CNN: “Toyota recalls 1 million cars worldwide. Automaker says majority of vehicles affected by recall located in Japan, notes it has received no reports of accidents due to defects. The Prius is among them.”

WALL STREET “SAVIOR” TO BUSH STREET
HADITHA IS NOT THE ONLY WAR CRIME
AFRICA’S ABSTINENCE DISASTER

Following in Bill Clinton’s footsteps, President Bush has reached into Wall Street for a new Treasury Secretary. Robert Rubin came to the Clinton Administration from Goldman Sachs in 1992. And now? AP reports:

”WASHINGTON - Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson was tapped Tuesday to be the next Treasury secretary by President Bush, who turned to a 32-year Wall Street veteran to help breathe new life into his economic agenda and revive his troubled presidency.”

Some of the Administration’s right-wing backers are not happy with the appointment, not because it represents more of what’s been called “the financialization” of America (ie. dominance by big banks). The Competitive Enterprise Institute is seething because Paulson has supported environmental conservation:

”The White House made an unfortunate mistake in nominating Henry M. Paulson, Jr. to be the next Secretary of the Treasury, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Goldman Sachs chairman’s other role as chairman of the board of the Nature Conservancy, which is under investigation for financial misdealings that benefited some of its officers and donors, should automatically disqualify him for the top Treasury job.

“No conservative administration should consider appointing anyone who works for the Nature Conservancy to any position and certainly not to one carrying the high responsibilities of Treasury Secretary”….

BUSINESS OF WAR

Speaking of economics, this just in: Bush is giving his intelligence czar the authority to let companies stop reporting their numbers - so Haliburton etc won’t have to show how much money they’re making in Iraq:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12952860/

CNN: HADITHA FINDINGS TO BE MADE PUBLIC

”The results of an investigation into the killings last year of 24 Iraqi civilians will be released to the public when the Marine Corps’ investigation is complete, the White House says.”

DAHR JAMAIL: HADITHA NOT ONLY MASSACRE

”While the media spotlight shines squarely on the Haditha massacre, countless atrocities continue daily, conveniently out of the awareness of the general public. Torture did not stop simply because the media finally decided, albeit in horribly belated fashion, to cover the story, and the daily slaughter of Iraqi civilians by US forces and US-backed Iraqi “security” forces had not stopped either.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13427.htm

LONG VIEW ON LONG WAR

Tom Porteous writes on TomPaine.com:

“From the uprising of the Taliban to the insurgency in Iraq, the West’s strategy for tackling radical Islam is failing.”

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/30/losing_the_long_war.php

FROM HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW

”In Baghdad two tennis players and their coach were killed for wearing shorts, and a Marine helicopter was shot down over the Anbar province. Soldiers were developing emotional relationships with their bomb-defusing robots. “Please fix Scooby Doo,” said one soldier, “because he saved my life.” Senator John Warner called for hearings into the killings of more than 20 civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines in 2005, and it was reported that, since 2003, 8,600 British troops had gone AWOL in Iraq; 929 were still missing…

LA TIMES: NEOCONS STAGE COMEBACK AS DEMS

Jacob Heilbrunn reports:

”DON’T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback - and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party.

“A host of pundits and young national security experts associated with the party are calling for a return to the Cold War precepts of President Truman to wage a war against terror that New Republic Editor Peter Beinart, in the title of his provocative new book, calls “The Good Fight.”

The fledgling neocons of the left are based at places such as the Progressive Policy Institute, whose president, Will Marshall, has just released a volume of doctrine called “With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty.” Beinart’s book is subtitled “Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.” Their political champions include Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and such likely presidential candidates as former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-heilbrunn28may28,0,6411415.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

NEWS NOT IN OUR NEWS

Sam Butler reports: “US frustrates Swiss nuclear probe”

”A Swiss investigation into an international nuclear smuggling network is being hampered by a lack of cooperation from the United States. The Swiss authorities say they asked US officials for judicial assistance a year ago but have yet to receive a reply.”

http://www.ideasfree.org

BUSH’S ABSTINENCE DISASTER

Esther Kaplan writes:

”Crushing news out of Uganda last week. The Bush administration’s $1 billion experiment in using abstinence messages as the basis of HIV prevention has born its first fruit: In a public speech on May 18, Uganda’s AIDS Commissioner Kihumuro Apuuli announced that HIV infections have almost doubled in Uganda over the past two years, from 70,000 in 2003 to 130,000 in 2005. And despite this chilling wake-up call, Bush has empowered Christian right activists to continue to push their abstinence-only agenda at a UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, to begin next week. According to a State Department email I obtained, the official U.S. delegation is stacked with some of the very people who contributed to the debacle in Uganda.

“Uganda was once an HIV prevention success story, where an ambitious government-sponsored prevention campaign, including massive condom distribution and messages about delaying sex and reducing numbers of partners, pushed HIV rates down from 15 percent in the early 1990s to 5 percent in 2001. But conservative evangelicals rewrote this history–with the full-throated cooperation of Uganda’s evangelical first family, the Musevenis.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/25/101656/91

PROTEST IN MALAYSIA

A friend sends an item from Kuala Lampur involving a protest by young Muslims against a court case scheduled for tomorrow. The case involves two young people charged with “indecent behavior”, because they allegedly hugged and kissed in a public park. An appeal for support has been circulated online saying:

”Do you like holding hands? How about sharing a hug with the person that you care for? Can you accept kisses as a way to show affection? Do you think that you have the ability to judge for yourself whether or not your behavior will offend others around you? Does it matter to you if you are being treated equally as everyone else, including tourists from other countries like Singapore or the UK?”

MONITORING THE MEDIA

HOWIE KURTZ ON THE NEWS

”Call it binge journalism, as out of control as a crazed keg party.

“Girls Behaving Badly,” said the Louisville Courier-Journal.

“Girls Go Wild for Booze, Sex,” said the Boston Herald.

“Spring Break Can Be Hazardous to Your Health,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“There may be some truth to the image of spring break as an orgy of wet T-shirt contests, booze parties and sex on the beach,” said USA Today.

“Stop the presses: Sex and intoxication among women more prevalent during spring break,” said MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson.

The breathless coverage was fueled by a survey of college women and graduates under 35, released in March by the American Medical Association. Some 74 percent said women use drinking as an excuse for outrageous behavior. Fifty-seven percent of women agreed that being promiscuous is a way to fit in, while 83 percent said they had friends who drank most nights while on spring break.

At the risk of spoiling the fun, it must be noted that this poll had zero scientific validity.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/28/AR2006052801122.html

HOWIE KURTZ IN THE NEWS

Larry Johnson says that journalists have an obligation to disclose family connections that cause conflicts of interest. One example is Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, whose wife works as a Republican consultant.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053006R.shtml

COVERAGE OF VOTING SCANDAL

Brad Blog: Washington Post ‘Fox News-izes’ the Diebold E-Voting Threat to Democracy Admits: ‘Originally Dismissed as Exaggerations, Criticisms Now Viewed With Increased Gravity’ Otherwise, Article Creates a False ‘Balanced Debate’ Where There is None…

URL: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002888.htm

Mark Crispin Miller on the the “balance” in that Post piece

”Here is a first-class example of how not to serve the public interest. Note how the reporter frames the struggle over DRE machines: as an “already-cantankerous debate” between Two Sides, equally respectable. On one side, there’s “a coalition of voting rights activists and prominent computer scientists,” arguing against the use of the machines. On the other side, we have…. the manufacturers of said machines, “and many election officials.” In between the two are “state officials” trying earnestly “to strike a middle ground.”

God forbid the Post reporter should “take sides,” as that would violate the Golden Rule of “balance,” and the “debate” might turn still more “cantankerous”—or maybe it would get a bit more edifying, as real debate should be. A real debate would duly note the mammoth qualitative difference between that coalition and those interests pushing the machines on an electorate that doesn’t want them.”

http://tinyurl.com/ptzex

ON VOTING: From a recent editorial in the New York Times

”In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it’s amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. They have adopted new rules for maintaining voter rolls that are likely to throw off many eligible voters, and they are imposing unnecessarily tough ID requirements.

ON THE DISENFRANCHISEMENT OF PRISIONERS
http://www.popandpolitics.com/articles_detail.cfm?articleID=1800

CBS CORRESPONDENT NOW IN GERMAN HOSPITAL

TV WEEK: CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, injured Monday in a Baghdad bomb attack, arrived at the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany Tuesday for treatment.

”Ms. Dozier received critical head and leg injuries in a blast that killed her CBS News soundman and cameraman, the network said on its Web site.

Ms. Dozier, 39, was described as being responsive and can open her eyes on command, an Army officer said Tuesday. Ms. Dozier is doing as well as can be expected and will probably remain at Landstuhl for several days, CBS reported.

http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=10091

CITY OF CHICAGO ISSUES RFP FOR WIRELESS SYSTEM

Http://egov.cityofchicago.org/wirelessrfp/

BROADCASTING& CABLE: CBS CHIEF TELLS SHOWTIME, DUMB IT DOWN

You could almost hear the collective gulp at Showtime. It’s not every day that a network’s new boss disparages its programming in public and on the record.

Speaking at Morgan Stanley’s annual media investor conference last week, CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves shared his thoughts about the premium cable channel his company acquired last January in its divorce from Viacom.

After praising Showtime’s financial position, he then panned its approach to original programming as pandering to highbrow TV critics rather than mass TV viewers.

Moonves believes Showtime ought to have shows that are every bit as popular as HBO’s The Sopranos, despite having half its subscriber base 
(14 million, versus 28 million).

The problem, he says, is that “Showtime was a bit too much of an off-off-Broadway play. They were interested in critics more than audiences. Anybody who knows me knows audiences are the thing. I am a populist, and you can take your reviews and stick them. Just give me big audiences.”

YOUR LETTERS AND “SECRET MYSTERIES

From Nikki Oldaker: How The Senate Voted on Amnesty Bill

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00157

Ryan Perkins writes: ”I just read your article regarding the Media’s lack of attention to the voter fraud in the US. Living in the Cleveland area, which was such a hotbed of controversy in 2004, I found this article quite surprising:

http://www.cleveland.com/election/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1144312870224340.xml&coll=2
(NOTE: This story barely garnered a minute during a 6′oclock newscast.)

Excerpt:”Days before the Dec. 16 recount, workers opened the ballots and hand-counted enough votes to identify precincts where the machine count matched.

“If it didn’t balance, they excluded those precincts,” Baxter said.

“The preselection process was done outside of any witnesses, without anyone’s knowledge except for [people at] the Board of Elections.” On the official recount day, employees pretended to pick precincts randomly, Baxter says. Dozens of Cuyahoga County election workers sat at 20 folding tables in front of dozens of witnesses and reporters.

“They did the hand and machine count of 3 percent of the votes 34 of the 1,436 precincts and when the totals matched, the recount was completed by machines.

The recount gave Kerry 17 extra votes and took six away from Bush. But observers suspected that the precincts were not randomly chosen and asked a board worker about it, said Toledo attorney Richard Kerger. The worker acknowledged that there had been a precount.

“They screwed with the process and increased the probability, if not the certainty, that there would not be a full countywide hand count,” Baxter said.

A GREAT READ

If you don’t know about Tony Sutton’s site ColdType.net, find out. He collects some of the most interesting articles in the world. Check out this month’s offerings: