In this issue:

U.S. Reps: Israel's Use of F-16s May Violate U.S. Law

Denver National Legislatures Conference: Our State Economies Are Collapsing!

After the Collapse: Phone and Internet Infrastructure Threatened

Power Outages Illuminate the Disasters of Dereg

Louisiana Governor Declares State of Emergency Over West Nile Virus Deaths

Anti-Police State: Opposition Surfaces in Judiciary and Congress

From the Vol.1 No.22 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly

UNITED STATES NEWS DIGEST

U.S. Reps: Israel's Use of F-16s May Violate U.S. Law

In a letter to President George W. Bush, released on July 26, Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Nick Rahall (D-W.V.) challenged the legality of the use of U.S. war matériel in an Israeli massacre on the West Bank.

According to the July 26 Saudi English-language publication Arab News, the letter says, "As you are well aware, late Monday, Israeli F-16 warplanes launched a missile strike on a densely populated area of Gaza City, killing at least 17 Palestinians and wounding 150, many of them children. We write to express our condemnation of this attack in the strongest possible terms. Furthermore, we request that the Administration examine whether the American-made and supplied military hardware employed in this attack was used in violation of the Arms Export Control Act, U.S. Public Law 90-89." They add, "The use of U.S. weaponry in this manner appears to violate U.S. law," telling Bush that "violent acts that target innocent civilians, regardless of who perpetrates them, must be condemned. There is no justification for killing innocent civilians."

This complaint about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's misuse of U.S. weaponry has been brought up before by members of Congress, but this time Dingell and Rahall note that even the White House admitted this attack was "deliberate." Arab News reports that State Department officials told them that Israel has been put "on notice."

Denver National Legislatures Conference: Our State Economies Are Collapsing!

The following report is adapted from an article in The New Federalist of Aug. 5

This year's annual meeting in Denver July 23-27, of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), drew 6,000—a significantly smaller attendance than usual—and it saw a very different mood among participants, directly reflecting the economic collapse process underway nationwide.

On July 24, the Denver-based group released its preliminary report, showing that the aggregate states' budget gap for FY 2003, which just began, is going to hit $57.9 billion, up some $20 billion from the June 30 estimate of the states' budget gap of $35.9 billion. Many legislators could not even come to Denver because they were in state budget emergency sessions.

Understandably, legislators are preoccupied, because 2002—being a mid-term election year—has 26 primaries coming up in August and September. But more to the point, the rapid erosion of state economies, and the impossibility of cutting state budgets or imposing new taxes fast enough, is testing every office-holder to the core. Making this worse is the fact that their own NCSL group based its new estimate of fiscal 2003 state deficits of $58 billion, on the the sugar-plum projection that nationally, state revenues will rise by 3.7% in fiscal 2003. No way!

The following are individual state reports from conference participants.

Kentucky: The state is running under executive order, by fiat of the governor, because the legislature did not pass a budget. A legal challenge will probably go to the U.S. Supreme Court, as to whether governors can "rule by decree" if state legislatures cannot pass a budget.

Mississippi: A special session resumed July 29, because the state cannot fund Medicaid, and will lose its 4-to-1 matching monies from the Federal government.

New York: Legislators noted how it's all over the press, that Albany just passed a state budget, and 11 days later, the deficit was already $1 billion, heading towards $5 billion!

Texas: Legislators confirmed the "unofficial" word from the state comptroller: The deficit is heading for $5-$7 billion.

Tennessee: Lawmakers are beside themselves. After their state government, in the absence of a budget, shut down for several days in early July (except for state police, prison guards, etc.), and after a tax-increase-based budget was finally passed July 3, now the state legislative primary is looming on Aug. 1, and no one has had a chance to campaign. Only a handful of lawmakers even came to the Denver conference—those without opponents in the primaries. Moreover, given the collapse of the economy, even the newly increased Tennessee sales tax can be expected to still produce a lower rate of state revenue, and the Legislature will be back in special session again soon!

Michigan: Only a tiny handful of legislators came to Denver, because of the upcoming primary, being held in the context of havoc in cities and suburbs. Governor Engler has cut $859 million in revenue-sharing to the municipalities, which have no way to make up for the lost funds. The former industrial center of Flint is bankrupt.

Virginia: The Commonwealth is struggling to make up for lost prison income. Governor Mark Warner has appointed a special panel to study ways to offset the loss of $46 million to the state treasury, incurred as the Federal government and other states "reclaim" many of the 1,600 prisoners Virginia houses (and for each of whom Virginia charges up to $75 a day).

After the Collapse: Phone and Internet Infrastructure Threatened

On July 30, the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), held a hearing on "Financial Turmoil in the Telecom Marketplace," to learn from executives of WorldCom, Global Crossing, and Qwest Communications, and Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell, how to ensure phone and internet networks continue working amid the telecom meltdown.

"They want to know from the FCC and from the companies, who have obviously been struggling, what needs to happen to ensure we don't have some kind of catastrophic failure" of service, said a spokesman for Senator Hollings.

FCC Chairman Powell, while pledging that the agency would protect customers against abrupt termination of telephone service, warned that the FCC's authority might not extend to the internet backbone, and asked Congress to expand the agency's power to block telecom companies from shutting down internet services.

Power Outages Illuminate the Disasters of Dereg

It's worse than Enron, Dynegy, and the California crisis! The pattern of electricity cuts is increasing, as the United States electric grid—destroyed by deregulation and the speculation carried out by the energy "traders"—cannot handle the demand. In El Paso on Aug. 2, a 45-minute blackout hit the entire city of 500,000, as a high-voltage line from New Mexico short-circuited. In New York City, the eighth power "alert" of the summer occurred Aug. 2, as the New York Power Authority asked its customers to cut back. Under a plan called, "Peak Load Management," customers will get a pay-off of $40 per kilowatt to reduce their power consumption. Earlier in the week, the small town of Bedford, in southeastern Pennsylvania, was hit with a blackout, as Penelec had a service breakdown. Why is this happening? See this week's InDepth for the EIR testimony on Enron submitted to the U.S. Congress.

Louisiana Governor Declares State of Emergency Over West Nile Virus Deaths

Louisiana Governor Mike Foster declared a statewide emergency Aug. 2, and asked for Federal help and money to spray mosquitoes (sometimes known as "the state bird" of Louisiana). Local parishes are using up all their funds, as cases of infection and death from the West Nile virus have become known. There have been 58 cases of infection reported; 4 people have died. Of the 12 hospitalized, 4 are in intensive care. State epidemiologist Dr. Raoult Ratard said, "This is only the beginning."

Louisiana—a swampy, Mississippi Delta Gulf state, was the home of the first Federal hospital (for seamen, in New Orelans), in the system which became the U.S. nationwide public-health system. But in recent decades, Federal, state, and local public-health infrastructure has been taken down to the point of guaranteed entry for disease vectors and outbreaks.

Anti-Police State: Opposition Surfaces in Judiciary and Congress

Attorney General John Ashcroft's police state measures have sailed through without opposition, but a Federal Judge's order this week went to the heart of the secrecy in detentions, evidence, and trial that Ashcroft is demanding. At the same time, some members of Congress indicate that a "blank check" to Ashcroft threatens the Constitutional balance of power among the Exective, the Legislative, and Judicial branches. See below for details:

*On Aug. 2, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler gave the Justice Department 15 days to release the names of all those detained in the post-Sept. 11 terrorist investigation, with only two exceptions—if the person doesn't want to be identified, and if the person is a material witness in a terror investigation. As many as 6,000 people, many of them non-citizens were detained on the local, state, and Federal level on the basis of 9/11, and many have been deported.

The Judge wrote, "The government has provided no information on the standard used to arrest and detain individuals initially." She also ruled that the government must release the names of lawyers representing the detainees. The action—a major civil rights decision—is in response to a lawsuit demanding disclosure of the detainees' names, which was filed by a number of organizations, including the American Civil Liberities Union and the Center for National Security Studies. A Justice Department spokesman, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Robert McCallum, criticized the ruling, saying it "impedes" and causes "harm" to their investigation. The Judge reportedly dismissed the DoJ argument about the need for secrecy, by pointing out that international terrorist groups undoubtedly knew that their operatives had been detained, so the "secrecy" argument doesn't hold water.

*According to the Washington Post of Aug. 2, members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have rejected an "unprecedented" intrusion by the FBI into the legislature under the guise of the FBI's investigation of Intelligence Committee leaks.

The 37 members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have been under investigation at "an unprecedented scale," since senior members of the White House suggested that the committees were responsible for leaks of National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) information about Sept. 11. It was the heads of the committees—Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) who asked John Ashcroft to order the FBI investigation, after they received an angry call about leaks, from Vice President Dick Cheney.

The FBI tactics are angering some committee members, who are refusing to take a polygraph test on the basis of the separation of branches of the government under the Constitution. One law professor told the Post that under the pretext of this investigation, the FBI is free to open a dossier on every member of Congress and every staffer, and "develop full information on them."

*The Senate was not able to ram through the vote and approval of the Department of Homeland Security that was being pushed by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), who is seeking to make a name for himself as "tougher than George Bush" in the war against terrorism. The bill failed to get past the opposition of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert E. Byrd (D-W.V.). A Byrd spokesman told the July 26 Washington Post that lawmakers are "going too fast" and "racing to meet artificial deadlines."

Even though the Senate bill was reported out of the Governmental Affairs Committee on July 25 by a 12-to-5 vote, the plan to ram through the full Senate vote by Aug. 2 was scuttled, and it will not be taken up until Sept. 3. President Bush is threatening a veto if the bill comes to his desk with the Senate provision restoring civil service job protection still in it. The White House wants to cut job protection in the name of "security" in the "war on terrorism."

The symbolic signing date of Sept. 11 was being pushed by some as a show of "patriotism," and the House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.) rammed through passage of the bill creating the Homeland Security Department on July 26 by a vote of 295 to 132.

While Congressional opposition to Homeland Security has largely been limited to particulars, such as workers' rights issues, within the House and Senate debate. constituency groups who seek to defend Constitutional liberties are using the delay in the vote to mobilize to stop the creation of the Department (see EIW, #21, " 'Homeland Security' Threatens Constitution").

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