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CORRUPTION UPDATES 67 June 5th, 2007: Draft Posting: Stay Tuned for More! The CORRUPTION UPDATES posts corruption news stories from California, the Nation and the World, and gives you the straight story. |
CORRUPTION UPDATES 67
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1) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE:
'03 Iraq reports warned Bush
U.S. intelligence predicted much of the current upheaval.
By Jonathan S. Landay - Mcclatchy Washington Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDTSaturday, May 26, 2007
http://www.sacbee.com/111/v-print/story/194926.html
U.S. intelligence agencies warned the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq that ousting Saddam Hussein would create a "significant risk" of sectarian strife, encourage al-Qaida attacks and open the way for Iranian interference.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released declassified prewar intelligence reports Friday that cautioned that establishing democracy in Iraq would be "long, difficult and probably turbulent" and said that while most Iraqis would welcome elections, the country's ethnic and religious leaders would be unwilling to share power.
Nevertheless, President Bush, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials decided not to deploy the major occupation force that military planners had recommended, planned to reduce U.S. troops rapidly after the invasion and believed that ousting Saddam would ignite a democratic revolution across the Middle East.
The administration also instituted a purge of members of Saddam's Baath Party and disbanded the Iraqi army -- moves that helped spark the country's Sunni Muslim insurgency -- even though the newly declassified intelligence reports had recommended against doing so.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is developing what are described as concepts for reducing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by as much as half next year, said senior administration officials in the middle of the internal debate.
...the declassified intelligence documents released Friday showed the administration had failed despite adequate warnings to prepare for the Sunni insurgency, al-Qaida terrorism and other problems that the United States has encountered since the March 2003 invasion.
One January 2003 report, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq," cautioned that whoever assumed control of Iraq "would face a country with societal fractures and significant potential for violent conflict among domestic groups if not prevented by an occupation force."
Another report said removing Saddam would open the door to Iranian influence in Iraq by "sowing dissent" among Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite Muslim communities.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Bush is an Irresponsible Idiot
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2) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Tribunals are dealt another legal setback
Dismissal rulings in two Guantanamo cases raise questions about the military's jurisdiction over detainees.
By Carol J. Williams and Julian E. Barnes
Times Staff Writers
June 5, 2007
GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Military judges threw out war-crimes cases Monday against the only detainees here who have been indicted, in rulings that suggest the hastily reassembled military tribunals have no jurisdiction over any of Guantanamo's 380 prisoners.
In separate hearings, an Army colonel and a Navy captain granted motions to dismiss the cases because the 2006 Military Commissions Act that Congress passed last year gave the tribunals jurisdiction only over "unlawful alien enemy combatants."
(Combatant Status Review Tribunals designate all 380 "detainees" as "enemy combatants" which are not under the jurisdiction of Bush's Military Tribunals)
The Geneva Convention protects the rights of "lawful combatants," who are usually members of national armed forces fighting with another country's soldiers. Captured lawful combatants are supposed to be designated prisoners of war and held in communal conditions.
But when the Bush administration devised the tribunals, it eliminated that designation to deprive the war-on-terror suspects of POW rights and living conditions. That left the three-officer status review boards with the choices of "enemy combatant" or "no longer an enemy combatant."
In the second of the two rulings, Navy Capt. Keith Allred suggested that Bush's blanket branding of all Al Qaeda members as illegally engaged in hostilities against U.S. forces was illegitimate because it failed to examine whether each individual had committed war crimes.
Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, head of the war crimes tribunal defense team, said that Congress should take the opportunity to force the government to cease circumventing legitimate U.S. courts in its effort to prosecute Guantanamo prisoners.
"The military commissions are a model that has repeatedly shown itself incapable of rendering justice," said Sullivan. He added that after the rulings, "if the United States government is wise, this would be the fatal blow to military commissions."
...Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials insisted that the prison remain open as an alternative to bringing the prisoners they have described as the world's most dangerous men to U.S. communities for trial in federal court.
...the rulings by the commissions' own judges seemed likely to compound criticism at home and abroad that the denial of Geneva Convention protections conflicts with American values and commitment to justice.
The dismissed cases have no real effect on the prisoners' freedom: The administration has said that even those never charged with specific crimes will be held for the duration of the war on terrorism, regardless of judicial procedures created to try them.
Defense Department officials were discussing whether to hold another round of the status review tribunals for detainees they intend to try, officials in Washington said Monday.
The commissions' chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, has said he envisions charging about 75 of the prisoners, with the rest to be held "for the duration of the war on terror."
Human-rights lawyers hailed the twin rulings as an admission that the commissions are "fatally flawed" and should be abandoned in favor of military courts-martial or trials in U.S. federal courts.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Navy Captain Calls Bush Designations "Illegitimate"
Bush is so Incompentent he cannot even run a Kangaroo Court
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Illegal Trials
Illegal Detentions
3) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
China Stocks Extend Loss, Falling 8.3%
June 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05chinastox.
html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
SHANGHAI, June 4 — China’s stock markets tumbled again on Monday, worsening one of the biggest sell-offs in years after the government’s move last week to impose a higher tax on stock trades.
...in China, stocks have fallen by a total of about 15 percent in the four sessions since the government announced last Wednesday that it would triple the stock-trading stamp tax, to 0.3 percent from 0.1 percent.
Monday’s drop of 8.3 percent in the benchmark index, raised the fear of a wave of panic selling in China’s financial markets after an extraordinary bull run in which share prices have climbed by more than 300 percent in the last two years.
...the most recent trajectories of the country’s two main stock markets have been unsettling. On Monday, the Shanghai Stock Exchange index plunged 330.34 points, to close at 3,670.40. The other major index, for the Shenzhen exchange, fell 7.9 percent, to 1,039.90.
...there are fears among both government officials and private analysts that a severe downturn in prices can lead to a further rout that would wreak havoc with the finances of ordinary Chinese.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
China Bubble Contained for Now:
Chinese Meltdown will Stagger America when China Calls Due Loans Underwriting our Consumption
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4) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Musharraf Issues Decree Cracking Down on News Media
By SALMAN MASOOD
June 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/world/asia/05pakistan.html?pagewanted=print
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, June 4 — In an apparent move to curb news media coverage of the continuing political crisis over his suspension of the country’s chief justice, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, issued a decree on Monday that gives the government more powers to shut down independent television channels.
The decree allows a government regulatory agency to make new regulations on its own, to seize broadcast or distribution equipment and seal the premises of organizations that are operating illegally or against regulations. It also allows the agency to suspend broadcasters’ licenses.
GEO, the foremost independent channel, said its transmissions across most of Pakistan had been blocked since Sunday.
Two other channels also reported heavy interference with their transmissions over much of the country.
All of Pakistan’s independent television channels are transmitted by cable companies, and journalists blamed the government for pressing the cable companies to block or interfere with transmissions.
The moves against the television channels and Monday’s decree appear to be the president’s latest tactics in containing the political fallout from the suspension of the chief justice,
The news media have given prominent coverage to the chief justice and to the lawyers, judges and opposition political parties around the country who have rallied behind him in his refusal to accept dismissal.
But on Friday, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority reminded all television channels that live coverage of political events was not permitted by law.
Mr. Masood, the GEO talk show host, said in a telephone interview Monday that his show was blocked Sunday evening as soon as it went on the air. He said he also had received anonymous threatening phone calls and that government officials had told his bosses to put him on paid leave to stop his program.
Two other channels, Aaj and ARY-One, have reported intermittent blockage of their transmissions since March 9, when the judge was suspended.
As an active justice, Mr. Chaudhry took cases involving “forced disappearances” — people believed to have been taken by intelligence agencies without due process.
In addition, several politically charged cases are likely to come before the high court soon, including one challenging the legality of General Musharraf’s holding the posts of both president and chief of the army, and one on whether the present Parliament can re-elect him president.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
American Backed Dictator Seized Power, Suspended Chief Justice, silenced Press. American Democracy a Farce Here, and in Pakistan
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5) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
When Fakery Turns Fatal
June 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/
WUDI, China — They might be called China’s renegade businessmen, small entrepreneurs who are experts at counterfeiting and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a profit.
Here in Wudi in eastern China, a few companies tried to save money by slipping the industrial chemical melamine into pet food ingredients as a cheap protein enhancer, helping incite one of the largest pet food recalls ever.
In Taixing, a city far to the south, a small business cheated the system by substituting a cheap toxic chemical for pharmaceutical-grade syrup, leading to a mass poisoning in Panama. And in the eastern province of Anhui, a group of entrepreneurs concocted a fake baby-milk formula that eventually killed dozens of rural children.
Dozens of Chinese cities have risen to prominence over the last two decades by first specializing in fake goods, like Wenzhou, which was once known for selling counterfeit Procter & Gamble products, and Kaihua in Zhejiang province, which specialized in fake Philips light bulbs.
Chinese authorities said that Binzhou Futian and a company in bordering Jiangsu province had intentionally doctored feed ingredients to generate bigger profits. Regulators in China called it an isolated incident.
But agricultural workers and experts in this region tell a different story. They say the practice of doctoring animal and fish feed with melamine and other ingredients is widespread in China. And Wudi, they say, has long been known as a center for such activity.
“Basically, for entrepreneurs, if something is not explicitly banned — it’s not banned,” said Dali Yang, who teaches at the University of Chicago and has studied China’s food safety regulations. “As long as people are not sick or dying, it’s O.K.”
Small-time entrepreneurs have played the same game over and over with other products, experts say, adding cheap substitute chemicals to toothpaste; using lower-grade materials to produce car parts, batteries and cellphones; and creating factories that specialize in counterfeit goods.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
China Trade Dangerous to Customers, Irresponsible to Labor, and Death for the Environment: Stop It Now!
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6) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Sprawl clashes with warming in California
Sunday, May 27, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2007/05/27/MNGJ0Q2FUI1.DTL
(05-27) 04:00 PDTSacramento -- California's pioneering push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is colliding with one of the state's most ingrained legacies: urban sprawl.
In litigation and legislation, environmentalists, lawmakers and Attorney General Jerry Brown are using a landmark law enacted last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to argue that the state must rethink the kind of immense and far-flung housing developments that have defined California land-use patterns for decades.
...But experts, including the governor's own climate advisers, argue that changing how housing is developed is key to meeting the emissions reductions that AB32 calls for.
Last month, the newly elected attorney general filed an unusual lawsuit against San Bernardino County over the county's recently adopted 25-year growth plan.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Sprawl is a Symptom of 40 Years of Irresponsible Growth and Consumption
We need to reduce the population of California by 50% as soon a possible. We must immediatly ban employment of illegals, and seize the buisness assets of anyone improving their property with illegal labor.
That will stop sprawl, eliminate about 50% of our greenhouse gas emiitions, and reduce our population to a long term sustainable level.
Our politicians do not have the moral courage to strike at the heart of the crisis that confront us.
They chip around the edges, trying to look like "leaders" while preserving and protecting the massive growth that has destroyed our climate, drained our water and electrical supplies and made everything expensive (except wages).
Irresponsible growth has empowered businesses with sufficient wealth to buy the obedience of both parties. Irresponsible Politicians will maintain the irresponsible growth that enriches the businesses who fund their political campaigns.
Expect no substantive reductions in co2 emissions as long as our politicians are owned by the corporations, and served by an endless stream of grasping foreigners.
Under these conditions, the population will double every 35 years, no matter how you build it.
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7) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Jefferson indicted on graft charges
The Democrat from Louisiana allegedly solicited millions for himself and his family.
By Richard B. Schmitt and Ann Simmons
Times Staff Writers
June 5, 2007
From the Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) was indicted Monday on charges that he used his congressional office to enrich himself and his family through a pervasive pattern of fraud, bribery and corruption that spanned five years and two continents.
In an unusually sweeping 94-page indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., Jefferson is charged with soliciting millions in fees and company stock in exchange for using his office to promote wide-ranging business interests in West Africa, including a telecommunications start-up, an oil exploration company and a waste-recycling firm.
The 16-count indictment, including allegations of money laundering, bribery and racketeering, contain the first charges ever brought against a U.S. official for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, enacted 30 years ago to combat bribery of foreign officials by U.S. corporations.
If convicted on all charges, he could be sentenced to up to 235 years in prison.
Jefferson is charged with soliciting bribes from 11 different companies for himself and his family, as well as bribing a Nigerian government official. The indictment describes a scheme covering five years, from August 2000 to August 2005, and including a front company set up by Jefferson to hide the money.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
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8) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
10 accused of conspiring to oust government of Laos
By Denny Walsh - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDTTuesday, June 5, 2007
http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/206120.html
Ten men -- including a prominent Hmong general who commanded CIA operatives fighting communists during the Vietnam War -- were charged in Sacramento federal court Monday with plotting to overthrow the government of Laos.
The men, who also include Harrison Ulrich Jack -- a 1968 West Point graduate and retired Army infantry officer from Woodland -- allegedly conspired to obtain scores of AK-47 assault rifles, ground-to-air Stinger missiles, anti-tank weapons, mines, rockets, explosives and smoke grenades with which to oust the Laotian communist regime.
Vang, 77, of Orange County, is accused with the nine others -- including a man from Sacramento and another from Rancho Cordova -- of violating the federal Neutrality Act by plotting on American soil to invade a foreign country with which the United States is at peace.
It says that Vang and the other Hmong leaders engaged in extensive, nationwide fundraising to underwrite their venture, which was meant to oust the communist regime.
The complaint charges that since January the suspects had inspected a wide array of weapons. They purchased "an initial installment of 125 AK-47 machine guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, and crates of smoke grenades for ... $100,000, to be delivered in Bangkok, Thailand, on June 12," the complaint says.
In May, the complaint says, the suspects had "intelligence operatives" in place in Vientiane, the Laotian capital, "conducting surveillance of military and government facilities in downtown Vientiane."
In Monday's predawn hours, more than 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officials armed with search and arrest warrants fanned out in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Woodland, Chico, Fresno and Stockton and took 10 men into custody.
All the defendants face maximum sentences of life plus 38 years in prison. They are charged with conspiring to violate the Neutrality Act and violating it; conspiring to kill, kidnap, maim and injure persons in a foreign country; conspiring to damage government buildings and property in a foreign country; and conspiring to receive and possess machine guns and explosive devices.
Jack, Vang, Lo Cha Thao, Lo Thao, Hue Vang and Chong Yang Thao also are charged with conspiring to receive and possess missiles designed to destroy aircraft.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
The Cubans want to Kill Castro, The Iranians want to ride American Tanks into Tehran, The Vietnamese want to stage a Coup in Vietnam.
Now we have the Hmong, Another Faction Driven from their Homeland for Supporting Foreign Invaders
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9) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Charge Migden,CHP advises
The state senator was driving recklessly while causing two crashes last month, DA is told.
By John Hill - Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDTTuesday, June 5, 2007
http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/v-print/story/205817.html
The California Highway Patrol on Monday recommended that state Sen. Carole Migden be charged with reckless driving after an erratic ride down the Interstate 80 corridor on May 18 that included two accidents and several 911 calls from concerned motorists.
Migden was at fault in the accidents in her state-issued Toyota SUV, sideswiping a guardrail and rear-ending another car, said Sgt. Les Bishop, a spokesman for the CHP's Golden Gate Division.
Migden's use of a cell phone while driving contributed to both crashes, Bishop said.
The reckless driving recommendation was forwarded Monday to the Solano County District Attorney's Office.
The CHP also is asking the Department of Motor Vehicles to re-evaluate Migden's fitness to drive.
A reckless driving conviction not involving alcohol often results in a fine and informal probation for three years...
The reckless driving charge is used when the driver "is kind of being an idiot," he said -- swerving between lanes, for instance, or causing more than one mishap.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
Why was Migden's Blood not Sampled after an Injury Accident?
Was Migden on drugs?
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Corruption Updates 55 , 9th article on page,
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10) THE ABSTRACT PRINTED BELOW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE :
Dan Walters: Redistrict proposals all flawed
By Dan Walters - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDTTuesday, June 5, 2007
http://www.sacbee.com/capolitics/v-print/story/205816.html
Many of those publicly advocating reform really don't want reform at all, especially Democrats who can look forward to drawing Democrat-friendly districts after the 2010 census. Democratic interest groups, such as public employee unions, and congressional members are openly hostile to change.
Arnold Schwarzenegger wants reform, however, and that makes the Democrats pay attention because they don't want the popular governor, as he has implied he would, to oppose a pending ballot measure that would ease up on legislative term limits.Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez's offering is especially weak. He would give the job to the state's Little Hoover Commission, which is only one tiny step removed from having politicians do it since its members are appointed by the governor and the Legislature.
The prevailing Senate version of reform, carried by Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, is better, creating an 11-member commission drawn more or less at random from pools drawn up by a panel of retired judges.
Real redistricting reform requires a panel that's both sophisticated enough to understand its effects and independent enough to put the public's interest above politics. The state Supreme Court, operating through special panels of masters that hired expert staff, did the job quickly, efficiently and fairly after the 1970 and 1990 censuses. If we truly want reform, we should emulate those experiences.
THE COMMITTEE SAYS:
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