Lisa Sánchez González on the Sotomayor Nomination : Fighting my Inner Cynic

Obama nominates a Boricua from the South Bronx:
A tease or a real slice of hope?

When news broke last month that a Boricua from the South Bronx, a woman, was being considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, I bet a Native American co-worker a box of pencils that she'd never get the seat.

Then yesterday, President Obama announced that 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor had, in fact, received the nomination...LINK

After I fainted, picked myself up off the floor, and brushed myself off, I began to ponder what had fed my inner cynic (which I generally keep under lock and key) so much defeatism that the very idea of aBoricua woman becoming a Supreme Court justice sounded to me like, well, the sci-fi version of a Horatio Alger novel (emphasis on the sci-fi). Why did it seem so wildly surreal -- even extraterrestrial -- to me that, through dint of hard work, talent, her family's support, sacrifice (and a little luck), a woman like Sotomayor, no matter how qualified, could ever be nominated by a President to serve on something as sacrosanct as the Supreme Court?

Maybe it's because I'm so used to hearing people in decision -making or -influencing positions dismiss the credentials of highly qualified Latinas just because they can (and because so few protest when they do), that I doubted there was any hope that, even if God were to descend to announce His support for a puertorriqueña Supreme Court Justice, she'd have any better than a 50/50 chance of getting considered on her own merit. That is, of course, presuming that she's a moderate conservative, a centrist, a liberal, or (eek!) an actually existing leftist. We all know that, at least for the past decade or so, the political fast-track to celebrity for an ultra-conservative Latina with more ambition than intellect (or any other qualification) is a yellow brick road paved by the Heritage Foundation (am I the only blogger old enough to remember Linda Chaves?).

My inner cynic has been well fed for weeks now too in the blogosphere, which has been littered with sensationalist commentaries, slathered in both overt and thinly veiled bigotry, about Sonia Sotomayor: "She's a bully!" "She's not really that smart!" and other drivel that suggests it might be ok, in public evaluation of a potential Supreme Court Justice (who, mind you, currently holds a seat on a Circuit Court, i.e. belongs to the nation's second-highest judicial echelon), to revert to the name-calling used on elementary school playgrounds. Did the criticism of any of the others on the widely publicized short list take on such a condescending and infantilizing tone? (If it did, I didn't see it.)

My inner cynic got enough sustenance that it escaped its shackles and started running loose as a snarky post-atomic Gila monster. Now it is nibbling on the mainstream media, especially their inability to make sense of why this nomination is so historic. The coverage -- which is so far all about reading Sotomayor's nomination as a leftist coup, and which is equally disinterested in what President Obama himself described as her "sterling" qualifications -- completely ignores, for example, what this nomination means in the historical context of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, or the long history of violent and peaceful struggle against that colonial relationship, or the mass migration of Sotomayor's parents' generation to the states that was engineered by U.S. maldevelopment policies, or the history of the South Bronx as aBoricua ghetto, not to mention the enormous odds (plug in any quality of life stat) that her success story means she overcame.

Obviously, we don't expect anything but shoddy faux journalism from the far right. But will Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann -- the supposed rugged left of the lefty prime time media -- care enough to do their homework and get it right?

Probably not, which is a shame. Or maybe that's the Gila monster talking.

The sad thing is, my many years of striving in another sacrosanct American institution -- academia -- have often fueled my cynicism. I'm a Boricua scholar whose parents were born and raised in the South Bronx. They worked heroically, like Celina Sotomayor (Sonia's mom), to give their children a better start in life than they had had. Yet too often I've found that, in my career, the proverbial glass ceiling looks more like a steel door viewed from a vipers' pit (with walls paved in wet limestone).

But now, thanks to President Obama, I have to rethink all this; I need to come to terms with the fact that I've been force-fed a big dose of hope.

I have to admit, it tastes good. Obviously, I'm not re-caging the Gila until the confirmation hearing is over in the Senate, and I'll be keeping close watch on the coverage until then. But -- dare I say it aloud? -- I really really hope I owe someone a box of pencils come fall semester.

Lisa Sánchez González is the author of Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Read her blog here:

Medical Referrals: Another Part of the Problem with the American Health Care System

Mark Allen Miller.
Referral System Turns Patients Into Commodities

I was chatting recently with a doctor friend who was depressed because he thought he had lost a referral source.

“This internist was sending me patients,” he told me, as I recall. “Then last month he sent me only one patient. And this month only one patient.”

I nodded hesitantly, unsure what he was driving at.

“So I understand something must have happened,” he said.

“Like what?” I asked.

He threw up his hands, exasperated by my obliviousness. “He met someone else! He developed a relationship with another cardiologist.”

I smiled at the overwrought response, with its connotations of a romantic breakup. But to my friend, this was no joke. Like most specialists, his livelihood depends on referrals. And like most, he will go to great lengths to preserve his referral sources.

Physician-to-physician referrals are the currency of day-to-day transactions in medicine, but as with any currency, they can be manipulated.

Logic says that a referral should depend only on a patient’s needs and the reputation and skill of the physician to which the patient is referred. But medicine is a business too, so that isn’t how it always works in practice.

The talk springs up in every doctors’ lounge: “Dr. X is opening shop — let’s give him some business.” When my wife told me she wanted to start an endocrinology practice, I reassured her that I would send patients to her, and that so would my brother, also a doctor, and his friends. As far as I can tell, there are no restrictions on such a practice.

Studies suggest that physicians receive up to 45 percent of new patients by referral, usually from other physicians. Referral rates to specialists in the United States are estimated to be at least twice as high as in Great Britain.

The rates reflect several aspects of American medicine: increasing specialization, the lack of time for any doctor to give to complex cases, and fear of lawsuits over not consulting an expert. At the same time, referrals are a way for cash-strapped doctors to generate business.

When I was in training, simple referrals from internists, like patients with only mild hypertension, bothered me as a waste of time. Now that I am in practice, I welcome them. I haven’t changed my mind that these referrals are probably unnecessary, and there is plenty of evidence that wasteful expert consultation is adding to health costs and creating redundant care. But as a full-fledged doctor, I appreciate the business. It is hard not to view a referral as an overture from another physician, and it is equally hard not to return the favor.

A sort of paradox is at work. Specialists are better paid than primary care physicians, but they are also less autonomous because, unlike primary care physicians, they depend on other doctors for referrals. There is pressure on specialists to keep referral sources happy, especially in doctor-saturated metropolitan areas like New York City.

There are limits, of course, on the autonomy of referring physicians, too. For instance, by federal law a doctor cannot refer patients to himself or to a business in which he has a significant financial stake, like a laboratory or imaging center, and he cannot be paid for a referral. The reasoning is that such behavior can interfere with clinical judgment, decrease quality and increase costs.

In 2006, Tenet Healthcare Corp., based in Dallas, agreed to pay $21 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit asserting that a hospital it owned in San Diego had paid kickbacks to physicians for referrals. (Tenet did not admit wrongdoing.) That same year, a New Jersey teaching hospital was investigated for giving sham salaries to community doctors in a reported attempt to increase the number of referrals to its cardiac surgery program. Two cardiologists pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.

But there are gray areas in practice. The Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services has investigated office space rentals, for example. Across the country, mobile medical imaging companies have made arrangements with internists to perform, in their offices, cardiac ultrasounds, which the companies send to cardiologists for interpretation. Insurance companies that cover the imaging pay the companies, and the companies pay rent to the internists. By law, these rent payments must reflect fair market value and be unrelated to the volume of patients referred by the internists for imaging. But according to doctors familiar with these agreements, that isn’t always the case.

“Obviously you get more rent if you provide 50 patients than if you provide 5,” an internist on Long Island, who did not want his name used, told me.

When I asked whether it wasn’t just a form of a kickback, he shrugged.

“When the companies take more time, they have to pay more rent,” he said. “You don’t say it is per patient; you say per hour. But patients equal time.”

Though he no longer participates in these contracts, he was open about the payments — about $100 per patient — and he saw nothing wrong with them. “As internists, we don’t bill for procedures, so we have to figure out another way to make money,” he said. “Every little bit helps.”

Whether the rent payments amount to indirect kickbacks is an open question still being investigated by the inspector general. The real issue, I think, is not the rentals but a referral system that is too easily corrupted. There is so much pressure to generate referrals that lines become crossed.

Our health care system needs a different approach, one in which patients are not treated as commodities.

One possibility is what Gail Wilensky, a health policy expert, argued for this year in The New England Journal of Medicine: a single payment that would cover all physician services and hospital care for any one patient. A major driver of referral proliferation is that doctors are paid piecework. There is less of an incentive to increase volume if payments are bundled rather than discrete for every service.

A bundled-payments system is already in place for hospitals, dialysis centers and nursing homes. Extending such a strategy to individual doctors’ payments seems to be the logical next step...LINK

Anti-War Memorial Day at Texas' Fort Hood

War may seem to be a million miles away to much of the population, but it is never more than a deployment order away from the minds of these young soldiers.

See 'Anti-war protesters exercise freedom to march' by Rebecca LaFlure, Below.

Killeen, Texas is nestled up to Fort Hood, the largest military base in North America, where soldiers are on a rapid deployment schedule to Afghanistan. On Memorial Day, I joined about 70 people at Under the Hood Café on College Street in Killeen for a peace march led by active duty soldiers.

An antiwar presence is surprising enough in a military town, but I must say that the reaction of people who drove by with thumbs up signs and honks of support was even more surprising. We marched in the blazing Texas sun for more than a mile to a point across from the East Gate before returning to the shelter of Under the Hood. Two of the soldiers who led the march have recently made their resistance known, issuing statements on why they won’t go to Afghanistan. See related Rag Blog stories [links below].

Killeen is a tired military town, full of tattoo parlors and other businesses catering to GIs. In contrast, the suburbs of Copperas Cove and Harker Heights seem to be full of new and shiny franchises.

Under the Hood has been open since February 1, gradually becoming known as a “free speech zone” for GIs –- a place where soldiers can gather, throw darts, play guitar, surf the internet, and occasionally get treated to Manager Cindy Thomas’ Spanish rice. The Memorial Day fare also included barbeque, beans, and home-made cookies. War may seem to be a million miles away to much of the population, but it is never more than a deployment order away from the minds of these young soldiers.

Anti-war protesters exercise freedom to march

By Rebecca LaFlure / May 26, 2009

"Get up. Get down. There's an anti-war movement in this town."

A group of active-duty Fort Hood soldiers and nearly 70 other anti-war protesters took to the streets of Killeen Monday afternoon in the city's first peace march since the Vietnam War.

Toting picket signs that read, "War is not the answer," and "Blessed are the peacemakers," the demonstrators gathered for one common purpose –- to call for an end to the wars in the Middle East.

The action, held on Memorial Day, was organized to honor the nation's fallen soldiers, and help prevent the further loss of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We're paying homage to the ones we've lost. We don't want to lose anymore," said Chris Saylor, an Iraq War veteran who traveled from Detroit to participate.

The protest was organized by Under the Hood Cafe –- a local outreach center for soldiers. Members from peace organizations across Texas as well as college students, active-duty soldiers and veterans came out to show their support.

The march began at the cafe house at 17 College St. and continued down Veteran's Memorial Boulevard to Fort Hood Street and then up to Fort Hood's East Gate.

The demonstrators waved colorful flags decorated with peace symbols and chanted slogans like, "They're our brothers, they're our sisters. We support war resistors," and "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!"

Many people honked their car horns as they drove by. Not all the responses were positive, however. One man shouted, "You don't have the right to do this!" as he drove by.

Ben Fugate, an Army specialist who returned from Iraq two months ago, was one of several Fort Hood soldiers who came to the event. Wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan, "Got rights?" Fugate called the Iraq war "unjustified" and recently decided to speak out against it.

"They say they're there to build up Iraq, but all you see is destruction of Iraq," he said. "There are thousands of guys who are not coming home to their mom and dad. I lost three buddies in my platoon in Iraq and for what? Why lose more when we don't have to?"

Cindy Thomas, manager of Under the Hood Cafe and the protest's organizer, said she hopes the day's action will influence other military community members to speak out.

"We want to let the soldiers out there know that we're here. They have somewhere to come to," she said. "A lot of them don't know that they actually have rights. You're allowed to speak out. You're allowed to march."..LINK

James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI's Runaway Informants

The Texas 2: David McKay and Bradley Crowder.
The Texas 2: Intrigue, Provocation, and Betrayal

The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul.

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

The steel door of the United States federal criminal justice system has slammed shut on the cases of the so-called Texas 2. Amidst courtroom drama replete with extraordinary plot twists, the linked stories of Austin activist pals Bradley Neal Crowder and David Guy McKay interweave tumultuous boy-to-manhood coming-of-age themes with the bitter taste of betrayal. Far more disquieting, looming above the northland Minnesota stage, larger, darker questions emerge concerning the role of informers and agents provocateur within activist movements.

On Thursday, May 21, David McKay, a 22-year-old Austin resident accused of making and possessing Molotov cocktails at last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, was sentenced to four years in federal prison. One week earlier his friend and co-defendant, Brad Crowder, 23 and also from Austin, was sentenced to 24 months on firebomb possession charges.

Crowder and McKay were charged Sept. 3, 2008, after federal authorities, acting on information provided by Brandon Darby, a paid informer who had been highly visible in Austin progressive circles for several years, found eight Molotov cocktails hidden in the basement of a St. Paul apartment building where the two were staying during the convention.

From the outset, the cases against Crowder and McKay were clouded by Darby’s brazen revelation that he was on the FBI payroll. Given his history of bizarre and provocative behavior in Austin and New Orleans, many local activists immediately suspected Darby of manipulating the younger men into a criminal adventure and then busting them.

Indeed, when McKay’s case went to trial in late January, his attorney, Jeff DeGree, staged an aggressive defense around the entrapment argument. Darby’s past statements, such as his stated advocacy of using firebombs to “fight against gentrification,” provided DeGree with a provocateur “quote fest,” and as many as six jurors found Darby’s actions to be over the line. The trial ended in a hung jury.


McKay’s courtroom success was to be short-lived. From the outset, the McKay and Crowder defense teams had no unity of purpose and common courtroom strategy. The government exploited the disunity between the two friends and fellow defendants with great success.

While McKay’s lawyer was planning an aggressive case to put Darby and his FBI handlers on trial, Crowder’s attorney, federal public defender Andrew Mohring -- with what appears to be considerable support from Crowder’s family -- persuaded the young Austinite to accept a plea bargain on a single charge of possession.

Crowder’s deal was signed in early January, several weeks before McKay was scheduled to go on trial. The government, however, delayed Crowder’s sentencing until after the McKay case was resolved. Though prosecutors did not call Crowder to testify in the McKay trial, they still held his admission of guilt as a trump card that ultimately would become the key factor in McKay’s eventual decision to change his plea to guilty.

Earlier this month, as McKay’s second trial date approached, federal prosecutors announced that this time they would put Crowder on the stand to testify against his friend. They also told Crowder that if he did not co-operate, they would tack two years onto his sentence.

Crowder’s public defender argued that because Crowder had not yet been sentenced, he could not be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony. The government countered by filing a request to grant Crowder immunity, thus compelling his testimony.

In his plea bargain, Crowder had stipulated that, though Darby had become “very influential” in his life and that he looked up to him, the FBI informant had not participated in the firebomb plan “in a direct way.” On the other hand, McKay’s defense had claimed that Darby’s prints were all over the alleged plot. "Brandon Darby created the idea that we, as an affinity group, create multiple Molotov cocktails," McKay stated on the witness stand in his own defense.

The contradiction between the two defendants’ statements would continue to be a factor as McKay attempted to negotiate a plea bargain earlier this month. District Judge Michael Davis, the same judge who presided over the Crowder case and would pass sentence on both defendants, at first refused to accept McKay’s guilty plea because McKay, in his statement to the judge, did not withdraw his entrapment allegations by repudiating his earlier insistence that Darby unduly influenced his decision to make bombs. With a panel of prospective jurors waiting outside the courtroom, Judge Davis told McKay to think about it and come back the next day.

Among the things McKay and his attorney had to think about was the problem of withdrawing the entrapment argument without exposing McKay to new charges -- perjury -- for his court testimony.

McKay returned to court the next day and told Judge Davis that he may have misremembered who first brought up the idea of making and using Molotov cocktails. Satisfied that the entrapment defense had been taken off the table voluntarily by McKay, the judge accepted the guilty plea.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

Why did federal prosecutors push so hard to get guilty pleas from both defendants and to avoid a second trial for McKay? The simple answer: Brandon Darby. He had proved to be a liability in the first trial, and the defense had put together a long list of witnesses prepared to attest to his violent and provocateur-like behavior.

But there is a far-more-important backstory at play, and that is the question of the scope and credibility of the government’s massive infiltration of peace and environmental activist groups and the incredibility of the Justice Department’s use of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws against American political dissidents.

The government likes its moles to burrow in deep and avoid the light. Darby turned out to be more moth than mole -- he has a penchant for gravitating toward the spotlight. Another key RNC informant, Andrew (Panda) Darst, also wandered too close to the flame.

In a case unrelated to the Texas 2, 23-year-old Matthew Bradley DePalma of Flint, MI, in early March quietly pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 months in prison on the charge of possessing Molotov cocktails. The case against DePalma began at a CrimeThinc Convergence in Wisconsin in July 2008 when an FBI informant first met DePalma and reported that DePalma had talked about traveling to the RNC to “make some bombs” and “blow shit up.”

The informant met up with DePalma in Minneapolis in mid-August and helped him procure bomb-making materials and how-to manuals, let him use his residence to manufacture as many as five firebombs, and even drove DePalma to a remote location to test the devices. That FBI informant was Andy Panda Darst.

In addition, Darst is a key government witness in the high-profile case of the RNC 8, Minneapolis area members of the RNC Welcoming Committee who in early September 2008 were indicted on four felony conspiracy and terrorism charges under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.

Just two weeks before the McKay trial, Darst seriously damaged his value as a creditable witness when he broke down a door and assaulted several people in a house where his wife had sought refuge after a domestic dispute. He was arrested and charged with burglary and assault. Later he was found guilty of felony burglary and assault and on May 18 was sentenced to 180 days in the workhouse with 160 days set aside.

Panda was on the government’s witness list for the McKay trial, but the prosecution did not put him on the stand. The damage to Darst’s credibility as a witness is also believed to have influenced county prosecutor (and Minnesota Democrat gubernatorial candidate) Susan Gaertner’s decision to drop the two terrorism charges against the eight Minneapolis activists -- conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property in furtherance of terrorism. All eight still face felony charges of conspiracy to commit riot and conspiracy to commit criminal damage to property.

Seven of the RNC 8 marched behind a banner reading "Our Common Treasury. Dig It!" at the Minneapolis May Day parade.
The overarching story here is the blatant size of the federal government’s strategic operational use of informants and undercover agents against American citizens protesting eight years of Republican misrule in the streets of St. Paul. Gone are the secret COINTELPRO operatives lurking in the shadows in the years before the Church Committee’s voluminous 1975-76 exposé of illegal domestic spying conducted by the FBI, CIA, NSA, Department of Defense, and intelligence services within the military against American citizens. Since the fear-mongered passage of the USA-PATRIOT Act in 2001 and the Bush-Cheney program to extend executive privilege beyond any and all constraints inconveniently imposed by rule of law, domestic spying is no longer illegal. No need to hide in the dark.

The Church Committee’s findings did not simply linger on the extent of the spying -- for example, 215,000 pieces of mail secretly opened by the FBI and CIA before 1973 -- or the hundreds of thousands of Americans on various “watch lists.” Far more revealing -- and appalling -- were the excesses. Near the top of that list stands the 1969 murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in his bed after he had been drugged by a police informant. Though years later details of a conspiracy to assassinate the charismatic young Panther implicated the FBI, the Illinois State's Attorney's Office tactical unit, and the Chicago Police, no one has been brought to justice.

Two recent studies -- the Center for Democracy and Technology’s2002 Analysis of New FBI Guidelines and a 2005 Justice Department Inspector General Report -- suggest that relaxed investigative ground rules and failure to properly oversee the activities of confidential informants once again may be leading to investigative excesses and dismantling of the Bill of Rights.

Eric Lichtblau reported in the May 6, 2009, New York Times that the FBI presently maintains a consolidated watch list of 400,000 “terrorism suspects.” According to Lichtblau, the DOJ inspector general discovered in a recent statistical sampling study that at least 24,000 people were incorrectly kept on the terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated and sometimes irrelevant information. Because of the limited scope of the study, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. Lichtblau continues:

People with names similar to actual terrorists have complained that it can take months to be removed from the list, and civil liberties advocates charge that antiwar protesters, Muslim activists and others have been listed for political reasons.

The CDT study of former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s 2002 revision of FBI investigative guidelines reached the following conclusions:

• The changes mean that the FBI, which has failed to manage the ocean of information it already collects, will be gathering yet more information in situations completely unconnected to any suspicion of criminal conduct, and will be continuing for longer periods of time investigations that are producing nothing.


• The expanded surveillance and use of data mining could be written off as just a waste of money, but for two paramount problems: the changes are likely to make the FBI less efficient in preventing terrorism, by diverting resources down rat-holes of fruitless investigations; and the DOJ has proven its determination since September 11 to arrest people based on the kinds of innocent coincidences that data mining may flag and hold them in jail even after concluding that they were unrelated to any terrorism and in some cases (the material witnesses) had committed no legal violation at all.


• The FBI was never prohibited from surfing the Internet or using commercial data mining services -- the FBI has long been a major customer of many private information systems. But in the past, searches of databases had to be related to some investigation. The threshold was very low -- under the old guidelines, the FBI could maintain a preliminary inquiry for 90 days using data mining, undercover operations, photo surveillance, informants, etc, whenever it had "information or an allegation whose responsible handling required some further scrutiny." In fact, the FBI could open preliminary inquiries solely for the purpose of data mining. But it had to be looking for some criminal conduct. The new changes allow the data mining technique -- who has changed apartments three times in the past two years? who has been making a lot of international phone calls? -- as the basis for generating the suspicion of criminal conduct in the first place.


• The FBI was never prohibited in the past from going to mosques, political rallies and other “public” places, to observe and record what was said, but, again, in the past it had to be guided by the criminal nexus -- in deciding what mosques to go to and what political meetings to record, it had to have some reason to believe that terrorism might be discussed. Under the new guidelines, even before opening a preliminary inquiry, the FBI can go to mosques and political meetings. How will it decide which ones to go to? -- we fear it will be on the basis of politics.


• The DOJ is using the terrorism crisis as a cover for a range of changes, some of which have nothing to do with terrorism.


The online surfing provisions, for example, relate not only to terrorism cases, but to all other investigations -- drugs, white collar crime, public corruption, and copyright infringement. Other changes affect how the FBI conducts investigations under RICO, the racketeering and organized crime law, allowing the FBI to use the heavy weaponry of RICO (forfeiture, enhanced penalties) against crimes that are not committed for monetary gain.

Regarding the FBI’s handling of its confidential informants, the DOJ inspector general found that in nearly nine out every 10 cases reviewed, bureau guidelines were violated in ways that risked compromising investigations.

While the guidelines sometimes permit informants such as drug dealers or gang members to commit crimes in order to further an investigation, the review found that F.B.I. agents allowed criminal informants to engage in criminal activities without getting needed approval from supervisors or lawyers for such operations, failed to report unauthorized illegal activity, or approved such illegal activity only retroactively.

Beyond the problems in managing confidential informants, the inspector general's review looked at the effect of a number of changes ordered by Mr. Ashcroft in his 2002 revamping of the bureau's investigative guidelines. According to The New York Times, “The new guidelines relaxed restrictions put in place in the 1970s as a result of F.B.I. abuses in the monitoring of political dissidents.”

Critics charged last year that the F.B.I. had abused its expanded powers by monitoring, interviewing and sometimes subpoenaing antiwar protesters and political protesters in advance of the political conventions last summer. The inspector general's office disclosed in its report Monday that it was conducting a separate investigation to determine whether the F.B.I. interrogations of protesters were in fact improper.

The 1990 Judi Bari-Darryl Cherney case may have been an early warning signal that the FBI had found an opportunity to recommission its Vietnam-era bag of dirty tricks. After she almost died when a motion-triggered pipe bomb wrapped with nails exploded under her car seat, Earth First activist Bari and her companion Darryl Cherney were charged by the FBI with knowingly transporting the bomb as part of an eco-terrorism plot.

Before Bari’s death in 1997, Bari and Cherney launched an aggressive lawsuit against the bureau and local police and uncovered evidence of collusion between the FBI and the lumber industry to blame the victims and cover up investigative leads that might have linked the bomber to an FBI bomb school run by the agency’s top expert -- the very “expert” who insisted that forensic evidence proved that the environmental activists had placed the device behind the drivers seat to transport it to their intended target.

"Anna" -- aka: Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani.
The plot thickened in 2007 when the FBI persuaded a 17-year-old Florida college student identified as “Anna” in court documents (also known in activist circles as Anna Davies, Anna Davidson, and Grai Damiani) to spend four years undercover -- apparently often literally so -- building a case against Earth Liberation Front member Eric McDavid on charges of conspiring to damage and destroy property, including government facilities, by means of fire and explosives.

The subsequent trial produced a sordid tale of sexual manipulation and obsession as “Anna” provided McDavid and the two other members of the group with money to buy materials, transportation, and a remote cabin -- fully equipped with audio and video surveillance equipment -- in which to work. According to McDavid’s attorney, Mark Reichel, Anna was always pushing McDavid and the two other members of the group to do something criminal, taught them how to make the bombs, supervised their activities, and repeatedly threatened to leave them if they didn't start doing "something." Friends of the ELF activist say that “Anna” used the promise of sex to manipulate and eventually snare McDavid into a bomb plot concocted and financed by her handlers at the Department of Justice.

After the two co-defendants were pressured into testifying against McDavid, he was found guilty and sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.

In the past few days news channels have been abuzz with the story of the Bronx terrorist bomb plot, four dead-enders with histories of drug addiction, mental illness, and a petty crime (such as purse-snatching) as well as big plans to blow up a New York City synagogue and shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles.

Noted the Los Angeles Times: “Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11. ‘It's hard to envision a more chilling plot,’ Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as ‘eager to bring death to Jews.’"

To which Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation on May 23, retorts:
“Actually, it's hard to imagine a stupider, less competent, and less important plot. The four losers were ensnared by a creepy FBI agent who hung around the mosque in upstate New York until he found what he was looking for.”

Lurking in the shadows of this sensationalized story is another FBI confidential informant, a man arrested for identity theft in 2002 and given five years probation on the condition that he become an FBI informer.

According to Michael Wilson’s May 21 report in the New York Times, the mole began to show up at a mosque in Newburgh, NY, in 2007, telling prospective targets that he was a recruiter for Jaish-e-Mohammed (the Army of Mohammed), an Islamic mujahadeenorganization based in Pakistan. The iman of the Newburgh mosque said that one of his congregants was offered a substantial amount of money to join the informant’s terrorist “team.”

As Dreyfuss emphatically notes:

So a creepy thug buttonholes people at a mosque, foaming at the mouth about violence and jihad? This is law enforcement? Preying on these losers, the "confidential informant" orchestrated the acquisition of a disabled Stinger missile to shoot down military planes and cooked up a wild scheme about attacking a Jewish center in the Bronx.

The informant whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted. To ensure that it made headlines, the creepy informant claimed to be representing a Pakistani extremist group, Jaish-e Muhammad, a bona fide terrorist organization. He wasn't, of course. …

The headlines reinforce the very fear that Dick Cheney is trying to stir up. The story strengthens the narrative that the "homeland" is under attack. It's not.

Is the Bill of Rights under attack? It would seem so in Minnesota where 34 RNC protest cases have come to trial with one conviction.

Correction: zero convictions.

On May 19 a street medic was convicted of public assembly without a permit, but the trial judge himself, in an extraordinary move, overturned the verdict, and the prosecutor has declined to retry the case.

Therefore the murky firebomb conspiracy pleas of DePalma, Crowder, and McKay are the only prosecutorial “successes” to date. Indeed, after the McKay sentence was handed down, the feds must have heaved a collective sigh of relief. Their improperly supervised, out-of-control informants provided just enough to intimidate three young men, two of whom were represented by public defenders, into copping pleas and saving the Justice Department from the sorry spectacle of more public trials -- and more revelations about how FBI snitches play fast and loose with the rule of law.

Pakistani Refugee Crisis Worsening

An internally displaced man holds up an identity card as he waits in line for relief supplies at a UNHCR distribution point at a makeshift camp in Mardan. Photo: Farooq Naeem.
Nearly 2.4 million displaced: UN


ISLAMABAD - Nearly 2.4 million people have registered with provincial authorities after fleeing an anti-Taliban military offensive this month in northwest Pakistan, the UN and government officials said Monday, AFP reports.

Ariane Rummery, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said they had been given the figure by the North West Frontier Province authorities and expected the number to fluctuate after cross checks are carried out in the coming days.

‘In the new influx, 2.38 million people have been registered,’ she said. ‘That’s the new influx registered from May two from Swat, Lower Dir and Buner.’

Pakistan’s security forces launched their onslaught against Taliban fighters in the districts of Lower Dir on April 26, Buner on April 28 and Swat on May 8, sending terrified civilians fleeing their homes.

Most of the displaced are staying with friends and relatives, while others are crammed into government-run camps.

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters the government was doing all it could to care for the massive number of uprooted people.

‘Around 2.3 million people have been displaced but this number is not final,’ he said.

The newly-displaced join more than 550,000 people who fled similar battles last year and rights groups have warned that it is Pakistan’s biggest movement of people since partition from India in 1947...LINK

El Salvador : President-Elect Funes Inherits Major Problems

Millennium Development Objectives:

President Saca leaves President-elect Fumes with some serious obstacles in the areas of poverty, health, education and equality

El Salvador is only close to achieving two of 12 Millennium Development Objectives that were projected for 2015, a 98 page document released May 21 disclosed.

Concerning the goal of reducing of poverty, outgoing President Elías Antonio Saca’s administration inherited in 2004 a lowering of the percentage of people in absolute poverty to below 14.1%. However he admitted in a press conference on May 28, that it is a “national disgrace” that over 800,000 Salvadorans remain in absolute poverty.

The document showed that the current administration failed to improve on most of the indices of poverty in the country, and on those that were improved on, the improvement was the result of previous administrations. Even members of President Saca’s own ARENA (considered to be the right-wing party) criticized President Saca as having failed to maintain the social image and policies of the ARENA party.

Although there has been a decrease in the percentage of the population earning less than $1 a day, general poverty increased from 30.7% in2006 to 34.6% in 2007, and in rural areas from 35.8% to 43.8% -- and sources expect that the effects of the world-wide economic crisis may raise the figures as much as 7% when reports for 2008 are in.

When President Mauricia Funes is inaugurated on June 1, he will receive a record high deficit of over a billion dollars, as well as a 48% decrease in taxes and fees collected, a decrease of 14% in the money sent from Salvadorans abroad to their families, and so little advances in the areas which impact the Millennium Objectives, that reaching them by 2015 seems farther away than ever.

Education and Equality

As far as the Objective’s goals for universal primary education, there have been increases in the number of children entering primary schools, but the goal of 100% of students who enter first grade completing fifth grade, classified as “probable” in 2004, is downgraded to “difficult to achieve” in the 2009 report. Under the objective of promoting equality among the sexes and women’s autonomy, the goals of equal numbers of boys and girls receiving primary education has been over 100% completed (because there are more girls in the population than boys), but the goal of raising the proportion of women working in non-agricultural sectors to 50% has gone from “very likely” in 2004 to “difficult to achieve” in 2009.

Health

In regard to infant and child mortality, El Salvador is on track to reach its 2015 goals of 17 per 1,000 deaths of children five and under, and 14 per 1,000 of infant mortality, and is also succeeding in vaccinating all children against measles. But the predicted rise in general poverty will likely decelerate the rates of improvement in these areas, and currently the health sector is in crisis -- so that even in cities where improvement in mortality indices was most demonstrated, care has decreased in both quality and quantity. As always, medical services are less available in the rural area. Due to different ways of reporting statistics, maternal mortality cannot be compared in the 2004-2009 period.

In the area of reducing infectious diseases including malaria and AIDS, even the hope of gaining a wide understanding of AIDS risks among ages 15-24 by 2015 is categorized as “difficult to achieve,” while reducing the numbers of cases of AIDs appears impossible.

As far as potable drinking water and sanitation services, the goals are of 80.5% and 89% coverage in 2015, and progress toward these goals is adequate, but the availability of potable water varies with the season, and during dry seasons, water is scarce and expensive. Some of the public water systems have been turned over to private companies, under the neo-conservative policies of past ARENA administrations. While in some cases this has led to an increase in investments in infrastructure in urbanized markets, the cost of water has risen significantly wherever water is supplied by for-profit companies.

The public water program, ANDA, has received large government subsidies, but still operates at a loss, leading its director to call for more public education about conservation. In some slum neighborhoods, water for a household’s drinking, cooking and bathing can cost as much as $1 a day -- when clothing has to be washed, costs are much higher, or residents walk to a (probably polluted) river or stream to wash.

Additionally the goal of reducing hunger by 50% was also classified as “difficult to achieve.”

Concerns that social spending may fail to sustain the gains toward these objectives were voiced by economist Juan Héctor Vidal: “El Salvador has the lowest rate of social spending in Latin America. Even not taking this into account, the spending is poorly administered, and [these factors] may reverse some of the gains we have achieved.”

[Texan Val Liveoak is a nonviolent activist, currently living in El Salvador and San Antonio. She coordinates Peacebuilding en las Americas, the Latin American Initiative of Friends Peace Teams that also has programs in the African Great Lakes region and in Indonesia.]...LINK

Food Democracy Now: Advocates for Sustainable Farming Practices

Dave Murphy, left, director of Food Democracy Now, talks with Paul Willis, manager of Niman Ranch Pork Co., and Lisa Stokke, assistant director of Food Democracy Now. All are founders of the nonprofit organization, which was started at a time when more consumers began to buy organic and locally grown foods. Photo: Andrea Melendez/The Register.
Iowan creates nonprofit for food politics
By Gunnar Olson / May 25, 2009

Iowan Dave Murphy quickly has become a national voice for the sustainable food movement since he petitioned the Obama transition team on appointments to the USDA.

Not a so-called "foodie," the 40-year-old is a history buff with a master's in creative writing from Columbia University in New York City. He was paying off student loans working as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Labor in 2006 when he returned home to Iowa to help his sister successfully fend off a Minnesota company's attempt to build a hog confinement next to the family farm. He thought he would stay a few months.

Today, advocating for food democracy is the full-time job for the Clear Lake man, with the bulk of his time split between his nonprofit start-up, Food Democracy Now, and consulting businesses on sustainable practices.

His rapid ascent into food politics in the last three years is a product of being in the right place at the right time - a politically connected state as the food movement grows and a receptive ear lands in the White House - and having the savvy to make something of it.

"This was the perfect opportunity," Murphy said.

Author and journalist Michael Pollan, whose book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a favorite read among advocates of sustainable farming, said Murphy is emerging as a leader.

Pollan credited the petition by Murphy and allies with having an impact on USDA staffing choices.

"The fact that the petition originated in Iowa, and not New York City or Berkeley, Calif., made it all the more powerful," Pollan said.

Environmentally safe

Shortly after Obama's election, Murphy and other sustainable food advocates started Food Democracy Now, a nonprofit that pushes for farming practices that are socially, environmentally and economically responsible.

They launched an online petition in December and within months gathered nearly 100,000 signatures in support of 12 candidates for undersecretary appointments in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

By February, they presented the first 10,000 signatures in person to newly appointed Agriculture Secretary and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.

The next day one of the group's suggestions - Kathleen Merrigan - was appointed to a deputy secretary job. A second suggested name, Iowa native Doug O'Brien, was named Merrigan's chief of staff.

A third suggested appointee, Neil Hamilton, who heads Drake University's Agricultural Law Center, was named an informal adviser.

The quick success of Food Democracy Now wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago, said Matt Russell of Drake's Agricultural Law Center in Des Moines.

He said the difference has been the Internet's power to organize people and the growing number of mainstream Americans who are "eating on a continuum."

People increasingly want food they can't grow in their backyards or find in the grocery store, he said, so they shop farmers markets and buy directly from local farmers via "CSAs," or community-supported agriculture.

While these farmers have a market for their food, Russell said, they have yet to find a voice in Washington, D.C., to match the political machine of industrial agriculture.

This is the role Murphy is trying to fill, and he comes armed with facts. For example, he pointed to a survey from the Organic Trade Association that showed that the U.S. sales of organic food grew nearly 16 percent between 2007 and 2008 to reach $22.9 billion. Organic foods now account for about 3.5 percent of all U.S. food sales.

For Murphy, sustainable farming is about more than the food.

He sees it as returning to a model of production that is better for the environment and one in which farmers can start without taking on deep debt to finance heavy equipment.

He said the agricultural policies today are stacked against farmers of small- to mid-sized farms in favor of larger operations.

Help all sizes of farms

Murphy stressed that he isn't against large farm operations. He said sustainable practices can help farms of all sizes.

But Murphy does believe that the playing field ought to be leveled, for the benefit not just for smaller farms but for rural areas in general.

"That's the best way to improve rural economies," he said. "The more farmers there are on the land, the better it is for rural economies."

Author Pollan said the food movement and its leaders today are where the environmental movement was on the first Earth Day in 1970: still being introduced to the country.

"It hasn't coalesced yet, and it isn't clear which national group will take the lead, if any," Pollan said. "It could be Dave's."..LINK