8 September - Late Links

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UN peacekeepers 'failed' DR Congo rape victims

Mr Khare, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, was sent to DR Congo by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the attacks in July and August.
He reported to the Security Council that although 242 rapes had earlier been reported in and around Luvungi, a village not far from a UN peacekeepers' camp, 260 more rapes had come to light in the Uvira area and other regions of North and South Kivu.
Mr Khare said he had learned of 74 attacks in a village called Miki, in South Kivu. The victims included 21 children - all girls aged between seven and 15 - and six men.
All the women in another village, Kiluma, may have been systematically raped, he said.
"While the primary responsibility for protection of civilians lies with the state, its national army and police force, clearly, we have also failed," he said.
"Our actions were not adequate, resulting in acceptable brutalisation of the population of the villages in the area. We must do better."

 

Inbred bumblebees 'face extinction threat'

The lack of genetic diversity is making the bees more vulnerable to a number of threats, including parasitic infection. Some populations of bees are becoming increasingly isolated as a result of habitat loss.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust said efforts to conserve bumblebees were vital as the creatures played a key role as pollinators, especially when it came to wild flowers and commercial crops.
The UK currently has 24 species of bumblebee, after seeing two species become nationally extinct in recent decades.
Of the remaining species, one quarter have been identified as being in need of conservation to prevent them from disappearing from the British landscape.


Washington Post

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Dick Cheney is the most influential and powerful man ever to hold the office of vice president. This special report examines Cheney's largely hidden and little-understood role in crafting policies on national security, the economy and the environment.

Exclusive Excerpts: Angler

Cheney Shielded Bush From Crisis

Three months into a legal rebellion at the Justice Department over warrantless domestic surveillance, President Bush was nowhere in the picture. The vice president, meanwhile, was "ready to go to the mat" to keep the program on track. » By Barton Gellman
» Conflict Over Spying Led White House to Brink
» Timeline | Key Characters | Documents
» Q&A With Gellman, Noon Wednesday
» More on "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency"

The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Series

Working in the Background

A master of bureaucracy and detail, Cheney exerts most of his influence out of public view.

Wars and Interrogations

Cheney's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Dominating Budget Decisions

From behind the scenes, Cheney was guardian of conservative orthodoxy on budget and tax matters.

Environmental Policy

Cheney loosened protections on air and water quality and changed the rules on national parks.

Cheney's Life & Career

Starting as a junior aide on Capitol Hill, Dick Cheney built an unmatched Washington resume as White House chief of staff, House minority whip and secretary of defense.

Robert Scheer on The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street

 Reagan was not able to reverse the sensible regulations of the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed to prevent us from getting into another depression. And those regulations of Glass-Steagall, which Feingold was against—was for keeping and against reversing, said that investment banks playing with supposedly rich people's money should not be allowed to merge with commercial banks that were using the deposits of people that were insured by the taxpayers and that these were different activities. And Reagan could never pull off that kind of deregulation. In fact, because of the savings and loan scandal at the end of his term, he actually had to sign off on increased financial regulation. But when Clinton came in, he brought in one of the big players on Wall Street, Robert Rubin, who has been head of Goldman Sachs, and basically turned to him and said, "You know, what do I need to do to get Wall Street on my side?" And they said, reverse what they considered to be onerous financial regulation. And Clinton delivered on that. He brought in Rubin then to be his Treasury secretary, who was followed by Lawrence Summers, who’s now the top economics adviser in the Obama White House.  ....

As a result, we had this wild runup of irresponsible mortgage lending. The banks no longer did, as in the old days, worry about whether you could make your payments, whether there was value in the house, because they weren’t going to hold that mortgage for thirty years like in the old days. They were going to sell it.

... in my book, I reprint the speech that Obama gave in the spring of '08, when he was a candidate. And it came three months after Robert Rubin had given a speech at Cooper Union saying we had no financial problem, we had no crisis. Three months later, Obama, at that same Cooper Union, said, you know, this is all due to reversal of Glass-Steagall, all due to reckless, radical deregulation. He spelled it out.....

if we can’t put a floor on housing foreclosures, if we can’t stem this bleeding right now, we’re not going to get consumption back, you know, and if we don’t get consumption back, because people were consuming based on their sense of what they’re worth, we’re not going to get the jobs back—jobs in construction, but jobs generally. And so, I would not divide the interest of homeowners and keeping them in their homes from the rest of the population.

has Obama done anything different about the economy than Bush, do you feel?
ROBERT SCHEER: No. Obama has been a disaster. And I say this as someone who was suckered into contributing to his campaign financially.  

You can’t look to the Democratic Party, you know, hacks, for leadership on this. First of all, most of these people are veterans of the Clinton administration. They’re the same people who destroyed Brooksley Born. Brooksley Born was one of the most competent lawyers in this country, dealing—she represented banks. She understood more about these derivatives than anyone around, actually, when she was appointed to what was supposed to be a lesser agency, you know, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And she spotted this problem. You know, seventeen times in testimony before congressional committees, Brooksley Born sounded the alarm that there was going to be a housing meltdown, that this thing had gone wild, that we had enabled Wall Street graft.  

 Facing Poor Unemployment, Foreclosure & Bankruptcy Rates, Obama Campaigns on Economy in Lead-Up to Nov. Midterms

 Study: CEOs Who Fired Most Workers Earned Highest Pay

Educators Push Back Against Obama’s "Business Model" for School Reforms

 Flood Refugees in Karachi Relief Camp Complain of Government Corruption and Inefficiency

 Six scams that target aid workers and humanitarian organizations

 The Triumph of Evil

Modern societies have justified their adoption of criminal activities by claiming that such techniques are necessary to combat evil. But the war against evil by the good cannot be won using evil tactics. Evil never yields goodness, and by using these evil practices, the amount of evil in the world increases both in amount and extent. Attempting to save the nation by becoming what you are trying to save the nation from is suicidal. Unless benign techniques such as those developed by primitive societies are put to use, evil will prevail. Then, paraphrasing J. Robert Oppenheimer's comment after the first atomic bomb was successfully tested, We will have become evil, the destroyer of goodness.  

Illinois stops paying its bills, but can't stop digging hole 

US Paramilitaries in Colombia: Now Twice as Illegal

 A high court in Colombia has voided an accord with the United States that would allow an increased U.S. presence on seven Colombian military bases. The ruling on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court declared the agreement signed by outgoing President Alvaro Uribe unconstitutional because it bypassed approval of the Congress.

The agreement was signed in October and faced intense criticism from Colombia’s more left-leaning neighbors, including Venezuela and Bolivia. President Juan Manuel Santos (pictured above right), who was inaugurated on Aug. 7, enjoys a wide political majority in Colombia’s Congress and told reporters Wednesday that the ruling would have no effect on cooperation between the U.S. and its closest ally in Latin America.

 

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