In one of the largest breaches of data security to date, CitiFinancial, the consumer finance subsidiary of Citigroup, announced yesterday that a box of computer tapes containing information on 3.9 million customers was lost by United Parcel Service last month, while in transit to a credit reporting agency.
Executives at Citigroup said the tapes were picked up by U.P.S. early in May and had not been seen since.
The tapes contained names, addresses, Social Security numbers, account numbers, payment histories and other details on small personal loans made to millions of customers through CitiFinancial's network of more than 1,800 lending branches, or through retailers whose product financing was handled by CitiFinancial's retail services division.
The company said there was no indication that the tapes had been stolen or that any of the data in them had been compromised.

The above is from Tom Zeller, Jr.'s "Personal Data for 3.9 Million Lost in Transit" from this morning's New York Times.

In other privacy news in the Times, Shirley e-mails to note Robert Pear's "Ruling Limits Prosecutions of People Who Violate Law on Privacy of Medical Records:"


An authoritative new ruling by the Justice Department sharply limits the government's ability to prosecute people for criminal violations of the law that protects the privacy of medical records.
The criminal penalties, the department said, apply to insurers, doctors, hospitals and other providers - but not necessarily their employees or outsiders who steal personal health data.
In short, the department said, people who work for an entity covered by the federal privacy law are not automatically covered by that law and may not be subject to its criminal penalties, which include a $250,000 fine and 10 years in prison for the most serious violations.
The reasoning is that federal regulations establish the standards for medical privacy. The regulations apply just to "covered entities," including insurers and health care providers. Thus, only covered entities can be prosecuted for criminal violations of the law.

From "National Briefing," we'll note:

MICHIGAN: BAIL FOR KURD
A federal judge has ordered a Kurd released on bail while he appeals his deportation to Turkey and questioned the government's motives in bringing terrorism charges against a "model immigrant." Judge Avern Cohn of Federal District Court in Detroit set bail at $50,000 on Friday for the man, Ibrahim Parlak, but postponed the release order for 10 days so the government could appeal. The government says Mr. Parlak had ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, classified a terrorist group in 1997 by the State Department. His supporters say that he was never involved in violence and that he could face reprisals in Turkey. Mr. Parlak, 43, has been jailed since his arrest last July. He was granted asylum in 1992.(AP)

Steve e-mails to note Joel Brinkley and David E. Sanger's "O.A.S. Hears Bush Press Congress on Central America Trade Pact:"

Also under discussion here is an American proposal to give the organization authority to monitor the exercise of democracy in the region, and Mr. Bush seemed to allude to that when he said, "Democratic change and free elections are exhilarating events, yet we know from experience that they can be followed by moments of uncertainty."
The original American monitoring proposal is essentially dead, but officials and diplomats said a new plan was taking shape.
American officials pointed to José Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the organization, as a top supporter of their plan. But during a meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Insulza made clear that his support was only conceptual and that he did not agree with everything the United States had proposed.

Wally e-mails to note Alan Cowell's "Britain Suspends Referendum on European Constitution:"


The announcement to Parliament by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, laid bare the gulf between nations like France and Germany that want to keep alive a sense that the constitution can be rescued, and Britain, where the government is under pressure to declare it dead. The move seemed to make ratification of the constitution, a cornerstone of European unity, all the more remote.
"The European Union does now face a period of difficulty," Mr. Straw said.
Technically, the constitution can come into force only if it is ratified by all 25 European Union member governments. Nine have approved it by parliamentary votes and one - Spain - by referendum. The "no" votes in France and the Netherlands seemed to many British legislators to have brought the ratification process to a shuddering halt.

Gina e-mails to note Marlise Simons' "World Court to Investigate Darfur Violence:"

Prosecutors for the International Criminal Court announced Monday that they had begun an investigation into war crimes in Sudan, opening the door for indictments and warrants for those considered most responsible for the ethnic violence and starvation that has exterminated hundreds of villages in Darfur.
But the Sudanese government, blamed by a United Nations inquiry for much of the violence, has said it will not accept the court's jurisdiction. It has already begun to try to delay legal action by using some of the safeguards built into the court's rules, like insisting that it is conducting its own investigations and will hold its own trials.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

A leading Senate opponent of John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations has signaled that Democrats will drop their objections to a vote on Mr. Bolton's nomination if the White House compromises in a dispute over access to information about his actions.
Senate Republicans are expected to try again this week to push for a vote on Mr. Bolton's nomination. Senate Democrats succeeded last month in blocking such a vote, but they have said they are not certain of succeeding again, even if the administration continues to refuse to hand over the information they have demanded.
The opponent, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, did not abandon the Democrats' insistence that the administration provide more information about Mr. Bolton's role in two areas, including his success in obtaining highly classified information about American individuals and companies whose names appeared in communications intercepted by the National Security Agency.
But in a letter to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, Mr. Dodd suggested that Democrats could settle for something less than complete access to those names. As one possibility, Mr. Dodd proposed that Mr. Negroponte might instead assure the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that none of the names obtained by Mr. Bolton were among "names of concern" to be listed by the panel.

File the above under "disgusting news." (Disgusting news, not disgusting reporting.) It's from Douglas Jehl's "Dodd Proposes Compromise Over Information He Seeks on Bolton" in this morning's New York Times.

As Judy Collins might sing, "Send in the DINOs, Where are the DINOs? Oh look, they're here."

In contrasting news, Patrick D. Healy's "Senator Clinton Assails G.O.P. at Fund-Raiser" proves that Hillary Clinton, at least, still knows how to energize the base:


Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton castigated President Bush and Congressional Republicans yesterday as being mad with power and self-righteousness, complained that the news media have been timid in taking on the administration, and suggested that some Washington Republicans have a God complex.
Senator Clinton, who is running for a second term in 2006 and is widely seen as a possible Democratic nominee for the presidency in 2008, said that her party was hamstrung in fighting back because Republicans dissemble and smear without shame.
While she has recently highlighted her moderate views, her remarks yesterday were starkly partisan and meant to rally her most loyal supporters at a time when at least four New York Republicans are preparing to run against her. She made the remarks at a Midtown hotel to about 1,000 supporters at a "Women for Hillary" breakfast that was her first major Senate re-election fund-raiser. Contributions from the event totaled about $250,000.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

 

Okay, Rebecca's entry is up. It's entitled "ed lorenzen feels the need to supposedly write me but really just complain about me to c.i. of the common ills." (Language warning if you visit the link.)

Here's an excerpt:


i'm the woman who won't eat your shame.
i'm the woman who won't back down.
i'm the woman who belives her place isn't in the back room or 2 steps behind a man.
i'm the woman who's front and center and in your face calling you on your s**t.
i don't play nicely in the sandbox with those who want to destroy social security or dismantle a woman's right to privacy.
i don't tolerate the right's attacks on america and i won't tolerate the actions of people who want to aid them.

Now we're going to excerpt from The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Essay dedicated to the mainstream press: 'Don't it leave you on the empty side?'" (Language warning if you visit this link.)

Quagmire. There we said it. Did you grimace? Did you toss out some nonsense about how long it took to rebuild a country after WWII? Are you still so scared of making the comparison to the Vietnam conflict?
The nation's turning against this illegal war. Every day, another new detail emerges. The mainstream press, if it addresses it, does so fleetingly. But the people are making the connections the press refuses to make.
You've got a press collectively pulling a hard for the glory days of the Watergate coverage all week. And then they go back to . . . talking about Tom Cruise. Hey, we understand Christian Slater may have been charged with something. Surely you can continue to do your j-schools proud by easing out of the Michael Jackson coverage and into that.
As Ruth pointed out a few editions back, it's easy to look back and think that the press was once just doing one hard hitting story after another. That they were actively and unanimously exposing the lies of Vietnam. But that's not the case. Then, as now, the public had to turn against the war. Only then did the press start to do its job.

That's an excerpt and Susan e-mailed to request that it be highlighted.

Keesha e-mails to note Margaret Kimberly's latest at The Black Commentator. From "Farrakhan and Foxman:"

In commemoration of the tenth anniversary of Million Man March, Minister Louis Farrakhan has announced the creation of the Millions More Movement. The Millions More Movement includes Russell Simmons, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Dorothy Height and Julianne Malveaux among its supporters.
Farrakhan is still a lightning rod for controversy. As soon as the Millions More Movement was announced Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, chimed in and asked black leaders to disassociate themselves from any involvement with Farrakhan: "When will someone in the African-American community stand up and say that the Million Man March had a positive message, but the pied piper is a racist and anti-Semite?"
Perhaps that will happen as soon as someone points out that Foxman is a hypocritical, ethically challenged, influence peddler.
The responses to Foxman's criticism were entirely predictable. Al Sharpton called the remarks a "distraction" and added "... we should not allow other people to define and denounce what we're about." Russell Simmons wrote to Foxman and called him "misguided, arrogant and very disrespectful of African Americans." Aside from the snide but amusing remark that Foxman had "single handedly caused millions of persons to flock to see the Passion of the Christ," Simmons letter did little to tell Mr. Foxman why he should butt out.
Sharpton and Simmons should be able to think of more biting criticisms, if they bother to respond at all. It doesn't really matter if Foxman doesn't like the Million Man, Millions More or Million Dollar march. He is irrelevant and so is anyone else who doesn't understand the appeal of a nationalist message in the black community. Few will admit it now, but there was more nay saying than support among black leaders in the days proceeding the Million Man March in 1995.

Todd e-mails to note BuzzFlash's "What Ever Happened to What Is Wrong Is Wrong?" by Jack Rice:

I am blown away. The news that Mark Felt, the number two man at the FBI was in fact Deep Throat was amazing. But what was more amazing to me was President Bush's response to hearing the story. What response, you ask? Well, the President saying its hard for him to judge if Felt was right to leak Watergate details to the Washington Post.
Let me get this right. President Nixon was a criminal. That is certain. He was an unindicted co-conspirator in the break in at the Watergate Hotel and should have gone to prison like many others involved in the break in and subsequent cover up. And it is hard for President Bush to judge if Felt was right to leak it?
What the hell is wrong with this picture when we have such moral relativism that we can explain away the moral and legal rot that took place in the White House some 30 plus years ago.
What ever happened to wrong is wrong, is wrong, is wrong?

Zach e-mails wondering if there's anything "on deck" on C-Span tomorrow:


Tuesday, June 5
Senate Hearing on Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)
On C-SPAN3 at 9:30am ET
Tuesday, June 5
NCTA Pres. Kyle McSlarrow on Telecommunications Marketplace
On C-SPAN at 1:10pm ET
Tuesday, June 5
House Hearing on Pentagon Management of Excess Inventory
On C-SPAN3 at 2pm ET

On CAFTA, we'll note, from In These Times, David Moberg's "Three-Dimensional Economics:
CAFTA won’t help U.S. workers, and blocking it may help the rest of the world:"

There are good reasons to doubt the administration claims. Even if they're wide open to American exports, the signatories are small, poor countries--including Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. The largest, the Dominican Republic, is a market about the size of Bakersfield, California. Even optimistically exaggerated trade with them isn't going to make a dent in the record U.S. trade deficit, which reached $617 billion, or 5.3 percent of the U.S. economy, last year.
CAFTA isn't likely to expand markets by reducing Central American poverty much either. Flooding their markets with subsidized U.S. corn will hurt many of the rural poor. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the model for CAFTA, offers scant inspiration. Over NAFTA's first eight years, Mexico lost 1.3 million jobs and suffered declining real wages, according to the Carnegie Endowment for Internal Peace, and the United States lost 880,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Hemispheric cooperation is not likely to save either Central American garment workers or the remaining U.S. apparel and textile workforce. The global quotas on export of apparel and textile products to Europe and the United States established under the longstanding Multifiber Agreement had dispersed the industry to dozens of poor countries. But when it ended on December 31, Chinese garment exports to the United States shot up in January by 75 percent, with 20 times more cotton knit shirts coming in than a year earlier. Apparel factories in both Central America and the United States have been shutting down. Not even China's upwards reevaluation of its currency, which is needed to reflect economic reality and to redress a rapidly growing trade imbalance with the United States, is likely to stop the Chinese from capturing a projected 70 percent of the U.S. market in a few years, much of it at the expense of small, poor, garment-exporting countries.
On labor rights, CAFTA is no improvement over NAFTA's deeply flawed labor side agreement, and it retreats from the labor rights standard that unions praised in the free trade agreement with Jordan signed in 2000. It simply requires the countries to enforce their own laws and "strive" to protect labor rights, with no meaningful penalties if they fail. Under current preferential trade agreements, unions and human rights groups have been able to petition the U.S. government for trade sanctions--and win some improvements--when Central American governments have violated international labor standards.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

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[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Jess, Ty, Jim, Dona and Ava (The Third Estate Sunday Review) have another great edition up. We're noting the editorial here in full (and Rebecca, Betty, Kat and myself assisted) because we all think it's important.


Editorial: Connect the dots

You too can be a well informed American, provided you read the British press. But maybe things are picking up? The Associated Press has a story today entitled "Bolton Said to Orchestrate Unlawful Firing" and we suggest you read it. It's by Charles J. Hanley and here's an excerpt:

John R. Bolton flew to Europe in 2002 to confront the head of a global arms-control agency and demand he resign, then orchestrated the firing of the unwilling diplomat in a move a U.N. tribunal has since judged unlawful, according to officials involved. A former Bolton deputy says the U.S. undersecretary of state felt Jose Bustani "had to go," particularly because the Brazilian was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad. That might have helped defuse the crisis over alleged Iraqi weapons and undermined a U.S. rationale for war.

Bolton fired Bustani, in 2002, because Bustani wanted to put chemical weapons inspectors in Baghdad. Now that might seem strange to you if you rely upon the American mainstream press.

If your news sources are a little more well rounded, you may however remember The Sunday Times of London's Downing St. Memo which reveals, in 2002, that the United States is willing to shape and distort to push forward on the invasion of Iraq. The same invasion that Bully Boy and his minions were saying they had not yet decided to go forward with.

How does Hanley sum up the Downing St. Memo (yes, it's mentioned in the article)? Thusly:

An official British document, disclosed last month, said Prime Minister Tony Blair' agreed in April 2002 to join in an eventual U.S. attack on Iraq. Two weeks later, Bustani was ousted, with British help.

Here's something the memo says that's not in the AP account:

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

The Sunday Times of London published that memo May 1, 2005. What did they publish last Sunday? Michael Smith's "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war." From the opening of that article:

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.
The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.
The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.

Is a pattern emerging? A pattern that even the mainstream press must begin to notice?

We think it is. But we wouldn't bet the house on it. We've shared our feelings/concerns on the mainstream press in an essay in this edition. The way we see it, the press has plenty to address. It's just an issue of whether they want to or not.

Hats off to BuzzFlash, once again, for finding the Associated Press article and drawing attention to a very important article.. As always the place we flocked to when finally getting ready to compose this edition's editorial.

posted by Third Estate Sunday Review @ Sunday, June 05, 2005

Rebecca and Kat have already posted this at their sites. Betty will do so in her next entry. Folding Star is also planning to post this editorial in full. We're attempting to get the word out on the need for connecting the dots.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Are you visiting BuzzFlash? If not, here are ten items you may be missing. If you enjoy a link below, take a moment to visit BuzzFlash. Also check out the premiums they offer.


Iran Wants to Cooperate with the U.S., but Expects U.S. to show "goodwill" (An impossibility with "Axis of Evil" Bush in office); and more in the June 3rd World Media Watch by Gloria Lalumia

Staten Island students hurt that Erica Jong called politicians liars in commencement speech. Guess they didn't get a very good education. 6/6

Pat Tillman's dad said that the path to true patriotism is confronting your government when it lies. 6/5

"60 Minutes" explores "justice" at Guantanamo -- military defense lawyers stunned by lack of due process 6/6

"They all have the same name; it's impossible." Australian paper offers a snapshot of traumatized Iraqi villagers and confused U.S. round-ups of suspects marked with an 'X' 6/6

P.M. Carpenter: Just one domestic article on Downing Street Memo since it broke? 6/5

Veterans and others help woman soldier who lost legs in Iraq 6/6

From the archives on the occasion of Emmett Till's reburial: Washington Times editor, a pro-Confederate, says killing wasn't racism 6/5

North Korea Calls Cheney A "Bloodthirsty Beast" -- Verse-Case Scenario by Tony Peyser

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (DVD); "Mr. Zinn delivers a challenge when he says, 'To be neutral and to be passive is to collaborate with whatever is going on.' Democracy he defines as 'not just a counting-up of votes' but a 'counting-up of actions.'"

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note:  This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

First, my apologies for not posting sooner. I had spoken to Rebecca earlier today on the phone and I had a few things to take care of before I got home. When I did make it home, I had messages from Rebecca and returned her phone calls. We were on the phone together as she read an entry she'd composed and would be posting.

How does that matter to this site? Besides the fact that Rebecca is a community member?

The entry, which we'll link to later, is about an e-mail sent to Rebecca. But it was sent here.

So let me explain something. If you write to trash Ruth or Isaiah or Dallas or KeShawn or Rob or Kara or Gina or Keesha or anyone who chooses to share here, your e-mail goes in the trash.

I'm not referring to an e-mail that says, "Please forward to Ruth because I have a problem with ___." I'm referring to e-mails that are just not worth forwarding. They are community members and I will spare them the kind of nonsense (usually from the fright wing or some "there's nothing lovelier than a blue dog Democrat). I'll read that junk myself until I've had enough and then delete it.

However, if you write and you want something forwarded to Kat or Rebecca (or Folding Star or The Third Estate Sunday Review or Betty), I'll forward it. If it's trash talk, I'll check with them first. (Kat laughs at that stuff, she'll read it if she's in the mood to read e-mails.) Those people have their own sites (and the e-mail addresses for all of them is posted at their sites) so they're more likely to be used to nonsense e-mails.

Today, someone supposedly wrote Rebecca. He wrote at the top that he needed it forwarded to her. But it wasn't to her. He wrote me about Rebecca.

I don't have time to reply to all the members who write in, so the fact that someone's with some think tank (a centrist one) doesn't qualify them for special benefits. I don't believe we'd linked to Rebecca's post here (I could be wrong -- I told Rebecca I didn't even remember the post he was complaining about -- Rebecca said that's because it was from the first of April). Even if we had linked to it, I really don't know why someone, who's not a member, feels the need to go into Rebecca's supposed wrongs.

I'm reading the e-mail and trying to be fair. I even tried to reply (saved to draft). But it's not really my business what Rebecca says or doesn't say.

If it's a member writing to praise her or slam her (I don't think any member's ever slammed her), I would read it. But somehow you stumbled on something Rebecca wrote over two months ago and you feel the need to complain to me about it?

I don't have the time for it.

I'm also not, even in fairness, going to take your side against Rebecca. So I don't know what purpose was served by writing me.

It was the weirdest e-mail I've ever been asked to forward because it wasn't written to Rebecca. It was written to me.

Rebecca can (and should) write whatever she wants at her site. I've said it over and over here, we need more voices not less.

Some centrist was offended by what she wrote.

Did I miss something? Did we suddenly veer from the left to the center here?

If so, I didn't notice it and no members wrote to complain.

We're of the left here.

I'm not surprised that a cenrist would be offended by things up at Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude. I am surprised that they think I would care.

I'm not trying to be rude or nasty here.

But apparently we need a clarification, so here it is: We're of the left. We highlight from the left (with the mainstream -- such as the Times -- thrown in). We're not trying to compromise on reproductive rights or to sell America on the supposed need to privatize social security.

I've never heard of the organization the man was with. I don't mean that as a slap down. I'm sure it's popular with the middle of the road crowd (in the same way that Vicky Carr or Steve & Edie were). But we're not centrist here.

This weekend, a UK member highlighted the Socialist Review and another Socialist publication.
We're happy to highlight from the left. But somehow this man missed that. I could be wrong but I don't think centrists highlight socialism periodicals.

We're pro-choice, anti-war, pro-peace, anti-Bully Boy, pro-gay rights . . . Go down the list.
How we've been confused with a centrist organization is beyond me.

But apparently we have.

Now there are e-mails from visitors (and one lurker) of the center all the time. But they usually write in to complain that we're risking the "party" by emphasing feminism. (It's funny how they all glom on that topic.) I read them or not depending on my mood. (I'm no longer reading every e-mail from start to finish. If a member writes in, it's read in full. If it's a visitor, it's read if it's someone who's goals are similar to this community's. Otherwise, I'll read until I'm bored.)

Right now, the focus is on members' e-mails. We're in the midst of an election, after all. But the people who've made this community what it is should be read first and always. When the issue of e-mails came up in a roundtable at The Third Estate Sunday Review, Ava and I disagreed with Rebecca's opinion. But I've thought about it and thought about it. There are some strong points that Rebecca made.

From time to time, friends offer to read the e-mails for me. "I can give you a report." They could but it might overlook something that's really important. For instance, Maria (and I got her permission to share this) will usually write what's most important to her in the final paragraph. I know that because I've read all of her e-mails. Someone coming in might miss that.

But if I'm not reading members e-mails, this can quickly turn into a blog and not a community.
I can pull a Daniel Okrent and do a "what I want to write about."

The community is strong because members are active in it. They make a point to weigh in on what they feel should be covered and what shouldn't be. They ask questions that lead to entries. They highlight stories we need to be aware of. Some of them write entries (always welcome) and those are shared with the community.

The minute I give up reading the e-mails, the community suffers.

But I don't have time to read through nonsense, from people who will never agree with us, about what we need to do. And I don't have time to read nonsense about what Rebecca should do.

Rebecca's got a blog. (She'll tell you it's a blog.) And it's quite popular. She's speaking in her voice and people are responding to that. I don't really think she needs tips on what to do at this late date. But she certainly doesn't need a rant about her written to me, passed on.

In the future, all e-mails to someone else need to be written to them. After you say "please forward," you need to begin speaking to that person so I'll know you're done with me and can forward it without reading further.

I'm not going to side with a stranger over Rebecca, Folding Star, Betty, Kat or Ava, Jim, Dona, Ty and Jess.

I read that e-mail and felt like I was supposed to reply, "Of course you're right."

I don't think he was.

We had a person write over the Memorial Day weekend wanting to be highlighted here. As noted here already, his blog isn't something the community would care about. I noted that here and we also did a "reply" at The Third Estate Sunday Review.

As most members know, on holiday weekends, I try to grab at least one day where I reply to every member who wrote in. (In the old days, I could always reply to every member.) I read the blogger's e-mail. I wish him luck. I felt for him. But we're a community and I was focused on the community.

I held back on posting the e-mail guideline that weekend (Shirley pointed out that with so many on vacation, most people would miss it).

But here it is, I'll reply to members when there's time for it. Even when I don't reply, I will read all e-mails from members. But I don't have time to reply to people who happen upon this community.

We're not trying to grow. New members are added and I'm not speaking about those people.
Anyone who's interested in social justice can always e-mail, visitor or member. And it's great when a new member comes along.

But I'm sick of these e-mails saying, "Defend this to me." Uh, it's up. It's here. If you can't grasp it (like the visitor who refused to believe Bill Clinton had visited Ireland just because the New York Times hadn't seen fit to inform its readers of it -- if a tree falls and the Times doesn't front page it, did it happen?) that's really your problem.

If you're anti-choice, that's your problem.

If you think the Bully Boy is a saint, that's your problem and even if I wrote back I couldn't help you because I don't have psychiatric training.

On those kind of e-mails, I'll read as long as far as I want. It might be one line. It might be one word. (I don't go past one word with e-mails that start off with curse words -- the c-word that rhymes with runt is especially popular among smaller minds. Although, in the past when I did, I always found it amusing that the writer always self-described as a Christian.)

When we highlight, if it's not of the mainstream, it's of the left. We don't highlight the right. They have an entire web circle to put out their side. More power to them, but we don't highlight them here.

Apparently that wasn't clear in some of the early days. So when someone e-mailed wanting an Andrew Sullivan piece highlighted, we did that. Then a day or two later, I clarified that we wouldn't highlight the right. Even if pigs were flying and they were saying something of great value, chances are we could find someone on the left writing on the same topic.

On a similar note, and this has been policy for some time, stop sending in asking that we highlight something from the morning's Times after we've done those posts. Some visitors love to do that. Members know that what goes up is what is sent in when I'm going through the e-mails. They know we don't do another post on the Times (a morning paper) in the evening or at night. Now if you want to write about why an article should have been noted or what it said to you, and mean for it be shared with the community, fine. But don't send in e-mails saying "I just finished the Times and you need to highlight this."

It's a daily paper. On any given day, we'll miss something. That's a given. We're not the "here's everything that's in this morning's Times" site.

By the same token, we now emphasize what members want from the Times only. Why? Because when I get up, even if I've managed to read every e-mail the night before, there are already hundreds waiting. If I read everyone before I start posting on the Times, we'll never have a post up for that morning's Times. There's a visitor who at least once a week, e-mails to note basically every story in the main section. We also don't have time for that.

(I know I don't.)

But let me be clear on this point, if you're a visitor, I don't want to hear your problems with Rebecca. Members know that the policy is, if it speaks to you, visit it, if it doesn't don't.

That's been the policy on links all along.

Today someone felt the need to trash Bill Scher (he was highlighted in the afternoon post which probably added to the visitor's ire). If you think Bill Scher is "an idiot" for defending Howard Dean, this really isn't the site for you. The community came out for Howard Dean early on.

I'm also tired of hearing how Christine of Ms. Musing was someone else in another life. I'm not attempting to slam reincarnation here. If you believe it, then great. But I fail to see how you know who Christine was or wasn't in another life. This is the same person who wrote a 40K e-mail earlier (and yes, it was on Christine). He has now limited himself to a 10K e-mail every other day. I'm not even opening them anymore after this goes up.

If you have a problem with Democracy Now!, I don't know how you missed this, but we highlight Democracy Now! Monday through Friday. The community gave an honor to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalaz in the year-in-review. Yet some visitors feel the need to e-mail that we should be focusing on a CNN show (the show in question differs from e-mail to e-mail) instead because Goodman is really ____ or ____.

Members have shaped this community. They've poured their time and energy into it. So for a visitor to drop by and slam something (with statements that are questionable -- my opinion) is a bit like dropping by someone's home and insulting the decor.

Again, this isn't all visitors. We have some great vistiors. Bridget was a visitor with a great idea. And we have visitors who've become members. But we're not going to change who we are to try to appeal to some centrist visitor.

And the idea that because we present the left we, therefore, have to present the right is evidence that a visitor hasn't grasped what this community is about or for.

I'll repeat (my apologies to members), God forbid we have another attack. But if it happens, we can't count on the mainstream, they've proven that. Leftist voices will, once again, be shut out.
We are a resource/review for the left. We're about providing you with resources. Maybe you like Molly Ivins' humor, maybe you don't. But if you're a member (or regular visitor), you know she's out there. You know Katrina vanden Heuvel is out there, Naomi Klein, Bob Somerby, Matthew Rothschild, Ruth Conniff, Medea Benjamin, Margaret Kimberly, etc.

Not every link will meet with the approval of every member. Some voices will speak to some, some won't. But you'll know they're out there.

After 9-11, we saw the right and the center on TV. Heard them on NPR. The conversation was limited to one pole and the center. That's not a full range of opinion.

We're here to highlight the left. Today someone wrote "Peggy Noonan got it right!" The visitor wanted her column linked to. It's not going to happen. Resource/review for the left.

If you're needing more, you need to go elsewhere.

One of the biggest problems with newspaper, TV or any news media (or "news media") in the center, my opinion (I could be wrong), is that if someone gets a letter writing campaign going, the paper, et al attempts to respond by leaning one way. That's a huge mistake (my opinion -- I could be wrong) because the majority don't read the paper or watch the TV show.

But slam 'em with enough e-mails and they move to the "center."

If there's hope that we will move to the center, it's a misguided hope.

Visitors are welcome (and most are wonderful) but the idea that we're going to highlight Peggy Noons or someone else from the right is a mistaken idea.

I've also stated before that I will deal with visitor e-mail here and I'm going to try to stand by that. If you're a visitor with a question, you need to watch here to see if it's answered. Members aren't getting personal replies to everyone of their e-mails. The point above (newspapers, et al) was that they needed to serve their constituency. Same here. The focus needs to be on members. Beth wants to do another interview and I've cancelled on her three times (she's been very understanding -- thank you Beth). That's her niche at this site. She'll address concerns or questions she has in the interview format.

I'm dying to compile an entry that's nothing but members comments. There's not been time for that.

We're never going to be all things to all people, but we never set out to be that in the first place.
Nor did we set out to be cheerleaders for the Democratic Party.

In the words of Kat, it is what it is. Maybe you can relate to it, maybe you can't. If it gives you a headache, that's probably a sign that this isn't the place for you.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Senator George V. Voinovich, the only Republican to speak out on the Senate floor against the president's nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, brought an unusual show of emotion to his case. Mr. Voinovich choked up.
"I wanted my colleagues to think about this. That's why I got emotional," he said in an hourlong interview at his home here on Friday, when he grew teary-eyed three more times over other subjects. "My emotions are a little bit closer to the surface than maybe they should be," he said.
Coming the same week that Ohio's other Republican senator, Mike DeWine, split from party leaders to compromise with Democrats over the president's stalled judicial nominees, Mr. Voinovich's emotional appeal to block Mr. Bolton has set up a dual test of Republican leaders' ability to hold their caucus together.

The above is from David D. Kirkpatrick's "A Teary-Eyed Rebel Defies Party Leaders" in this morning's New York Times.

Nate e-mails to note that "Bush's war on the middle-class, the lower-class and anyone not in the top 1% continues." Nate steers us to Greg Winter's "Financial Aid Rules for College Change, and Families Pay More:"


No matter how she parses it, Roberta Proctor cannot make sense of her son's college bill. Her income and her assets have not changed. If anything, she says, her family's finances have deteriorated somewhat.
So, she wonders, how could she possibly owe an extra $6,000 for the coming school year, when tuition has not increased anywhere near that amount?
But she does. Like Ms. Proctor, a Californian whose son just finished his freshman year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, thousands of American families might find it harder to qualify for financial aid this year and might be asked to contribute more money toward the cost of college because of changes to a complicated federal formula they barely know about, much less understand.
Taken together, these changes, some based on overly optimistic predictions of inflation, have required families to count a greater share of their incomes and assets toward college expenses before becoming eligible for financial aid. As a consequence, tens of thousands of low-income students will no longer be eligible for federal grants; middle-class families are digging deeper into their savings; and some colleges are putting up their own money to make up the difference.

Billie e-mails to note Ralph Blumenthal's "Texas Governor Draws Criticism for a Bill-Signing Event at an Evangelical School:"

Making good on a Republican campaign call to celebrate with "Christian friends," Gov. Rick Perry traveled to an evangelical school here on Sunday to put his signature on measures to restrict abortion and prohibit same-sex marriage.
About 100 protesters lined the street outside the school, Calvary Christian Academy, denouncing the unusual signing as breaching the constitutional separation between church and state.
The event, termed historic by the church's pastor, Bob Nichols, was pointedly held in the academy's gymnasium, apart from the church sanctuary, to deflect complaints. A plan by the Perry campaign to film the event for political commercials was dropped earlier.
Mr. Perry, who may face a tough primary challenge next year, described the event as "pro-family, pro-life" and nonpartisan. On a dais before a cheering crowd of close to 1,000 churchgoers and leaders of evangelical ministries, he signed a bill passed during this session of the Texas Legislature requiring girls under 18 to get their parents' consent before having an abortion. Previously, they needed only to notify their parents.

Billie again wonders how tough the Republican primary will be and whether Perry will survive it if the rumors resurface -- the rumors he refuted without naming in a press conference he called to address them -- in a non-addressing manner.

Billie: This looks to be a really ugly primary and Democrats need to field a strong candidate who won't shy from addressing the blood-letting that's bound to come up in the Repube's primary.

KeShawn e-mails to note Denise Grady's "New Vaccines Prevent Ebola and Marburg in Monkeys:"


Scientists trying to develop vaccines against Africa's deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses are reporting an important milestone, a new type of vaccine that prevents the diseases in monkeys. Successfully immunizing monkeys is an essential step toward producing human vaccines.
Two new vaccines, one for Marburg and one for Ebola, were 100 percent effective in a study of 12 macaques being published today in the journal Nature Medicine. Monkeys given just one shot of vaccine and later injected with a high dose of virus did not even get sick. Normally, all the animals would be expected to die.
The Marburg and Ebola viruses are closely related, and in both people and monkeys they cause hemorrhagic fevers that can be fatal within a week. There is no vaccine or treatment for either disease. Death rates in people can be high, sometimes exceeding 80 or 90 percent.
[. . .]
The two new vaccines are still experimental, and will not be ready to be tested in people for at least two years. If human trials are successful, products might be ready for licensing five or six years from now, the researchers said. The vaccines would not be used for routine immunization, but would be given to health workers in high risk areas, virus researchers and people who had been exposed to the disease, such as relatives and others in close contact with sick patients. Eventually, it might be possible to combine the vaccines to protect people from both diseases with a single shot.

Lastly we'll note Joel Brinkley's "Latin Nations Resist Plan for Monitor of Democracy:"

The major nations of Latin America have told the United States that they cannot support an American plan to establish a permanent committee of the Organization of American States that would monitor the exercise of democracy in the hemisphere, Latin American diplomats said Sunday.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who arrived here on Sunday afternoon to serve as chairwoman of an O.A.S. meeting where the American plan is on the agenda, expressed frustration with their view, saying, "We have to have a discussion of how the organization can be effective if it does not have a mechanism that can help at times of crisis."
If the organization fails to approve the American proposal, it would be a significant diplomatic defeat for the United States - from a region that for decades has generally gone along with Washington's requests. The United States is negotiating with the other countries, though diplomats and officials said they made little progress on Sunday.

It's a Monday. Translation, not a great deal going on in the Times (a typical Monday for the Times). Since we've done the news stories from outside the US in two entries yesterday, we'll skip over to The Christian Science Monitor. (A number of members already read that paper and this is an issue that came up Friday in another forum. I'll go into that after we finish highlighting stories from the paper.)

We'll start with Peter Grier's "The image war over US detainees: Debate over the word 'gulag' and treatment of the Koran in US detention facilities symbolizes a broader challenge for US:"

In its latest attempt to minimize the impact of revelations about detention conditions, Bush officials over the weekend played down a new military report on mishandling of the Koran at Guantánamo.
The report, released June 3, detailed five incidents during which the Islamic holy book was either kicked, stepped on, or soaked in water.
The military said that the incidents were unusual, considering that interrogators have conducted over 28,000 interviews at the prison, and that official policy emphasizes sensitivity towards detainees' religious faith.
[. . .]
Leaders of the human rights group have conceded that their language may have overreached: On Sunday William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a broadcast interview that the gulag comparison "is not an exact or literal analogy."
But he noted that his group is far from alone in criticizing the underlying tenets of the US detention system. US courts have ruled against certain aspects; internal military investigations have found disturbing incidents of abuse, even murder, from Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld offered to resign in April 2004, when pictures of Abu Ghraib practices first surfaced. The US government has undertaken some 370 military investigations into the charges, with some 130 personnel facing some degree of punishment.

Susan e-mails to note the scary trend of attacks on campus freedom "are now going beyond college." She notes G. Jeffery MacDonald's "Conservatives see liberal bias in class - and mobilize
Complaints that teachers push liberal ideology are trickling down from college campuses to the K-12 level:"

Concerned that public schools are becoming sites of liberal indoctrination, activists have generated a wave of efforts to limit what teachers may discuss and to bring more conservative views into the classroom.
After all, they say, if related campaigns can help rein in doctrinaire faculty on college campuses, why not in K-12 education as well?
So far this year, at least 14 state legislatures have considered bills aimed at colleges that would restrict professors and establish grievance procedures for students who perceive political bias in teaching. None have become law, but the movement has momentum: Four state universities in Colorado, for instance, adopted the principles under legislative pressure in 2004.

(Note, there's a poll you can take when you visit The Christian Science Monitor's story above to weigh in on whether you think K-12 has been overrun with liberal indoctrination.)

Cedric e-mails to note Mark Sappenfield's "Global-warming fight goes grass roots: Mayors from around the world met this weekend to cut emissions:"

Sunday, when mayors from around the world gathered in this most environmentally aware of American cities to mark World Environment Day, they hoped to make a clear statement: Local communities - even more than nations - can be the pioneers of environmental reform. The choice of place and time could hardly have been more auspicious.
In recent months, it has become increasingly obvious that a critical mass is developing around perhaps the most nettlesome issue of modern American environmentalism - climate change - and that states, cities, and even some businesses are the ones taking the lead. While the Bush administration insists that human impact on climate change is far from certain, a growing number of policymakers disagree and are now taking decisive steps that the federal government has so far shunned.

Rob e-mails to note Joshua Mitnick's "As Hamas makes gains, will Abbas's ruling party unravel? On Saturday, the Palestinian president delayed a vote amid disarray in his party:"

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's decision over the weekend to postpone Palestinian parliamentary elections raised concern immediately about a confrontation with militant Hamas, poised to trounce Mr. Abbas's ruling Fatah party in a vote scheduled for next month.
But after months of promising to hold the elections on July 17, the Palestinian president's reversal actually highlights the deepening tensions within his own party, analysts and officials say. It's expected now that the vote will be held this fall.
"[The delay] is not out of fear for Hamas, as so many people say," says Fatah lawmaker Ghazi Hanineyeh. "We are afraid of ourselves."
Founded by the late Yasser Arafat as the umbrella political party that galvanized Palestinian resistance to Israel, Fatah has unraveled into a loose alliance of rival factions tainted by allegations of corruption and mismanagement. Delaying the vote could give Abbas enough time to reform the party and avert collapse when it faces Hamas in the legislative vote, analysts say.

If a member e-mailed another article from The Christian Science Monitor, I'm sorry but I'm not seeing it. For visitors (and members not on the list for the gina & krista round-robin), Friday's gina & krista round-robin contained a talk between Gina, Krista and myself about the Times. During that, the question arose of if we dropped coverage of the Times here, which newspaper would we pick up? As I've stated here before (at least twice), my guess is it would be The Christian Science Monitor. It's a national paper. It's generally a strong paper. In the discussion, I offered to highlight some articles from it on Monday if members were interested. Monday was selected because the Times on Monday generally has a very thin main section.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

 

Members of the Sept. 11 commission, fearing that the Bush administration and Congress will never act on some of their recommendations, are joining together almost a year after completing their final report to press the White House for information showing whether the government has done enough to prevent another catastrophic terrorist attack, commission officials said.
The officials said the 10 commissioners, acting through a private group they founded last summer, will present a letter within days to Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, asking the White House to allow the group to gather detailed information from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies about the government's recent performance in dealing with terrorist threats.
Commissioners say they want the information to prepare for a series of public hearings scheduled to begin here on Monday and to draft a privately financed report that will evaluate the government's counterterrorism policies in the wake of the commission's final report last July.

The above is from this morning's New York Times, Philip Shenon's "Members of Sept. 11 Panel Press for Information on Terror Risk." Note this from the article as well:

Members of the commission readily acknowledged that they no longer had any authority to force the Bush administration to hand over information or to make witnesses available, and they have no expectation that they will re-create the fireworks of their public hearings last year, when senior administration officials were subjected to hours of often hostile questioning under oath and on live network television. (The hearing on Monday is scheduled to be broadcast live on C-Span 2, the cable network.)

To watch online, go to the C-Span home page. And here's C-Span's description of the program:

Forum
CIA and FBI Reform
9/11 Public Discourse Project
Washington, District of Columbia (United States) ID: 187060 - 06/06/2005 - 2:00 - No Sale
Thornburgh, Richard, Attorney General, Department of Justice
Gorelick, Jamie S., Commissioner, National Cmsn. on Terrorist Attacks
Ragavan, Chitra, Chief Correspondent, [U.S. News & World Report], Legal Affairs
The 9/11 Public Discourse Project, the nonprofit successor organization to the 9/11 Commission, will hold a panel discussion to assess the status of CIA and FBI reform one year after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report.

It starts at 9:30 a.m. EST. It's estimated to last two hours.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.] 

An outbreak of a lethal new bug at a leading specialist hospital has claimed 12 lives and is posing a grave new threat to the NHS, doctors have warned.
More than 300 patients have been infected with the bug, a virulent new strain of Clostridium difficile, at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Oxfordshire, known for its world-famous spinal injuries unit supported by the former disc jockey Sir Jimmy Savile. But all attempts to control the infection, which causes severe diarrhoea that can be life-threatening, have failed.
The disclosure raises new concerns about NHS hygiene following a series of scares over the superbug MRSA and the pressure on hospitals to hit waiting list targets.
Cases of C. difficile have soared from fewer than 1,000 in 1990 to 43,672 in 2004 but it has not received the same attention as MRSA. Latest figures show there were 934 deaths in 2003, a 38 per cent rise in two years. A similar number of people died from MRSA in the same year, with 955 people dying from the infection, a 30 per cent increase in two years.

The above is from The Independent, Jeremy Laurance's "Superbug kills 12 at spinal unit as doctors warn of new threat to NHS."

From Ireland's I.E. Breaking News, "Adams throws down talks challenge to unionists:"

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams tonight challenged the Democratic Unionist Party to take the "difficult" decision to enter dialogue with republicans.He said the Rev Ian Paisley’s party might find it “a very uninviting prospect”, but their current position of not negotiating with Sinn Féin was not sustainable.
Mr Adams said he awaited a positive response from the IRA to his appeal for them to declare a purely non-violent democratic future – and said there was now an unprecedented opportunity to make political progress in Northern Ireland.


From IPS, we'll note Jim Lobe's "Right-Wing Hostility to NGOs Glimpsed in Amnesty Flap:"

This week's flap over Amnesty International's characterisation of U.S. overseas detention facilities and practices as a ''gulag of our times'' offers insights into the Bush administration's and its neo-conservative supporters' deep distrust of some non-governmental organisations (NGOs). President George W. Bush's administration already had responded with ritual reflex -- most recently seen in its offensive against Newsweek -- to mostly undisputed charges that U.S. authorities have committed and continue to commit serious abuses, in some cases amounting to torture, against individuals rounded up on suspicion of supporting terrorism: It blamed the messenger, be it the International Red Cross or the media. In the last case, however, it was the rights watchdog Amnesty International and there was an interesting wrinkle in the administration's reaction: The way senior administration officials -- from the president, to Vice President Dick Cheney, to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to the Armed Forces chief of staff, Gen. Richard Myers -- immediately followed their initial statement of outrage against Amnesty's use of the word ''gulag'' with some version of the same non sequitur: arguing, in effect, that U.S. military interventions somehow justified non-compliance with the Geneva or U.N. torture conventions.
As stated by Cheney on CNN's Larry King show, it went like this: ''I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world.''
That precisely the same defence figured at the top of each official's comeback suggested that their ''talking points'' were all prepared by the same source -- testimony perhaps to the extraordinary discipline exercised by this White House to ensure that what used to be called the ''message of the day'' -- perhaps now more accurately referred to as the party line -- is repeated over and over again.
While Cheney was the most direct in denouncing the world's largest and most famous human rights organisation -- ''I just don't take them seriously'' -- the other officials declined to attack Amnesty's bona fides, no doubt because even the Bush administration knows that NGOs like Amnesty get much higher credibility ratings than leaders of major business, labour or government institutions, according to surveys.

From Open Democracy, we'll note Stephen Bowen's "'Full-spectrum' human rights: Amnesty International rethinks:"


Amnesty International recently highlighted a case concerning water protestors in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. On 17 May a large group of men, women and children went to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation office in Bhopal to complain that clean water had been denied them, despite a Supreme Court of India ruling in 2004. Ground-water had been contaminated after the infamous 1984 explosion at the former Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Clean water, the protestors claimed, was their due.
The authorities’ reaction was heavy-handed. Riot police allegedly beat the protestors with sticks, arresting, detaining and even charging some. Had the police overreacted, acting excessively? Worse, had they acted politically, whether directed to or not, suppressing legitimate free expression, not least of those with a serious grievance? Both scenarios bring with them classic human-rights concerns. Those familiar with the organisation’s work would expect Amnesty International to step in. Indeed some would be disappointed if it did not.
However, what if the protestors had merely arrived, voiced their concerns and then gone home again, without police intervention? While less glaringly a case of human-rights abuse, informed commentators could still have said that this was a human-rights matter. After all, the 17 May protestors were seeking partial redress for wrongs done to them in 1984, when the Union Carbide pesticide factory exploded. The disaster left a deadly legacy; toxic gases caused the death of 7,000 people within days, at least another 15,000 in the following years, and some 100,000 people have since been struck down with chronic diseases.
In addition, 500,000 people were exposed to deadly chemicals and the environment was profoundly contaminated, remaining so twenty years on despite Union Carbide’s claims to the contrary. The Bhopal water protestors were effectively already people living in the shadow of human-rights crimes.
But what if protestors had mounted a peaceful water protest anywhere else? Should Amnesty International and other human-rights groups support all those seeking their “right to water”? Or equally to other natural resources, to education, housing, a family life, the right to work, to speak a language of one’s choice?


Back to IPS, Pat e-mails to note Sanjay Suri's "G8 SUMMIT:The Climate Does Not Look Good:"

The prospects for progress on climate change at the G8 summit in July do not look too good, going by the content of a leaked document. The document purporting to be a draft for agreements on climate change was posted anonymously on a website Friday. The British Prime Minister's office confirmed later that the document was genuine, but said it was being developed, and was not the final draft. Friends of the Earth picked on the document to show how little substantial progress there had been on climate change. The document marks agreement at the officials level on the draft to be produced at the summit of heads of government of the G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Russia, Japan, Britain, Italy, France and Germany). The summit will be held at Gleneagles in Scotland July 6-8. Climate change is among the two top priorities named by the British hosts, along with development of Africa. The leaked draft calls for steps to deal with climate change, and for international financial institutions to play a role. But the general suggestions are not backed by any call to binding commitments.

From Australia's ABC, Lyle e-mails to note "Downer can grant defector political asylum: lawyer:"


An immigration lawyer says Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has the power to grant Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin political asylum.
Mr Chen says the Immigration Department rejected his application for political asylum, advising him instead to apply for a protection visa.
He has been in hiding, fearing retributions from the Chinese Government, since he defected from his senior post at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney more than a week ago.
He claims his Government has up to 1,000 spies operating in Australia who have been kidnapping Chinese nationals.

From Scotland's The Sunday Herald, Elaine e-mails to note Robert Burns' "Military report confirms Koran mishandled at Guantanamo Bay:"

UNITED States military officials acknowledged that a copy of the Koran was splashed with urine at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for terror suspects, but said none of the guards at the facility flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
Among other newly disclosed incidents cited in a Pentagon report on the mis handling of the sacred text at the prison were reports that a detainee’s Koran was deliberately kicked and another’s was stepped on.
On March 25, a detainee complained to guards that “urine came through an air vent” and splashed on him and his Koran. A guard admitted he was at fault, but the report, which offered new details about Koran mishandling incidents, did not make clear whether the guard had intended the result.
The findings are among the results of an investigation last month by Brigadier General Jay Hood, the commander of the detention centre in Cuba. The investigation was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report – later retracted – that a US soldier had flushed one camp detainee’s Koran down a toilet.

From the Times of London, Gareth e-mails Anthony Browne and David Charter's "Battle lines drawn up as leaders get ready for a war over EU:"


The struggle between the EU’s three biggest powers over the fate of the constitution, and the future direction of the Union, is likely to deepen the turmoil caused by the French and Dutch “no” votes last week. France and Germany are also expected to step up the pressure on Britain to be a “good European” by insisting that it surrender its budget rebate at a fin ance ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg tomorrow.
The meeting is supposed to agree the EU’s budget for the next seven years, and France and Germany will argue that reaching a deal is essential to prevent a second crisis. But Gordon Brown has insisted that the rebate must stay.
José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, sought to calm tensions at the weekend by pleading with EU leaders not to play the blame game. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, will tell Parliament today that Britain is suspending the ratification process for the constitution despite Saturday night’s demand by President Chirac of France and Chancellor Schröder of Germany that all countries pass judgment on the treaty.

Amy e-mails to note, from UK's The Independent, David Usborne's "Terrorists 'using Guantanamo as a recruitment aid:'"

Senior Democrats are calling for the closure of America's detention centre in Guantanamo, Cuba, saying it has become a "propaganda and recruitment tool" for terrorists in the wake of continued allegations of prisoner abuse.
A leading senator, Joseph Biden of Delaware, suggested the time had come to consider a gradual closure of the facility, arguing its worsening reputation around the world was helping to recruit people bent on hurting the US.
"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position."
For a start, the senator argued, there should at least be an independent commission established to address the value of keeping Guantanamo. "The end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]