Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

By Missy Stoddard
Staff Writer

Steven Soper had his life all mapped out.

The 18-year-old from Lake Worth had been accepted into the Army and planned to enlist after graduating this spring from Santaluces High School.

But the plan came apart in late October when he attacked his girlfriend after learning she planned to vote for Sen. John Kerry in the presidential election.

Soper pleaded guilty Wednesday to false imprisonment, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery and resisting arrest without violence. Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga sentenced Soper to 90 days in jail followed by five years of probation and 100 hours of community service. The judge ordered Soper to write a letter of apology to 18-year-old Stacey Silveira, whom he dated for two years, according to Silveira. Soper is also required to complete a batterers’ intervention program, undergo psychological and substance abuse evaluations and complete any recommended treatment.

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Self-described as “the nation’s largest neighborhood watch group,” the Minuteman Project is a group of hundreds of volunteers, mostly recruited off the Internet, who will spend the next month patrolling the 23-mile San Pedro Valley border with the intent of reporting “sightings of illegal activity to Border Patrol agents.” There are fears from law enforcement and human rights groups alike that the group will “attract racist crackpots and lead to vigilante violence,” especially since “at least one white supremacist group has mentioned the project on its Web site,” calling to action “All Aryan Soldiers.” There will be volunteers armed with handguns, but organizers of the project claim that volunteers have been “instructed to avoid confrontation” and their goal is actually to raise public awareness of porous borders with Mexico. The chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson sector stated, “The volunteers are ‘not the kind of help the Border Patrol is asking for.’”

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by Will Lester

WASHINGTON — Most Americans surveyed in a poll say they do not think any country, including the United States, should have nuclear weapons. That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal.

Six in 10 people age 65 and older approve of the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II; the same percentage of respondents 18 to 29 disapprove.

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Wildly overplaying the Schiavo protesters, ignoring facts and giving Bush a free ride, the press was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

By Eric Boehlert

It was fitting that reporters were in danger of outnumbering pro-life supporters outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., on Thursday morning. When one man began to play the trumpet moments after Schiavo’s death was announced at 9:50 a.m., a gaggle of cameramen quickly surrounded him, two or three deep.

Has there ever been a set of protesters so small, so out of proportion, so outnumbered by the press, for a story that had supposedly set off a “furious debate” nationwide? That’s how Newsweek.com described the Schiavo story this week. Although it’s not clear how a country can have a “furious debate” when two-thirds of its citizens agree on the issue or, in the case of some Schiavo poll questions (i.e., Were Congress and President Bush wrong to intervene?), four out of five Americans agree.

But the “furious debate” angle has been a crucial selling point in the Schiavo story in part because editors and producers could never justify the extraordinary amount of time and resources they set aside for the story if reporters made plain in covering it every day that the issue was being driven by a very small minority who were out of step with the mainstream.

Clearly, the press went overboard in its around-the-clock coverage of the right-to-die case. But at this point, that type of exploitation is almost to be expected from news organizations, particularly television, desperate for compelling narratives that can be stretched out for days or weeks at a time. And it’s not fair to suggest that the Schiavo story was a manufactured one, or that it didn’t spark genuine interest. It did.

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by David Swanson

The U.S. Senate has passed a dream bill
for credit card and financial service companies that, if passed by
the House, will land millions of American families in debt slavery. Rather
than being able to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and make a difficult
new start, families and individuals will be placed on long-term payment
plans to credit card companies, companies that will take their houses,
their cars, their child-support payments, and their paychecks.

If you think you’re unlikely to land yourself
a share-cropping position in this new feudal system, ask yourself
if you can be sure that no one in your family will get sick, be injured,
die, lose a job, or get divorced. More than one in every 100 adults
in America files for bankruptcy each year. If you’re a child, the
chances of your family filing for bankruptcy are about twice that. (Kids
cost money.) These rates have doubled in the past decade. The basic
reason that bankruptcies have increased is that personal debt has
increased. In fact, in proportion to debt, bankruptcies are actually
down.

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by Norman Solomon

The first quarter of 2005 brought significant media dividends for the Bush-Cheney limited liability corporation.

Our major domestic financial goal, the privatization of Social Security, is out of reach for the next several quarters. However, in view of the magnitude of potential profits, this massive effort will continue.

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By MAUREEN DOWD

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by Gloria R. Lalumia, BuzzFlash Columnist

Seymour Hersh visited New Mexico State University (Las Cruces) on
Tuesday, March 29 as part of his speaking tour for his newest book,

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By WilliamPitt,

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

All those fences. All those guns. All those cops. At first, it seemed
like an arguably necessary precaution; these were, after all, the two
cities to take the hit on 9/11. But the longer I stayed, the longer I
looked around, and the closer I observed the behavior of Bush and his
people, I came to a sad conclusion: This security was not about keeping
us all safe from terrorists, but was about keeping Bush safe from his
own people. The President of the United States is flatly terrified of
the citizens he would supposedly lead to some supply-side promised
land. He is scared to death of us.

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Just when you thought it was impossible, Cheney energy schemes get even worse

Molly Ivins – Creators Syndicate

According to the Energy Information Administration in the Department
of Energy, last year’s energy bill (same as this one) would cost
taxpayers at least $31 billion, do nothing about the projected over-80 percent
increase in America’s imports of foreign oil by 2025, and increase
gasoline prices. (Since every bureaucrat who tells the truth in this
administration — about the cost of the drug bill or the safety of Vioxx —
seems to get the ax, I’m probably getting those folks in trouble.)

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On the March 29 edition of CNN’s American Morning, anchor Carol Costello interviewed a “pharmacist fired for refusing to fill a prescription for birth control pills.” But while Costello’s co-anchor, Bill Hemmer, teased the segment as a report on the tension between “pharmacist beliefs” and “women’s rights,” Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer appeared by herself to discuss the topic, with no one presenting an opposing view. Further, Costello failed to point out the serious questions about Pharmacists for Life’s credibility, ask Brauer about her own credibility problems, or ask Brauer obvious questions about the appropriateness of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions. CNN’s treatment of Brauer, though, is consistent with several other news reports that have mentioned her or her organization without explaining their background or giving readers and viewers a full picture of them.

The Issue:

Brauer and Pharmacists for Life are at the forefront of a growing movement aimed at giving pharmacists the right to refuse to fill prescriptions if filling them would be inconsistent with their moral or ethical beliefs. Thus far, the fight has primarily revolved around birth control prescriptions.

On February 10, the Associated Press reported:

Last year, Mississippi lawmakers passed a bill that allows all types of health care workers and facilities to refuse performing virtually any service they object to on moral or religious grounds. Anti-abortion organizations and a group called Pharmacists for Life are urging pharmacists to refuse to distribute emergency contraceptives.

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Music-biz biggie pilots a new radio hit

by NIKKI FINKE

Ride, captain, ride, upon your mystery ship!

Maybe it

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March 31st 2005 ..Posted in.... Uncategorized