Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for December 20th, 2007

Head’s Up

Dec 20

Posted by Marlena in Economy | 2 Comments

Tax refunds for 2007 will be delayed by up to 7 weeks. Hey baby, you don’t mind, do you?

Tax refunds will be delayed at the start of 2008 because of late passage of the Temporary Tax Relief Act of 2007, which Congress was apparently too busy to pass until now. President Bush is expected to sign the Act that extends the current AMT thresholds with a temporary one year “patch.”

Because this legislation comes so late in the year, e-filing and paper processing of tax returns for everyone may not start until February.

Some IRS instruction manuals will have to be redone because they are now outdated. IRS computers will have to be reprogrammed.

Twelve IRS forms are affected by the AMT including those for child and dependent care credits.

The resulting delay in refunds could be up to seven weeks. It is estimated that a postponement of tax refunds for 15 million taxpayers, including lower and middle class taxpayers who normally file for early refunds, is very possible.

What exactly this really means, I don’t know… but it can’t be good.

Black Sites

Dec 20

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Torture | No Comments

More information on what happens to people in CIA Black Sites. After enduring torture, interrogation and solitary confinement for six months, he was released without being charged with any crime.

Just remember that the CIA and its associates, whoever they are, will torture innocent people to “protect” us. I know, I know, it doesn’t seem like that would work. It really seems counterproductive and inhumane and not very American. That’s because it is counterproductive, inhumane and un-American.

Through a translator, over the phone from his home in Yemen, Bashmilah described how his ordeal began on Oct. 21, 2003, when he was arrested in Amman, Jordan: “It was approximately six days, but what I endured there is worth years. They wanted me to confess to having some connections to some individuals of al-Qaida. They tried several times to get me to confess, and every time I said no, I would get either a kick, a slap or a curse. Then they said that if I did not confess, they will bring my wife and rape her in front of me. And out of fear for what would happen to my family, I screamed and I fainted. After I came to, I told them that ‘please, don’t do anything to my family. I would cooperate with you in any way you want.‘”

…He was prepared for transit, stripped “completely naked. They started taking pictures from all directions. And they also started to beat me on my sides and also my feet. And then they put me in a position similar to the position of prostration in Muslim prayer, which is similar to the fetal position. And in that position, one of them inserted his finger in my anus very violently. I was in terrible pain, and I started to scream. When they started taking pictures, I could see that they were people who were masked. They were dressed in black from head to toe, and they were also wearing surgical gloves.”

He says he was put in a diaper, had his eyes and ears covered, a bag was put over his head, and he had additional earphones put on his head to block noise. He was then flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held in solitary confinement for close to six months. He believed he was being held by Americans. “Some of the interrogators would come to me and interrogate me in the interrogation room, and they would tell me, ‘You should calm down and be comforted, because we’ll send all this information to Washington.’ And they would say that in Washington, they will determine whether my answers are truthful or not.” Although kept isolated from other prisoners, he managed to overhear some of them speculating that they were being held at Bagram Air Base. He went on to say that he was kept awake with blaring music and was held in shackles that were removed only for periodic interrogations.

While Bashmilah was being interrogated and tortured, he was also visited by “psychiatrists.” “[T]he therapy mainly consisted of trying to look at my thoughts and trying to interpret them for me, and in addition to some tranquilizers.”

Bashmilah attempted suicide three times, staged a hunger strike that was painfully ended with a feeding tube forced down his nose, and was denied access to a lawyer, to any human-rights group, to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In effect, he disappeared.

On May 5, 2005, he was transferred to a prison in Yemen, where he eventually gained access to his family. Amnesty International got involved. He was released in March 2006 without being charged with anything.

God help us.

Superlatively Thin Skin

Dec 20

Posted by Marlena in Corruption & Crime, Politics, Psychology, Stupidity | No Comments

Mike Huckabee fascinates me. Apparently I’m not the only one. In the latest installment on Faire Huckabee, we will examine his micron thin skin and vindictive streak.

Max Brantley, the editor of the alternative weekly Arkansas Times, has feuded with Mike Huckabee since the presidential candidate first appeared on the political stage during his failed 1992 Senate run. A liberal columnist married to a circuit judge appointed by Bill Clinton, Brantley penned weekly columns antagonizing Huckabee for his staunchly conservative social views, opaque campaign finance disclosures, and acceptance of gifts during his time in office. “Huckabee would believe I covered him obsessively, and he’d be right about that,” Brantley says.

Fair enough.

In a series of unpublished private letters dating to the mid-’90s that Huckabee faxed to Brantley, a surprising–and furious–side of the former governor comes through. The four letters, which Brantley provided to The New Republic, are multi-page, rambling, and highly personal attacks that Huckabee wrote while in Arkansas office. In them, he excoriates the journalist, referring to the Arkansas Times as “a local version of the National Enquirer,” a “collection of carping columnists,” a “newsletter for the Democrats,” an “irrelevant irritant” and the “Theater of the Absurd,” among other sobriquets.

And Brantley was not alone. Reporters recall Huckabee as combative, even malicious, in response to critical coverage. He was known to attack reporters, fire off scathing e-mails to newsrooms, and complain to editors about probing questions. “I was just astounded at how vindictive he was,” says Joan Duffy, who covered Huckabee for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis in the ’90s. “He took it all so personally. . . . You’re either with him, or you’re a mortal enemy.”

Looks like he has precarious control over his own temper. I think we can safely predict some colorful snappage sooner or later.

It could be that, when it comes to media relations, Huckabee is finally in good hands. But talk to enough reporters who really got to know him, and you begin to suspect that his curiously unthreatening demeanor may not last.

In addition, Huckabee holds a very high opinion of himself and his own righteousness. Notice his definition of ethics: whatever feels right.

Many reporters who have covered Huckabee believe his reticence to answer critical questions is a result of his experiences as a Southern Baptist leader. When Huckabee faced scrutiny, he exuded an infallibility that frustrated reporters. “He has a religious thing going on and usually thinks he’s in the right,” Brummett says. Rob Moritz, a reporter for the Arkansas News Bureau, recalls that Huckabee retreated from tough questions into moral certitude: “During the ethics questions, he would tell reporters, ‘I don’t see a problem here. I can lay my head on the pillow and get a good night sleep.’ “

Jonathan Weil, a columnist for Bloomberg News, covered Huckabee for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in the late 1990s and broke a series of stories about both Huckabee’s use of a private plane during a campaign and payments received from the nonprofit group Action America. “He was constantly getting in the press for taking small amounts of money where it just didn’t look right,” Weil recalls. “To a lot of people, it didn’t look becoming of a governor. And his answer was that ethics isn’t following rules, it’s what in your heart.”

How convenient. I think if given enough rope, with any luck, Mike Huckabee will hang himself.

.

The State of Afghanistan

Dec 20

Posted by Marlena in Afghanistan, Corruption & Crime, Injustice, Iraq, Politics | 1 Comment

I don’t read much fiction, but I read both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini this fall. They are wonderful books. To have heard that Afghanis have known little but suffering for decades is one thing; to read such powerful stories about them is quite another. Sadly, that continues even after the US decided to “help” them.

More than six years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, two recently released reports have again demonstrated the falsehood of the Bush administration’s claims to be helping the Afghan people. The social indices on literacy, life expectancy and food availability contained in the reports provide an insight into the terrible social crisis confronting millions of Afghans. [emphasis in original]

…The SENLIS Council report “Stumbling Into Chaos, Afghanistan on the Brink” examines the reasons behind the growing armed insurgency against the US-led occupation. In doing so, however, the think tank is compelled to consider the anger and hostility generated by the country’s social crisis, endemic official corruption and broken promises of international aid.

The report quoted a doctor at the Bost Hospital in Lashkar Gar who explained: “If the international community has sent aid to Helmand province I haven’t seen this. There are 25,000 refugees in the camps around Helmand. Not a single person has spoken of food aid delivery. In some districts there are not even any medical clinics; these were destroyed as a result of the fighting between the Taliban and the international forces.

“I don’t think anyone is getting any aid whatsoever. We gave the British ambassador and Members of Parliament a list of all the hospital’s needs. We haven’t heard anything from them since. We have not received the medicines they promised, nor have we received the equipment or anything else they promised us.”

The reality of these people’s lives has been reduced to begging and/or growing drug crops:

“I cannot provide for my family; I don’t have any work and I am ill. My eldest son is only three years old. My mother is begging for food. Only the people at the mosque collect some money for us,” one said.

“We don’t receive any help, no aid whatsoever. My family and I don’t have anything to eat. We have no shelter and no drinking water. We can only get some water from the houses around the camp. We are forced to move from one place to the other,” the second explained.

The only flourishing industry in Afghanistan is the illicit growth and trade in opium. Forced to find a means of feeding their families, many farmers have turned to growing opium poppies. So widespread and all pervasive is the drug trade that Afghanistan is often referred to as a “narco-state”.

According to the 2007 Afghanistan Human Development Report, between 80-90 percent of economic activity occurs within the “informal” sector. “The estimated area upon which poppy cultivation is taking place in Afghanistan increased by 59 percent,” it stated. Afghanistan is believed to produce about 90 percent of the world’s supply of illegal heroin.

According to the 2007 opium survey conducted by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, cannabis cultivation has also risen 40 percent this year. In an Associated Press article last month, a farmer explained: “The government cannot provide a good market for other crops like cotton, watermelon and vegetables, so I have to grow marijuana instead of poppy.”

Another farmer Akbar Khan said: “We know marijuana is an illegal crop, but we are very poor and we have to grow it to help our families survive. I don’t like growing poppy or marijuana. I don’t want people to become addicted to these things, but I have to feed my children and I have no other way.”

Britain, which is responsible for trying to eradicate opium production, is seeking to find ways of encouraging farmers to grow legal crops - such efforts have been tried and failed before. Washington, however, is pressing for poppy fields to be destroyed from the air. If that takes place on a wide scale, many farming communities will be left without any livelihood at all. Already there have been complaints of opium crops being destroyed.

While information and statistics remain scanty, the two reports constitute a devastating indictment of the Bush administration’s invasion, which has compounded, not alleviated the crisis facing the Afghan population.

It’s not for nothing that Afghanistan has been turned into a narco-state. If you’ve never investigated the War on Drugs in America, this is as good a place as any to start.