Critical reading

By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Jun 10, 2010 - While U.S. officials insist they are making progress in reversing the momentum built up by the Taliban insurgency over the last several years, the latest news from Afghanistan suggests the opposite may be closer to the truth.

Even senior military officials are conceding privately that their much-touted new counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold and build" in contested areas of the Pashtun southern and eastern parts of the country are not working out as planned despite the "surge" of some 20,000 additional U.S. troops over the past six months.

Casualties among the nearly 130,000 U.S. and other NATO troops now deployed in Afghanistan are also mounting quickly.

Four U.S. troops were killed Wednesday when Taliban fire brought down their helicopter in the southern province of Helmand, the scene of a major U.S. offensive centred on the strategic farming region of Marja over the past several months.

That brought the death toll of NATO soldiers just this week to 23, including 10 killed in various attacks around the country on Monday, the deadliest day for NATO forces in two years.

June 10, 2010

By KEITH BRADSHER

ZHONGSHAN, China — Striking workers at a Honda auto parts plant here are demanding the right to form their own labor union, something seldom allowed in China, and are preparing for a protest march on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, other scattered strikes have begun to ripple into Chinese provinces previously untouched by the labor unrest.

A near doubling of wages is the primary goal of the approximately 1,700 Honda workers on strike here in this southeastern China city, at the third Honda auto parts factory to face a work stoppage in the last two weeks. But this latest strike, which started Wednesday morning, has taken on political dimensions.

The strikers here have developed a sophisticated, democratic organization, in effect electing shop stewards to represent them in collective bargaining with management. They are also demanding the right to form a trade union separate from the government-controlled national federation of trade unions, which has long focused on maintaining labor peace for foreign investors.

Posted on Tue, Jun. 08, 2010

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@ElNuevoHerald.com

Immigrant workers reduce job opportunities for native-born workers in the short run, but improve the economy after several years, thus making it easier for everybody to be hired, according to a study released Monday.

“Immigration may slightly reduce native employment and average income at first,” according to the 26-page report The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion. “In the long run, immigrants do not reduce native employment rates, but they do increase productivity and hence average income.”

The report, issued by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, based its conclusions on an analysis of U.S. Census data from 1960 to 2008. To assess long-term effects, the report's author looked at 48 years of state population and employment data. For the short term, they analyzed population surveys since 1994.

The report is one of the latest efforts by groups favoring immigration reform to show that foreign nationals in the U.S. work force help advance national interests.

Jun 9, 2010

By Pepe Escobar

Why would Israel, in a deliberate and methodical operation planned over a week in advance - according to statements by senior Israeli military commanders made in Hebrew-language media days before the attack - target an unarmed ship on a humanitarian mission flying the flag of Comoros? (Unlike Turkey, Comoros is a party of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction over war crimes committed on vessels of member states.)

Why would Israeli commandos shoot nine unarmed activists dead with nine millimeter bullets at close range, between the eyes, in the top of the head, in the back of the head, in the chest, in the back, and in the legs - including an American citizen? (The final death toll may be 15, as six activists are still missing; Israeli army radio reported 16 dead early last Monday when the attack took place on the Mavi Marmara, a part of the Free Gaza flotilla.)

How could Israel think it would get away with it by censoring video and photos - and then getting away with it all over again by refusing an international, independent commission to investigate the incident and subsequent cover-up?

By Stephen Zunes, June 7, 2010

The offensive by the Congressional Democratic leadership against the Gaza humanitarian aid flotilla has now moved beyond just rhetorical support for the Israeli attack on the unarmed convoy. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade, has called upon U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute U.S. citizens who were involved or on board the flotilla.

Because the Gaza Strip is currently ruled by Hamas, according to Sherman, any humanitarian aid to the people of that territory is “clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization,” which is prosecutable under the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Despite the active support of the humanitarian aid effort by a number of pacifist organizations in the United States and Europe, Sherman insists that the organizers of the flotilla have “clear terrorist ties,” dismissing critical analysis of such charges as part of the ideological agenda of “the liberal media.”

By: Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman
June 6, 2010 07:03 PM EDT

Spurred by state budget crunches and an angry public mood, Republican and some Democratic leaders are focusing with increasing intensity on public workers and the unions that represent them, casting them as overpaid obstacles to good government and demanding cuts in their often-generous benefits.

Unlike past battles over the high cost of labor, this time pitched battles over wages and pensions are being waged from Sacramento to Springfield to New York City and the conflict is marked by its bipartisan tone, with public employee unions emerging as an intransigent public enemy number one in cities and state capitals across the country.

They're the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants.

By Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH, Jun 7, 2010 - Although Israel successfully controlled news of its deadly commando raid on the Free Gaza (FG) flotilla during the first crucial 48 hours of media coverage, emerging evidence from witnesses and survivors is challenging the Israeli government's version of events.

These include claims of medical treatment being withheld; beatings and abuse of passengers who never resisted; the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) doctoring audio and selectively editing videos.

Furthermore, allegations of a possible shoot-to-kill policy, amidst autopsies revealing repeated gun shots to the heads of the victims, are also part of an emerging pattern.

One of the first targets of Israeli commandos raiding the FG flotilla was the international media. Photographers were attacked, and journalists had their video, audio and other communications equipment confiscated. The equipment has still not been returned.

"It was clear that Israel wanted to control the media coverage of the situation from the very beginning," Huwaida Arraf, FG’s chairwoman, told IPS.

By Jesse Drucker - May 13, 2010

Tyler Hurst swiped his debit card at a Walgreens pharmacy in central Phoenix and kicked off an international odyssey of corporate tax avoidance.

Hurst went home with an amber bottle of Lexapro, the world’s third-best selling antidepressant. The profits from his $99 purchase began a 9,400-mile journey that would lead across the Atlantic Ocean and more than halfway back again, to a grassy industrial park in Dublin, a glass skyscraper in Amsterdam and a law office in Bermuda surrounded by palm trees.

While Forest Laboratories Inc., the medicine’s maker, sells Lexapro only in the U.S., the voyage ensures most of its profits aren’t taxed there -- and they face little tax anywhere else. Forest cut its U.S. tax bill by more than a third last year with a technique known as transfer pricing, a method that carves an estimated $60 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury as it combines tax planning and alchemy. (See an interactive graphic on Forest’s tax strategy here.)

The Big Money Behind Top Lawmakers

By Josh Israel and Aaron Mehta | June 07, 2010

California Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh once famously said of moneyed political interests: “If you can't take their money, drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women, and vote against them, you don't belong here.” In other words, giving cash to politicians is no guarantee they’ll carry your water. But campaign contributions to elected officials don’t hurt either. The links between money and votes is an endlessly debated subject in official Washington. Cynics say campaign cash often buys support. Others claim that examining who opened their wallets most for a politician is simply an indication of who those backers think best advocates their agenda. Either way, though, following the money is often illuminating.

By CURT ANDERSON (AP) – 6 hours ago

MIAMI — More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.

Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean — and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year. The AP reviewed 2008 disclosure forms, the most recent available.

Paul Krugman

June 6, 2010, 3:00 am

The deficit hawks have taken over the G20:

“Those countries with serious fiscal challenges need to accelerate the pace of consolidation,” it added. “We welcome the recent announcements by some countries to reduce their deficits in 2010 and strengthen their fiscal frameworks and institutions”.

These words were in marked contrast to the G20’s previous communiqué from late April, which called for fiscal support to “be maintained until the recovery is firmly driven by the private sector and becomes more entrenched”.

It’s basically incredible that this is happening with unemployment in the euro area still rising, and only slight labor market progress in the US.

by Dennis Wagner - Jun. 4, 2010 12:00 AM

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the school's principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town's most prominent intersections.

"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)."

Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter.