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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (50806)	9/12/2006 10:36:43 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 90947

Asking the Wrong Questions Is America safer today? The media don't seem interested. Friday, September 8, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT The title of a CBS special report Wednesday night posed the question that haunts us all after 9/11: "Five Years Later: Are We Safer?" Given the show's brevity--an hour minus commercials--and the complexity of the subject, CBS's treatment was predictably shallow. After host Katie Couric asked President Bush a few questions of the "your critics say . . . how do you respond?" sort, and we toured the federal antiterrorism command center, there was little time left for an in-depth examination of anything. Then again, CBS, like other networks, has had five years to illuminate suggestions to make Americans safer, and it has barely skimmed the surface in all that time. According to a new study by the Media Research Center (MRC), in fact, TV coverage of the domestic War on Terror has focused most intently not on the threat to our lives but on alleged threats to civil liberties. The latter demands discussion in an era when potentially intrusive law-enforcement tools are indispensable weapons against an unconventional enemy. Yet when the MRC reviewed all CBS, ABC and NBC evening news segments about three major aspects of the war--a total of 496 reports since 9/11--it found almost no debate or context. Judging by most of the segments, the Patriot Act, the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay and NSA surveillance are legal atrocities with little or no security value. The full MRC study will be available today on its Web site, www.mrc.org. In summary, it found that "most TV news stories about the Patriot Act (62%) highlighted complaints or fears that the law infringed on the civil liberties of innocent Americans. . . . Only one report suggested the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures 'may not be enough.' " Of 277 segments about Guantanamo, the MRC says, "most of the network coverage . . . focused on charges that the captured al-Qaeda terrorists were due additional rights or privileges . . . or allegations that detainees were being mistreated or abused. . . . Only 39 stories described the inmates as dangerous, and just six stories revealed that ex-detainees had committed new acts of terror after being released." Finally, on phone-call monitoring, "most network stories (59%) cast the NSA's post-9/11 terrorist surveillance program as either legally dubious or outright illegal. Only 21 stories (16%) focused on the program's value as a weapon in the War on Terror." The report's author, MRC research director Rich Noyes, reminded us this week that journalists are supposed to question what the government does. But the networks have been selective in what they questioned, often failing to ask what more can be done to protect us from deadly terror attacks. Only, be careful what you wish for. Wednesday night, CBS correspondents did offer a couple of terror-fighting suggestions. The most remarkable one implied that many "homegrown" domestic Islamic radicals are comparatively harmless boobs with "delusional" schemes to blow us all up and called on the FBI to stop wasting so much time on these folks and focus instead on real al Qaeda types. Definitely not a proposal that should make anyone feel safer. opinionjournal.com

To: Sully- who wrote (50806)	9/13/2006 2:59:22 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Super-rich hide trillions offshore · Study reveals assets 10 times larger than UK GDP · Exchequers deprived of hundreds of billions in tax Nick Mathiason Sunday March 27, 2005 The Observer The world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion of assets in offshore havens, mainly as a tax avoidance measure. The shock new figure - 10 times Britain's GDP - is contained in the most authoritative study of the wealth held in offshore accounts ever conducted. The study, by Tax Justice Network, a group of accountants and economists concerned at the escalating wealth held in offshore locations, shows that the world's high-net-worth individuals earn $860 billion each year from their assets. But there is growing alarm among regulators and campaigners because exchequers worldwide are missing out on at least $255bn of tax each year. Governments appear unable, or unwilling, to prevent the rich employing aggressive strategies to minimise their tax liabilities. The OECD this weekend confirmed that international tax avoidance is a growing problem that troubles governments not just of rich countries, but middle-income ones as well. 'This is one of the defining crises of our times,' said John Christensen, co-ordinator of the Tax Justice Network and a former economic adviser to the Jersey government. 'One of the most fundamental changes in our society in recent years is how money and the rich have become more mobile. This has resul ted in the wealthy becoming less inclined to associate with normal society and feeling no obligation to pay taxes.' James Jones, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, said: 'In this country, we have created a culture of tax avoidance. The current debate is pandering to a culture of consumption and avoidance. We need a much better debate than the political parties are currently giving us.' Individuals such as Rupert Murdoch, Philip Green, Lakshmi Mittal and Hans Rausing - among the world's richest men - all make extensive use of tax havens. There is nothing illegal about placing assets and cash offshore, but campaigners are promising to attack tax avoidance by the world's richest people in much the same way that they currently target environment and trade issues. The $11.5trn does not include the vast amount of money stashed in tax havens by multinational corporations, which are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to run rings round the authorities. The Tax Justice Network study has drawn from data supplied by the Bank of International Settlements, Merrill Lynch and McKinsey. Richard Murphy of Tax Research, who co-authored the report, said: 'No one has tried to calculate a number like this before. To ensure the credibility of our data, we have only used information already in the public domain and produced by some of the most authoritative sources in the world. 'In addition, we tested our conclusions against three independent sources of information, and all seem to substantially agree, giving us a high degree of confidence in the conclusions.' 'Gordon Brown and the British government are ideally placed to act on offshore tax avoidance, since so many of the banks and tax havens that facilitate these processes have British links,' said Charles Abugre, Christian Aid's head of policy. 'Only last week, the Commission for Africa called for an immediate doubling of aid to Africa to help it meet the Millennium Development Goals. And yet here is a potential source of revenue that even the most responsible governments are doing little to tap into.' politics.guardian.co.uk