The Bailout: Bush’s Final Pillage | Naomi KleinThe Bailout: Bush’s Final Pillage
By Naomi Klein - October 29th, 2008
In the final days of the election, many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don’t be fooled: that doesn’t mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700 billion bailout out the door. At a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, Republican Senator Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. “How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?” Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bailout.
When European colonialists realized that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.
Nothing so barbaric for the Bush gang. Rather than open plunder, it prefers bureaucratic instruments, such as “distressed asset” auctions and the “equity purchase program.” But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese—a final frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.
How else to make sense of the bizarre decisions that have governed the allocation of the bailout money? When the Bush administration announced it would be injecting $250 billion into America’s banks in exchange for equity, the plan was widely referred to as “partial nationalization”—a radical measure required to get the banks lending again. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had seen the light, we were told, and was now following the lead of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
In fact, there has been no nationalization, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks like much of the windfall will cover this year’s bonus pool. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its newfound $25 billion buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts that “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion.” The U.S. government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans – officially, the reason for the entire program.
What, then, is the real purpose of the bailout? My fear is this rush of deal making is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business; that the Bush version of “partial nationalization” is rigged to turn the U.S. Treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come. Remember, the main concern among big market players, particularly banks, is not the lack of credit but their battered share prices. Investors have lost confidence in the honesty of the big financial players, and with good reason.
This is where Treasury’s equity pays off big time. By purchasing stakes in these financial institutions, Treasury is sending a signal to the market that they are a safe bet. Why safe? Not because their level of risk has been accurately assessed at last. Not because they have renounced the kind of exotic financial instruments and outrageous leverage rates that created the crisis. Rather, because the market will now be banking on the fact that the U.S. government won’t let these particular companies fail. If they get themselves into trouble, investors will now assume that the government will keep finding more cash to bail them out, since allowing them to go down would mean losing the initial equity investments, many of them in the billions. (Just look at the insurance giant AIG, which had already gone back to taxpayers for a top-up and seems set to ask for a third.)
This tethering of the public interest to private companies is the real purpose of the bailout plan: Paulson is handing all the companies that are admitted to the program—a number potentially in the thousands—an implicit Treasury Department guarantee. To skittish investors looking for safe places to park their money, these equity deals will be even more comforting than a Triple-A rating from Moody’s.
Insurance like that is priceless. But for the banks, the best part is that the government is paying them to accept its seal of approval. For taxpayers, on the other hand, this entire plan is extremely risky, and may well cost significantly more than Paulson’s original idea of buying up $700 billion in toxic debts. Now taxpayers aren’t just on the hook for the debts but, arguably, for the fate of every corporation that sells them equity.
Interestingly, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac both enjoyed this kind of unspoken guarantee before the mortgage giants were nationalized at the start of this crisis. For decades the market understood that, since these private players were enmeshed with the government, Uncle Sam could be counted on to always save the day. It was, as many have pointed out, the worst of all worlds. Not only were profits privatized while risks were socialized but the implicit government backing created powerful incentives for reckless business practices.
Now, with the new equity purchase program, Paulson has taken the discredited Fannie and Freddie model and applied it to a huge swath of the private banking industry. And once again, there is no reason to shy away from risky bets—especially since Treasury has made no such demands of the banks. (Treasury, apparently, does not want to “micromanage.”)
To further boost market confidence, the federal government has also unveiled unlimited public guarantees for many bank deposit accounts. Oh, and as if this wasn’t enough, Treasury has been encouraging the banks to manically merge with one another, ensuring that the only institutions left standing will be “too big to fail,” thereby guaranteed of a bailout. In three different ways, the market is being told loud and clear that Washington will not allow the country’s financial institutions to bear the consequences of their behavior, no matter how reckless. This may well be Bush’s most creative innovation: no-risk capitalism.
There is a glimmer of hope. In answer to Senator Corker’s question, Treasury is indeed having trouble dispersing the bailout funds. So far it has requested about $350 billion of the $700 billion, but most of this hasn’t yet made it out the door. Meanwhile, every day it becomes clearer that the bailout was sold to the public on false pretenses. Clearly, it was never really about getting loans flowing. It was always about doing what it is doing: turning the state into a giant insurance agency for Wall Street—a safety net for the people who need it least, subsidized by the people who will most need state protections in the economic storms ahead.
This duplicity is a political opportunity. Whoever wins the election on November 4 will have enormous moral authority. It should be used to call for a freeze on the dispersal of bailout funds—not after the inauguration, but right away. All deals should be renegotiated immediately, this time with the public getting the guarantees.
It is risky, of course, to interrupt the bailout process. The market won’t like it. Nothing could be riskier, however, than allowing the Bush gang their parting gift to big business—the gift that will keep on taking.
A version of this column was first published in The Nation.
Print Story: Consumer confidence plunges to lowest on record - Yahoo! NewsConsumer confidence plunges to lowest on record
WASHINGTON – A private research group said Tuesday that consumer confidence in the U.S. economy plunged in October to its lowest on record, as stock markets dropped sharply and companies laid off workers.
The Conference Board said the consumer confidence index fell to 38, down from a revised 61.4 in September and significantly below analysts' expectations of 52.
That's the lowest level for the index since the Conference Board began tracking consumer sentiment in 1967, and the third-steepest drop.
"Consumers are extremely pessimistic," said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center. "This news does not bode well for retailers who are already bracing for what is shaping up to be a very challenging holiday season."
A year ago, the index stood at 95.2.
The 23.4-point drop in the index from September to October is the steepest since it fell 36.9 points from October 1973 to December 1973, when the economy was in the throes of a severe recession. Then, the index was measured every two months. The index dropped 24.3 points from December 1969 to February 1970, Franco said.
Consumer sentiment is closely watched because consumer spending powers about 70 percent of economic activity.
Print Story: Feds disrupt skinhead plot to assassinate Obama - Yahoo! News
**And so it begins...! The slimy underbelly of America starts to rear it's ugly, inbred head. On November 5th I believe that the most dangerous job in America will become that of Obama's Secret Service detail!? Sad but true....
(and should the Secret Service read this page....please read it carefully and realize I'm on YOUR side, before shipping me off to Gitmo!)
Feds disrupt skinhead plot to assassinate Obama
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.
In all, the two men whom officials described as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people — 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.
The spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward Obama, "shooting at him from the windows," the court documents show.
"Both individuals stated they would dress in all-white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt," the court complaint states. "Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt."
An Obama spokeswoman traveling with the senator in Pennsylvania had no immediate comment.
Sheriffs' deputies in Crockett County, Tenn., arrested the two suspects — Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of Helena-West Helena, Ark. — Oct. 22 on unspecified charges. "Once we arrested the defendants and suspected they had violated federal law, we immediately contacted federal authorities," said Crockett County Sheriff Troy Klyce.
The two were charged by federal authorities Monday with possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer, and threatening a candidate for president.
Cowart and Schlesselman are being held without bond. Agents seized a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and three pistols from the men when they were arrested. Authorities alleged the two men were preparing to break into a gun shop to steal more.
Jasper Taylor, city attorney in Bells, said Cowart was arrested on Wednesday. He was held for a few days in Bells, then moved over the weekend to another facility.
"It was kept under lid until today," Taylor said.
Until his arrest, Cowart lived with his grandparents in a southern, rural part of the county, Taylor said, adding that Cowart apparently never graduated from high school. He moved away, possibly to Arkansas or Texas, then returned over the summer, Taylor said.
Attorney Joe Byrd, who has been hired to represent Cowart, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday. Messages left on two phone numbers listed under Cowart's name were not immediately returned.
No telephone number for Schlesselman in Helena-West Helena could be found immediately.
The court documents say the two men met about a month ago on the Internet and found common ground in their shared "white power" and "skinhead" philosophy.
The numbers 14 and 88 are symbols in skinhead culture, referring to a 14-word phrase attributed to an imprisoned white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" and to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Two "8"s or "H"s stand for "Heil Hitler."
Court records say Cowart and Schlesselman also bought nylon rope and ski masks to use in a robbery or home invasion to fund their spree, during which they allegedly planned to go from state to state and kill people. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the African-American school they were targeting by name.
Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville, Tenn., field office for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, said authorities took the threats very seriously.
"They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."
He added: "They seemed determined to do it. Even if they were just to try it, it would be a trail of tears around the South."
An ATF affidavit filed in the case says Cowart and Schlesselman told investigators the day they were arrested they had shot at a glass window at Beech Grove Church of Christ, a congregation of about 60 black members in Brownsville, Tenn.
Nelson Bond, the church secretary and treasurer, said no one was at the church when the shot was fired. Members found the bullet had shattered the glass in the church's front door when they arrived for evening Bible study.
"We have been on this site for about 120 years, and we have never had a problem like this before," said Bond, 53 and a church member for 45 years.
The investigation is continuing, and more charges are possible, Cavanaugh said. He said there's no evidence — so far — that others were willing to assist Cowart and Schlesselman with the plot.
At this point, there does not appear to be any formal assassination plan, Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said.
"Whether or not they had the capability or the wherewithal to carry out an attack remains to be seen," he said.
Zahren said the statements about the assassination came out in interviews after the men were arrested last week.
The Secret Service became involved in the investigation once it was clear that an Obama assassination attempt was part of this violent, far-reaching plot.
"We don't discount anything," Zahren said, adding that it's one thing for the defendants to make statements, but it's not the same as having an organized assassination plan.
Helena-West Helena, on the Mississippi River in east Arkansas' Delta, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living. Police Chief Fred Fielder said he had never heard of Schlesselman.
However, the reported threat of attacking a school filled with black students worried Fielder. Helena-West Helena, with a population of 12,200, is 66 percent black. "Predominantly black school, take your pick," he said.
Pensacola Independent NewsShauna's Story of Slavery
by Mari S. Krueger
Panhandle top place in Florida for human trafficking
The room was dark when Shauna Newell, 17, woke up, her clothes torn from her, a man over her, raping her. Her hands were tied, crossed, behind her head. She yelled for them to stop, to leave her alone. She looked into the faces of the four men watching, looked to her friend Jana, looking for a sign that one of them would help her. Instead, she got a gun pressed to her head.
"Do you want to see your brains all over that wall?" one man asked. She was quiet.
Then she blacked out again. She woke up to the same horrifying nightmare again and again. But it was real. The pain told her it was happening.
As she faded in and out she heard, "He isn't ready yet…We have to stall longer...$300,000 in cash…Man in Texas."
Shauna is a real person. Shauna is her real name. She's 18 now, and she's lived in Pensacola as long as she can remember. She's white, middle-class. All her family is here. This all happened just over a year ago. She was held against her will for four days from April 29 to May 2, 2006.
Shauna is a victim of sex trafficking. Forced commercial sex and labor are called human trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery. Human trafficking is very real across the United States, especially in Florida, California, New York and Texas. And it's very real in Pensacola.
Sex trafficking means a commercial sex act has been induced by force, fraud or coercion, or the person induced to perform the act is under age 18, reports the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. Many times traffickers target young, female runaways, sweet talk them, earn their trust, then rape them and shame them into prostitution, saying things like, "You can't go home now. Your family will never take you back. I'm the only one who will watch out for you now. You're worthless."
Sex traffickers also bring in women from other countries, often from Central and South America, with promises of marriage, better jobs, a new life.
NO. 2 CRIME INDUSTRY
After drug dealing, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world and is the fastest growing, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says. Many victims are forced to be prostitutes or strippers, but trafficking includes people forced or tricked into domestic servitude, construction work, restaurant work, janitorial work, sweatshop factory work and migrant agricultural work.
The Panhandle saw 33 rescued victims in the past month—plus 10 this week alone for a total of 43—and has 10 open cases involving 300 potential victims, says Anna Rodriguez, head of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking. That's more than Miami or Orlando.
Brad Dennis of the KlaasKids foundation started helping human trafficking victims after Shauna's case. The Florida Coalition contacted him about her case, and he started working with them on other cases along the Gulf Coast. That grew into the Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking, which he oversees.
"That doesn't happen in Pensacola." "She must have deserved it." "She asked for it." "That doesn't happen to girls who don't want it." "That's too unbelievable."
Shauna hears all those comments. And she'll be the first to tell you, she never thought it could happen either.
"I went to that house of my own free will," she says softly, "but I was not held there on my own free will. I told them plenty of times, 'Just let me go home!'
"I was aware stuff like that happens, but I never thought it'd happen to me," she adds. "I thought I could trust her."
BETRAYED AND RESCUED
She was betrayed by a friend, Jana, a girl she met at night school, a girl she thought was trustworthy. Shauna was two days away from earning her GED. Her stepdad had promised her a new car when she got it—she never did.
Shauna's friend Jana invited her to hang out at her dad's home, a house in Shauna's neighborhood, four blocks from her own home and less than a mile from the sheriff's office headquarters. It's a neighborhood where she always felt safe. She sees cops patrolling all the time.
Shauna had just talked to her mom on the phone. She'd be home by 10 p.m. But when they got to the house, Jana's "dad" turned out to be her pimp. He was out on an errand. Instead, Shauna found five men. She felt uncomfortable and asked for some water. She drank it. Then she blacked out.
She woke up in a pool of vomit in the bathroom. One of the men told her to take the pill he offered her. It'd make her feel better. Shauna doesn't know if she took it or not, because she blacked out again. The next time she regained consciousness was in the dark, during one of the rapes. Those went on for days.
When she was rescued after four days of rape, abuse, starvation and water deprivation, Shauna had lethal amounts of cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, the date rape drug and ecstasy in her system, so much she had to take Life Flight to West Florida Hospital. No one thought she'd survive.
Shauna was rescued thanks to her mom, the Escambia County Sheriff's Department and the KlaasKids Foundation—that's where Dennis joined the hunt. The sheriff's office asked for Dennis' help, and he organized search parties, posted flyers and asked questions. He finally got a name of someone who knew who Shauna was with.
Repeated calls to Shauna's attackers—and Jana—led them to prop Shauna up between two men in the backseat of a car and start driving.
That's when Jana asked Shauna, "Did the water I gave you taste funny?" Jana told her she'd drugged her first glass of water with the date rape drug. Jana had been present almost constantly during the entire ordeal.
"She wasn't acting like she didn't want to be there," Shauna says flatly. "When I saw her running around, I was so mad. She set me up."
She didn't know where they were going, but she didn't have the strength to argue.
"My body was so low on energy I couldn't fight anymore," she says. "I couldn't if I wanted to. I could barely hold my head up. I know I definitely would've been sold, and I'd be someone's whore."
Ultimately, she was left in the parking lot of a convenience store in Perdido Key with a final threat: "If you say our names or what happened to you, we'll kill you and the rest of your family."
TERROR CONTINUES
That's why she hesitated to tell her story at first. But one of her friends held her hand and walked her through it. She told her mom what happened, then Dennis, who convinced her to talk to the police.
But to make her case, she had to sit alone with a detective and recall the horrifying four days. She couldn't even be alone in a room with her dad, but her mom wasn't allowed to sit through the interview with her, and a female detective wasn't available. So her case was closed, and many called her a liar then and now.
The medical evidence tells the truth on her behalf: internal bleeding that went on for days, ripping in the muscles up around her bladder. And she had a sexually transmitted disease called trichomonas from all the tearing in her vagina.
Shauna can't even estimate how many times she was raped—all she knows is what she has endured since then, emotionally and physically.
"They said it had to be a large number for all the bruising and the tearing," she says. "There were only five guys, and five guys couldn't do that much damage just doing it once or twice."
Shauna is tiny with shiny, shoulder-length brown hair. She did child modeling for 10 years. She used to want to be a nurse, but now she's just trying to keep up with daily life with her boyfriend and their new baby son. She is somber, honest and direct when she discusses her captivity, but lights up with smiles and laughter when she talks about her son.
For months, Shauna suffered nightmares and night terrors. She's still afraid of the dark. She can't be alone at night in places she doesn't know well. She always is more careful than she used to be.
She panicked when her brother walked into the room one day, because he was wearing the same cologne as one of the men who raped her. She had to move out of the state for a while. She moved to a different neighborhood.
She recognized one of her attackers in a car behind her in traffic a few months after her ordeal and panicked.
"One of the guys followed us, and my mom called and said, 'Don't come home—there're guys sitting out in front of the house.'" She and her boyfriend fled to his parents' house, where they now live. It's a quiet neighborhood away from where her ordeal happened. She feels safer—a little anyway.
"It might be old people, but we still have neighborhood watch!" Shauna says.
"I wouldn't exactly say I'm weak," Shauna explains. "I like to make new friends. I welcome you with open arms. And it got me in trouble."
ENDING SLAVERY?
That kind of "trouble" is not new. There are 2 million human trafficking victims in the United States, and Florida ranks second behind California in the highest percentage of those victims, the U.S. Department of Justice reports.
About 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders annually, with 14,000 to 20,000 people—of all nationalities—trafficked across U.S. borders annually, estimates the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Those are probably underestimates, Rodriguez says. She's been involved in the Florida Coalition since 1999, but really noticed an increase in awareness after the first international conference on human trafficking in 2004 in Florida. Since then, more research, funding and victims have come her way.
"As we've started getting people to come forward and rescuing people, almost on a daily basis, we're getting calls from people wanting to come forward," she says.
Many victims are scared, threatened and may not speak English. But the more word gets out, the more people they're able to help.
"Every 10 seconds there is a new victim of human trafficking," Rodriguez says.
Forty to 50 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are at risk of human trafficking by force or coercion, people from the Americas, Europe and Asia. But alarmingly, the Panhandle is seeing a lot of U.S. human trafficking victims.
"I can tell you in Pensacola we have a lot of cases of underage U.S. citizens being used for sexual exploitation," Rodriguez says.
She admits it surprised her to see so many girls being recruited for human trafficking, because she expected the new Gulf Coast Coalition office to be her quietest.
But of all the offices across the state, the Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking—run by Dennis after he helped rescue Shauna—is seeing the most victims. That's because Interstate 10, a major trafficking corridor, sends victims right through the Florida Panhandle. And picks them up there, too.
"(Dennis) has been finding a lot of U.S. citizens and that is scary," Rodriguez says, pointing out that trafficking affects citizens as much as immigrants. "We have been slammed. This is our office where we have the most victims right now in the state of Florida, so it is scary."
When Dennis encounters someone who may be a human trafficking victim, he gets them physical, emotional and legal help. After identifying them as a victim, he works to get them certified, which enables the government to help stabilize their immigration status, rebuild their life in the United States, and receive federally funded benefits like a refugee.
"We're trying to build an underground railroad just like in the days of slavery," Dennis says. "This is modern day slavery."
THE CIRCUIT
People are surprised to hear slavery still exists and some try to criminalize young runaways, who have been pressured into prostitution.
"That's not the case," Dennis says firmly. "They're victims."
He encounters girls who suffer beatings, rape, gang rape and punishments for not earning enough money. If a pimp tells his victim she must make $500 one day and she doesn't, she could be locked in a car trunk, room or closet, not allowed to shower or have clean clothes. Dennis says some women are forced to have sex up to 30 times a day.
Even more frightening, the average age of sex victims across the country is lowering because johns, men who use prostitutes, are afraid of catching sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS from women who've been in the business a long time. So pimps recruit younger and younger girls.
One case Dennis worked recently involved four girls between 13 and 16 years old, who were brought to Tallahassee from Illinois to work the South Florida circuit for their pimp.
Pimps bring girls they've recruited from bus stops, the mall and MySpace to New York or Atlanta and take them on a circuit: Atlanta—Jacksonville—Miami—Tampa—Orlando—Tallahassee—Panama City Beach—Pensacola—Mobile—New Orleans and back to Atlanta. Then after a break, it starts again.
"That's a pretty well-known circuit for all of this," Dennis says. "They can get more money from these kids than working them somewhere else."
People flock to the South for conventions, vacation and prostitutes, so it's an easy way for pimps to make more money than in their hometowns.
That's also why trafficking is on the rise, passing the illegal arms trade for most profitable crimes. Trafficking profits come in second only to the drug trade.
"Drugs you can only use once, but a human being you can use time and time again," Dennis says.
SAVING YOUNG GIRLS
The biggest challenge he faces in Pensacola? "Overcoming the opinion that they are criminals, not victims," Dennis says.
It's impossible to get help if no one thinks the Shaunas of the world are victims. But the 13- and 14-year-old girls he encounters have been stripped of their childhoods. "They were put into adulthood overnight." And they need help.
The Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking works with local law enforcement, social services, community- and faith-based groups to provide that help.
A Child Abduction Response Team, or CARE, combines efforts of law enforcement agencies in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties to get to missing or runaway children before traffickers do.
"A lot of times they do come hand in hand," says Investigator Troy Brown of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office Missing Persons Unit. "She'll not have anywhere to go and she'll be hungry and a friend will refer them to a pimp, if you want to call them that. They'll be sweet to them for a few days, then basically force them into sexual slavery. So it's important to us to stay on top of it."
Brown first got involved with human trafficking on a local case he worked more than a year ago. He received a call about an underage girl in a car who might be a prostitute.
"They determined it was not a prostitution thing, but because of her being a minor, they started digging deeper," Brown says.
The girl was actually a victim of a major trafficking ring based in Ohio. Her recruiters had gone to bus stops and truck stops looking for down-and-out, young women working for minimum wage.
"They kind of showered them with gifts and praise, then when they get them in a certain point they say, 'You're going to be a prostitute or we're gonna kill you.'"
From there, the victims were put on the circuit through the major tourist cities. It was two women doing the recruiting for the Ohio human trafficking ring. The man leading the ring was arrested and sentenced to 40 years in prison as part of the FBI's Operation Innocence Lost.
Brown says stopping traffickers requires being alert during patrols.
As for the 17-year-old girl, Brown guesses she probably would've ended up dead. Instead, she was reunited with her father.
"I'm a father. I have kids. If my kids run away, I'm gonna want somebody to go look for them, so I'm going to treat it the way I'd want someone to look for mine," he says.
HERE TO HELP
Sue Dees is a member of the Eden Fellowship Church in Pensacola where Dennis is pastor. She and other church members are joining the fight against trafficking by helping Dennis post flyers for missing people, talking to prostitutes about unusual or underage activity and opening their homes to rescued victims. They're committed to providing them safety, shelter, food, clothes—whatever they need.
"We weren't aware of the in-depth situations that are here in our environment, our community," Dees says. "It hits close to home. We're just doing our part to help these people get out from oppression. As a Christian, that's what we're supposed to do—love our neighbors and help them. Everybody wants a comfort zone…It would be easier to just close my eyes and look the other way, but people are suffering and hurting and this is the least I can do to help."
Human trafficking is at the same place awareness of domestic violence was 20 years ago, Dennis explains. Then it was people's dirty little secret they tried to hide from the neighbors and family, not the unacceptable behavior it is today with services available to victims. Trafficking is right at the same cusp and Dennis says he wants to raise awareness so trafficking victims can get help, too.
"It's just starting to come out," he says. "At a level where we're trying to spread the word, people are starting to take notice."
Trafficking victims could be the people mowing your lawn, the teenager standing alone on the street corner, the woman at the Laundromat. But it can hit even closer to home.
Law enforcement called Dennis recently to get his help on a case. When they told him the name of the missing girl, it was someone Dennis knew. It was a girl from his own neighborhood.
"If it's happening in my community, how dare I not do anything about it? For me, that's enough," Dennis says. "I know that my calling in life is to stand by these kids."
His dedication to standing by her may have saved Shauna's life. And now she wants to help save other girls, too.
"I've already been called a liar," as well as a drug addict and a runaway, Shauna says. "People think it doesn't happen because it doesn't happen to someone they know. If you say it's just another girl from Pensacola, people will say it didn't happen. But if you say, 'Shauna Newell was raped,' people will say, 'Hey, I know that girl. I see her at Starbucks. I went to school with her.'"
Nothing will stop her from telling her story as long as she can help one girl, one woman, one person.
"It gets easier every time," she says. "Now that I know I'm actually helping people, it helps me."
TRAFFICKING IN TEXAS, TOO
Monitoring the police scanner on the nighttime cop beat for the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times left little time to research stories I really wanted to write.
So, I surfed the 'Net on my 9 p.m. dinner break for ideas. I found stories about women and children being sold into slavery in the cold, impersonal wastelands of Eastern Europe.
I learned a lot about human trafficking and conditions that attract traffickers. Borders between very poor and very rich countries—borders people will do nearly anything to cross—are at risk.
The Corpus Christi newsroom is 150 miles from the border with Mexico and my brain got to ticking. But stuff like that doesn't happen in the U.S., right? RIGHT?
I started reporting this story when I met my first human trafficking victim a few days later on Jan. 11, 2006 at a protest of the proposed border wall between Texas and Mexico.
She took 40 days to walk from Honduras into Mexico. When she got there, Norma Morales was raped and beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital because her arm was broken and she couldn't walk.
During her recovery, doctors said she was pregnant from the rape. Less than a year later, Norma waded with her six-week-old infant through the Rio Grande and stopped in Corpus Christi.
Eight years later, Norma is now a documented immigrant. She goes to Laundromats and places in the city and looks for signs of abuse and fear in women's faces. She brings the women to the Coastal Bend Immigration Council in South Texas.
"These women, they won't even look us in the eye," says Santa Gonzales, director of the organization. She says Mexican, South American and Asian women are captives in Corpus Christi and South Texas.
I asked the two women if they knew anyone who was forced to stay in an abusive relationship with threats of deportation.
Norma covered her face with her hands. Tears dripped down her cheeks and onto the table. She had heard those threats before herself. And she knew others.
I asked if they knew anyone who was smuggled across the border, promised one job and then forced into prostitution, domestic work or other slave labor.
They looked at each other knowingly and Gonzales says, "We could tell you so many stories. Yes, we know those women."
Veterinarian Michael Vickers had just been named Texas State Director of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps—the sometimes-controversial eyes and ears of Border Patrol, which is now a separate group called Texas Border Volunteers—when I spoke with him in March 2006.
He has personal reasons for getting involved with border issues. He lives about 100 miles north of Mexico and his South Texas ranch has seen 60 deaths within 10 miles of his home. Vickers even found a dead woman's nude body less than 300 yards from his front door in September 2005. All those cases are reported to Border Patrol or local law enforcement for investigation.
"We know bad things are happening out there," Vickers says.
But he sees more than just human trafficking. He finds children as young as 8 wandering around lost, thirsty and starving. He finds women abandoned by the so-called coyotes who often charge a small fortune to smuggle people across the border, then leave them for dead. He found an African woman beaten and robbed.
People of all nationalities come across the Texas border desperate for work and safety. That's why they're at risk of human trafficking, even if they make it to U.S. soil on their own volition.
"These poor people are exploited beyond the scope of your wildest imagination," Vickers says. "This is just a way of life down here. I guess, you could say that's one of the reasons I'm a Minuteman. I just can't sit back and watch this human exploitation anymore."
This story never went to press a year ago at the Corpus Christi newspaper.
But it led me to Shauna's story of her horrifying experience in Pensacola and the threat of being sold into slavery to a man in Texas for $300,000.
Nowhere seems beyond the web of human trafficking.
GET INVOLVED
For info on how to help or items to include in a care package, call the local Coalition Against Human Trafficking: 525-4807
Send your tax-deductible donations to the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking to: 9260 Cove Ave., Pensacola, Fla., 32514
Print Story: AP IMPACT: Security firms join Somali piracy fight - Yahoo! NewsAP IMPACT: Security firms join Somali piracy fight
By KATHARINE HOURELD, Associated Press Writer Katharine Houreld, Associated Press Writer
NAIROBI, Kenya – Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms — some with a reputation for being quick on the trigger in Iraq — are joining the battle against pirates plaguing one of the world's most important shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia.
The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq.
But some maritime organizations told The Associated Press that armed guards may increase the danger to ships' crews or that overzealous contractors might accidentally fire on fishermen.
The record in Iraq of security companies like Blackwater, which is being investigated for its role in the fatal shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, raises concerns about unregulated activity and possible legal wrangles.
"Security companies haven't always had the lightest of touches in Iraq, and I think Somalia is a pretty delicate situation," said Roger Middleton, who wrote a recent report on piracy in Somalia for Chatham House, a think tank in London.
NATO, with a flotilla of warships due to arrive in Somali waters this weekend, is trying to work out legal and regulatory issues surrounding the use of armed contractors before adopting a position on private security companies.
But the U.S. Navy, part of the coalition already patrolling off the coast of Somalia, says the coalition cannot effectively patrol the 2.5 million square miles of dangerous waters and welcomes the companies.
"This is a great trend," said Lt. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet. "We would encourage shipping companies to take proactive measures to help ensure their own safety."
Somali officials also approve of the private contractors.
Abdulkadir Muse Yusuf, deputy marine minister of the semiautonomous region of Puntland, said private firms are welcome in Somali waters. As well as fighting piracy, he said, they could help combat illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping.
Some security companies — not all of which let their employees carry lethal weapons — blame trigger-happy operators in Iraq and Afghanistan for tarnishing the reputation of legitimate businesses.
After a series of shootings that killed civilians, Iraqi legislators negotiated an agreement with the U.S. that will remove some of the private contractors' immunity from prosecution. U.S. authorities are investigating Blackwater for improperly bringing weapons into Iraq and for its role in the 2007 Iraqi civilian deaths.
The removal of immunity, Iraq's stabilizing security situation and a glut of security operators in the country have combined to tempt some companies to seek a new market in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden off Somalia.
Last week, Blackwater announced it was hiring a ship fitted with helicopters and armed guards for escorting vessels past Somalia's pirate-ridden coast. Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said it had received 15 inquiries so far.
Peter Singer, an expert on private security companies, agrees Africa is a potential growth market, but he says it's unlikely many firms will abandon work in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are dramatically more business opportunities as long as the wars continue.
"If somehow Iraq ends and you see a shrinking amount of contractors there, most of them are in logistics and training services," Singer added. "None of that carries over to this role."
British firms dominate security work in the Gulf of Aden, but American companies are increasingly getting into the action, according an Associated Press examination of new anti-piracy efforts through interviews in East Africa, Europe and Washington.
In addition to Blackwater, Mississippi-based Hollowpoint, which has not been active in Iraq, says it will provide guards and recover seized ships.
"We'll get your crew and cargo back to you, whether through negotiations or through sending a team in," said CEO John Harris, who is discussing contracts with several companies.
There have been 63 reported attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year alone and probably many more have been carried out. Almost a third of the recorded attacks have been successful.
Ransoms can reach into the millions of dollars. That's a fortune in a failed state like Somalia, where almost half the people depend on aid and warlords plunder food shipments meant for starving children. The money goes to clan-based militias, some of which are fighting in Somalia's civil war.
Cyrus Mody, the manager of the International Maritime Bureau, says private security personnel can offer useful advice to ship captains, but he worries not all companies have clear rules of engagement or have sought legal advice about the consequences of opening fire.
So far hijackings are rarely fatal: One Chinese sailor was executed by pirates when ransom negotiations were going badly, and the two other known deaths resulted from a ricochet and a heart attack.
Mody says armed guards onboard ships may encourage pirates to use their weapons or spark an arms race between predators and prey. Currently, pirates often fire indiscriminately during an attack but don't aim to kill or injure crew. The pirates usually use assault rifles but have rocket-propelled grenades; some reports also say they have mini-cannon.
"If someone onboard a ship pulls a gun, will the other side pull a grenade?" Mody asked.
British contractors stress the importance of intelligence and surveillance, a safe room for the crew to retreat to if the ship is boarded, and the range of non-lethal deterrence measures available.
"The standard approach is for (pirates) to come in with all guns blazing at the bridge because when a boat is stopped it's easier to board," said David Johnson, director of British security firm Eos. "But if you have guns onboard, you are going to escalate the situation. We don't want to turn that part of the world into the Wild West."
Johnson's employees don't carry arms, relying on tactics that can be as simple as greasing or electrifying hand rails, putting barbed wire around the freeboard — the lowest area of the deck — or installing high-pressure fire hoses directed at vulnerable areas of a ship.
One tugboat confused its attackers by going into a high-speed spin when pirates approached, causing the attackers to give up — and leaving the crew sick but safe.
High-tech but non-lethal weapons include dazzle guns, which produce disorienting flashes; microwave guns, which heat up the skin causing discomfort but no long-term damage; and acoustic devices that can blast a wave of painful sound across hundreds of yards.
Johnson believes his company's refusal to carry guns has helped attract business: inquiries have gone up three- to fourfold in the past few months.
Other companies do arm their employees, pointing out that while non-lethal weapons are also carried and greatly preferred, they can be taken out by bullets or a grenade, sustain damage from salt water, and may have a shorter range than some weapons of pirates.
Pirate attacks have driven up insurance premiums tenfold for ships plying the Gulf of Aden, increasing the cost of cargos that include a fifth of the world's oil. But some insurers will slash charges by up to 40 percent if boats hire their own security. Earlier this month, British security firm Hart launched the first joint venture with an insurance company, offering discounted premiums for ships sailing past Somalia that used Hart's guards.
The 20,000 ships that pass through the Gulf of Aden on the way to or from the Suez Canal each year can't avoid the 1,800 miles of Somali coastline without sailing around the entire continent of Africa.
The jump in interest in private contractors — spurred by last month's hijacking of a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weapons — has brought new players into the market and a flood of business for well-established firms.
Drum Cussac, a specialist maritime security company, says its business has increased 50 percent the last few months. Not operating in Iraq or Afghanistan, the firm has traditionally supplied security teams to luxury yachts like the French Le Ponant, which was hijacked last April with 22 crew members onboard.
Maritime operations manager Michael Angus says the yacht business has doubled. And now, he says, merchant ships such as bulk carriers or oil tankers are asking the company for teams of armed guards, making what was once a seasonal business off Somalia a year-round enterprise.
London-based Olive Group, which protects Shell operations in Iraq, began offering services in the Gulf of Aden earlier this year. Its security consultant, Crispian Cuss, says just the presence of armed guards may be a deterrent. Pirates get information on crews and cargos from contacts in ports or at shipping companies and avoid vessels with armed men on board, he said.
"No client's ship has been approached by pirates while we've been on them," he said.
Print Story: AP INVESTIGATION: Palin pipeline terms curbed bids - Yahoo! NewsAP INVESTIGATION: Palin pipeline terms curbed bids
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD and GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writers Justin Pritchard And Garance Burke, Associated Press Writers
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin's signature accomplishment — a contract to build a 1,715-mile pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to the Lower 48 — emerged from a flawed bidding process that narrowed the field to a company with ties to her administration, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Beginning at the Republican National Convention in August, the McCain-Palin ticket has touted the pipeline as an example of how it would help America achieve energy independence.
"We're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline, which is North America's largest and most expensive infrastructure project ever, to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets," Palin said during the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate.
Despite Palin's boast of a smart and fair bidding process, the AP found that her team crafted terms that favored only a few independent pipeline companies and ultimately benefited the winner, TransCanada Corp.
And contrary to the ballyhoo, there's no guarantee the pipeline will ever be built; at a minimum, any project is years away, as TransCanada must first overcome major financial and regulatory hurdles.
In interviews and a review of records, the AP found:
_Instead of creating a process that would attract many potential builders, Palin slanted the terms away from an important group — the global energy giants that own the rights to the gas.
_Despite promises and legal guidance not to talk directly with potential bidders, Palin had meetings or phone calls with nearly every major candidate, including TransCanada.
_The leader of Palin's pipeline team had been a partner at a lobbying firm where she worked on behalf of a TransCanada subsidiary. Also, that woman's former business partner at the lobbying firm was TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal, interacting with legislators in the weeks before the vote to grant TransCanada the contract. Plus, a former TransCanada executive served as an outside consultant to Palin's pipeline team.
_Under a different set of rules four years earlier, TransCanada had offered to build the pipeline without a state subsidy; under Palin, the company could receive a maximum $500 million.
"Governor Palin held firmly to her fundamental belief that Alaska could best serve Alaskans and the nation's interests by pursuing a competitive approach to building a natural gas pipeline," said McCain-Palin spokesman Taylor Griffin. "There was an open and transparent process that subjected the decision to extensive public scrutiny and due diligence."
___
ONLY ONE VIABLE BIDDER
There were never more than a few players that could execute such a complex undertaking — at least a million tons of steel stretching across some of Earth's most hostile and remote terrain.
TransCanada estimates it will cost $26 billion; Palin's consultants estimate nearly $40 billion.
The pipeline would run from Alaska's North Slope to Alberta in Canada; secondary supply lines would take the gas to various points in the United States and Canada. The pipeline would carry 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily, about 8 percent of the present U.S. market.
Building such a pipeline had been a dream for decades. The rising cost and demand for energy injected new urgency into the proposal.
So too did the depletion of Alaska's long-reliable reserves of oil, which are trapped in the same Arctic Circle reservoirs as clean-burning natural gas. Not only does that oil provide jobs, it pays for an annual dividend check to nearly every Alaska resident. This year's payment was $2,069, 25 percent higher than 2007 — plus a $1,200 bonus rebate to help offset higher energy costs.
Palin was elected as governor two years ago in part because of her populist appeal. Promising "New Energy for Alaska," she vowed to take on Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP, the multinational energy companies that long dominated the state's biggest industry.
Oil interests were particularly unpopular at that moment: Federal agents had recently raided the offices of six lawmakers in a Justice Department investigation into whether an Alaska oil services company paid bribes in exchange for promoting a new taxing formula that would ultimately further the multinationals' pipeline plans.
Palin ousted fellow Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, who pushed a pipeline deal he negotiated in secret with the "Big Three" energy companies. That deal went nowhere.
With Alaskans eager for progress and sour on Big Oil, Palin tackled the pipeline issue with gusto, meeting with representatives from all sides and assembling her own team of experts to draw up terms.
Palin invited bidders to submit applications and offered the multimillion-dollar subsidy. Members of Palin's team say that without the incentive, it might not have received any bids for the risky undertaking.
___
TIES THAT BIND
Palin's team was led by Marty Rutherford, a widely respected energy specialist who entered the upper levels of state government nearly 20 years ago. Rutherford solidified her status when, in 2005, she joined an exodus of Department of Natural Resources staff who felt Murkowski was selling out to the oil giants.
What the Palin administration didn't tell legislators — and neglected to mention in its announcement of Rutherford's appointment — was that in 2003, Rutherford left public service and worked for 10 months at the Anchorage-based Jade North lobbying firm. There she did $40,200 worth of work for Foothills Pipe Lines Alaska, Inc., a subsidiary of TransCanada.
Foothills Pipe Lines Alaska Inc. paid Rutherford for expertise on topics including state legislation and funding related to gas commercialization, according to her 2003 lobbyist registration statement.
Palin has said she wasn't bothered by that past work because it had occurred several years before. But Rutherford wouldn't have passed her new boss' own standards: Under ethics reforms the governor pushed through, Rutherford would have had to wait a year to jump from government service to a lobbying firm.
Rutherford also has downplayed her work for Foothills.
"I did a couple of projects for them, small projects," she told a state Senate committee examining the TransCanada bid earlier this year. While a partner, Rutherford said, she "realized that my heart was not in the private sector, it was in the public sector, and I sold out for the same amount of money I bought in for."
At one point, Palin's pipeline team debated Rutherford's role, but concluded there was no problem.
"We were looking at it in terms of is this an actual conflict or is there the appearance of impropriety of Marty's participation," said Pat Galvin, the commissioner of the Revenue Department and another top team member. "It was determined that there was none, and so we moved forward."
Patricia Bielawski, Rutherford's former partner at Jade North, spent last summer in Juneau, the state capital, serving as TransCanada's lead private lobbyist on the pipeline deal. While the Legislature debated — and ultimately approved — the TransCanada deal, Bielawski met with lawmakers and sat in on the public proceedings, several legislators said.
Bielawski told AP earlier this month that Rutherford's employment at her firm was irrelevant. She said Rutherford never directly lobbied the Legislature for Foothills, and that Rutherford broke no rules based on 2003 state ethics guidelines.
"There's no statutory or regulatory prohibition that extends to things that many years ago," Bielawski said. "So there's no issue."
But others say it's a legitimate question.
"I'm not saying someone's getting paid off for a sweetheart contract, but it's very hard to ignore that this is your former partner and your former client standing there before you," said Republican Sen. Lyda Green, a Palin critic who in August was among the handful of lawmakers who voted against awarding TransCanada the license. "Every time it was mentioned to the governor or to the commission, it was like, 'How could you question such a wonderful person?'"
Tony Palmer, the TransCanada vice president who leads the company's Alaska gas pipeline effort, rejects the suggestion that his company benefited.
"We have gained clearly no advantage from anything that Ms. Rutherford did for Foothills some five years ago on a very much unrelated topic," he said.
Rutherford did not respond to interview requests made directly to her and through the governor's office. But Griffin, the spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Rutherford "had no decision-making role or authority," and contended that such matters were handled by others on the Palin pipeline team.
TransCanada also had a connection to the team hired by the Palin administration to analyze the bid. Patrick Anderson, a former TransCanada executive, served as an outside consultant and ultimately helped the state conclude that TransCanada's technical solution for shipping gas through freezing temperatures would work.
___
NARROW SET OF RULES
In January 2007, Palin spoke the first of at least two times to Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration's point person on energy issues, according to calendars obtained by the AP through a public records request. Cheney's staff pressed the Palin administration to draw in the energy companies, said current and former state officials involved in those discussions.
As the governor's approach unfolded in the spring of 2007, there were signs it was skewed in a different direction.
Palin said she saw problems if the firms that own the gas also owned the pipeline. They could manipulate the market or charge prohibitive fees to smaller exploration firms, discouraging competition.
Several important requirements in the legislation were unpalatable to the big oil companies. In the talks under Murkowski, the firms asked that the rates for the gas production tax and royalties be fixed for 45 years; Palin refused to consider setting rates for that long.
Under the Palin process, the pipeline firms had an advantage because they simply pass along taxes paid by oil and gas producers.
Oil company officials warned lawmakers they wouldn't participate under those terms. Still, in a near unanimous vote, the Legislature passed the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act in May 2007, generally as written by Palin's pipeline team.
Once the state issued its request for proposals on July 2, 2007, the level of communication between the government and potential bidders was supposed to decrease drastically, so that no one would be accused of gaining unfair advantage. State lawyers advised public officials to keep their distance, and bidders were told to submit questions on a Web site where answers could be seen by all.
Several of the state's gas line team members interviewed by AP said they had no contact with possible bidders. But Palin had conversations with executives at most of the major potential bidders during that period, according to her calendars.
While the calendars don't detail what was discussed, the documents indicate that the pipeline was the subject of the discussions, or that the conversations occurred immediately after a briefing with Palin's pipeline team.
When she was in Michigan for a National Governors Association summit in late July 2007, Palin and her team met executives from Williams Co., a pipeline builder that ended up not bidding.
"The purpose of the meeting was to more fully understand the details of the project, which we were still evaluating at the time," company spokeswoman Julie Gentz said in a statement.
TransCanada's Palmer described communication with state officials as nonexistent.
According to the governor's official schedule, however, Palin called TransCanada President and CEO Hal Kvisle on Aug. 8, 2007. Asked about that call, Palmer said it was to clarify the bidding process.
Griffin said that in keeping with legal guidance, Palin never spoke in any of the meetings about the competitive bidding process.
By the Nov. 30 submission deadline, there were five applications. But the state disqualified four for failing to satisfy the bill's requirements.
That left TransCanada.
The Canadian giant had been pursuing an Alaska pipeline since at least 2004, when the company negotiated a deal with Rutherford that the state ended up shelving. While the details remain confidential, six people familiar with the terms told the AP that TransCanada was willing to do the work then without the large state subsidy.
In testimony this July before the state Senate, Rutherford herself confirmed such a willingness, but described the 2004 deal as presenting a different set of trade-offs. A state lawyer warned her not to say more, lest she violate a confidentiality agreement.
Others who reviewed the deal think much of the $500 million will be wasted money.
"Most definitely TransCanada got a sweetheart deal this time," said Republican Sen. Bert Stedman, who voted against the TransCanada license. "Where else could you get a $500 million reimbursement when you don't even have the financing to build the pipeline?"
Print Story: Guantanamo guards struggle with hunger striker - Yahoo! NewsThis shit is absolutely pathetic! When did 'we' become worse than the people we're fighting?! This kind of thing makes me disgusted to be an American!
Guantanamo guards struggle with hunger striker
By BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer Ben Fox, Associated Press Writer
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Three years ago, the man known as Internment Serial Number 669 stopped eating. Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a father of 10 children in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, had been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 without charges and decided to join a mass hunger strike in protest. The U.S. military was determined not to let him succeed.
Since then, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, guards have struggled with him repeatedly, at least once using pepper spray, shackles and brute force to drag him to a restraint chair for his twice-daily dose of a liquid nutrition mix force-fed through his nose.
The documents, filed in federal court in Washington, are a rare look at the military tactics used on hunger strikers, which have sparked international condemnation but remained hidden from view, with officials refusing to even confirm the identity of the men taking part in the protest.
Zuhair's attorney, Yale Law School lecturer Ramzi Kassem, says the tactics described in the documents amount to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." The military says the only reason it uses such tactics is that Zuhair is violent and dangerous.
"ISN 669 has a very long history of disciplinary violations and noncompliant, resistant and combative behavior," according to Army Col. Bruce Vargo, commander of Guantanamo Bay's guards.
Zuhair's protest is the remnant of a mass hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay that began in the summer of 2005, with prisoners celebrating the 10 Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army militants who starved themselves to death in Britain's Maze prison in 1981 while demanding political-prisoner status.
At its peak, there were 131 prisoners refusing meals at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. The U.S. began force-feeding prisoners, but some were regurgitating the liquid-nutrient mix. In January 2006, commanders adopted a practice borrowed from American civilian prisons of strapping detainees into a special restraint chair for the feedings, and the number of strikers quickly dropped off.
Eventually there were just two: Zuhair, 43, and another Saudi, Abdul Rahman Shalabi. The number has since fluctuated and 12 were participating on Friday.
A number of prisoners have alleged brutal treatment during the hunger strike, and lawyers and human rights groups have accused guards of using unnecessary force. Kassem and other attorneys say their clients have mostly complied with the force-feeding, and that the U.S. has used rough treatment in an effort to break the strike.
Physicians for Human Rights, the World Medical Association and the United Nations, among others, have condemned the use of restraint chairs and other tactics as a violation of U.S. law and basic human rights principles.
The U.S. military has denied any abuse, though it has offered few if any details about what happens between guards and prisoners behind the coiled-razor wire.
Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, a spokeswoman for the detention center, said Friday the military was required "under federal law and Department of Defense policy, to preserve the health and well-being of all detainees under our control."
"When a detainee refuses to comply with guard instructions to leave his cell in order to receive necessary medical care, we will use the minimum force necessary ... in order to preserve life," including by tube feeding, she said.
And while the U.S. considers the detainees "enemy combatants" for whom the Geneva Conventions do not apply, it maintains it treats them in a humane manner that in some ways exceeds international standards.
The court documents, affidavits and filings recently submitted as part of Zuhair's challenge of his confinement provide the first detailed picture of his struggles with guards.
On the evening of July 17, for example, two Navy sailors took Zuhair to be fed. When they finished, they say the 5-foot-5, 136-pound, Zuhair violently squirmed to avoid being taken back to his cell. He cursed at them and said his shackles were too tight.
They searched him for contraband and put him back in his cell, they said, and he responded with chilling words:
"Come in my cell, I will cut off your head," he said in English, according to their account. "You are scared. I can tell. Come in my cell. I will cut off your head." (with what?! why the hell is that 'chilling'?)
Four weeks later, on Aug. 14, Zuhair refused to come out of his cell for a force-feeding in what his lawyer described as a protest against rough treatment of the hunger strikers.
Five guards strapped on body armor, helmets and face shields and went in for him. One guard shot pepper spray through a hole in the door, but Zuhair knocked away the can. The five men wrestled him to the ground.
"He fought briefly with the guards before five of them were able to place him on his stomach," an officer said. "It took an additional several minutes to shackle ISN 669."
(5' 5" and 136 pounds and it took 5 guards?! You go Zuhair!!)
The court documents describe other clashes involving Zuhair. One day in June, he "became aggressive and tried to break free" from guards, the military said.
Navy Capt. Bruce Meneley, the doctor in charge of prisoner care, said wounds on Zuhair's head and face were stitched up after "scuffles" with guards in April 2003 and January 2007.
Zuhair was captured in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo in June 2002. He has not been charged with a crime, although the military says he trained with the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan and was a member of an Islamic fighting group in Bosnia in the mid-1990s that received money from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The U.S. also claims he was involved in the November 1995 shooting death of an American U.N. employee, William Jefferson of Camden, N.J., in Bosnia.
Zuhair denies the allegations. In addition to seeking his release, his legal team has asked for his medical records, an examination by an independent doctor and surveillance video that might support his claims of mistreatment. The U.S. military has refused.
MySpace.com Blogs - Zen Soul MySpace BlogBeing Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and living in Arizona, one would assume that I would be voting for our state's senator, John McCain. I am still struck by certain 'dyed in the wool' Republicans who are on the fence this election, as it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Myself, along with my siblings and a few cousins, will not be supporting the Republican presidential candidates this year. We believe strongly in what our grandfather stood for: honesty, integrity, and personal freedom, free from political maneuvering and fear tactics. I learned a lot about my grandfather while producing the documentary, Mr. Conservative Goldwater on Goldwater. Our generation of Goldwaters expects government to provide for constitutional protections. We reject the constant intrusion into our personal lives, along with other crucial policy issues of the McCain/Palin ticket.
My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman's right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930's, a cause my grandfather supported. I'm not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.
For a while, there were several candidates who aligned themselves with the Goldwater version of Conservative thought. My grandfather had undying respect for the U.S. Constitution, and an understanding of its true meanings.
There always have been a glimmer of hope that someday, someone would "race through the gate" full steam in Goldwater style. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened, and the Republican brand has been tarnished in a shameless effort to gain votes and appeal to the lowest emotion, fear. Nothing about McCain, except for maybe a uniform, compares to the same ideology of what Goldwater stood for as a politician. The McCain/Palin plan is to appear diverse and inclusive, using women and minorities to push an agenda that makes us all financially vulnerable, fearful, and less safe.
When you see the candidate's in political ads, you can't help but be reminded of the 1964 presidential campaign of Johnson/Goldwater, the 'origin of spin', that twists the truth and obscures what really matters. Nothing about the Republican ticket offers the hope America needs to regain it's standing in the world, that's why we're going to support Barack Obama. I think that Obama has shown his ability and integrity.
After the last eight years, there's a lot of clean up do. Roll up your sleeves, Senators Obama and Biden, and we Goldwaters will roll ours up with you.
MySpace.com Blogs - Zen Soul MySpace BlogWall Street banks in $70bn staff payout
Pay and bonus deals equivalent to 10% of US government bail-out package
Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.
Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts.
The sums that continue to be spent by Wall Street firms on payroll, payoffs and, most controversially, bonuses appear to bear no relation to the losses incurred by investors in the banks. Shares in Citigroup and Goldman Sachs have declined by more than 45% since the start of the year. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley have fallen by more than 60%. JP MorganChase fell 6.4% and Lehman Brothers has collapsed.
At one point last week the Morgan Stanley $10.7bn pay pot for the year to date was greater than the entire stock market value of the business. In effect, staff, on receiving their remuneration, could club together and buy the bank.
In the first nine months of the year Citigroup, which employs thousands of staff in the UK, accrued $25.9bn for salaries and bonuses, an increase on the previous year of 4%. Earlier this week the bank accepted a $25bn investment by the US government as part of its bail-out plan.
At Goldman Sachs the figure was $11.4bn, Morgan Stanley $10.73bn, JP Morgan $6.53bn and Merrill Lynch $11.7bn. At Merrill, which was on the point of going bust last month before being taken over by Bank of America, the total accrued in the last quarter grew 76% to $3.49bn. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of August by 3% to $3.7bn.
Days before it collapsed into bankruptcy protection a month ago Lehman Brothers revealed $6.12bn of staff pay plans in its corporate filings. These payouts, the bank insisted, were justified despite net revenue collapsing from $14.9bn to a net outgoing of $64m.
None of the banks the Guardian contacted wished to comment on the record about their pay plans. But behind the scenes, one source said: "For a normal person the salaries are very high and the bonuses seem even higher. But in this world you get a top bonus for top performance, a medium bonus for mediocre performance and a much smaller bonus if you don't do so well."
Many critics of investment banks have questioned why firms continue to siphon off billions of dollars of bank earnings into bonus pools rather than using the funds to shore up the capital position of the crisis-stricken institutions. One source said: "That's a fair question - and it may well be that by the end of the year the banks start review the situation."
Much of the anger about investment banking bonuses has focused on boardroom executives such as former Lehman boss Dick Fuld, who was paid $485m in salary, bonuses and options between 2000 and 2007.
Last year Merrill Lynch's chairman Stan O'Neal retired after announcing losses of $8bn, taking a final pay deal worth $161m. Citigroup boss Chuck Prince left last year with a $38m in bonuses, shares and options after multibillion-dollar write-downs. In Britain, Bob Diamond, Barclays president, is one of the few investment bankers whose pay is public. Last year he received a salary of £250,000, but his total pay, including bonuses, reached £36m.
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CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
Waterboarding Got White House Nod
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."
The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said. The concerns grew more pronounced after the revelations of mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and further still as tensions grew between the administration and its intelligence advisers over the conduct of the Iraq war.
"It came up in the daily meetings. We heard it from our field officers," said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the events. "We were already worried that we" were going to be blamed.
A. John Radsan, a lawyer in the CIA general counsel's office until 2004, remembered the discussions but did not personally view the memos the agency received in response to its concerns. "The question was whether we had enough 'top cover,' " Radsan said.
Tenet first pressed the White House for written approval in June 2003, during a meeting with members of the National Security Council, including Rice, the officials said. Days later, he got what he wanted: a brief memo conveying the administration's approval for the CIA's interrogation methods, the officials said.
Administration officials confirmed the existence of the memos, but neither they nor former intelligence officers would describe their contents in detail because they remain classified. The sources all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to discuss the events.
The second request from Tenet, in June 2004, reflected growing worries among agency officials who had just witnessed the public outcry over the Abu Ghraib scandal. Officials who held senior posts at the time also spoke of deteriorating relations between the CIA and the White House over the war in Iraq -- a rift that prompted some to believe that the agency needed even more explicit proof of the administration's support.
"The CIA by this time is using the word 'insurgency' to describe the Iraq conflict, so the White House is viewing the agency with suspicion," said a second former senior intelligence official.
As recently as last month, the administration had never publicly acknowledged that its policymakers knew about the specific techniques, such as waterboarding, that the agency used against high-ranking terrorism suspects. In her unprecedented account to lawmakers last month, Rice, now secretary of state, portrayed the White House as initially uneasy about a controversial CIA plan for interrogating top al-Qaeda suspects.
After learning about waterboarding and similar tactics in early 2002, several White House officials questioned whether such harsh measures were "effective and necessary . . . and lawful," Rice said. Her concerns led to an investigation by the Justice Department's criminal division into whether the techniques were legal.
But whatever misgivings existed that spring were apparently overcome. Former and current CIA officials say no such reservations were voiced in their presence.
In interviews, the officials recounted a series of private briefings about the program with members of the administration's security team, including Rice and Cheney, followed by more formal meetings before a larger group including then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. None of the officials recalled President Bush being present at any of the discussions.
Several of the key meetings have been previously described in news articles and books, but Rice last month became the first Cabinet-level official to publicly confirm the White House's awareness of the program in its earliest phases. In written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rice said Tenet's description of the agency's interrogation methods prompted her to investigate further to see whether the program violated U.S. laws or international treaties, according to her written responses, dated Sept. 12 and released late last month.
"I asked that . . . Ashcroft personally advise the NSC principles whether the program was lawful," Rice wrote.
Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the briefings described Tenet as supportive of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the officials said were developed by CIA officers after the agency's first high-level captive, al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, refused to cooperate with interrogators.
"The CIA believed then, and now, that the program was useful and helped save lives," said a former senior intelligence official knowledgeable about the events. "But in the agency's view, it was like this: 'We don't want to continue unless you tell us in writing that it's not only legal but is the policy of the administration.' "
One administration official familiar with the meetings said the CIA made such a convincing case that no one questioned whether the methods were necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.
"The CIA had the White House boxed in," said the official. "They were saying, 'It's the only way to get the information we needed, and -- by the way -- we think there's another attack coming up.' It left the principals in an extremely difficult position and put the decision-making on a very fast track."
But others who were present said Tenet seemed more interested in protecting his subordinates than in selling the administration on a policy that administration lawyers had already authorized.
"The suggestion that someone from CIA came in and browbeat everybody is ridiculous," said one former agency official familiar with the meeting. "The CIA understood that it was controversial and would be widely criticized if it became public," the official said of the interrogation program. "But given the tenor of the times and the belief that more attacks were coming, they felt they had to do what they could to stop the attack."
The CIA's anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program. A secret White House "memorandum of notification" signed by Bush on Sept. 15, 2001, gave the agency broad authority to wage war against al-Qaeda, including killing and capturing its members. But it did not spell out how captives should be handled during interrogation.
But by the time the CIA requested written approval of its policy, in June 2003, the population of its secret prisons had grown from one to nine, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Three of the detainees had been subjected to waterboarding, which involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face and pouring water over his nose and mouth to simulate drowning.
By the spring of 2004, the concerns among agency officials had multiplied, in part because of shifting views among administration lawyers about what acts might constitute torture, leading Tenet to ask a second time for written confirmation from the White House. This time the reaction was far more reserved, recalled two former intelligence officials.
"The Justice Department in particular was resistant," said one former intelligence official who participated in the discussions. "They said it doesn't need to be in writing."
Tenet and his deputies made their case in yet another briefing before the White House national security team in June 2004. It was to be one of the last such meetings for Tenet, who had already announced plans to step down as CIA director. Author Jane Mayer, who described the briefing in her recent book, "The Dark Side," said the graphic accounts of interrogation appeared to make some participants uncomfortable. "History will not judge us kindly," Mayer quoted Ashcroft as saying.
Participants in the meeting did not recall whether a vote was taken. Several weeks passed, and Tenet left the agency without receiving a formal response.
Finally, in mid-July, a memo was forwarded to the CIA reaffirming the administration's backing for the interrogation program. Tenet had acquired the statement of support he sought.
