Dear J,
These are days of decision in the War on Terror. Today, President Bush traveled to Iraq to meet with the new democratically-elected government and deliver a simple message from the American people: "We stand with you."
The progress in Iraq would have seemed impossible just a short time ago. A permanent government elected by the Iraqi people. Iraqi forces increasingly taking the lead in providing for the safety and security of their country. And just last week, the removal of Iraq's most dangerous terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Now is the time to stand together to ensure that our job gets done. Sign our message of support for the mission in Iraq - and reject efforts by some Democrats who want to cut and run at the worst possible time.
The way forward in Iraq won't be easy. We can still expect to see hard days, with terrorists lashing out violently. President Bush understands that victory will come if we stand strong, renew our resolve, and never give in to these assassins. The terrorists tried to derail our progress by attacking our troops - and failed. Then they turned to killing innocent Iraqis - and failed. They tried to stop the Iraqi people from choosing a temporary government, a constitution, and now a permanent government - and they failed each and every time. The celebration on Iraqi streets that greeted al-Zarqawi's death said it all: whatever the challenges, Americans and Iraqis stand side by side for victory over the terrorists.
At home, completing the mission means rejecting craven, politically-motivated demands for instant withdrawal. Think of the message that would send our troops - and our enemies - at this critical time.
Sign the message, watch the video of the President in Iraq, and spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ken Mehlman
Chairman, Republican National Co
Congress.org presents:
M E G A V O T E
June 10, 2006
In this MegaVote for New York's 25th Congressional District:
Recent Congressional Votes -
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to the Marriage Protection Amendment
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act
* House: Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act
* House: Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006
Upcoming Congressional Bills -
* Senate: National Defense Authorization Act, FY2007
* House: Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act
=================================================================
Recent Senate Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to the Marriage Protection Amendment
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=163&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (49-48, 3 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this proposed constitutional amendment that would define
marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=164&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (57-41, 2 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this bill to make the estate tax repeal permanent.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted Not Voting
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=165&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (56-41, 3 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this bill that would have granted indigenous Hawaiians the
right of self-governance.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted Not Voting
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
=================================================================
Recent House Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=230&chamber=H&congress=1092
Vote Passed (379-35, 18 Not Voting)
The House gave final approval to this bill that will raise the fines that can be
levied against broadcasters who violate decency rules.
Rep. James Walsh voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=430&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=430)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=241&chamber=H&congress=1092
Vote Passed (321-101, 11 Not Voting)
This House bill would allow telephone companies to offer video services.
Rep. James Walsh voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=430&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=430)
=================================================================
Upcoming Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
National Defense Authorization Act, FY2007 - S.2766
The Senate is scheduled to take up this bill authorizing $467.7 billion in
defense spending for the upcoming fiscal year.
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act - H.R.4939
The House is scheduled to begin consideration of the conference report approving
$94.5 billion in emergency funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
for hurricane relief.
Google launches federal search engine
By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff
Story Tools: Print this | Email this | Purchase a Reprint | Link to this page
Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., has launched a search site devoted to finding government material on the Web.
Although Google U.S. Government Search offers an almost identical service to the General Services Administration’s FirstGov, Google’s site will offer more personalization features, said Kevin Gough, product manager for the new offering.
Gough said Google’s site was designed for both government employees as well as citizens interested in government material. Using the company’s own index of Web sites, the site will return results from .gov and .mil federal sites, state and local Web sites, selected .org and .edu sites, and government sites under the .com and .net domains, such as the Postal Service’s site.
Individuals can personalize their pages to display headlines from feeds that use the Real Simple Syndication, or RSS, format. The site offers a list of agency feeds, such as those from the White House, as well as feeds from commercial news sites that cover government. Users can also add their own feeds.
GSA launched the latest version of FirstGov in January. That system uses the public search engine from Microsoft Corp. along with clustering software from Vivisimo Inc. of Pittsburgh. In addition to a basic listing of search results, FirstGov also groups findings by agency, source and a set of topic headings that are generated by the system on the fly.
Google’s service will not offer this sort of clustering capability, Gough admitted. Nor can users filter results so that they include only federal sites. They can, however, limit the results to specific Web sites, such as usda.gov, which was not possible using Google’s previous government site, Google Uncle Sam. That site should be closed within a few weeks and users will be automatically redirected to the new site, Gough said.
Google’s service will also not offer a great deal of insight into the material locked into the sort of publicly available databases that must be queried with strict syntaxes, the kind of databases well covered by Science.Gov. Gough did note, however, that the company is encouraging managers of such databases to use Google’s tools for indexing such sites, so that they can be accessible through Google.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/41037-1.html
Apple Investigates "Slave-like" Chinese Work Conditions
Regarding recent accusations of inhumane work conditions in iPod manufacturing plants in China, Apple said it will investigate and stated: "We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct."
Recent news suggest that workers in iPod factories are treated as slaves, being asked to work for fifteen hours a day, while being paid 50 dollars per month; factories subject to the scandal are located in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Apple stated it "is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible. (we are) currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China. We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct posted at apple.com/environment. That code says, among other things, that a work week should be restricted to 60 hours and that suppliers "may not discriminate against any worker based on race, color, age [or] gender…"
According to "Mail on Sunday," the Foxconn-owned plant located 20 miles from Hong-Kong employs anyone over 16 years of age, housing every hundred workers in a single room. Multiplying the one hundred workers with the approximate 2000 such chambers, it gives you an approximate 200,000 workforce.
The plant's most striking characteristic, apart from its size, is the security involved; security is provided by police officers, preventing any unauthorized person to gain access to restricted information concerning the technology and manufacturing process of Apple's iPods.
Plant-owner Foxconn, plans on opening two other manufacturing facilities in Beijing and Suzhou.
The iPod nano and iPod shuffle assembly lines are the most secure places one could be in. The lines are made of mostly girls and women, and only work 12hrs/day, while earning a bit more.
iPod nano is Apple's fourth digital audio player, replacing the iPod mini. The iPod nano is 1.6 inches (40 mm) wide, 3.5 inches (90 mm) long, .27 inches (6.9 mm) thick and weighs 1.5 ounces (42 grams). It provides up to 14 hours of music playback or up to 4 hours of slideshows with music. The display is an 1.5-inch color LCD with LED backlight.
By summing the costs in the manufacturing process of an iPod nano you would get about 76 dollars.
They are one the largest manufacturers of electronics and computer components worldwide. Among other things, they produce the Mac mini and iPod for Apple Computer, Intel branded motherboards for Intel corp., and manufacture orders for the American computer retailer, Dell, Inc.. It is the largest private company in Taiwan, with a revenue of NT$ 413.35 billion in 2004.
Will Sturgeon, managing editor of IT website silicon.com:
"Apple are only one of thousands of companies manufacturing their products in the same places and in the same conditions. It's the nature of big business today to exploit any opportunity that comes their way."
James Kynge, author of "China Shakes The World:"
"The money sent back to farming families from the workers now exceeds the amount made from agriculture. Because China has no independent unions, subcontractors like Foxconn are able to keep wages artificially low. Workers will be lucky if they make 2 percent of the profit from an iPod. Foxconn will make less than 10 percent. Far more money is spent by Apple on marketing the product than making it. Even if the Chinese made their own version of the iPod and sold it at a fraction of the price, no one would buy it," says Kynge. "Consumers respond to the Apple logo -- not the people in Chinese factories making the products."
http://www.spotlightingnews.com/article.php?news=2465
Evolution simulated in the lab
June 16, 2006
LONDON: A species of butterfly has been created in laboratories by interbreeding two distinct species, offering new insights into how evolution takes place in the wild.
The experiment by British, Colombian and American scientists has offered the strongest evidence yet that two species can cross-breed to form a new one, a process that many experts had considered impossible.
In the study, the team sought to recreate the evolutionary pathway that the scientists suspected had given rise to Heliconius heurippa, a South American butterfly with red-orange and yellow-white stripes on its wings.
The colouring suggested that it might be a hybrid of two related varieties: Heliconius cydno, which has a yellow stripe, and Heliconius melpomene, which has a red one. To test the theory, they interbred the two species, creating a butterfly with the two-stripe pattern of H. heurippa within just three generations.
The hybrid butterflies chose to mate with others of similar colouring, an indicator that a separate species had formed.
Jesus Mavarez, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Washington DC, who led the team, said: "If you cover the red or yellow stripe of a bi-coloured hybrid female, hybrid males no longer find her the least bit attractive."
His colleague Chris Jiggins, of Edinburgh University, said: "Butterflies tend to choose partners that look like themselves. So, once the new pattern was established, these individuals have tended to mate with one another and shunned their parental species."
The study, published in the journal Nature, is the most convincing case yet of a process known as homoploid speciation.
While different breeds of the same species, such as dogs, can produce fertile offspring, this is not often true when different species mate, as in the case of mules, created by crossing a horse with a donkey. This gives hybrids an evolutionary disadvantage that usually prevents the formation of viable new species.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484572-2703,00.html
We have proof of genocide in Darfur
Correspondents in New York
June 16, 2006
THE chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says his office has documented large-scale massacres and hundreds of rape cases in Sudan's Darfur region.
Video: ICC targets Darfur crimes
A series of charges was expected to be laid, Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council yesterday.
His office had gathered evidence of "thousands of alleged direct killings of civilians by parties to the conflict", including "a significant number of large-scale massacres, with hundreds of victims in each".
The court was investigating allegations some of the groups implicated in the Darfur crimes "did so with specific genocidal intent", he said.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said identifying those with the greatest responsibility for the crimes in Darfur was a challenge for his inquiry, but that he would not draw any conclusions pending the completion of a "full and impartial investigation".
He outlined obstacles to gathering evidence and testimony, including limited access to Khartoum and lack of access to Darfur, where fighting between government forces and rebel militias continues.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in three years of conflict in Sudan's poor but oil-rich Darfur region. The US has called the crisis genocide.
The mainly Arab militias known as Janjaweed are said to be behind most of the murder, pillaging and rape in Darfur.
The Sudanese Government set up a special court in Darfur to investigate the atrocities.
Under the Rome Treaty creating the ICC, the court cannot prosecute suspects who have already been tried in fair trials in their home countries.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484594-2703,00.html
South Africa youth `want to move on'
Kwaito generation concerned about jobs, AIDS, crime
Beginning of the end of apartheid remembered
Jun. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM
KRISTIN NELSON
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Johannesburg—Thirty years ago today, Soweto entered the global imagination when horrifying photographs of black South African school children gunned down by white police officers were splashed across newspapers around the world.
The most famous — 13-year-old Hector Pieterson's lifeless body in the arms of a classmate running beside Pieterson's sister — came to symbolize the brutality of apartheid, the official segregationist system that was abolished in 1993.
Police shot into a crowd of more than 15,000 youths peacefully protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in black schools. The official death toll was 23, but others put it as high as 200.
Today, half of South Africans are under 25, and can barely remember apartheid. And Soweto is the New York City of sub-Saharan Africa: a place where artists, musicians, soccer players, politicians and gangsters come to make it.
"It's simply not possible to underestimate the importance of that day," University of Witwatersrand history professor Philip Bonner said. "June 16th was radically transformative in every sense."
The day's events ignited a fury that spread across South Africa, marking the beginning of the end of apartheid.
"It was the end of submissiveness," Bonner said, "and it led to the questioning authority of all kinds."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150408210946&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
Rescue teams hunt for missing soldiers
'We never stop looking for our service members,' general says
Saturday, June 17, 2006 Posted: 1746 GMT (0146 HKT)
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the search would go on until the soldiers were found.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A massive search was under way Saturday for two U.S. soldiers who went missing during a checkpoint attack in Iraq.
Another soldier was killed in Friday's attack at a canal crossing near Yusufiya, about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.
Yusufiya is part of Iraq's "Triangle of Death," where insurgents are active and there is widespread lawlessness.
When the canal checkpoint was attacked at about 7:55 p.m. (11:55 a.m. ET) Friday, soldiers at a second checkpoint nearby heard an explosion and small-arms fire, Maj. Gen. Willliam Caldwell said Saturday. (Watch how the military is using land, air and water resources in search -- 2:59)
They tried to contact the soldiers at the canal and called in a quick-reaction force after they got no response. Reinforcements arrived within 15 minutes and found one soldier dead and the other two missing, the general said.
The names of the soldiers are being withheld until their relatives are notified.
U.S. and Iraqi troops cordoned off the area, shutting down civilian traffic "in a concerted effort to focus the search and prevent the movement of suspects out of the area," Caldwell said.
Helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles were sent in to help with the search.
Divers were also deployed to search waters at the canal crossing near the Euphrates River.
Three raids were conducted Friday night and another was conducted Saturday morning, Caldwell said, and coalition troops have enlisted the help of local leaders and civilians.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/17/soldiers.missing/
Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
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By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 18, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.
Multimedia
Graphic: The Revolving Door
Tracking the Turnover
A list of former domestic security officials and where they are now working. (pdf)
At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.
More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials.
"People have a right to make a living," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. "But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous."
Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Michael J. Petrucelli, for example, who was once acting director of citizenship and immigration services, moved within months of leaving his post in July 2005 to a job in which he lobbied the Coast Guard, another unit of the department, to test a power-supply device made by his new employer, GridPoint.
Victor X. Cerda, within a few months of his 2005 departure as acting director of the agency that handles the detention of illegal immigrants, was hired by a company that is a top contractor for that agency. With Mr. Cerda's help, the company is now seeking millions of dollars in new agency business.
In their new roles, former department officials often command salaries that dwarf their government paychecks. Carol A. DiBattiste, who made $155,000 in 2004 as deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, earned more than $934,000 last year from ChoicePoint, a Homeland Security Department contractor she joined in April 2005, the same month she left the agency.
Mr. Ridge, the former secretary, stands to profit handsomely now that Savi Technology, a maker of radio frequency identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three months after resigning from the department and has been compensated with an undisclosed number of stock options that Lockheed will presumably need to buy back. In the coming weeks, Mr. Ridge says he plans to open his own domestic security and crisis management consulting firm.
The shift to the private sector is hardly without precedent in Washington, where generations of former administration officials have sought higher-paying jobs in industries they once regulated. But veteran Washington lobbyists and watchdog groups say the exodus of such a sizable share of an agency's senior management before the end of an administration has few modern parallels.
"It is almost like an initial public offering in the stock market," Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, based in Washington, said of the booming domestic security market. "Everyone wants a piece of it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/washington/18lobby.html?_r=1&oref=login
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR subsidiary.
But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.
"I discovered the water being delivered from the Euphrates for the military was not being treated properly and thousands were being exposed daily to numerous pathogenic organisms," Carter informed HalliburtonWatch.
Carter worked at Camp Ar Ramadi, located 70 miles west of Baghdad in the notoriously violent Sunni Triangle, but he says water contamination problems exist throughout Iraq's military camps. He helped manage KBR's Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU), which is a water treatment system designed to produce potable (drinkable) water from a variety of raw water sources such as lakes, lagoons and rivers. ROWPU is supposed to provide the troops with clean water from Iraq's Euphrates River.
link
But hey these are just employees of Halliburton what would they know?
Posted by: DAR at June 17, 2006 07:27 PM
Pentagon details abuse of Iraqi detainees
6Pictures released in April 2004 uncovered the abuse of Iraqis by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib jail
1,000 pages documents released by the Pentagon Friday, detailing incidents that took place inside Iraqi prisons during the period between 2003 and 2004, shows that U.S. special operations forces used inhuman interrogation tactics to break the detainees including sleep deprivation and loud music, as well as stripping prisoners naked and in some cases feeding them only bread and water for up to 17 days.
According to one of the two reports included in the Pentagon documents, a probe carried out by Brigadier General Richard Formica following the outbreak of April 2004 Iraq abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, U.S. soldiers kept Iraqi detainees with their eyes taped shut in small box-like cells for up to seven days at a time while playing extremely loud music at one of the Army’s special operations facilities.
Formica’s report, which claimed that allegations that prisoners were physically abused or humiliated were false, didn’t lead to the punishment of any of the Army personnel.
Formica argued that "that detainees were held in small cells measuring 20 inches (wide) by 4 feet (high) by 4 feet (deep) [0.5 meters by 1.2 meters], that loud music was played at a volume to prevent detainees from communicating with each other and that was employed as a method of setting favorable conditions for interrogations."
"I find the allegations of physical abuse and mistreatment during their detention and interrogations to be unsubstantiated," the report added, claiming that there was lack of evidence to support those allegations.
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11468
These are days of decision in the War on Terror. Today, President Bush traveled to Iraq to meet with the new democratically-elected government and deliver a simple message from the American people: "We stand with you."
The progress in Iraq would have seemed impossible just a short time ago. A permanent government elected by the Iraqi people. Iraqi forces increasingly taking the lead in providing for the safety and security of their country. And just last week, the removal of Iraq's most dangerous terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Now is the time to stand together to ensure that our job gets done. Sign our message of support for the mission in Iraq - and reject efforts by some Democrats who want to cut and run at the worst possible time.
The way forward in Iraq won't be easy. We can still expect to see hard days, with terrorists lashing out violently. President Bush understands that victory will come if we stand strong, renew our resolve, and never give in to these assassins. The terrorists tried to derail our progress by attacking our troops - and failed. Then they turned to killing innocent Iraqis - and failed. They tried to stop the Iraqi people from choosing a temporary government, a constitution, and now a permanent government - and they failed each and every time. The celebration on Iraqi streets that greeted al-Zarqawi's death said it all: whatever the challenges, Americans and Iraqis stand side by side for victory over the terrorists.
At home, completing the mission means rejecting craven, politically-motivated demands for instant withdrawal. Think of the message that would send our troops - and our enemies - at this critical time.
Sign the message, watch the video of the President in Iraq, and spread the word.
Sincerely,
Ken Mehlman
Chairman, Republican National Co
Congress.org presents:
M E G A V O T E
June 10, 2006
In this MegaVote for New York's 25th Congressional District:
Recent Congressional Votes -
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to the Marriage Protection Amendment
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
* Senate: Motion to Proceed to Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act
* House: Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act
* House: Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006
Upcoming Congressional Bills -
* Senate: National Defense Authorization Act, FY2007
* House: Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act
=================================================================
Recent Senate Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to the Marriage Protection Amendment
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=163&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (49-48, 3 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this proposed constitutional amendment that would define
marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=164&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (57-41, 2 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this bill to make the estate tax repeal permanent.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted Not Voting
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted NO
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Motion to Proceed to Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=165&chamber=S&congress=1092
Vote Rejected (56-41, 3 Not Voting)
The Senate rejected this bill that would have granted indigenous Hawaiians the
right of self-governance.
Sen. Charles Schumer voted Not Voting
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=402&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=402)
Sen. Hillary Clinton voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=10902&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=10902)
=================================================================
Recent House Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=230&chamber=H&congress=1092
Vote Passed (379-35, 18 Not Voting)
The House gave final approval to this bill that will raise the fines that can be
levied against broadcasters who violate decency rules.
Rep. James Walsh voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=430&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=430)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006
http://capwiz.com/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=241&chamber=H&congress=1092
Vote Passed (321-101, 11 Not Voting)
This House bill would allow telephone companies to offer video services.
Rep. James Walsh voted YES
send e-mail (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/mail/?id=430&mailid=custom)
see bio (http://capwiz.com/congressorg/bio/?id=430)
=================================================================
Upcoming Votes:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
National Defense Authorization Act, FY2007 - S.2766
The Senate is scheduled to take up this bill authorizing $467.7 billion in
defense spending for the upcoming fiscal year.
Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act - H.R.4939
The House is scheduled to begin consideration of the conference report approving
$94.5 billion in emergency funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
for hurricane relief.
Google launches federal search engine
By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff
Story Tools: Print this | Email this | Purchase a Reprint | Link to this page
Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., has launched a search site devoted to finding government material on the Web.
Although Google U.S. Government Search offers an almost identical service to the General Services Administration’s FirstGov, Google’s site will offer more personalization features, said Kevin Gough, product manager for the new offering.
Gough said Google’s site was designed for both government employees as well as citizens interested in government material. Using the company’s own index of Web sites, the site will return results from .gov and .mil federal sites, state and local Web sites, selected .org and .edu sites, and government sites under the .com and .net domains, such as the Postal Service’s site.
Individuals can personalize their pages to display headlines from feeds that use the Real Simple Syndication, or RSS, format. The site offers a list of agency feeds, such as those from the White House, as well as feeds from commercial news sites that cover government. Users can also add their own feeds.
GSA launched the latest version of FirstGov in January. That system uses the public search engine from Microsoft Corp. along with clustering software from Vivisimo Inc. of Pittsburgh. In addition to a basic listing of search results, FirstGov also groups findings by agency, source and a set of topic headings that are generated by the system on the fly.
Google’s service will not offer this sort of clustering capability, Gough admitted. Nor can users filter results so that they include only federal sites. They can, however, limit the results to specific Web sites, such as usda.gov, which was not possible using Google’s previous government site, Google Uncle Sam. That site should be closed within a few weeks and users will be automatically redirected to the new site, Gough said.
Google’s service will also not offer a great deal of insight into the material locked into the sort of publicly available databases that must be queried with strict syntaxes, the kind of databases well covered by Science.Gov. Gough did note, however, that the company is encouraging managers of such databases to use Google’s tools for indexing such sites, so that they can be accessible through Google.
http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/41037-1.html
Apple Investigates "Slave-like" Chinese Work Conditions
Regarding recent accusations of inhumane work conditions in iPod manufacturing plants in China, Apple said it will investigate and stated: "We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct."
Recent news suggest that workers in iPod factories are treated as slaves, being asked to work for fifteen hours a day, while being paid 50 dollars per month; factories subject to the scandal are located in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Apple stated it "is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible. (we are) currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China. We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct posted at apple.com/environment. That code says, among other things, that a work week should be restricted to 60 hours and that suppliers "may not discriminate against any worker based on race, color, age [or] gender…"
According to "Mail on Sunday," the Foxconn-owned plant located 20 miles from Hong-Kong employs anyone over 16 years of age, housing every hundred workers in a single room. Multiplying the one hundred workers with the approximate 2000 such chambers, it gives you an approximate 200,000 workforce.
The plant's most striking characteristic, apart from its size, is the security involved; security is provided by police officers, preventing any unauthorized person to gain access to restricted information concerning the technology and manufacturing process of Apple's iPods.
Plant-owner Foxconn, plans on opening two other manufacturing facilities in Beijing and Suzhou.
The iPod nano and iPod shuffle assembly lines are the most secure places one could be in. The lines are made of mostly girls and women, and only work 12hrs/day, while earning a bit more.
iPod nano is Apple's fourth digital audio player, replacing the iPod mini. The iPod nano is 1.6 inches (40 mm) wide, 3.5 inches (90 mm) long, .27 inches (6.9 mm) thick and weighs 1.5 ounces (42 grams). It provides up to 14 hours of music playback or up to 4 hours of slideshows with music. The display is an 1.5-inch color LCD with LED backlight.
By summing the costs in the manufacturing process of an iPod nano you would get about 76 dollars.
They are one the largest manufacturers of electronics and computer components worldwide. Among other things, they produce the Mac mini and iPod for Apple Computer, Intel branded motherboards for Intel corp., and manufacture orders for the American computer retailer, Dell, Inc.. It is the largest private company in Taiwan, with a revenue of NT$ 413.35 billion in 2004.
Will Sturgeon, managing editor of IT website silicon.com:
"Apple are only one of thousands of companies manufacturing their products in the same places and in the same conditions. It's the nature of big business today to exploit any opportunity that comes their way."
James Kynge, author of "China Shakes The World:"
"The money sent back to farming families from the workers now exceeds the amount made from agriculture. Because China has no independent unions, subcontractors like Foxconn are able to keep wages artificially low. Workers will be lucky if they make 2 percent of the profit from an iPod. Foxconn will make less than 10 percent. Far more money is spent by Apple on marketing the product than making it. Even if the Chinese made their own version of the iPod and sold it at a fraction of the price, no one would buy it," says Kynge. "Consumers respond to the Apple logo -- not the people in Chinese factories making the products."
http://www.spotlightingnews.com/article.php?news=2465
Evolution simulated in the lab
June 16, 2006
LONDON: A species of butterfly has been created in laboratories by interbreeding two distinct species, offering new insights into how evolution takes place in the wild.
The experiment by British, Colombian and American scientists has offered the strongest evidence yet that two species can cross-breed to form a new one, a process that many experts had considered impossible.
In the study, the team sought to recreate the evolutionary pathway that the scientists suspected had given rise to Heliconius heurippa, a South American butterfly with red-orange and yellow-white stripes on its wings.
The colouring suggested that it might be a hybrid of two related varieties: Heliconius cydno, which has a yellow stripe, and Heliconius melpomene, which has a red one. To test the theory, they interbred the two species, creating a butterfly with the two-stripe pattern of H. heurippa within just three generations.
The hybrid butterflies chose to mate with others of similar colouring, an indicator that a separate species had formed.
Jesus Mavarez, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Washington DC, who led the team, said: "If you cover the red or yellow stripe of a bi-coloured hybrid female, hybrid males no longer find her the least bit attractive."
His colleague Chris Jiggins, of Edinburgh University, said: "Butterflies tend to choose partners that look like themselves. So, once the new pattern was established, these individuals have tended to mate with one another and shunned their parental species."
The study, published in the journal Nature, is the most convincing case yet of a process known as homoploid speciation.
While different breeds of the same species, such as dogs, can produce fertile offspring, this is not often true when different species mate, as in the case of mules, created by crossing a horse with a donkey. This gives hybrids an evolutionary disadvantage that usually prevents the formation of viable new species.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484572-2703,00.html
We have proof of genocide in Darfur
Correspondents in New York
June 16, 2006
THE chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says his office has documented large-scale massacres and hundreds of rape cases in Sudan's Darfur region.
Video: ICC targets Darfur crimes
A series of charges was expected to be laid, Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council yesterday.
His office had gathered evidence of "thousands of alleged direct killings of civilians by parties to the conflict", including "a significant number of large-scale massacres, with hundreds of victims in each".
The court was investigating allegations some of the groups implicated in the Darfur crimes "did so with specific genocidal intent", he said.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said identifying those with the greatest responsibility for the crimes in Darfur was a challenge for his inquiry, but that he would not draw any conclusions pending the completion of a "full and impartial investigation".
He outlined obstacles to gathering evidence and testimony, including limited access to Khartoum and lack of access to Darfur, where fighting between government forces and rebel militias continues.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in three years of conflict in Sudan's poor but oil-rich Darfur region. The US has called the crisis genocide.
The mainly Arab militias known as Janjaweed are said to be behind most of the murder, pillaging and rape in Darfur.
The Sudanese Government set up a special court in Darfur to investigate the atrocities.
Under the Rome Treaty creating the ICC, the court cannot prosecute suspects who have already been tried in fair trials in their home countries.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484594-2703,00.html
South Africa youth `want to move on'
Kwaito generation concerned about jobs, AIDS, crime
Beginning of the end of apartheid remembered
Jun. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM
KRISTIN NELSON
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Johannesburg—Thirty years ago today, Soweto entered the global imagination when horrifying photographs of black South African school children gunned down by white police officers were splashed across newspapers around the world.
The most famous — 13-year-old Hector Pieterson's lifeless body in the arms of a classmate running beside Pieterson's sister — came to symbolize the brutality of apartheid, the official segregationist system that was abolished in 1993.
Police shot into a crowd of more than 15,000 youths peacefully protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in black schools. The official death toll was 23, but others put it as high as 200.
Today, half of South Africans are under 25, and can barely remember apartheid. And Soweto is the New York City of sub-Saharan Africa: a place where artists, musicians, soccer players, politicians and gangsters come to make it.
"It's simply not possible to underestimate the importance of that day," University of Witwatersrand history professor Philip Bonner said. "June 16th was radically transformative in every sense."
The day's events ignited a fury that spread across South Africa, marking the beginning of the end of apartheid.
"It was the end of submissiveness," Bonner said, "and it led to the questioning authority of all kinds."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150408210946&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
Rescue teams hunt for missing soldiers
'We never stop looking for our service members,' general says
Saturday, June 17, 2006 Posted: 1746 GMT (0146 HKT)
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the search would go on until the soldiers were found.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A massive search was under way Saturday for two U.S. soldiers who went missing during a checkpoint attack in Iraq.
Another soldier was killed in Friday's attack at a canal crossing near Yusufiya, about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.
Yusufiya is part of Iraq's "Triangle of Death," where insurgents are active and there is widespread lawlessness.
When the canal checkpoint was attacked at about 7:55 p.m. (11:55 a.m. ET) Friday, soldiers at a second checkpoint nearby heard an explosion and small-arms fire, Maj. Gen. Willliam Caldwell said Saturday. (Watch how the military is using land, air and water resources in search -- 2:59)
They tried to contact the soldiers at the canal and called in a quick-reaction force after they got no response. Reinforcements arrived within 15 minutes and found one soldier dead and the other two missing, the general said.
The names of the soldiers are being withheld until their relatives are notified.
U.S. and Iraqi troops cordoned off the area, shutting down civilian traffic "in a concerted effort to focus the search and prevent the movement of suspects out of the area," Caldwell said.
Helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles were sent in to help with the search.
Divers were also deployed to search waters at the canal crossing near the Euphrates River.
Three raids were conducted Friday night and another was conducted Saturday morning, Caldwell said, and coalition troops have enlisted the help of local leaders and civilians.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/17/soldiers.missing/
Former Antiterror Officials Find Industry Pays Better
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By ERIC LIPTON
Published: June 18, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 17 — Dozens of members of the Bush administration's domestic security team, assembled after the 2001 terrorist attacks, are now collecting bigger paychecks in different roles: working on behalf of companies that sell domestic security products, many directly to the federal agencies the officials once helped run.
Multimedia
Graphic: The Revolving Door
Tracking the Turnover
A list of former domestic security officials and where they are now working. (pdf)
At least 90 officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security — including the department's former secretary, Tom Ridge; the former deputy secretary, Adm. James M. Loy; and the former under secretary, Asa Hutchinson — are executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business.
More than two-thirds of the department's most senior executives in its first years have moved through the revolving door. That pattern raises questions for some former officials.
"People have a right to make a living," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the department, who now works at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research center. "But working virtually immediately for a company that is bidding for work in an area where you were just setting the policy — that is too close. It is almost incestuous."
Federal law prohibits senior executive branch officials from lobbying former government colleagues or subordinates for at least a year after leaving public service. But by exploiting loopholes in the law — including one provision drawn up by department executives to facilitate their entry into the business world — it is often easy for former officials to do just that.
Michael J. Petrucelli, for example, who was once acting director of citizenship and immigration services, moved within months of leaving his post in July 2005 to a job in which he lobbied the Coast Guard, another unit of the department, to test a power-supply device made by his new employer, GridPoint.
Victor X. Cerda, within a few months of his 2005 departure as acting director of the agency that handles the detention of illegal immigrants, was hired by a company that is a top contractor for that agency. With Mr. Cerda's help, the company is now seeking millions of dollars in new agency business.
In their new roles, former department officials often command salaries that dwarf their government paychecks. Carol A. DiBattiste, who made $155,000 in 2004 as deputy administrator at the Transportation Security Administration, earned more than $934,000 last year from ChoicePoint, a Homeland Security Department contractor she joined in April 2005, the same month she left the agency.
Mr. Ridge, the former secretary, stands to profit handsomely now that Savi Technology, a maker of radio frequency identification equipment that the department pushed while he was secretary, is being bought by Lockheed Martin. He was appointed to the Savi board three months after resigning from the department and has been compensated with an undisclosed number of stock options that Lockheed will presumably need to buy back. In the coming weeks, Mr. Ridge says he plans to open his own domestic security and crisis management consulting firm.
The shift to the private sector is hardly without precedent in Washington, where generations of former administration officials have sought higher-paying jobs in industries they once regulated. But veteran Washington lobbyists and watchdog groups say the exodus of such a sizable share of an agency's senior management before the end of an administration has few modern parallels.
"It is almost like an initial public offering in the stock market," Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, based in Washington, said of the booming domestic security market. "Everyone wants a piece of it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/washington/18lobby.html?_r=1&oref=login
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR subsidiary.
But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.
"I discovered the water being delivered from the Euphrates for the military was not being treated properly and thousands were being exposed daily to numerous pathogenic organisms," Carter informed HalliburtonWatch.
Carter worked at Camp Ar Ramadi, located 70 miles west of Baghdad in the notoriously violent Sunni Triangle, but he says water contamination problems exist throughout Iraq's military camps. He helped manage KBR's Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU), which is a water treatment system designed to produce potable (drinkable) water from a variety of raw water sources such as lakes, lagoons and rivers. ROWPU is supposed to provide the troops with clean water from Iraq's Euphrates River.
link
But hey these are just employees of Halliburton what would they know?
Posted by: DAR at June 17, 2006 07:27 PM
Pentagon details abuse of Iraqi detainees
6Pictures released in April 2004 uncovered the abuse of Iraqis by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib jail
1,000 pages documents released by the Pentagon Friday, detailing incidents that took place inside Iraqi prisons during the period between 2003 and 2004, shows that U.S. special operations forces used inhuman interrogation tactics to break the detainees including sleep deprivation and loud music, as well as stripping prisoners naked and in some cases feeding them only bread and water for up to 17 days.
According to one of the two reports included in the Pentagon documents, a probe carried out by Brigadier General Richard Formica following the outbreak of April 2004 Iraq abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, U.S. soldiers kept Iraqi detainees with their eyes taped shut in small box-like cells for up to seven days at a time while playing extremely loud music at one of the Army’s special operations facilities.
Formica’s report, which claimed that allegations that prisoners were physically abused or humiliated were false, didn’t lead to the punishment of any of the Army personnel.
Formica argued that "that detainees were held in small cells measuring 20 inches (wide) by 4 feet (high) by 4 feet (deep) [0.5 meters by 1.2 meters], that loud music was played at a volume to prevent detainees from communicating with each other and that was employed as a method of setting favorable conditions for interrogations."
"I find the allegations of physical abuse and mistreatment during their detention and interrogations to be unsubstantiated," the report added, claiming that there was lack of evidence to support those allegations.
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11468
Comments
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