Critical reading

UPDATED ON:
Saturday, June 05, 2010
16:21 Mecca time, 13:21 GMT

Autopsies on bodies of activists killed in Israel's attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla five days ago indicate that the victims were shot multiple times at close range.

Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted Yalcin Buyuk, the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, as saying that the nine men were shot a total of 30 times.

Two men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, Buyuk told the newspaper, based on preliminary autopsy reports.

Ibrahim Bilgen, a 60-year-old activist, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back, the autopsy revealed.

Nineteen-year-old Furkan Dogan, a US citizen of Turkish descent, was shot five times from less that 45cm in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

Nine people were killed in Monday's pre-dawn raid on the Freedom Flotilla, a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid, that was heading to Gaza in a bid to break Israel's blockade of the territory.

Jeremy Scahill | June 4, 2010

The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama administration has substantially expanded the role of US special operations forces across the globe as part of what the paper calls Washington's "secret war" against al Qaeda and other radical organizations. Obama, according to the paper, has increased the presence of special forces from 60 countries to 75 countries. US Special Forces, the paper reports, have about 4,000 people in countries besides Iraq and Afghanistan. "The Special Operations capabilities requested by the White House go beyond unilateral strikes and include the training of local counterterrorism forces and joint operations with them," according to the Post. "Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group."

Page last updated at 5:28 GMT, Friday, 4 June 2010 6:28 UK

By Finlo Rohrer
Washington

It's 45 days since the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon rig and the oil spill still isn't fixed, but just how angry are Americans at BP?

There's been blanket coverage on American rolling news stations. Every national politician in the US has the spill at or near the top of his or her agenda.

And BP itself is already fighting a PR war to try to minimise the damage to its reputation from the oil starting to ravage the northern Gulf of Mexico coast.

SOCIAL MEDIA

If Facebook groups are a good indicator of rage, then the US is very angry indeed.

The group dedicated to "Boycott BP" is gaining over 30,000 members every day and is already around the 350,000 mark.

Many vow not to buy BP petrol or products again and express visceral anger towards the oil firm. Some have designed their own logos, satirical takes on BP's green and yellow livery, featuring dripping oil and skulls.

This is an environmental crisis that ordinary people have been able to get to grips with online in a way not possible during the US's other notorious oil spill, the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989.

As the number of working-age laborers dwindles, dissatisfaction with low pay and brutal hours has grown. Big companies are beginning to offer pay increases to stem the anger.

By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times

June 2, 2010

Reporting from Beijing

They are the engine behind China's decades-long economic miracle: factory workers earning meager wages to ensure that the nation's exports are sold at unbeatable prices.

But a strike at Honda Motor Co. and a rash of worker suicides at one of the world's largest electronic-components plants in recent weeks have highlighted the challenges China will face as it continues to rely on cheap labor.

Experts say younger factory workers, having grown up in a time of relative prosperity, will find it increasingly difficult to accept low pay and grueling work hours the way previous generations have.

China's rapidly aging population also is expected to boost labor's leverage as the number of working-age Chinese dwindles to about half its current portion of the population by 2030.

Arthur Delaney
arthur@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

First Posted: 06-3-10 12:11 PM | Updated: 06-3-10 01:48 PM

The financial services sector has hired 1,447 former government employees to do its bidding as lobbyists since the beginning of 2009, according to the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Citizen.

Seventy-three of those lobbyists are former members of Congress -- four former Senate and House Majority Leaders and 17 former members of Senate and House banking committees. Sixty-six financial sector lobbyists formerly worked as banking staffers and 82 worked for members still serving on those committees.

What's to be done? Stop talking to colleagues who cash out, says Public Citizen's David Arkush.

June 2, 2010

By JOHN LELAND

At least 11 states have passed laws this year regulating or restricting abortion, giving opponents of abortion what partisans on both sides of the issue say is an unusually high number of victories. In four additional states, bills have passed at least one house of the legislature.

In a flurry of activity last week, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi signed a bill barring insurers from covering abortion in the new insurance exchanges called for under the federal health care overhaul, and the Oklahoma Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Brad Henry of a bill requiring doctors who perform abortions to answer 38 questions about each procedure, including the women’s reasons for ending their pregnancies.

It was the third abortion measure this session on which the Legislature overrode a veto by Mr. Henry.

At least 13 other states have introduced or passed similar legislation this year. The new laws range from an Arizona ban on coverage of abortion in the state employees’ health plan to a ban in Nebraska on all abortions after 20 weeks, on the grounds that the fetus at that stage can feel pain.

By Walden Bello, May 25, 2010

Nearly a week after the event, Thailand is still stunned by the military assault on the Red Shirt encampment in the tourist center of the capital city of Bangkok on May 19. The Thai government is treating captured Red Shirt leaders and militants like they're from an occupied country. No doubt about it: A state of civil war exists in this country, and civil wars are never pretty.

The last few weeks have hardened the Bangkok middle class in its view that the Red Shirts are "terrorists" in the pocket of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. At the same time, they have convinced the lower classes that their electoral majority counts for nothing. "Pro-Thaksin" versus "Anti-Thaksin": This simplified discourse actually veils what is — to borrow Mao's words — a class war with Thai characteristics.

Epic Tragedy

No doubt there will be stories told about the eight weeks of the "Bangkok Commune." As in all epic tragedies, truth will be entangled with myth. But one thing will be clear: The government's decision to order the Thai military against civilian protesters can never be justified.

June 1, 2010

By SHAILA DEWAN

In late April in a courthouse in Madison County, Ala., a prosecutor was asked to explain why he had struck 11 of 14 black potential jurors in a capital murder case.

The district attorney, Robert Broussard, said one had seemed “arrogant” and “pretty vocal.” In another woman, he said he “detected hostility.”

Mr. Broussard also questioned the “sophistication” of a former Army sergeant, a forklift operator with three years of college, a cafeteria manager, an assembly-line worker and a retired Department of Defense program analyst.

The analyst, he said, “did not appear to be sophisticated to us in her questionnaire, in that she spelled Wal-Mart, as one of her previous employers, as Wal-marts.”

Instead of standing up to deficit hawks, Democrats in Congress shrank the scope of a much needed jobs bill.

By Robert Reich

posted June 1, 2010 at 6:40 am EDT

Consumer spending is 70 percent of the American economy, so if consumers can’t or won’t spend we’re back in the soup. Yet the government just reported that consumer spending stalled in April – the first month consumers didn’t up their spending since last September.

Instead, consumers boosted their savings, probably because they’re worried about the slow pace of job growth (next Friday’s report will likely show gains, but the number will continue to be tiny compared to the overall ranks of the jobless), as well as a lackluster “recovery.” They’re also still carrying enormous debt burdens. One in four home owners is still underwater. And median wages are going nowhere.

May 31, 2010

By MICKEY MEECE

This year is shaping up to be even worse than last for the millions of high school and college students looking for summer jobs.

State and local governments, traditionally among the biggest seasonal employers, are knee-deep in budget woes, and the stimulus money that helped cushion some government job programs last summer is running out. Private employers are also reluctant to hire until the economy shows more solid signs of recovery.

So expect fewer lifeguards on duty at public beaches this summer in California, fewer workers at some Massachusetts state parks and camping grounds and taller grass outside state buildings in Kentucky.

Students seeking summer jobs, generally 16 to 24 years old, are at the end of the job line, behind the jobless baby boomers who are competing with new college graduates who, in turn, are trying to elbow out undergraduates and high school students.

Talk of a Middle East cold war is inaccurate – Russia and Turkey are simply capitalising on the region's new power vacuum

Chris Phillips

Monday 31 May 2010 10.01 BST

A recent arms deal between Russia and Syria has raised the prospect of a new cold war in the Middle East. Foreign Policy's Josh Landis, for example, suggests that unconditional US support for Israel will draw Moscow back into its pre-1989 role as supporter and arms supplier for the enemies of Tel Aviv and Washington.

Yet Russia's return to Syria, whether it be the sale of MiG-29s or building a naval dock on the Syrian coast, is not the action of a superpower challenging US hegemony as it was in 1945-89 but rather an assertive regional power taking advantage of the emerging power vacuum in the region. Instead of a new bi-polar cold war, regional powers such as Russia and Turkey are increasing their influence at the United States' expense.

May 30, 2010

By PAUL KRUGMAN

What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery? Dangers abound, of course. But what I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea: the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.

When the financial crisis first struck, most of the world’s policy makers responded appropriately, cutting interest rates and allowing deficits to rise. And by doing the right thing, by applying the lessons learned from the 1930s, they managed to limit the damage: It was terrible, but it wasn’t a second Great Depression.

Now, however, demands that governments switch from supporting their economies to punishing them have been proliferating in op-eds, speeches and reports from international organizations. Indeed, the idea that what depressed economies really need is even more suffering seems to be the new conventional wisdom, which John Kenneth Galbraith famously defined as “the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability.”