USGAO -Offshoring:
U.S. Semiconductor and Software Industries
Increasingly Produce in China and India. GAO-06-423, September 7.
At:
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-423
At:
Highlights – http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06423high.pdf
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FAA-Imposed Labor Day Contract Means Less Sleep for Air Traffic Controllers
The Bush Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) used the Labor Day weekend to unilaterally impose work rules on its air traffic controllers—rules that air traffic controllers say will reduce passenger safety.
The move was a “brazen, arrogant trampling of the collective bargaining process,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) President Pat Forrey says:
It’s like getting fired on Christmas. It’s the worst, punch-in-the-gut blow to the morale of this workforce imaginable. But our position is very simple: We do not consider the imposed work rules to be valid because they were not negotiated and have not been ratified by the NATCA membership.
Some of the new rules pose real and potentially dangerous consequences for the safety of airline passengers and crews, NATCA says. For example:
The new rules cut pay for current and future traffic controllers by as much as 30 percent, reduce pensions and, according to some aviation experts, could prompt more than 4,000 of the current 14,000 controller workforce to retire, exacerbating an already critical controller shortage.
Under the imposed rules, controllers who do not feel they have gotten enough rest before a shift would be forced to work anyway. Controllers also can no longer take a break after two hours on the job, a longstanding practice that controllers say was a major way to fight fatigue.
Controller fatigue may have contributed to the fatal Comair crash in Lexington, Ky., last month. The lone air traffic controller on duty had only nine hours between two work shifts—and had only two hours sleep before going back on duty, according to the Associated Press.
With control towers already short of staff, controllers are forced to work overtime to ensure air travel is safe. The FAA claims the workers make enough money to be able to absorb a 30 percent pay cut. However, a big factor in controllers’ pay is forced overtime. On average, in some locations, controllers can be assigned 52 overtime shifts per year just to keep up with the huge number of planes in the air, NATCA says.
…
Complete article at:
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After being pulled from the internets , ABC’s “The Path to 9/11″ blog reopens. With “even further clarification” of why they are going to lie to you
At:
http://blogs.abc.com/thepathto911/2006/09/even_futher_cla.html
From: Poacnewsletter
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Media reports fail to probe 9-11 Commission chairman Kean’s role with ABC’s factually flawed Path to 9/11 miniseries
New York Times and Associated Press reports about ABC’s miniseries The Path to 9/11 described former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, chairman of the 9-11 Commission, as a “senior consultant” for the film. But while both articles noted that Kean has defended the miniseries from those who have criticized its reported falsehoods, neither addressed whether Kean has been paid in his role as a consultant and promoter of the film.
Read more
http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609070007?src=other
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9/11 Miniseries Is Bunk
Former ambassador to Yemen says ABC traded fact for drama in portraying events after the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole.
By Barbara Bodine, BARBARA BODINE was U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997-2001. She is a visiting scholar at MIT’s Center for International Studies.
September 8, 2006
ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans — and the world — froze, saddened and angry. Five years later, we stop to remember those we lost and those who have sacrificed in our defense since, and to reflect on what we must learn. History will define us not by the events of that day but by who we choose to become as a result.
Regrettably, ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of history is called for. The 9/11 commission report tells the story with clear-eyed honesty, precision and studious impartiality. The ABC drama does not. The 9/11 commission spent hours interviewing virtually everyone connected not just with the events of that day but those involved in counter-terrorism over 25 years — Republican as well as Democrat. ABC did not.
Many senior officials from President Clinton’s administration, along with key members of the 9/11 commission, have publicly challenged the distortions and inaccuracies of “The Path to 9/11.” From the part of the story I know firsthand, ABC has done the American people a disservice. Drama may be more profitable than reality, but at what cost to our national history?
One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of New York, John O’Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to that country. According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador.
I am not here to either defend or attack O’Neill. He was a complex man. But what happened after Al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole was a complex story. Within hours, our embassy in Sana, Yemen, received support from Washington, U.S. military commands in the region and neighboring U.S. embassies. Within days, our presence in Aden went from zero to more than 300 people from the Navy, Marines, the intelligence community, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the State Department and my embassy. We had a clear and common goal: honor those killed by finding those guilty.
…
Complete article at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-bodine8sep08,0,7413678.story?track=tothtml
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Indications add up to government conspiracy
Friday, September 8, 2006
JAMES MORGANTE
GUEST COLUMNIST
An Aug. 8 Seattle P-I editorial asked, “Where are the facts? Where is the evidence?” about government complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
The case for complicity begins with motive and benefit. In his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard,” Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that the key to global dominance in the 21st century lies in control of Central Asian oil and gas reserves. Establishing a U.S. presence there would require the kind of military deployment that only “a direct external threat” could justify.
And in a 2000 paper titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” Project for a New American Century, whose founding members were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, argued for vast increases in military spending to assure American global dominance. Such a process, PNAC said, would take time absent “a catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.” Military deployment into Central Asia followed 9/11, as well as their desired increases in military spending.
The symmetry between the 9/11 attacks and U.S. policy goals is but the backdrop to the case for government complicity. The picture becomes clearer through considering the following:
Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, the head of the Pakistani intelligence service, was in Washington when the attacks occurred, conferring with government officials. The Indian press subsequently implicated him in wiring $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker. When the story broke, he was pressured into retirement at U.S. insistence. His link to the attacks was never pursued.
Two FBI agents approached attorney David Schippers with specific foreknowledge about the attacks. His repeated calls to Attorney General John Ashcroft were never returned. An article in New American on March 11, 2002, corroborated the agents’ story. They claimed that knowledge of the plot was widespread within the FBI for months before 9/11.
The air defense system breakdown on the day of Sept. 11 was unprecedented. Well-practiced protocols for dealing with suspected hijackings failed to function for an astonishing 90 minutes. The little-known existence of “coincidental” military war games has since been exposed, which undoubtedly caused confusion. And now, the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission claim (in a new book, “Without Precedent”) that the military was less than completely honest.
The collapse of steel-frame buildings — such as the World Trade Center Towers — due to fire is unprecedented. The collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, is especially inexplicable. Its collapse late in the afternoon of Sept. 11 exhibited 10 specific features of a controlled demolition, as did the collapse of the Twin Towers. More important, numerous eyewitnesses attest to hearing multiple explosions at the time. And, Steven Jones, a professor at Brigham Young University, discovered Thermate, an incendiary compound, in two molten steel samples taken from the site.
…
Complete article at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/284273_conspire08.html
James Morgante is with Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, Seattle (www.mujca.com). Other contributors were Rebecca Em Campbell, Deborah Crowe, Connie Eichenlaub and Roger Herbst, all of the Seattle 9/11 Visibility Project; and Richard Curtis, Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
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#6 of 7 Facts You Might Not Know about the Iraq War
By Michael Schwartz
With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments — a few enduring, but seldom commented upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American occupation and Iraqi society.
6. There Is a Growing Resistance Movement in the Shia Areas of Iraq
Lately, the pattern of violence established in largely Sunni areas of Iraq has begun to spread to largely Shia cities, which had previously been insulated from the periodic devastation of American pacification attempts. This ended with growing Bush administration anxiety about economic, religious, and militia connections between local Shia governments and Iran, and with the growing power of the anti-American Sadrist movement, which had already fought two fierce battles with the U.S. in Najaf in 2004 and a number of times since then in Sadr City.
Symptomatic of this change is the increasing violence in Basra, the urban oil hub at the southern tip of the country, whose local government has long been dominated by various fundamentalist Shia political groups with strong ties to Iran. When the British military began a campaign to undermine the fundamentalists’ control of the police force there, two British military operatives were arrested, triggering a battle between British soldiers (supported by the Shia leadership of the Iraqi central government) and the local police (supported by local Shia leaders). This confrontation initiated a series of armed confrontations among the various contenders for power in Basra.
Similar confrontations have occurred in other localities, including Karbala, Najaf, Sadr City, and Maysan province. So far no general offensive to recapture the any of these areas has been attempted, but Britain has recently been concentrating its troops outside Basra.
If the occupation decides to use military means to bring the Shia cities back into anything like an American orbit, full-scale battles may be looming in the near future that could begin to replicate the fighting in Sunni areas, including the use of IEDs, so far only sporadically employed in the south. If you think American (and British) troops are overextended now, dealing with internecine warfare and a minority Sunni insurgency, just imagine what a real Shiite insurgency would mean.
Complete article at:
Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones.com, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net .
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Views of Bush Stance on Detainees, Torture and War
MARJORIE COHN, libertad48@san.rr.com, http://nlg.org
Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, Cohn said: “Today, Bush criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld because it will put a crimp in the CIA’s interrogation program. The Court declared that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions protects all prisoners in U.S. custody. Our U.S. War Crimes Act defines violations of Common Article 3 as war crimes. Since the Bush administration has violated Common Article 3, officials could become defendants in war crimes prosecutions. Bush is trying to prevent this by asking Congress to water down our obligations under the Geneva Conventions.”
From: Institute for Public Accuracy
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Borowitz Report – Secret Prison Shocker
Bush Transfers Detainees From CIA to DMV
Will Wait on Line Until They Talk, President Says
President George W. Bush stunned the international human rights community today by announcing that he would transfer a dozen detainees being held in secret CIA prisons to the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York City.
While rumors have abounded that the United States was contemplating using the interminable waiting times at the DMV to force terror suspects to talk, Mr. Bush’s Rose Garden announcement was the first public acknowledgement of the plan.
“Effective tomorrow, these detainees will be forced to wait on long lines and fill out form after form for hours on end,” Mr. Bush told reporters. “If that does not make these evildoers talk, nothing will.”
Explaining the President’s plan, White House spokesman Tony Snow said that each terror suspect would be forced to apply for new drivers’ licenses, vehicle registrations and license plates “until they start singing like canaries.”
But hours after the President’s plan was announced, human rights groups around the world cried foul, claiming that detaining suspects at the DMV, especially the one in New York, was tantamount to torture.
“It is in our opinion that being forced to spend more than one hour at the DMV could be in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions,” said Carol Foyler of Amnesty International.
At the White House, Mr. Snow said that the President had other options for making detainees talk, including making them take turns as White House press spokesman.
“No one lasts in this job for long without snapping,” Mr. Snow said.
Elsewhere, photos in Vanity Fair reveal that Suri Cruise has her mother’s eyes and her father’s insatiable thirst for publicity.
http://www.borowitzreport.com/
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three to see
Mr. Fish (Dwayne Booth): you’re either with us or just like us
http://www.cagle.com/working/060901/booth.jpg
Mike Lane: make a good impression
http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/060906/lane.gif
Jeff Danziger: Islamofascism, Rumsfeld, Bush, Draft
http://danzigercartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/dancart2905.jpg
