Archive - Jul 19, 2010

• Seafood industry struggles to get financial aid during Gulf Oil spill
• Washington Post investigation finds expansive, secret network of intelligence in US
• Clinton continues bilateral talks with Pakistan
• Afghan students face challenges crossing border to attend Pakistan school
• Lynne Stewart sentencing could affect role of defense lawyers

• 20,000 attend AIDS 2010
  
• DC ordered to pay 900 K in racial discrimination claim
  
• Former GITMO detainee says UK documents of his interrogations are incomplete
  
• Irish President signs civil union bill
  
• Women in Gaza banned from publicly partaking in water pipe
  
• Dozens of Awakening Council members among dead in days of bombing in Iraq

BP continues to monitor pressure levels on the capped oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday, the oil company and the US government  announced that they had found a leak in the sea floor near the capped well, causing concern that pressure levels in the well are getting too high.  If the leak gets worse, BP may have to uncap the well and allow oil to continue flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.  As the company continues to wrestle with the gusher, BP and the U.S. government are encouraging business owners to apply for disaster compensation from BP’s $20 billion relief fund.  But some in the hard-hit Gulf seafood industry say funding is hard to apply for, and often adds up to too little.  FSRN’s Matt Pearson reports.

According to a two-year investigation by the Washington Post, since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the US government has created an expansive top secret network of intelligence and anti-terrorism agencies that is hidden from public view and lacks thorough oversight. The investigation finds that nearly 2,000 private companies and some 1,200 government agencies operate in 10,000 locations across the country, often in secrecy. Many of the agencies produce the same work, creating "waste and redundancy". The Post reports that agencies produce 50,000 intelligence reports every year, many of which are routinely ignored in a system that lacks synchronization.

In an online video reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin describe how massive funding and a lack of regulation has led to an unwieldy system.

ARKIN: This is a closed community and since 9/11 it’s becoming more so.

NARR: It has become so big and the lines of responsibility are so blurred that even our nation’s leaders don’t have a handle on it. Where is it? It’s being built from coast to coast, hidden from within America’s most familiar cities and neighborhoods.

The investigation, Top Secret America, was published in today’s Washington Post.
It includes a public, online database of government and private companies involved with the network.
You can find it here: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finishes a two-day long trip to Pakistan today, where she continues ministerial-level strategic talks. Today, she promoted $500 million in aid money to go to dams, energy production, hospitals and agricultural development. It’s part of more than $7 billion in aid approved by Congress last year and to be spread out over five years.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

“We are focusing on projects, on sectors that would make a qualitative difference to the lives of ordinary Pakistanis . . .This is a relationship that improves purchasing power, our quality of life.”

Clinton also emphasized that the partnership is not just about military aid and security.

“Our partnership with Pakistan goes far beyond security. It is economic, political, educational, cultural, historical, rooted in family ties. That this misperception has persisted for so long tells us we have not done a good enough job of connecting our partnership with concrete improvements in the lives of Pakistanis and with this dialogue we are working very hard to change that perception and to deliver results that truly have the concrete effects we are seeking."

Pakistan is key in the US bid to oust militants and terrorists from the region - but many civilians blame the US government for fomenting violence through CIA unmanned drone strikes in the country, which have killed many civilians.

In another regional development, Pakistan and Afghanistan announced a new trade deal on Sunday. The deal needs to be approved by both country’s governments. It would allow Afghanistan to move goods through Pakistan into India, and for Pakistan to move goods across Afghanistan, to Central Asia. US officials praised the deal. They say it will help Afghan President Karzai fight the insurgency.

The Pakistan-Afghan border is a strategic location for the US government and today we’re going to take you there, to the Hindu Kush Mountain Range and a place called Torkham Gate. It’s the main border crossing – and hundreds of US military and NATO trucks cross there every day.

Thousands of travelers also pass through Torkham Gate, including many Afghan students who cross into Pakistan six days a week to study in private schools. But even though most people traveling through the gate face no problems crossing these young people do. FSRN’s Antonio Ortiz reads for our reporter in Pakistan, Gabe Mathews.

On July 15, former defense lawyer Lynne Stewart was resentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in New York. In 2005 Stewart was convicted of aiding terrorism. Her sentencing stems from a violation of the Special Administrative Measures, which govern what information can be made public, during her representation of Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1995 on terrorism charges. The sentencing could have broad implications for defense attorneys.

For more on the case, we're joined by David Gespass, president of the National Lawyers Guild.