Back in February, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage — who won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing Bush’s use of signing statements to break the law — wrote an article reporting that, after a first-week Executive Order from Obama banning torture, “the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda,” which is “prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.” About Savage’s February article, I wrote:

While believing that Savage’s article is of great value in sounding the right alarm bells, I think that he paints a slightly more pessimistic picture on the civil liberties front than is warranted by the evidence thus far (though only slightly).

In retrospect, Savage was right and I was wrong about that: his February article was far more prescient than premature.

Read more.

MCM

Hundreds Of Calif. Homeless March For Land Rights
by Richard Gonzales

All Things Considered, July 2, 2009 · It has been about three months since city officials shut down a large “tent city” occupied by Sacramento’s homeless people.

Now, some of the tent city’s residents say they feel like refugees, with no place to go. They staged a loud demonstration Wednesday, in hopes of pressuring Sacramento officials to find them a new place to camp.
‘Where Am I Supposed To Live?’

Philip Grice, 45, has been on the move ever since the tent city closed.

“When we moved out, we moved over to a private area two fields over. They wanted us off of there too. Just like shuttling cattle, that’s all it is,” said Grice, a carpenter by trade, who wears a T-shirt that reads, “Where am I supposed to live?” “We’re supposed to be the eyesore, but actually we’re citizens and we’re human beings. We’re supposed to have rights like everybody else; it don’t matter what we have in our pockets.”

Read more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/opinion/30Vargasllosa.html

That piece was thoroughly misleading. Here, then, is a sharp response by John Gerassi, a professor the Politics Department at Queens College, and author of The Great Fear in Latin America (which sold almost 200,000 copies when it came out in 1965).

MCM

From John Gerassi:

A passing reflection: No one in the established media is going to point out that no Honduran
soldier, officer or general would dare to act against a US request, ever. The Honduran military
get trained at a US base 50 miles from Tegucigalpa. The US furnishes its weapons, its uniforms, lunch and travel perks by inviting every officer to come to the School of the Americas for a bit
of brainwashing. But the NYTimes makes much ado about integrity, honesty, fairness, etc.

Today (June 30), the Times ran an op-ed by Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a “fellow of the Independent Institute.” That op-ed is a tissue of bald lies.

Now, everyone has the right to be against Honduras President Manuel Zelaya. But not to reveal
that Honduras is run by a tight little oligarchy (which includes its parliament and Supreme Court)
which kills labor organizers just for pleasure is to be genuinely dishonest. When I visited the
farm of such an oligarch, while reseaching my book The Great Fear in Latin America, I asked
him why he paid his peons so little. “They’re pigs,” he answered. “The only thing they respect is power. They have to know that I have life and death power over them. Only then will they work.” Stupidly, I asked: “Do they know that?” He laughed, called over one of the peons, took out his
pistol and shot him in the head.

When I reported it to the Tegulcipaga chief of police, he quipped: “Yeah, but he owns that
estancia.”

Now this “fellow” Vargas Llosa writes that President Zelaya is trying to become a dictator like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez by holding “a referendum with the ultimate aim of allowing him to
seek re-election.” You’re supposed to think that the referendum is that change, and that it’s
illegal because “the electoral court, the Supreme Court, Congress and members of his own party
declared Mr. Zelaya’s intention unlawful.”

What Varga Llosa doesn’t tell you–and the Times would never say it either–is that all
those bastards are the same as that oligarch who shot the peon just to prove a point. Nor would
the Times tell you that that referendum merely put the question: “Hey, folks, should I try to get
the constitution changed legally so I can run for re-election?” Nor would the Times tell you that Zelaya ran at first with a reactionary party, but changed on seeing how his country’s oligarchy,
in partnership with US businesses, and abetted by the US-created death squad (set up by then- Ambassador Negroponte?), kept his people among the continent’s poorest. His Liberal Party
was the party of the oligarchy.

Nor would the Times ever run my corrections, even if written politely without such insulting
words as “bastard.” It never has. Because it believes in integrity, honesty, fairness, etc.

This sort of thing would just be laughable if types like Fund, who’s done a lot to help his party
steal elections (through his involvement with “the American Center for Voting Rights,” a
propaganda front established to promote the myth of Democratic “voter fraud”), were not
so often treated as a genuine disinterested “expert” by the MSM. Him they’ve had on time
and time again, to blather about (Democratic) “voter fraud,” while freezing out all those
true experts–and there are dozens of them–who serve neither party, and who really
know the subject well.

In any case, about the Franken/Coleman race: If either side committed fraud in that election,
it certainly was not the Democrats, but–as ever–the Republicans. As there is evidence
that Coleman “won” through fraud back in 2002 (the same year that Don Siegelman, Max
Cleland, John Sununu and Tom Strickland also “lost” under suspicious circumstances), so
is there evidence of (further) fraud on his side in that too-close Senate race last year. And yet
we now have Fund perversely bellowing that Franken cheated, even though there’s not a
shred of evidence to back it up.

(Fund compares Al Franken’s “stolen” victory with Christine Gregoire’s “stolen” victory in
the 2004 gubernatorial contest in Washington State. Although that “theft” is Gospel in Rush Limbaugh’s universe, the fact is that, there too, the only solid evidence suggests that it was
Dino Rossi, Gregoire’s Republican opponent, who tried to “win” through fraud.)

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if Sen. Franken were to make an issue of such civic crime? Certainly
Paul Wellstone would, if he had not been so decisively–and conveniently–eliminated
from the running just before Election Day, 2002. And Franken has pledged tearfully to honor,
and continue, Wellstone’s legacy:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/49610287.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

So let’s be optimistic, and assume that Franken’s long and staunch refusal to discuss the GOP’s
election fraud (like Obama, he has always held that Bush and Cheney won their re-election
fair and square) doesn’t mean that he won’t ever change his mind, or even open it a little.

MCM

WSJ Whackos in Denial: ‘Franken Stole It (and So Did Gregoire in ‘04!)’
Debunking evidence-free, sore-loser wingnuttery from John Fund and fiends. Again…
In an unbylined Wall Street Journal editorial (why a liar and sore-loser like WSJ/GOP operative John Fund is so ashamed to put his name on his own writing we’ll never know…okay, maybe we do), the once-respectable paper shamelessly asserts: “Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.”
Since the sore-losing, sour-grapes, tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists of the Wall Street Journal have taken the opportunity to propagandize the transparent Franken/Coleman election results by comparing them to the 2004 Washington state Gubernatorial race, where the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire defeated Republican Dino Rossi during a long, sloppy post-election contest and court case, let’s remind folks for the record, here in the reality-based community, what the judges in each case found in regard to the keyboard wingnut claims of “fraud”…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7278

They’ve done so for the exact same reason that the GOP has blocked all efforts to conduct
a thorough national census, and the reason why the Roberts Five are working now to neutralize
the Voting Rights Act, and the reason why the DoJ is forcing op-scans on the voters of
New York; and on and on.

The reason for all that is that the GOP, because it cannot win elections honestly, must “win”
through election fraud and vote suppression. That is why the party’s doing everything it can
to make such criminal measures even easier, and largely imperceptible, and (if/when any such
malfeasance might somehow attract attention) quite impossible to prosecute.

Now, as that extremist party keeps it up, we have to ask about the other party, and its weird
refusal even to acknowledge, much less try to stop, all that the GOP is doing to advance itself
despite the will of the electorate.

What gives, AG Holder? What gives, Pres. Obama? Do you think it would be too divisive
to defend the people’s voting rights? Or is it that you’d rather not allow too much democracy,
as it would irk your major funders?

Since neither party will defend those rights of ours, that crucial effort is now up to us (along
with any journalist who also happens to believe in real elections).

MCM

‘The Commission has been roadblocked’:
Republicans’ war on the FEC

By Pete Martin and Zachary Roth – June 30, 2009, 9:13AM

Last fall, James Ross, a New York City resident and a donor to several Democratic organizations, received an unusual letter. “Your name has been put in our database,” Ross was told. “We are monitoring all reports of a wide variety of leftist organizations. As your name appears in subsequent reports, it is our intent to publicize your involvement in your local community. Should any of these organizations be found to be engaged in illegal or questionable activity, it is our intent to publicize your involvement with those activities.”

The letter was signed by Howard Rich, a publicity-shy New York real-estate investor and the founder of the conservative activist group Americans for Limited Government. Rich and his group were accused by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of illegally using Federal Election Commission disclosure reports to obtain the names and addresses of political donors in order to discourage them from making contributions — a violation of election law. In April, three of the FEC’s six commissioners voted to open an investigation into the matter. But the commission’s three Republicans opposed a probe. The FEC deadlocked 3-3, and no action was taken against Rich.

That’s happened with increasing frequency at the FEC lately. Election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three Republicans on the commission — led by Tom DeLay’s former ethics lawyer — have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function. As the normally mild-mannered Washington Post editorial board wrote recently: “The three Republican appointees are turning the commission into The Little Agency That Wouldn’t: wouldn’t launch investigations, wouldn’t bring cases, wouldn’t even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated.”

Read more.

Note his friend’s quote (in bold) in the penultimate paragraph.

MCM

Friend of Las Vegas H1N1 Victim Speaks Out

John Talley spent his 34th birthday hospitalized in a coma.

An otherwise healthy 34-year-old man could not fight off the H1N1 virus and ended up becoming the first Clark County death from swine flu. His roommate is now speaking out about what happened to his friend.
John Talley spent his 34th birthday hospitalized in a coma.

“I’ve known him for 20 years. He’s a healthy person,” said Luc Mayer, Tally’s friend and roommate.
When Talley first became sick, he thought he had food poisoning but the virus that is now a global pandemic ended up killing him.

“He came back from the doctor’s office, and he said, ‘they say I have food poisoning.’”

Luc Mayer lived with Talley and two other roommates. They saw their friend’s health go down fast.
“He came home on Monday, looked at him, he looked worse. He went back to the emergency room, and they checked him into the hospital.”

Talley was admitted at Mountain View Hospital on June 15 for pneumonia.

“He never came out,” Mayer said. He says that Talley did not respond to Tamiflu or other treatments. He says his friend kept getting worse and ended up in ICU for 13 days.

“I believe the hospital did what they could. The nursing staff in ICU was incredible throughout, the doctors too,” Mayer said.

What’s frustrating for Mayer is that Talley’s first four tests came back negative. Only the fifth test was positive for H1N1. He died three days later and Mayer has lots of questions.

“Anger, how can I not be angry? How you can go this long and not know what’s going on?”

Source: http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=10640857#

Hello, Mark, yes, they are closing the banks. Our financial system is being reorganized, wouldn’t you agree? Aren’t central bankers simply wringing in all the money to retool our banking system into a cashless society? There was something on the news earlier this week on WorldForum, a news program on PBS, where the President of Estonia was promoting Estonia’s new social experiment: a cashless society. See if you can find it on the PBS website. It is clear to me that the world governments are preparing to move in this direction. They’re already fine tuning it before they introduce it worldwide. Watching the market these days, I am “comforted” so long as Congress keeps dishing out the $billions because I see it as “buying” time, delaying the
inevitable march toward the new world economy. It is when they “stop” dealing out the $billions that I begin to worry!

Best,
CB

While shielding George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Justice Department lawyers let slip CIA leak case clues, reports Jason Leopold.
For the full story, go to:

Consortiumnews.com

While there, also read:

The brutal recession is not only tearing about lives and families, it is threatening the fabric of democracy, writes Graham Rankin.

New York and California are facing political crises driven by a GOP dogma regarding taxes on the wealthy, Michael Winship writes.

So far, we have only reached about one-tenth of our $45.000 goal for our crucial mid-year fundraiser.
If you can, please make a tax-deductible donation by credit card online or by mailing a check to:

Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ)
Suite 102-231
2200 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington VA 22201

(For readers wanting to use PayPal, you can address contributions to our account, which is named “consortnew@aol.com”).

Thanks so much.
Robert Parry, Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. bank regulators closed seven institutions on Thursday, including six banks in Illinois controlled by one family and a small bank in Dallas, bringing the total number of U.S. bank failures to 52 so far this year.

Founders Bank, of Worth, Illinois, was the largest of the financial institutions seized. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said Founders had $962.5 million in assets and approximately $848.9 million in deposits.
The PrivateBank and Trust Co of Chicago (PVTB.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will assume all of the deposits of Founders Bank.

The failure is expected to cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund an estimated $188.5 million.

Read more.

Four Reponses to the Military Coup in Honduras

1) From Danny Glover: Support Restoration Of Honduran President Zelaya

2) Amy Goodman: Undo the Coup

3) Committees of Correspondence: End US Military Aid & Close SOA

Denounce the Coup, End US Military Aid and Close the
SOA

July 1, 2009

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism (CCDS) joins with the international community
in denunciation of the military coup in Honduras.

We join with all who call for an immediate end to the
violence and repression against the people of Honduras
who are resisting. We express our solidarity with the
Honduran trade unions and all democratic forces waging
a heroic defense of democracy against the military
coup.

We call on the U.S. government – the White House, State
Department and Members of Congress – to denounce
unambiguously the coup and call for the immediate
return of the democratically elected President of
Honduras, withhold recognition of the coup leaders, and
cut all military aid until democracy is restored. We
urge all to contact their Member of Congress, the U.S.
State Department and White House to convey this
message.

We also join with others in calling on the U.S.
Congress and the White House to close the School of the
Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation) in Ft. Benning Georgia, the
training ground for the Honduran coup leaders.

National Coordinating Committee

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism

www.cc-ds.org

4) Roberto Lovato : Obama Must Strongly and Unequivocally Condemn the Coup