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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

American Flag Bikinis
Posted by Don Hazen, AlterNet on July 6, 2008 at 6:22 PM.

The 4th of July in my neck of the woods has become pretty boring. The classic barbecue has become a vestige of the past; even the fireworks seemed old hat. So this year excitement was at a minimum.

But there was one surprise that I never expected. In a stroke of genius I didn't realize the people at the Huffington Post had produced "The Ten Greatest American Flag Bikini Moments," providing us with the photos of the best babes in the best stars and stripes bikinis. We're talking a range from Jessica Simpson, to Giselle, to Lynda Carter in her Wonder Woman outfit, who incidentally announced on the same day -- thank you again Huff Po -- that she is an alcoholic.

I want to go out of my way to thank the Huffington Post for enriching my Independence Day, with a feature I never would of thought of in a hundred years. And in case there are any prudes in the audience, rest assured. Don't lose you confidence in the Huff Po readers: Barack Obama's explanation of his FISA vote was out polling the Bikini spread in page views: 143, 550 to 122,510. (And make no mistake. I love the Huffington Post -- where else can you get hot politics and hot bodies on the same web site at the same time. What a country! )

Race-Baiting Former Senator Jesse Helms Has Died
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 4, 2008 at 1:21 PM.

One of America's most notorious race-baiters has died. Former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms passed away early this morning at the age of eighty-six. Conservatives are eulogizing Helms as one of the most important architects of their movement.

Helms wasn't just a politician who happened to be racist, racism was his politics. He entire career was an extended pitch to the worst instincts of Americans. He became a conservative icon by skillfully harnessing the media of his day to stoke the country's darkest fears about race, sex, and modernity. Along the way, he helped build what we know today as the right wing noise machine--an integrated network of media outlets, think tanks, political consultants, lobbyists, church groups, and direct-mail fundraisers dedicated to rolling back the reforms of the 1960s and "reclaiming" America for straight white guys with money.

Jesse Helms may even have been world's first vlogger. In 1960 he began producing a TV segment called Viewpoint for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC. In all, more than 2800 2-minute Viewpoints were broadcast.

Helms used Viewpoint and other syndicated media products to establish his brand of race-baiting demagoguery. "Dr. King's outfit...is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior," Helms announced in a 1963 edition of Viewpoint.

(As a Senator, Helms launched a filibuster against the MLK holiday. He also went to court to try to force the FBI to open its files on Martin Luther King, whom Helms denounced as a communist on the Senate floor.)

"Are civil rights only for Negroes? White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who have had their purses snatched by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated," he opined in a 1963 Viewpoint later quoted in The Charlotte Observer.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

NYC Cops Harass Club Owner Whose CCTV Footage Overturned Drug Conviction
Posted by , bOING bOING on July 4, 2008 at 9:10 AM.

Posted by Cory Doctorow

Law enforcement LOVES surveillance cameras -- except when those cameras are used to surveil dodgy busts and get them overturned:

Last year, New York police officers were seen dancing in the streets just before arresting four men in a city nightclub on charges of selling $100 worth of cocaine. It took six months and the men's life savings, but their names were finally cleared when prosecutors took the unusual step of announcing in court that the men had committed no crime.

That's because club surveillance video shows that the undercover cops had no contact with the accused men in the two hours they were in the club.

Now, club owner Eduardo Espinoza says the police are retaliating against him.

Link

[Photo by Joi]

Watermelon is the New Viagra
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 3:11 PM.

A new study funded by the US Department of Agriculture suggests that watermelon contains a compound that might have effects similar to erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra and Levitra.

"Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it," said Bhimu Patil, a researcher and director of Texas A&M's Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it's a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side effects."

Todd Wehner, who studies watermelon breeding at North Carolina State University, said anyone taking Viagra shouldn't expect the same result from watermelon.

"It sounds like it would be an effect that would be interesting but not a substitute for any medical treatment," Wehner said.

The nitric oxide can also help with angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, according to the study, which was paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [SF Gate]

The only problem is that you'd probably have to eat about 6 cups of watermelon to get enough of the active ingredient, citrulline, to achieve the desired effect. But that's where our friends at the Fruit and Vegetable Improvement Center come in... It might be possible to modify melons to produce more citrulline, researchers say.

Is this a great country, or what?

House Judiciary Committee: Rove Must Testify
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on July 3, 2008 at 2:49 PM.

Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee received a letter from Karl Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, stating that his client refuses to testify before a House subcommittee, despite a congressional subpoena. He reiterated his offer to have Rove appear for an off-the-record interview, not under oath, about the prosecution of formerly Alabama governor Don Siegelman only. In a response to Luskin, Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) reject the offer:

We want to make clear that the Subcommittee will convene as scheduled and expects Mr. Rove to appear, and that a refusal to appear in violation of the subpoena could subject Mr. Rove to contempt proceedings, including statutory contempt under federal law and proceedings under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives.

Your letter states that Mr. Rove will not attend the hearing because he is “obligated” to disregard the subpoena as a result of the White House’s claim of immunity for former advisors. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. As a private party, Mr. Rove is “obligated” to comply with the subpoena issued to him and, at the very least, appear at the July 10 hearing.

In addition to the Siegelman matter, the committee has also asked Rove to testify on the politicization of the Justice Department, including the U.S. attorney scandal.

Wal-Mart Broke MN Labor Laws Over 2 Million Times
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 2:42 PM.

A Minnesota judge awarded $6.5 million in damages to Wal-Mart employees for wage-and-hour violations. This is the third wage-and-hour court battle Wal-Mart has lost in a row:

Wal-Mart and its lead trial counsel, Houston's Susman Godfrey, are now 0-for-3 in wage-and-hour class action trials.

On Tuesday, after a three-month bench trial, a state court judge in Minnesota ruled that in failing to provide rest breaks, Wal-Mart broke state labor laws more than 2 million times. Judge Robert King Jr. awarded $6.5 million in compensatory damages to the class, which consists of about 56,000 Wal-Mart employees in Minnesota.

King's ruling follows a $172 million jury verdict against Wal-Mart in California in 2005 and a $78 million jury verdict in Pennsylvania in 2006. Both cases are on appeal. Susman Godfrey represented the company in both trials and is leading the appeals as well. Partner Neal Manne, who tried all three Wal-Mart cases, declined to comment and referred questions to Wal-Mart spokesperson Daphne Moore. In an e-mail statement, Moore said, "We are pleased that the court in Minnesota ruled in Wal-Mart's favor on many points before, during, and after trial. We respectfully disagree with portions of the decision. As part of the order, the court invited both parties to file an appeal, and we are considering that option." Wal-Mart's national coordinating counsel, Brian Duffy of Greenberg Traurig, did not return calls for comment. [American Lawyer]

Let's hope Wal-Mart's losing streak is a sign of things to come. Maybe the courts can see their way clear to penalizing them enough to actually discourage the company from violating wage-and-hour laws in the first place--the threat of a $3.25 penalty per incident of lawlessness isn't enough to keep Wal-Mart honest.

Woman Convulses and Dies, Ignored, in Waiting Room of New York City Hospital
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on July 3, 2008 at 1:39 PM.

If this story doesn’t disgust you, I don’t know what will:

It was a nightmare captured on surveillance video. A woman who had waited nearly 24 hours to be seen in a Brooklyn public hospital collapsed, fell face-down on the floor, convulsed and for nearly an hour — while several hospital staff members looked at her and one staff member even prodded her with her foot — received no aid. At some point during that time, she died.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has been sounding the alarm about New York City hospitals for some time now, calling the emergency room and inpatient units at Kings County Hospital “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.” It’s disgusting that someone had to die before the city bothered doing anything about it.

And this is just the one that we know about because the video was released on YouTube. The callous disregard that the hospital employees showed to Esmin Green is not possibly a one-time occurrence. Ms. Green was a poor, mentally ill woman of color. She apparently didn’t matter one bit to the employees at the hospital who were supposed to be giving her care. I would bet everything I own that she is not the first “unimportant” patient to receive that kind of treatment — she is just the first to have her death broadcast on YouTube, and so she is the first that the city cannot turn a blind eye towards.

And via Panopticon in the comments:

A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric center “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.”

Patients, the suit said, “are subjected to overcrowded and squalid conditions often accompanied by physical abuse and unnecessary and punitive injections of mind-altering drugs.”

“From the moment a person steps through the doors,” it added, “she is stripped of her freedom and dignity and literally forced to fight for the essentials of life.”

The suit was especially critical of the hospital’s emergency ward, saying it is so poorly staffed that patients are often marooned there for days while they wait to be evaluated.

Sometimes, the unit runs out of chairs, according to the lawsuit, forcing people to wait on foam mats or on the waiting room floor. The suit also claims that bathrooms are filthy and filled with flies, and that patients who complain too loudly are sometimes handcuffed, beaten or injected with psychotropic drugs.

In case this doesn’t make it clear, mental health (and health care in general) is a feminist issue. This should appall and enrage all of us.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Is the Department of Justice Tracking Your Mobile Phone Without a Warrant?
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 11:35 AM.

Public Records Guy seizes on an interesting legal battle between the Department of Justice and the ACLU.

In 2007, some U.S. Attorneys Offices were quoted in the news saying that federal law enforcement didn't need warrants or probable cause to track people's movements using the signals emitted by their moble phones. The ACLU wasn't so sure about that. The Justice Department rebuffed the ACLU's FOIA request for more information on the program. Now, the ACLU is suing the DOJ to get some real answers:

WASHINGTON (CN) - The Department of Justice has violated open government laws, says the ACLU in a Federal Court action, by rejecting requests for information about the government's role in "tracking the location of individuals' mobile phones without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause."

The ACLU submitted the [FOIA] request after court decisions and media reports revealed that the United States Attorneys Offices were claiming not to need probable cause to obtain real-time tracking information and that some field offices were violating a DOJ 'internal recommendation' that 'federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probably cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.' ... The information now in the public domain suggests that defendant may be engaging in unauthorized and potentially unconstitutional tracking of individuals through their mobile phones. ... The limited information currently available about the government's tracking practices raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with the law and the Constitution." [Courthouse News]

Julian Sanchez has many more details at Ars Technica.

G8 Dispatches: Water Cannons, Candlelight Vigils and Rebellion in the Streets
Posted by Marina Sitrin, David Solnit, Asha Colazione, Sarah Lazare, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 11:22 AM.

July 3
(See below for previous dispatches.)

The following is a conversation with South Korean activist Dopehead Zo and the Just Words Collective -- Sarah Lazare, Marina Sitrin, David Solnit and Asha Colazione.

The anti-G8 mobilizations have been bringing together inspiring organizers and activists from all over the world. Japanese precarious temp workers, calling themselves "Freeters", South Korean anti-military base organizers, Spanish media activists, Farm workers from Via Campesina, Australian human rights activists, German direct action organizers, and many others from North America, Asia, and Europe, have all come together to share stories, struggles, ideas, and to network and plan actions. At The Counter G8 International Forum in Tokyo, we met one organizer whose story is so compelling we needed to share it as soon as possible. The following is a selected transcription of our conversation.

Dopehead Zo is an activist who has been heavily involved in the South Korean demonstrations against the US beef import deals. Beginning in late May 2008, mass protests have rocked Seoul and other cities in South Korea, bringing hundreds of thousands, and at times over a million protesters together into the streets. These are some of the biggest mobilizations South Korea has seen for over two decades. These are both mass demonstrations and places for the creation of new social relationships between people. As one flyer put out by activists there reads: "Candlelight Vigils Evolving to a Street Rebellion Calling for Direct Democracy - We've Got the Power"

At issue is the decision taken by the new South Korean president - Lee Seok-haeng - to ease restrictions against US beef imports, most of which had been banned in 2003 after mad cow disease was discovered in the United States. The ban was a blow to the US beef industry, as South Korea was its third largest importer of US beef. Critics see the lifting of the ban as an effort to appease the United States at the expense of South Korean public health, and the trade deal has awakened broader feelings of discontent with the government's pursuit of neoliberal reforms and close relations with the United States. The overwhelming public response has virtually paralyzed Lee Seok-haeng's government and has caused him to start backpedaling on the agreement. Meanwhile, protests, rallies, and candlelight vigils continue to fill the streets of Seoul. Perhaps other forms of democracy are on the people's agenda.

Dopehead Zo spoke with us for hours, sitting on the floor together after the forums of the day had finished. He shared his experience protesting in the streets of Seoul and described a new kind of social movement that is taking form. A movement comprised of, as he calls them, "common people." He describes forms of mass democracy in the streets, and the joy of being together to create new ways of relating to one another. He also explains what all of this has to do with the G8 protests and places it in the context of an overall struggle for social justice.

Q: Can you describe what it is like right now on the streets of Seoul?

A: People are holding candlelight vigils every night, with a minimum of 10,000 people in Seoul and several thousand in other cities. On weekends, we have 50 thousand or 100 thousand people participating. When it began, it was anti-US beef imports by the Korean government. The newly elected, right-wing neoliberal ex CEO South Korean president, wanted to give some good gifts or presents to the US. The first thing the new South Korean president did was to visit the US and beg for a good relationship, and for all kinds of things. Or go to Sarkozy. I hate to mention the president's name. The gate to the US beef industry was the imports of US beef, every part of the cow - spinal cord, intestines, heart - the parts that other people usually don't eat.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Judge: President Can't Just Make Up His Own Wiretapping Rules
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet on July 3, 2008 at 7:47 AM.

A federal judge in California ruled yesterday that the President can't just make up his own rules for wiretapping. Only the FISA law passed by Congress can authorize domestic spying, according to the ruling:

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

The judge, Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of California, made his findings in a ruling on a lawsuit brought by an Oregon charity. The group says it has evidence of an illegal wiretap used against it by the National Security Agency under the secret surveillance program established by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Justice Department has tried for more than two years to kill the lawsuit, saying any surveillance of the charity or other entities was a “state secret” and citing the president’s constitutional power as commander in chief to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court under the agency’s program. [NYT]

According to the story, Judge Walker's opinion carries extra weight because he has already been chosen to hear the consolidated lawsuit against all the telecoms who cooperated with Bush's illegal domestic spying program.

Fox News Distorted Photographs of New York Times Reporters
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 3, 2008 at 6:55 AM.

This morning on Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade called Jacques Steinberg’s June 28 New York Times article on Fox News’s declining ratings a “hit piece,” adding that Steinberg and Times editor Steven Reddicliffe are “attack dogs.” During the segment, Fox aired blatantly distorted photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe with their teeth yellowed, eyes blackened, and facial features exaggerated:

Media Matters has the video.

Update: The Times' Culture Editor Sam Sifton said, "It wasn't a hit piece. It was straight news. This was a hit piece by Fox News. It is beneath comment." Asked if the paper planned to respond to Fox's actions, he said no: "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."