocities committed by government-backed Janjaweed death squads across the border in Chad. The cash-strapped U.N. World Food Program has been forced to reduce the already meager rations it distributes to 6 million Sudanese, including 3 million in Darfur. And Sudan's government has waffled on the crucial question of whether it will allow in an expanded peacekeeping force, without which violence, hunger and mass death are likely to continue.
The only external force at present is a 7,000-strong African Union contingent. It is too small and ill-equipped to cover a territory the size of France, and its mandate allows it to monitor violence but not actually stop it. Gunmen in Darfur have learned that it is toothless. Even the displaced civilians whom the African Union is trying to help have staged violent demonstrations against the force out of frustration with its shortcomings. There is no way that this contingent can oversee the implementation of Darfur's peace treaty, which envisages the complex demobilization of combatants and the eventual repatriation of some 2 million displaced people. Recognizing this, the African Union has agreed to fold its soldiers into a larger U.N. peacekeeping force.
After much prevarication, Sudan's government appeared to agree last Thursday to allow in a team of U.N. military planners. But that concession came just a day after the speaker of Sudan's parliament ruled out a foreign deployment in Darfur, and it was undermined by the foreign minister's simultaneous statement that "any forces, if that is agreed upon, would be a force for supervision and not a force for peace implementation." In a repeat of its tactics toward humanitarian workers, Sudan's regime plainly means to stall peacekeepers for as long as possible -- and never mind that the aid workers and peacekeepers are trying to save the lives of Sudanese civilians.
The U.S. government has described the killing in Darfur as genocide, a term that Sudan's government rejects and that the United Nations and Europeans have also shrunk from using. The more that the conflict in Darfur features infighting between rebel factions rather than just atrocities by the government's militia, the more observers may resist pointing the finger at the government and accusing it of genocide. But the reason that Sudan's government is culpable, today as in the past, is that it is deliberately creating the conditions in which thousands of civilians from rebel-aligned tribes are likely to die. First the government and its militia drove these people from their villages. Then it impeded humanitarian workers so that thousands of them fell prey to disease or starved. Now it is obstructing a serious peacekeeping deployment, with the result that its victims will continue to face shortages of medicines and food.
This may not be genocide by gas chamber or machete. But it is still a calculated policy of targeting ethnic groups and planning, meticulously, to eliminate them.
29 May 2006
28 May 2006
so, ask the question... what're they hiding?
The President's Bad Move
In trying to defuse a showdown with Congress, Mr. Bush created another problem.
Gonzales Said He Would Quit in Raid Dispute
good stuff
The ceremony began in a misty drizzle but the sun broke out and a bright rainbow appeared on the horizon by the time Benedict gave his speech. [Pope Benedict Visits Auschwitz]
pic c/o The Washington Post
A rainbow forms over the former
Nazi death camp of Birkenau
during Pope Benedict XVI visit on
Sunday, 28 May 2006. EPA/ANDRZEJ WIKTOR
pic c/o The Washington Post
A rainbow forms over the former
Nazi death camp of Birkenau
during Pope Benedict XVI visit on
Sunday, 28 May 2006. EPA/ANDRZEJ WIKTORGerman Youth in Drunken Frenzy Stabs 28
The police said Saturday that six of those injured in the 10-minute attack on a crowded street in the center of Berlin were in serious condition. The teenager was quickly seized after witnesses pointed him out to security officials. The attack came as a shock to Germany less than two weeks before the World Cup soccer tournament opens in this country, and cast a shadow over the fireworks and celebrations to open the new station that some 500,000 people watched.
"It was a horrible act," said Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had already left the station's gala ceremony. "It's good to know that the Berlin police caught the assailant so quickly."
The attacker is a 16-year old German from Neukölln, a south Berlin district with a large immigrant population, and has a record for assault. The police said the teenager had acted on his own and was under the influence of alcohol. They said they were still investigating the motive.
One of the first victims was H.I.V. positive, the police said adding that they could not say if those stabbed after the first victim could also be infected. The police said the teenager knifed most of the people in the back and buttocks, although some suffered chest and stomach wounds.
The stabbing, which follows a string of attacks on dark-skinned people in eastern Germany that appear to be racially motivated, may fuel concerns about security at the month-long soccer tournament.
"I've never experienced a crime like this in the seven years that I've been in this job," said Ehrhart Körting, the senator in charge of the police in Berlin, the German capital, at a news conference on Saturday.
"This sort of attack does not usually happen in Berlin or in Germany," he added, noting the youth was not from a broken or troubled family. "It's horrifying to see how he developed. We need to think about violence in computer games and films."
State prosecutors said the teenager faces attempted murder charges. The attacks took place along a long stretch of crowded sidewalks in the government quarter between the Reichstag parliament building and Charite hospital -- which probably saved the lives of some of the more seriously wounded.
Israeli jets, artillery bombard Lebanon border area
BEIRUT, May 28 (Reuters) - Israeli jets and artillery bombarded southern Lebanese border areas on Sunday and its forces exchanged fire with Hizbollah guerrillas.
The Israeli army ordered residents living in northern areas to head for bomb shelters.
Israeli planes also attacked two bases run by a Syrian-backed Palestinian faction in Lebanon, killing one Palestinian fighter, hours after rockets fired into northern Israel wounded an Israeli soldier. Lebanese witnesses said areas near Rmeish, Aita, Yaroun, Mais al-Jabal and Ghajar, towns along different parts of the Lebanese border with Israel, were hit by Israeli aircraft.
The Israeli army said it fired aircraft and artillery rounds at suspected Hizbollah positions in southern Lebanon.
Israel's orders to its residents followed a gun battle between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli soldiers near Kibbutz Menara and mortar and rocket fire into northern Israel, Israeli security sources said.
Hizbollah guerrillas also exchanged fire with Israeli forces in the disputed Shebaa Farms border area, witnesses and security sources said.
27 May 2006
26 May 2006
"the commonly-practiced scheme of deception and book-cooking that consumed almost the entire corporate world at the time"
ahhh.... fun fun.
Where's the caped crusader of corporate fraud (and fellow fraudster himself) Larry Thompson when you need him?
Not Just Bad Apples
The welcome convictions in the Enron trial do not make post-Enron accounting reform any less necessary.
Friday, May 26, 2006; A20
WAY, WAY back, before dot-coms became dot-bombs, Kenneth L. Lay was part rock star, part high priest among rival energy executives. His company, Enron Corp., had seized opportunities created by deregulation and the Internet to transform the energy business, turning itself into America's seventh-biggest public company in the process. At an industry conference in 1999, Mr. Lay was asked how he could top the ninefold expansion of Enron's market capitalization over the previous decade. According to The Economist, Mr. Lay responded coolly: "We'll do it again this coming decade."
Not long after that forecast, Enron admitted that its profits for the years 1997 to 2000 had been overstated by $591 million. That confession began a downward spiral that ended in Enron's 2001 bankruptcy. But yesterday a Houston jury accepted the government's contention that Mr. Lay's bragging was deliberately dishonest rather than merely hollow. Along with Jeffrey K. Skilling, his right-hand man at Enron and briefly his successor as chief executive, Mr. Lay was found guilty of misleading investors about the true state of his firm. The sentencing phase of the trial will begin in September. Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling may spend the rest of their lives in prison.
These convictions follow those of bosses from other firms that imploded around the same time, such as Tyco International Ltd., WorldCom Inc. and Adelphia Communications Corp. But Enron was the first and most famous of the corporate failures, and the Lay and Skilling verdicts are the most symbolically significant. The government's prosecutors, who were up against a defense team that cost almost $70 million, deserve credit. The criminals' victims -- investors who lost savings, and workers who lost both their jobs and their savings because their retirement plans were invested in Enron stock -- may now feel some emotional redress. Meanwhile, many plan to sue for financial redress as well.
There is a danger in this verdict, however. In the wake of Enron's bankruptcy, some argued that the problems of corporate America were the work of a few bad apples. That argument lost, for the good reason that fully 250 U.S. public companies had to restate their accounts in 2002, up from 92 five years earlier. Corporate America's problems reflected lax oversight of auditors, conflicts of interest at audit companies, accounting rules with too many inviting loopholes and so on. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 to fix these systemic weaknesses, now faces a backlash from firms that complain of stiff compliance costs. Although some tweaks in the way the law is implemented may be justified, the welcome Enron verdict should not color the regulatory question. This decade's business scandals were not just about bad apples, and putting those apples in jail is not going to change that.
GOOD... Fix it! Finally!
Judge suspends New Orleans prosecutions due to broke system
With the New Orleans public-defender system in dire financial trouble, Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. has suspended prosecutions in most cases where the defendant is too poor to afford a lawyer.The New York Times reported Tuesday that the public-defenders system in the Crescent City is essentially out of money. The news comes on the heals of a US Justice Department report obtained by the LA Times two weeks ago finding that New Orleans need six times as many public defenders and $10 million just to be adequate.
The city’s public-defender system, like those throughout Louisiana, is funded largely through local court fees. Hunter, along with another judge, recently declared the funding scheme unconstitutional. The state plans to appeal.
What Sells Papers?
Local news on Page 1. (duh)
Remaking the Front Page
As they struggle to stem the circulation decline, newspapers are taking new approaches to what they put on page one.
is 'coverup' too strong of a word
when the government continuously applies the "matters of national security" argument to stymie investigations, even in the most dubious of circumstances?
Justice Department Probe Foiled
By Shane Harris and Murray Waas, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Thursday, May 25, 2006
An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials -- including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft -- acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program was stymied because investigators were denied security clearances to do their work. The investigators, however, were only seeking information and documents relating to the National Security Agency's surveillance program that were already in the Justice Department's possession, two senior government officials said in interviews. [full story here]
some justice, finally served
They deserve every bit of jail time they're about to receive
Lay, Skilling Convicted in Enron Collapse
By KRISTEN HAYS
AP Business Writer
HOUSTON (AP) -- Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of conspiracy and fraud Thursday by a federal jury that laid blame for one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history squarely on Enron Corp.'s two former top executives.
Jurors found that the men, who received tens of millions in pay and stock options, repeatedly lied to cover up accounting tricks and business failures that led to the company's 2001 demise. The collapse wiped out more than $60 billion in market value, almost $2.1 billion in pension plans and 5,600 jobs.
Jurors found that the men, who received tens of millions in pay and stock options, repeatedly lied to cover up accounting tricks and business failures that led to the company's 2001 demise. The collapse wiped out more than $60 billion in market value, almost $2.1 billion in pension plans and 5,600 jobs.
25 May 2006
"They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them"
Libby Told Grand Jury Cheney Spoke of Plame
Vice President May Be Called as Witness
By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 25, 2006; A01
Vice President Cheney was personally angered by a former U.S. ambassador's newspaper column attacking a key rationale for the war in Iraq and repeatedly directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then his chief of staff, to "get all the facts out" related to the critique, according to excerpts from Libby's 2004 grand jury testimony released late yesterday by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Libby also told the grand jury that Cheney raised as an issue that the former ambassador's wife worked at the CIA and that she allegedly played a role in sending him to investigate the Iraqi government's interest in acquiring nuclear weapons materials. That issue formed the basis of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's published critique.
In the court filing that included the formerly secret testimony, Fitzgerald did not assert that Cheney instructed Libby to tell reporters the name and role of Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. But he said Cheney's interactions with Libby on that topic were a key part of the reason Libby allegedly made false statements to the FBI about his conversations with reporters around the time her name was disclosed in news accounts.
"The state of mind of the Vice President as communicated to defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about Ms. Wilson's employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue," he said.
The prosecutor also left open the possibility that Cheney will be called as a witness at Libby's trial, scheduled to begin next year, and denied an assertion last week by Libby's lawyers that Cheney would not be called.
Fitzgerald was appointed in late 2003 to investigate the disclosure of Plame's name to the media after the CIA complained that it was an illegal act because she was an undercover officer. His probe has led to a series of disclosures about efforts by the White House to rebut Wilson's published critique, but no official has been directly charged with leaking Plame's name.
Instead, Libby was accused of making false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury, mostly based on his statements that he did not confirm Plame's employment at the CIA and alleged involvement in Wilson's trip when he was talking with two journalists. Libby has denied wrongdoing and said in court filings that he may have forgotten what he said to the journalists because of the press of other business.
Fitzgerald, in contrast, has sought to build a case that Libby was preoccupied with the task of rebutting Wilson's July 2003 column, which accused the White House of twisting intelligence to support its invasion of Iraq -- and that this preoccupation stemmed from Cheney's intense focus on Wilson's assertions. While yesterday's filing largely concerned a side issue -- whether Libby's attorneys are entitled to see more government documents -- it provided the first detailed look at what Libby told investigators about his interactions with Cheney on this issue.
According to the excerpts from testimony on March 5, 2004, Libby recalled that he and Cheney discussed Wilson's article on multiple occasions each day after it appeared. Cheney, Libby said, "often will cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife that he has" and "look at it, think about it."
That's what Cheney did with the column, Libby said, because Cheney saw it as attacking his credibility. "He wanted to get all the facts out about what he had or hadn't done, what the facts were or were not. He was very keen about that and said it repeatedly. Let's get everything out," Libby testified.
A previous court filing by Fitzgerald revealed that Cheney had annotated his copy of the column with this question about Wilson: "Did his wife send him on a junket?" Cheney's defense lawyers said in a subsequent filing that Libby had testified he never saw those annotations until the FBI showed him a copy. In Libby's actual testimony, as released by Fitzgerald, he said, "It's possible if it was sitting on his desk that, you know, my eye went across it."
An apparently key issue to be contested at trial is precisely when these conversations took place: Did they occur before or after Libby's discussions with reporters that included Plame's name? And did Libby have reason -- as his attorneys have asserted -- to forget some of what Cheney said about Plame and her employment at the CIA?
The grand jury excerpts record Libby as saying at one point that he did not recall Cheney asking about the Plame connection "early on . . . although he may well have." Libby also said that he did not recall such a discussion with Cheney before he heard Plame's name from reporter Tim Russert -- a conversation that Russert has disputed in his own testimony.
Waxman nails it
FEMA pushes back timeline for meeting hiring target
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials on Wednesday released information indicating that they may be behind schedule on meeting hiring goals.
In April, FEMA officials said they would have 95 percent of openings filled by mid-May. Then, on Tuesday, the agency's acting director, R. David Paulison, said FEMA would likely reach its goal by the start of the hurricane season on June 1. But in a fact sheet released at a House Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday, officials said it will be at least July before the target is reached.
Panel members assailed the lack of hands on deck at the beleaguered agency, and some continued to push for FEMA's removal from the Homeland Security Department.
"Senior posts at FEMA and DHS remain unfilled, in part because experienced emergency managers are unwilling to work in an organization they perceive as broken," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee's ranking member.
Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., pushed for FEMA's independence, and said she wants to see competitive contingency contracts in place for this hurricane season, to eliminate possibilities for waste, fraud and abuse.
"It is not clear what [contracts] FEMA has entered into," she said.
Robert Shea, FEMA's acting director of operations, told lawmakers that not all contracts have been solidified, in part due to the agency's steps to eliminate no-bid deals.
"We're going through a very strong competitive process," he said.
DHS' undersecretary for preparedness, George Foresman, told committee members that federal officials also have taken steps to establish a clearer chain of command for disaster response, but nevertheless are prepared to shadow state and local officials and, when necessary, take the reins from them.
Foresman said some states are better at handling disasters than others, but when approached by a reporter, he declined to elaborate. He told committee members that he and other DHS officials will rely on decades of experience in assisting state and jurisdictional authorities.
24 May 2006
the best government money can buy
a new report from Public Citizen sheds more light on influence peddling in Washington.
Major findings include that lobbyists and their political action committees have given over $100 million in campaign contributions to members of Congress since 1998 and that the top 6 percent of lobbyists -- those giving a total of at least $10,000 each over eight years -- gave 83 percent of all the money. Many of the top recipients of the money are on the appropriations committees. Thirty-six members of Congress have received a half-million dollars or more from lobbyists and their PACs since 1998. Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have each received more than $1 million. Of the 36 members in the half-million dollar club, 21 are Republicans and 15 are Democrats.
you're right Paul
And 5 "reallys" is probably still an understatement. Potentially, catastrophically bad if you're thinking what I'm thinking.
Things that really bother the Bush administration
National security vs. freedom of the press
The media must monitor the powerful, not just serve as their mouthpiece
some fence
Letters
in tomorrow's Washington Post...
David Ignatius was wrong when he said that legislation introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and myself -- mandating that the full National Security Agency program on calling records comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- would "duck the basic issue."
Our legislation would address the basic issue: how to end the unlawful practice of warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans. FISA gives the government authority to use a pen-register/trap-and-trace device to collect information about a telephone call other than the content of the conversation -- i.e., the time the call was placed, its duration and the number called. It's akin to collecting information contained in your monthly phone bill.
The "pen-trap" authority of FISA, modernized after Sept. 11, 2001, provides a legal basis to get a warrant that meets the standards of the law and the Constitution. These warrants must be renewed regularly in accordance with the law.
Mr. Ignatius wants scrutiny. FISA mandates court scrutiny and was premised on vigorous congressional oversight. I am baffled why Mr. Ignatius thinks FISA is insufficient to cover the entire domestic surveillance program.
JANE HARMAN
U.S. Representative (D-Calif.)
Washington
The writer is the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
UBERHACKERY: The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages strike again
Its one thing to publish admittedly one-sided commentary in hopes that you may influence debate or shift the discussion to one side or another. I do it all the time. That's what opinion pages, columns and editorials are for.
In a perfect world, no matter how one-sided that perspective may be, the reader can ONLY HOPE that the person whose views are being promoted is, at a minimum, qualified to speak on the subject, and at best, is capable of seeing both sides of an issue before sharing their opinion with the world.
That's not the case with the folks at The Wall Street Journal.
Imagine if you will, a widely-cited column about global warming... feverishly churned out in rapid fashion in response to Al Gore's transformation into (effectively), Dr. Seuss' character The Lorax. Now, imagine the irony if such a column was actually penned by a man with the last name "Du Pont". ["Don't Be Very Worried: The truth about "global warming" is much less dire than Al Gore wants you to think."]
So desperate for a voice to counter Gore's, they've trotted out Pete Du Pont to weigh in and correct the record... and save the day from Sky Is Falling Gore.
I wonder why they never mentioned that Du Pont's family business tops the list of THE TOXIC 100: Top Corporate Air Polluters in the United States
That's right. In the end, you're left to decide "who's right"? The majority of the global scientific community, and "a preponderance of available evidence", or THE WORLD'S BIGGEST POLLUTER?
Hmmm. Tough one.
[update: Shocked. I'm shocked. Pete Du Pont's day job, which is Chairman of National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) , also includes receiving $390,900 from ExxonMobil since 1998.]
prosecuting reporters....?
This is basically all you need to know:
The administration is seeking to convert a moribund World War I-era espionage law into an American version of Britain's Official Secrets Act. ~ It is a dangerous road
23 May 2006
The Bush Administration's Economic Policies Have Been Created In An Alternate Reality Universe
Down Is Still Up
The White House continues to tax reality.
Sunday, May 21, 2006; B06
WHEN BEN S. Bernanke left the White House Council of Economic Advisers to become Fed chairman, his place was filled by Edward P. Lazear, an accomplished economist from Stanford University. For all his credentials, Mr. Lazear is not doing well.
In a speech Thursday, Mr. Lazear contended that "low taxes are consistent with rising federal revenues, which helps bring the deficit down." This deliberately implies that low taxes cause a rise in federal revenue, even though they don't. Last year one of Mr. Lazear's predecessors as chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, examined whether tax cuts pay for themselves: In other words, do they boost work incentives enough to generate sufficient extra growth that government revenue ends up higher than it would have been without tax cuts? Mr. Mankiw concluded that this "dynamic" effect is way too small to justify Mr. Lazear's message. Tax cuts cause falls in federal revenue, and implying the opposite is irresponsible.
Mr. Lazear also stated that "higher productivity translates directly into higher wages -- even over the relatively short run." But one of his own charts showed how wages of production workers have lagged behind productivity gains for nearly all of the past 50 years and how this gap has grown wider in the past five years. In a recent paper titled "Where did the Productivity Growth Go?" Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University reports that between 1966 and 2001, everyone in the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution saw wages grow more slowly than productivity and that fully half the gains from extra productivity went to the richest tenth. Mr. Lazear did not address this issue.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed recently, Mr. Lazear stated that the Bush tax cuts have narrowed gaps in take-home earnings. This is wrong, as a previous editorial noted; but in Thursday's speech Mr. Lazear returned to the subject of progressivity from the opposite angle. "To further investment in human capital, it is necessary that the progressivity of the tax system not become too pronounced," he said; in other words, inequality usefully boosts the incentive to get an education. To illustrate the dangers of equality, Mr. Lazear cited Eastern Europe circa 1990, when "highly skilled individuals chose to drive taxis for tourists."
It is true that equal wages dampen work incentives, but the invocation of communist Czechoslovakia or Poland is far-fetched. In the late 1980s, the Gini coefficient, a standard measure of inequality, averaged around 24 points in the Soviet bloc; the contemporary United States, with a Gini score of about 40, is far less equal. Does Mr. Lazear honestly believe the United States is anywhere close to a situation in which engineers or doctors forsake their professions to act as tour guides? Or is he scraping around for an argument -- any argument -- to play down justified concerns about rising inequality?
good ole Paul Sperry read Clark Kent Ervin's book
and he wants to tell everyone about it.
Terrorists Within A former top Homeland Security official warns that the terrorists aren't confined to the battle fronts abroad, but are already here in America living among us. And he says the government needs to redouble its efforts to root them out. "While we certainly should continue to take the fight to the enemy wherever he is, we need to face the awful reality that the enemy may already be in our very own backyard," says former Homeland Security Department Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin. "The frightening truth is that there are already terrorists among us." ~ "It's safe to say that a not insignificant number of suspected terrorists are known to be in the country today," Ervin says in a new tell-all book, Open Target: Where America Is Vulnerable To Attack.and speaking of Paul Sperry... whatever happened with this story is still "just one of those mysteries".
on bin Laden's statement re: Moussaoui
just a passing thought... but when tapes are released showing bin Laden, he's typically talking to his followers, he usually means exactly what he says, and he almost invariably tells the truth.
a blog is born
talk about disgruntled. From VNUNET.com
Sacked spy's blog takes on MI6Intelligence community shaken and stirred
Matt Chapman, vnunet.com 22 May 2006 A former MI6 officer who spent time in prison for breaking the Official Secrets Act has launched a blog to air his views. Richard Tomlinson launched his Tomlinson v MI6 blog as part of a long-running campaign that began when he was sacked by the British intelligence service. Tomlinson was an operational officer to the Soviet Union, but was sacked after four years with MI6 following a posting to Bosnia in 1995. "MI6 have only themselves to blame for the creation of this blog," Tomlinson said on the site.
Dear Mr. DiRita
... a fond farewell from Joe Galloway to Donald Rumsfeld, c/o E&P. [emphasis added is mine].
NEW YORK Joe Galloway the fabled war correspondent, now reporting on military affairs for Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau, retires next week after more than four decades in journalism, during which he covered numerous foreign wars, from Vietnam to Iraq, and was one of the rare civilians awarded a Bronze Star for bravery.
Not surprisingly, he is going out with a bang. A series of combative and revealing emails between Galloway and chief Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita concerning Donald Rumsfeld’s management of the military and the Iraq war have surfaced which cut to the heart of the country’s current trauma. Retired General Barry McCafferty, a familiar figure nowadays as a cable news commentator, urged Galloway to release the emails, calling them “the most powerful stuff hands down I have ever read about this war. ...this exchange ought to be your going away gift to the capital.”
It all began on April 26, with a typically toughminded Galloway column. It profiled retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, who commanded both the Marine War College at Quantico, Va., and the National War College in Washington before retiring in 1997. Galloway recalled that Van Riper had told an interviewer in October 2004 that the military got the lessons all wrong after World War II and that mistake resulted in two disasters -- Korea and Vietnam.
"My great fear is we're off to something very similar to what happened after World War II, that is getting it completely wrong again," Van Riper said of Iraq. But Van Riper saved his strongest criticism for the Pentagon boss. "Mr. Rumsfeld has failed 360 degrees in the job. He is incompetent," Van Riper concluded. "Any military man who made the mistakes he has made, tactically and strategically, would be relieved on the spot."
Two days later, Rumsfeld's top spokesman, DiRita, fired off a reply to his friend Galloway (original spelling and typography retained in all emails that follow): “Let's at least be honest about this: there is a lot of change taking place, and that change forces people to re-examine the way we have always done things,” he wrote. “That is bumpy, and that can make people anxious. ... Van Riper has never even met the secretary to my knowledge. For him to make such sweeping comments as he did in your piece is just irresponsible.
“You're just becoming a johnny one-note and it's only a couple of steps from that to curmudgeon!!”
-- Galloway replied in an email: “i've always understood that the guy in charge takes the fall for everything that goes wrong on his watch. this is why the u.s. navy courtmartials the captain of any ship that is involved in an accident or is sunk for whatever reason….Last I knew Mr. Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense. He has the ultimate responsibility….”
-- DiRita responded: "I think your columns have been representative of a school of thought within military circles that I don't believe is particularly widespread. The army is so much more capable and suitable for the nation's needs that it was 5 or 10 years ago. To my mind, the voices your columns represent missed the forest for the trees.”
-- On May 3, Galloway sent this missive (the exchanges that follow apparently all come from that day): “The army you describe as ‘so much more capable’ than it was 5 or 10 years ago is, in fact, very nearly broken. another three years of the careful attention of your boss ought to just about finish it off. this is not the word from your anonymous officers; this is from my own observations in the field in iraq and at home on our bases and in the military schools and colleges.
“you can sit there all day telling me that pigs can fly, with or without lipstick, and i am not going to believe it. seemingly the reverse is also true. one of us is dead wrong and i have a good hunch that it would be you. you go flying blind through that forest and you are going to find those trees for sure.
“whether or not paul van riper has ever met Secretary Rumsfeld is not at issue. one does not have to be a personal acquaintance to find that a public figure's policies and conduct of his office are wanting. Secretary Rumsfeld spent a good number of years as the CEO of various large corporations. He knows about being responsible for the bottom line in that line of work. So too is he responsible in his current line of work; actually even more so given the stakes involved. So grasp that concept harder, friend Larry. Urge your boss to step up to the plate and admit it when he's gotten it wrong at least as quickly as he steps up to run those famous victory laps with Gen Meyer back in the spring of '03.”
-- DiRita answered quickly: “Time will tell. The army is faster, more agile, more deployable, more lethal….The army of 2000 could not have sustained rotational deployments indefinitely. Retention is above 100 percent in units that have frequently deployed. Would all those soldiers be rushing to join a ‘broken’ army? Do you really believe we were better off with tens of thousands of soldiers in fixed garrisons, essentially non-deployable, in germany and korea? I appreciate your depth of feeling. What bugs me though is your implication that rumsfeld doesn't care about it as much as you do.”
-- But, of course, Galloway was not done, noting that the army “is grinding up the equipment and the troops inexorably. recruiting can barely, or hardly, or not, bring in the 80,000 a year needed to maintain a steady state in the active army enlisted ranks....and that is WITH the high retention rates in the brigades. and neither figure addresses the hemorraging of captains and majors who are voting with their feet in order to maintain some semblance of a family life and a future without war in it….
“so far it is the willingness of these young men and women to serve, and to deploy multiple times, and to work grueling and dangerous 18 hour days 7 days a week that is the glue holding things together. all the cheap fixes have been used; all the one-time-only gains so beloved of legislators trying to balance a budget and get out of town. the question is what sort of an army are your bosses going to leave behind as their legacy in 2009? one that is trained, ready and well equipped to fight the hundred-year war with islam that seems to have begun with a vengeance on your watch?
"or will they leave town and head into a golden retirement as that army collapses for lack of manpower, lack of money to repair and replace all the equipment chewed up by iraq and afghanistan, lack of money to apply to fixing those problems because billions were squandered on weapons systems that are a ridiculous legacy of a Cold War era long gone. ...
“you say i blame your boss for things 3 or 4 levels below him that he can't possibly be controlling and quote accusations from present and former flag officers who he has never eyeballed personally. well the above items are things that he directly controls, or should; things he came into office vowing he was going to fix or change drastically. and in the latest QDR, his last, he made none of the hard choices about wasted money on high dollar weapons systems that make no sense in the real world today….this is what has my attention; this is what has me in a mood to question over and over and over, waiting for answers that never come, change that never comes, course corrections that never come. you wanted some specifics. there are some specifics….
“your boss is fond of saying that this or that thing is ‘unknowable.’ the most unknowable thing of all is who your enemy is going to be next time and where you are going to need allies and bases from which to attack or defend.
“all i can say is what the hell are you doing questioning my columns when you ought to be in there at the elbow of your boss reading those columns aloud to him every wednesday afternoon and urging him to pay attention to them. best wishes, Joe.”
-- DiRita replied: “Thanks for these insights, joe. none of this is easy. Your perspective seems pretty fixed but I do appreciate the experience you bring to it.
“Again, what bothers me most about your coverage is your implication that the people involved in all of this are dumb or have ill-intent or are so sure of what they know that they don't brook discussion. That's the part you're just way off on, friend. This is tough stuff, and we're all hard at it, trying to do what's best for the country.”
-- Galloway concluded: “i like to think that is what i am doing also, and it is a struggle that grows out of my obligation to and love for america's warriors going back 41 years as of last month.
"there are many things we all could wish had happened. i can wish that your boss had surrounded himself with close advisers who had, once at least, held a dying boy in their arms and watched the life run out of his eyes while they lied to him and told him, over and over, ‘You are going to be all right. Hang on! Help is coming. Don't quit now...’ Such men in place of those who had never known service or combat or the true cost of war, and who pays that price, and had never sent their children off to do that hard and unending duty.
“i could wish for so much. i could wish that in january of this year i had not stood in a garbage-strewn pit, in deep mud, and watched soldiers tear apart the wreckage of a kiowa warrior shot down just minutes before and tenderly remove the barely alive body of WO Kyle Jackson and the lifeless body of his fellow pilot. they died flying overhead cover for a little three-vehicle Stryker patrol with which i was riding at the time. i could wish that Jackson's widow Betsy had not found, among the possessions of her late husband, a copy of my book, carefully earmarked at a chapter titled Brave Aviators, which Kyle was reading at the time of his death. That she had not enclosed a photo of her husband, herself and a 3 year old baby girl.
“those things i received in the mail yesterday and they brought back the tears that i wept standing there in that pit, feeling the same shards in my heart that i felt the first time i looked into the face of a fallen american soldier 41 years ago on a barren hill in Quang Ngai Province in another time, another war. someone once asked me if i had learned anything from going to war so many times. my reply: yes, i learned how to cry.”
22 May 2006
so says someone
ho hum
“What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data.” “This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order,” a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration’s goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. “The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence,” the former official said. ~But the point, obviously, was to identify terrorists. “After you hit something, you have to figure out what to do with it,” the Administration intelligence official told me. The next step, theoretically, could have been to get a suspect’s name and go to the fisa court for a warrant to listen in. One problem, however, was the volume and the ambiguity of the data that had already been generated. (“There’s too many calls and not enough judges in the world,” the former senior intelligence official said.) The agency would also have had to reveal how far it had gone, and how many Americans were involved. And there was a risk that the court could shut down the program.
Instead, the N.S.A. began, in some cases, to eavesdrop on callers (often using computers to listen for key words) or to investigate them using traditional police methods. A government consultant told me that tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored in one way or the other. “In the old days, you needed probable cause to listen in,” the consultant explained. “But you could not listen in to generate probable cause. What they’re doing is a violation of the spirit of the law.” One C.I.A. officer told me that the Administration, by not approaching the FISA court early on, had made it much harder to go to the court later.
~
“The N.S.A. had a lot of latitude under FISA to get the data it needed. I think the White House purposefully ignored the law, because the President did not want to do the monitoring under FISA. There is a strong commitment inside the intelligence community to obey the law, and the community is getting dragged into the mud on this.
973 Days, 10 hrs, 40 mins left in the disastrous reign of the Bush administration
and finally Republicans are beginning to wise up.
LATimes:
The right discovers Bush's 'honesty' Conservatives are finally getting a taste of his misleading rhetoric.The Washington Post:
Bush's Base Betrayal
Judge revokes bail for Saudi bus riders
Tampa Bay Tribune:
TAMPA - A judge revoked bail for two Saudi men arrested Friday for boarding a school bus and riding to Wharton High.
Initially, Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were held in Orient Road Jail on bails of $250 each on misdemeanor trespassing charges. Circuit Judge Monica Sierra decided to hold them at a court appearance Saturday so investigators could dig deeper into their pasts.
~ At the hearing, Sierra agreed with a prosecutor that she needed to know more about them before she could feel comfortable releasing them.disturbing
TAMPA -- Two Saudi men were held without bond Sunday after they were arrested for boarding a school bus full of children, authorities said.
Mana Saleh Almanajam, 23, and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, 20, were charged with misdemeanor trespassing and were being held at Orient Road Jail after a judge said Saturday that she wanted more background information on them.
The two men arrived in the country six months ago on student visas and are enrolled at the English Language Institute at the University of South Florida.
Investigators said they boarded the school bus Friday, sat down and began speaking in Arabic. Their behavior concerned the driver, a substitute, who alerted the school district.
The men were asked why they boarded the bus, and Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said they gave different answers: They wanted to enroll in an easier English language program than the one at USF; they wanted to see a high school; and they thought it would be fun.
more William Arkin: There is no enemies list
Early Warning: "The Bush administration has been arrogant and incompetent in communicating to the American public. It has cynically split the country into red and blue in order to give itself greater power to pursue a wrong-headed national security strategy that it claims is red, white and blue.
The Congress has also utterly failed in five months to get to the bottom of the NSA's warantless surveillance program and thereby resolve its legality and assuage public anxiety.
But having said all of that, there is no enemies list."
William Arkin: A New Trident II is an Illusion of Defense
Read every single word. Here's a snippet:
Two former Secretaries of Defense argue in today's Washington Post that the United States should procure conventional warheads for Trident II submarine-launched missiles, a capability, they argue, that someday could be the only defense standing between us and terrorists with nuclear weapons. These two big brains would have us accept a scenario in which a terrorist organization acquires "several" nuclear weapons, that somehow in this scenario we have been so blind, so negligent or so stupid to have allowed this to happen, that we will wake up one morning facing this mortal threat hanging over our heads, and that when all of this happens, we should just be thankful that the super heroes perfect-intelligence and instant weapon will appear to zap the bad guys and make us safe. ~So let me understand: the United States is unsuccessful in carrying out its core national security objective of countering terrorism, U.S. intelligence is incompetent or blind and misses all of these developments and can not predict their unfolding, and yet we should accept that they will detect an imminent strike an hour beforehand to allow the President to push the button and have Trident II missiles save the day.
We are talking here about confidence levels that will allow the President of the United States to decide to preemptively attack a terrorist operation in the middle of a sovereign nation within 30 minutes. Why would we believe that U.S. intelligence could detect this with any level of confidence and yet have failed to detect all of the days, months, or years of preparation to get there?
I'm no fan of preemption, I question the weapons of mass destruction obsession of the national security priesthood, and I don't even like the articulation of a "war" against terrorism, but if the United States is going to have a national security strategy of preemption, if the pre-9/11 let's-just-sit-around-waiting for the worst to happen mindset went the way of the Cold War dinosaurs, then how is it that this scenario could ever be implemented?
19 May 2006
yoohooooo... hey war on terror folks
DAKAR, Senegal -- Attacks by Janjaweed Arab militiamen from Darfur are forcing 100 Chadians a day to leave their homes, adding to the more than 40,000 people displaced in eastern Chad, a U.N. official said. More than 200,000 refugees from Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region are already in U.N. camps in Chad.
Conyers on Impeachment, the destructive Republican agenda, and the GOPs ridiculous pre-election scare tactics
from yesterday's Washington Post. Emphasis added is entirely mine.
No Rush to Impeachment
By John Conyers Jr. Thursday, May 18, 2006; A23
As Republicans have become increasingly nervous about whether they will be able to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections, they have resorted to the straw-man strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority. Among these is the assertion that I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.
I will not do that. I readily admit that I have been quite vigorous, if not relentless, in questioning the administration. The allegations I have raised are grave, serious, well known, and based on reliable media reports and the accounts of former administration officials.
But none of these allegations can be proved or disproved until the administration answers questions. For example, to know whether intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war, we need to know what information was made available to -- and actually read by -- decision makers and how views contradicting the case for war were treated.
We need to know the extent to which high-ranking officials approved of the use of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment inflicted upon detainees. We need to know whether the leaking of the name of a covert CIA operative was deliberate or accidental, as well as the identity of those responsible.
The administration's stonewalling, and the lack of oversight by Congress, have left us to guess whether we are dealing with isolated wrongdoing, or mistakes, or something worse. In my view, the American people deserve answers, not guesses. I have proposed that we obtain these answers in a responsible and bipartisan manner.
It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those "revolutionaries," it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate.
So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.
The committee's job would be to obtain answers -- finally. At the end of the process, if -- and only if -- the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee. This threshold of bipartisanship is appropriate, I believe, when dealing with an issue of this magnitude.
One-party rule has dug our nation into a deep hole over the past six years. The Judiciary Committee needs to fully implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, strengthen laws against wartime fraud, ban trade with state sponsors of terrorism, increase funding for community policing and protect government whistle-blowers. Most important, before we have another presidential election, I believe we need to pass laws protecting the integrity of our electoral system -- the very foundation of our democracy.
18 May 2006
things you learn in the elevator
This morning I had the pleasure of sharing an elevator with a woman who works for the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce.
She was heading to the much-anticipated dedication of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which spans the Potomac River for the Washington beltway, on the southern edge of DC (actually connecting Maryland and Virginia). For those of you unfamiliar with the nightmarish DC commute, the old WW Bridge was generally avoided by most commuters at all costs. 45 minute backups were not uncommon... in fact, that kind of delay was quickly becoming a normal daily occurence.
6 years after the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project began, they've finished the first span, and traffic will begin crossing the new bridge next month.
So, what did I learn in the elevator?
That the first car to cross the new span will be Woodrow Wilson's 1923 Rolls-Royce and that the mayor of DC, the Governors of Md and Virginia, and Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta will be riding in it.
Here's a pic from The Washington Post:
DC's commuters are surely rejoicing. Next month can't come around fast enough.
DC's commuters are surely rejoicing. Next month can't come around fast enough.
16 May 2006
GOP Crooks
15 May 2006
the next Governor of New York
In a speech delivered at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, Eliot outlined his plan to launch a statewide broadband initiative so every New Yorker has access to high-speed, affordable Internet.
Eliot pointed out that, "If you're a kid growing up in South Korea, your Internet access is ten times faster at half the price than a kid growing up in the South Bronx. New Yorkers are at a competitive disadvantage that is simply unacceptable... In the 21st Century, Internet access is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity...That's why today I am proposing that New York launch a comprehensive statewide broadband initiative to ensure universal access to affordable, high-speed broadband service for every New Yorker. We must make New York State the most connected and technologically advanced place to live and do business in the world. The problem isn't a lack of resources, it's a lack of imagination and a lack of leadership.
when you elect liars....
“A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi ‘bioweapons trailers’ were discredited by American experts, U.S. officials were still suppressing the findings, says a senior member of the CIA-led Iraq inspection team. At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was ‘politically not possible’ to report that the White House claims were untrue. In the end, Barton says, he felt ‘complicit in deceit.’ The Washington Post reported last month that a U.S. fact-finding mission confidentially advised Washington on May 27, 2003, that two truck trailers found in Iraq were not mobile units for manufacturing bioweapons, as had been suspected. Two days later, President Bush still asserted the trailers were bioweapons labs, and other administration officials repeated that line for months afterward.” [full article: Ex-WMD Inspector: Politics Quashed Facts]
14 May 2006
...
All the Governor's Men
Maryland's utility regulator ditches his independence.
Sunday, May 14, 2006; B06
KENNETH D. SCHISLER, chairman of the agency charged with regulating Maryland's public utilities, is clearly in the wrong job. The agency he leads, the Public Service Commission, is supposed to be an impartial, apolitical arbiter looking out for the state's consumers and beholden to no one. Instead, Mr. Schisler and his aides behave as loyalists of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and as confidants of the very industry the agency regulates.
In one telling exchange of e-mails made public recently, Mr. Schisler's chief of staff, Craig Chesek, writing on his boss's behalf, asked for and received the green light from the governor's appointments office to fire a high-ranking commission employee -- one of five who were ousted and escorted from their offices by armed guards two years ago. Mr. Schisler insists he was alerting the governor's office of his intentions, not asking its permission. But the e-mails clearly indicate the opposite.
On Thursday state lawmakers grilled Mr. Schisler and Mr. Chesek about the e-mails and other indications that they were doing the governor's bidding by firing senior commission officials to make room for Ehrlich loyalists. The questions are legitimate; the PSC's independence is critical. In response, Mr. Schisler repeatedly flew off the handle and insulted state Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery). "E.T. phone home, Senator, you and your wild conspiracy theories," Mr. Schisler spluttered, demonstrating his own utter lack of self-control.
Just as remarkable was Mr. Schisler's explanation for his decision to fire several of his agency's most experienced officials, whose job performance he characterized as subpar. Pressed for details, he said one of the officials, the PSC's former chief engineer, wore ripped jeans and "dorky" old ties at work.
In previously released e-mails, Mr. Schisler and his top aides were shown asking and receiving favors from Reliant Energy, a huge electricity producer. The favors themselves were petty -- on one occasion, tickets to see the Houston Astros; on another, a dozen seats to watch President Bush's 2005 inaugural parade. Still, those e-mails, and others, suggested an unsuitable coziness between regulators and regulated.
Having misconstrued his role in the public sector, Mr. Schisler might be better off seeking employment in the private one. Perhaps, as a proven sartorial stickler, he could find work as a tailor of fine men's clothing; that way he could cater to the tastes of the wealthy and powerful without having to worry about compromising a public agency's independence -- or the interests of consumers.
Happy Mother's Day!
A Pattern of Excess
One by one, the administration's secret measures against terrorism are exposed. They don't look good in the light.
Sunday, May 14, 2006; B06
THE ROUTINE has become distressingly familiar: A news organization reveals a secret operation by the Bush administration that employs new means to fight the war on terrorism but also raises serious issues of civil liberties or human rights. The president responds with a curt assertion that the actions are legal, even as his administration moves to head off any intervention by Congress. Resisting further requests for information, the White House countenances a public debate only to the extent it can be put to partisan use, as a means of casting Democratic critics as weak on national security.
Last week the subject was the National Security Agency's compilation of a massive database of the phone calls made by hundreds of millions of Americans -- a program of questionable legality that was carried out for more than four years in secrecy and without congressional authorization or judicial review. Before that came the report of the NSA's warrantless surveillance of phone calls between the United States and foreign countries; before that the revelation that the CIA has created secret prisons abroad where terrorist suspects are held without charge, due process or access to the International Red Cross.
In the past several years we also have learned of the administration's secret decision to subject foreign detainees to torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, despite U.S. ratification of a treaty banning such conduct. We have seen it assert the right to arrest American citizens in this country and hold them indefinitely without charge or access to an attorney. We have learned of its decision to set aside the Geneva Conventions in order to hold and interrogate "enemy combatants" indefinitely and try them before special military commissions with limited rights of appeal.
Some of these measures may be necessary to effectively combat international terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda. Many were adopted in the weeks immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, when the situation seemed to demand urgent and aggressive action. Yet almost all of the exceptional steps President Bush approved have been compromised and discredited by the administration's behavior: its insistence on secrecy and imperious readings of the law; its contempt for meaningful congressional oversight and disregard of international opinion and U.S. alliances; its stubborn resistance to good-faith efforts by Congress to bring the operations under statute.
The consequence is that much of the administration's counterterrorism strategy lacks the democratic legitimacy that would be conferred by open debate and congressional votes. In some instances, such as the detention of foreign prisoners in CIA jails or at Guantanamo Bay, the damage done to U.S. interests far outweighs any benefit gained through the use of exceptional measures. The mounting political backlash here and abroad not only has seriously weakened this president but may cramp the ability of his successors to effectively fight the war.
Congress and the Supreme Court already have checked some of the administration's excesses; more decisions and legislation could come in the next few months. In the long run, we'd expect that the NSA surveillance program, secret prisons and other exceptional measures won't survive in their present form -- nor should they. If Mr. Bush wishes to preserve their purported benefits, he should stop stonewalling his critics or playing for partisan advantage and work with Congress to create legal means to fight terrorism compatible with American values and democracy. It would be nice to see him begin before the next disturbing revelation; we have a feeling there are more to come.
12 May 2006
Political Economy Research Institute's: Toxic 100
THE TOXIC 100: Top Corporate Air Polluters in the United States
Rank | Corporation | Toxic score
(pounds released
x toxicity x
population exposure) | Millions of
pounds of toxic
air releases |
1 | E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. | 475,482 | 17.15 |
2 | United States Steel Corp. | 359,681 | 2.84 |
3 | ConocoPhillips | 284,772 | 8.04 |
4 | General Electric Co. | 266,308 | 4.46 |
5 | Eastman Kodak Co. | 253,054 | 5.09 |
6 | Exxon Mobil Corp. | 247,699 | 15.47 |
7 | Ford Motor Co. | 244,782 | 9.67 |
8 | Tyson Foods Inc. | 234,041 | 1.28 |
9 | Alcoa Inc. | 193,034 | 9.88 |
10 | Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) | 191,367 | 12.40 |
11 | The Dow Chemical Co. | 157,237 | 14.07 |
12 | Eastman Chemical Co., Inc. | 154,570 | 8.91 |
13 | The Boeing Co. | 152,426 | 1.26 |
14 | Nucor Corp. | 152,421 | 0.76 |
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