by Manuel Garcia Jr. / July 3rd, 2009 ()
The recent loss of Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200, has raised many doubts among the flying public and even some aviation professionals about the safety of the newest generation of passenger airplanes. These new airliners have composite materials replacing metal for many structural elements and control surfaces, and they are reliant on computer-controlled flight and navigation systems.
The impetus for developing this new generation of airliners is the need to improve fuel economy so as to maintain the profitability of the passenger air transport industry. Between 1986 and 2001, the world price of crude oil remained steady at …
by Don Monkerud / July 3rd, 2009 ()
In June 2009, the U.S. economy saw its second steepest decline in 27 years. New jobless claims increased, business inventories fell and exports plunged as bad economic news persisted.
Will the once high-flying American wealth machine continue to produce the vast inequalities of the past?
Only two years ago, Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes magazine, declared 2007 “the richest year ever in human history.” During eight years of the Bush Administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top one percent claimed 22 percent …
“A Previously Unknown Individual”
by Allen Joe / July 3rd, 2009 ()
James Hickman left for work at a local steel mill just before nine o’clock on the night of January 16, 1947. He was a thirty-nine year-old African American and the father of nine children. The Hickmans lived in Chicago in difficult, overcrowded conditions in a tenement owned by their landlord, David Coleman, who was also African-American. Sometime shortly after 11:30 p.m., Annie Hickman, James’ wife, said she “heard paper popping” in the ceiling. It was fire.
Panic ensued. The one hallway leading out of their attic apartment was engulfed in flames. Charles, Annie and James’ 19-year-old son, made a …
by Ira Glunts / July 3rd, 2009 ()
The very public disagreement about the “settlement freeze” came as a complete surprise to many observers. People who make a business of following Israeli-U.S. politics had concluded that there would continue to be little public friction between the two close allies, at least not until final status issues were negotiated with the Palestinians, and maybe not even then.
The assumption that any disputes would occur behind the scenes became open to question during the Netanyahu-Obama press conference, when the two leaders claimed they were basically in agreement, but then made statements which demonstrated that the opposite …
by Tom Burghardt / July 3rd, 2009 ()
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a memorandum June 23 that announced the launch of U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). A scheme by securocrats in the works for several years, the order specifies that the new office will be a “subordinate unified command” under U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM).
According to the memorandum, CYBERCOM “will reach initial operating capability (IOC) not later than October 2009 and full operating capability (FOC) not later than October 2010.”
Gates has recommended that this new Pentagon domain be led by Lt. General Keith Alexander, the current Director of the ultra-spooky National Security Agency (NSA). Under the …
by Benjamin Dangl / June 30th, 2009 ()
Worldwide condemnation has followed the coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras on Sunday, June 28. Nationwide mobilizations and a general strike demanding that Zelaya be returned to power are growing in spite of increased military repression. One protester outside the government palace in Honduras told reporters that if Roberto Micheletti, the leader installed by the coup, wants to enter the palace, “he had better do so by air” because if he goes by land “we will stop him.”
On early Sunday morning, approximately 100 soldiers entered the home of the left-leaning Zelaya, forcefully removed him and, while he was …
PART 5: Freeh Became "Defense Lawyer" for Saudis on Khobar
by Gareth Porter / June 30th, 2009 ()
WASHINGTON — In early November 1998, Louis Freeh sent an FBI team off to observe Saudi secret police officials interviewing eight Shi’a detainees from behind a one-way mirror at the Riyadh detention center. He planned to use the Shi’a testimony to show that Iran was behind the bombing.
As expected, the stories told by the detainees recapitulated the outlines of the Shi’a plot that had already been described by the Saudis two years earlier. Now there were even more tantalizing details of direct Iranian involvement.
One of the detainees said Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps General Ahmad Sherifi had personally selected the Khobar …
by Jonathan Cook / June 30th, 2009 ()
Nazareth — Israel’s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.
The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.
The accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, …
by Stephen Soldz / June 30th, 2009 ()
Today a number of psychological, health, and human rights organizations released the following statement criticizing the American Psychological Association (APA) Board of Directors failure to accept responsibility for the APA’s role in facilitating psychologists’ participation in abusive national security interrogations. The coalition statement responds to a June 18 open letter from the APA Board acknowledging for the first time that psychologists have engaged in torture, but making no reference to the APA Board’s own apparently unanimous support extending over several years for psychologists’ right to participate in detainee interrogations.
The APA letter follows years of reports that psychologists designed, helped conduct, …
Part 4: FBI Ignored Compelling Evidence of bin Laden Role
by Gareth Porter / June 29th, 2009 ()
WASHINGTON — Osama Bin Laden had made no secret of his intention to attack the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia. He had been calling for such attacks to drive it from the country since his first fatwa calling for jihad against Western “occupation” of Islamic lands in early 1992.
On Jul. 11, 1995, he had written an “Open Letter” to King Fahd advocating a campaign of guerilla attacks to drive U.S. military forces out of the Kingdom.
Bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization began carrying out that campaign later that same year. On Nov. 13, 1995 a car bomb destroyed the Office …
by Clifton Ross / June 29th, 2009 ()
Even in the best of times a coup in Honduras wouldn’t get much coverage in the U.S. since most North Americans couldn’t find the country on a map and, moreover, would have no reason to do so. Nevertheless, those in the U.S. who have been alert to the changes in Latin America over the past decade and almost everyone south of the border know that the coup d’etat (or “golpe de estado”) against President Manuel Zelaya has profound implications for the region and, in fact, all of Latin America. While the US press will glance from their intent gaze at …
by Greg Moses / June 29th, 2009 ()
From a distance the Chinese mainland appears to be snorting through the global depression like a fire-breathing dragon. But a closer look at internet discourse reveals a giant in the throes of aftershock. When we hear tones of irritation from Chinese officials regarding “dollar problems” we could on the one hand consider their pain.
On the other hand, whether you are listening to pro-dollar or anti-dollar partisans today, there is an eerie agreement between Marxist and Friedmanite alike that return on capital is the main thing. What we need to hear more often from both sides of the global …
by Ron Jacobs / June 29th, 2009 ()
Thanks to the peccadilloes of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, the question of sex and politics has once again been cheaply splashed across US newspapers, television and the internet once again. Although those of us who have nothing nice to say about this particular rightwing “Christian” moralist are enjoying watching the crocodile tears fall on his career of hate and intolerance, there is a part of each of us that finds absurd the notion that someone should end their political career because of their sexual life. After all, humans are sexual beings, even though Mark Sanford and his ilk often …
by Hans Bennett / June 28th, 2009 ()
On April 6, 2009, the US Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from death-row journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of white Philadelphia Police Officer, Daniel Faulkner, at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and numerous others. Citing the Supreme Court denial and several instances of withheld evidence, Abu-Jamal’s international support network is now calling for a federal civil rights investigation into Abu-Jamal’s case.
The facts of the Abu-Jamal/Faulkner case are highly contested, but all sides agree on …
Part 3: US Officials Leaked a False Story Blaming Iran
by Gareth Porter / June 28th, 2009 ()
WASHINGTON — In March 1997, FBI Director Louis Freeh got what he calls in his memoirs “the first truly big break in the case”: the arrest in Canada of one of the Saudi Hezbollah members the Saudis accused of being the driver of the getaway car at Khobar Towers.
Hani al-Sayegh, then 28 years old, had arrived in Canada in August 1996 after having left Saudi Arabia, by his own account, in August 1995, for Iran and Syria. The Canadian government charged him with being a terrorist, based on claims by the Saudi regime.
In order to be transferred to the United …
by Billy Wharton / June 28th, 2009 ()
A creeping assumption lies just beneath the surface of arguments concerning the disputed election in Iran. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cast as an anti-US populist crusader resisting the materialistic advances of the West. His opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as his foil — a Western-backed liberal intent on implementing free-market policies. Violent street battles have been presented as a re-enforcement of the Western disposition to see the two idealized positions as the limit of what is politically imaginable. Such arguments conveniently avoid a third force — the people of Iran, whose street politics threaten to move well beyond the confines of the …
by Lee Sustar / June 28th, 2009 ()
Bloody repression in the streets, political maneuvering at the top, and continued popular organizing from below signal a new stage in Iran’s post-election crisis as the country’s ruling class is increasingly haunted by the specter of revolution.
The crackdown intensified five days after the June 16 demonstration of up to 2 million people in Tehran protesting the disputed re-election claim of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Offices were shut down as large numbers of workers stayed away from their jobs.
This great outpouring recalled the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, the hated US-backed dictator. Many protesters revived the anti-Shah chant, “Down …
by Emily Spence / June 28th, 2009 ()
Recently, an American Civil Liberties Union report pointed out, “Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.” [1]
Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the …
by Victor M. Rodriguez Domínguez / June 28th, 2009 ()
Next July 13, congressional hearings will by held by the Judiciary Committee headed by Sen. Patrick Leahy D-VT to examine the credentials of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a candidate to sit in the bench of the nation’s highest court. The extreme right wing of the Republican Party began with such strong negative rhetoric about the first Latina woman to be nominated for this position that many wondered if the hearings could become a very conflictive process. While the tone of the rhetoric has been softened, it remains to be seen if the Republican Party will continue laying out the foundation …
by Gareth Porter / June 28th, 2009 ()
WASHINGTON — The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the “Taliban” were fraudulent.
By covering up the most damaging facts surrounding the incident, the rewritten public version of report succeeded in avoiding media stories on the contradiction between the report and the previous arguments made by the U.S. command.
The declassified “executive summary” of the report on the bombing issued …
