Today's Headlines:

Iraqis allege sex abuse at the British Embassy


From The Times
May 8, 2008

..."Mr Bird described KBR’s investigation as “thorough and professional”.

He said that it was his understanding that the Iraqi claimants had testified to KBR. However, the three told The Times that they were never contacted by the company. Their claims are backed up by staff at the ASI consultancy, which examined KBR’s findings.


A memo, sent by a senior ASI consultant to Mr Lodge and seen by The Times, criticised KBR’s investigation, saying that as well as failing to interview the Iraqis the company had also omitted to talk to other senior embassy officials who had interviewed the cleaner when she first made her claim.

KBR’s report stated that “we have found no evidence to support the claims of serious sexual harassment”, according to ASI."...

The FiOS ads say, ‘This is big!’ Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t

COMMENTARY | May 09, 2008

Bruce Kushnick scoffs at the new FiOS ads in New York and wants to know where all the billions earmarked for broadband have gone.

By Bruce Kushnick
bruce@newnetworks.com

..."New Yorkers have paid about $2,400 per household since 1995 and counting for a service we may never get or want. Under earlier plans, the city was to be rewired with high speed fiber optics starting in 1995. Verizon has been collecting money ever since in the form of billions in higher rates and tax perks.

Here's what Verizon, then known as NYNEX, said in 1995:

"New York is the most information-intensive economy in the world, and telecommunications networks – which transport this information – will spur economic development in the state... With an advanced telecommunications infrastructure, a number of industries can, and should, flourish in New York: health care, financial services, information technology, research and development, educational services, entertainment and real estate."

Sound familiar? Economic growth, advanced telecommunications networks, education and entertainment would flourish."...

..."Local New York City phone prices have increased 472 percent since 1980 because the phone companies have been able to keep excess profits in an environment where competition has been mostly eliminated. Cable prices, which should have dropped with the introduction of Verizon TV, have instead increased by about $3.5 billion, or $500 a household.

This same scam is occurring throughout the U.S. According to earlier promises, AT&T and Verizon should have rewired 98 million homes by now. Since the early 1990s they have collected $240 billion – and counting – for such rewiring. In my first Nieman article, I outlined much of this, working largely from the companies’ annual reports. "...

Source: http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00247

The Future We Almost Know

By: Ian Welsh Saturday May 10, 2008 4:00 pm

..."I miss the past’s future. I want my spaceships and jetpacks and flying cars. I want my cybertech and biotech and anti-aging treatments.. But you can’t have futures like that if you won’t pay for them, if you let public policy be run by people who are slaves to superstition, or if you ignore basic political economic problems."...