by Larry Geller

It’s one thing to reform (by which I mean improve) public education and another to destroy the value of it. No Child Left Behind has decimated curricula across the country as schools scramble to show progress in reading and math. The pressure on students is enormous, and in the end, they arguably receive an inferior education, stripped of arts, social studies, even phys ed. Reading and math are essential, of course, but not enough to produce well-rounded individuals capable of critical thinking.

The US Department of Education has supported an emphasis on social studies, as you will read in the paper. Yet Hawaii is planning drastic cuts.

Hawaii’s Department of Education is headed by a superintendent without educational credentials or experience, a departure from her predecessors. So it may fall to parents to defend the quality of Hawaii’s public school curriculum.

That appears to be what is happening with the formation of Aloha POSSE and the promulgation of their scholarly and well-reasoned position paper, which I’ve posted below with permission.

Aloha POSSE was formed in June 2011 “as an informal network of Hawai’i residents interested in Protecting Our Social Studies Education.”

The paper, Position Paper Regarding Board Policy 4540:Proposal to Reduce The Number of Social Studies Credits Required For High School Graduation From 4 Credits To 3, is well constructed and persuasive. Whether it will sway a Board of Education anxious to receive the US Department of Education’s bribe money, the Race to the Top award, remains to be seen. The paper is worthy of their attention and consideration.

It may take many parents working together to defend against erosion of the school curriculum. For more information, here is how to get hold of Aloha POSSE:

Aloha Posse  website:  http://www.alohaposse.org/alohaposse/Aloha_POSSE_home.html

Aloha Posse Facebook page:  http://www.facebook.com/alohaposse

 

Download 20110721 Aloha POSSE Position Paper Re Board Policy 4540

 

by Larry Geller

Averie Kenery, a flight attendant laying over in New York City, had swallowed a bottle of pills and wasn’t breathing when police broke down her door in Jamaica, Queens. But how did they find her? No one knew exactly where she was staying. Thanks to her clear-thinking mom in Honolulu, quick police action, and no thanks to 911, her life was saved.

Since this is a blog, I cannot reproduce articles in full. I do urge readers to click through and check out this amazing story of quick thinking and police action that saved a woman’s life—long distance, from Hawaii to Jamaica, Queens.

The story was broken by the New York Daily News, but for detail, please see the article in GMA News, you’ll find the whole story there. I won’t spoil the story by telling you how the police found her.

Averie Kenery, 32, swallowed a bottle of pills and called her mother and husband in Honolulu just before 5 p.m. Sunday to tell them, "I apologize for what I've done. Tell my kids I love them," a police source told the Daily News.

[Daily News, Ringing cell phone saves woman's life: Attempted suicide saved by mom's long distance call to cops, 7/21/2011]

Here is the longer GMA News story:

The call came from someplace at a crash pad near JFK airport in Queens, New York. The phone dropped from Kenery’s hand as she passed out.

The rescue began after Kenery’s mother Beth Walz had used another phone to call 911 almost immediately after Kenery’s call.

But she got no help because she could only specify an intersection in Kew Gardens, not an exact address which an operator demanded to locate Kerry.

Walz and other family members called up different police stations around the area until Walz reached Detective Charles LoPresti of the 103rd Precinct Detective Squad.

[GMA News, Fil-Am in New York rescued from suicide attempt, 7/30/2011]

LoPresti sprung into action, as the article reports. I won’t snip further, please read the article.

Officer Charles LoPresti will be recognized for his heroism. For more on his quick response and recognition, check out this final article:

Detective Charles LoPresti of the 103rd Precinct has tackled hundreds of cases involving emergency calls all over the city in his 22-year career with New York’s Finest, but he successfully handled one of the longest distance pleas for help his squad has received.

LoPresti and a team of three detectives were able to save a distraught, 32-year-old flight attendant who attempted suicide while staying in a flight crew crash pad in Jamaica. The detective, who has spent 20 combined years with the stationhouse, said he and his partners were lucky to save Averie Kenery because her family called the NYPD from their home in Honolulu, Hawaii, and did not know her exact location.

[yournabe.com, 103rd cop saves flight attendant after Hawaii call, 7/28/2011]

Click the thingy in the lower right for full screen.

by Larry Geller

Finally, by 4 p.m., a jury of 12 members and 4 alternates was seated and instructed.

It all begins tomorrow at 9 a.m. with opening statements.

Looking at my notes, if one were a courtroom junkie, I could tell you why the room is so cold (Judge Mollway likes it that way), and all kinds of stuff that frankly, isn’t terribly important. For a blow-by-blow, check out Sara Lin’s live blog on the Civil Beat website. She’s doing a great job, and these past two days must be something of a warm-up for the real action tomorrow.

Oh, one thing that interested several of us—KGMB has brought in a courtroom sketchbook artist. It was fascinating to watch her and later, outside the courtroom, to ask her how she got started, what cases she’s worked on, and so forth.

It really is cool that finally, at last, a laptop is allowed into the courtroom. Just one, of course, but that’s a breakthrough. Over time, perhaps we can drag our federal district court at least into the 20th century. But is taking a photograph less disruptive, or very much different, than having a sketch artist labor for hours to produce a similar effect? Would a tweet or two from the peanut gallery really be so bad?

At least the judges have given up their white wigs.

---

การแปลของ Google : สุดท้ายโดย 16:00 คณะลูกขุนจาก 12 สมาชิกและ 4 สลับนั่งและสั่ง

มันทั้งหมดเริ่มต้นในวันพรุ่งนี้ที่ 9:00 ที่มีงบเปิด

มองไปที่บันทึกของฉันหากมีขี้ยาห้องพิจารณาคดีที่ผมสามารถบอกคุณว่าทำไมห้องจึงเย็น (Mollway ผู้พิพากษาชอบมันวิธีการที่) และทุกชนิดของสิ่งที่ตรงไปตรงมาไม่ได้เป็นสิ่งที่สำคัญมาก สำหรับเป่าโดยเป่า, ตรวจสอบบล็อกสด Sara หลินในเว็บไซต์ชนะโยธา เธอทำงานได้ดีและเหล่านี้ผ่านมาสองวันจะต้องเป็นสิ่งที่อบอุ่นขึ้นสำหรับการดำเนินการจริงในวันพรุ่งนี้

Oh, สิ่งหนึ่งที่น่าสนใจหลายของเรา - KGMB ได้นำศิลปิน sketchbook ห้องพิจารณาคดี มันเป็นที่น่าสนใจที่จะดูเธอและต่อมานอกห้องพิจารณาคดีเพื่อขอเธอว่าเธอได้เริ่มต้นสิ่งที่กรณีของเธอทำงานอยู่และอื่น ๆ

จริงๆมันเป็นเย็นที่ในที่สุด, at last, แล็ปท็อปที่ได้รับอนุญาตเข้าไปในห้องพิจารณาคดี เพียงหนึ่งของหลักสูตร แต่ที่ก้าวหน้า เมื่อเวลาผ่านไปบางทีเราสามารถลากศาลแขวงของรัฐบาลกลางของเราอย่างน้อยในศตวรรษที่ 20 แต่จะถ่ายภาพน้อยก่อกวนหรือมากแตกต่างกันกว่ามีแรงงานศิลปินวาดสำหรับชั่วโมงในการผลิตผลที่คล้ายกันหรือไม่ จะ tweet หรือสองจากแกลเลอรี่ถั่วลิสงจริงๆจะเลวร้าย?

อย่างน้อยผู้พิพากษาได้ให้ขึ้นวิกผมสีขาวของพวกเขา

 

by Larry Geller

Staff at the News of the World, who may have thought they had hit rock bottom when their company told them their newspaper was "toxic" and closed it, have been shocked again by the offer of work... in Siberia.

[The Independent (UK), NOTW staff offered new job – in Siberia, 7/28/2011]

That’s one job. Another was in Bulgaria.

by Larry Geller

Not much to report today. The trial gets into gear tomorrow (Thursday) with opening statements expected to begin after lunch, or at about 1-1:30 p.m. This assumes that jury selection will be completed in the morning.

There was a large pool of 111 potential jurors available today. Judge Seabright moved a trial date and donated his jury pool to Judge Mollway for this trial.

Prior to jury selection there were two issues that came up. It was discovered that one of the attorneys now on the defense team represented three witnesses in the past, before the grand jury. That could represent a conflict of interest. Heck, Hawaii is such a small place… Judge Mollway asked the Sous (Mike and Alec, the defendants) if this would be a problem for them, and they indicated that it would not.

Then it turned out that one of the translators did some work for the FBI (an FBI representative sits with the government attorneys in court). The court has no translators in the Thai language, and in particular, translation is needed for the rural dialect that the Thai witnesses speak. One of the defense attorneys, Tom Beinert, is to check to see if he can locate another translator. This should not turn into a big obstacle, though.

Judge Mollway showed considerable respect and deference to the situation of individual jurors during jury selection. Any for whom serving in a multi-week trial would be an economic hardship were readily excused. One juror was about to begin his apprenticeship as a carpenter. He was excused.

Judge Mollway kept the tone light, even comparing the wireless mike passed around to jurors to a karaoke microphone. It worked, each juror held the mike up close and kept it horizontal so it could transmit properly.

If I need to tell you how jurors held the microphone, you see that it was not really an exciting day.

Tune in tomorrow when the trial really begins.

---

การแปลของ Google : ไม่มากที่จะรายงานในวันนี้ การทดลองที่ได้รับในวันพรุ่งนี้เกียร์ (วันพฤหัสบดี) ด้วยการเปิดงบคาดว่าจะเริ่มหลังอาหารกลางวันหรือที่เกี่ยวกับ 1-1:30 น. นี้จะถือว่าการคัดเลือกคณะลูกขุนว่าจะแล้วเสร็จในตอนเช้า

มีสระว่ายน้ำขนาดใหญ่จาก 111 jurors ที่อาจเกิดขึ้นคือวันนี้ใช้ได้ ผู้พิพากษา Seabright ย้ายการทดลองและการบริจาคสระว่ายน้ำของเขาไปยังคณะลูกขุนตัดสิน Mollway สำหรับการทดลองนี้

ก่อนที่จะเลือกคณะลูกขุนมีสองประเด็นที่ถูกขึ้นมา มันถูกค้นพบว่าหนึ่งในทนายความในขณะนี้อยู่ในทีมงานการป้องกันแทนสามพยานในอดีตที่ผ่านมา Heck, ฮาวายเป็นเช่นสถานที่เล็ก ... Mollway ผู้พิพากษาถาม Sous (ไมค์และอเล็กซ์, จำเลย) ถ้านี้จะเป็นปัญหาสำหรับพวกเขาและพวกเขาแสดงให้เห็นว่ามันจะไม่

จากนั้นก็จะเปิดออกที่หนึ่งของนักแปลที่ได้ทำงานให้กับเอฟบีไอ (ตัวแทนเอฟบีไออยู่กับทนายความของรัฐบาลในศาล) ศาลได้มีนักแปลในภาษาไทยและโดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งการแปลเป็​​นสิ่งจำเป็นสำหรับภาษาที่พยานพูดไทย หนึ่งในทนายความป้องกัน, ทอม Beinert, คือการตรวจสอบเพื่อดูว่าเขาสามารถค้นหานักแปลอื่น นี้ไม่ควรจะเปลี่ยนเป็นอุปสรรคใหญ่แม้ว่า

Mollway ผู้พิพากษาควรเคารพมากและเคารพกับสถานการณ์ของแต่ละ jurors ใด ๆ สำหรับผู้ที่ให้บริการในการทดลองหลายสัปดาห์ที่จะเป็นยากลำบากทางเศรษฐกิจที่มีการยกเว้นได้อย่างง่ายดาย หนึ่งลูกขุนได้เกี่ยวกับการเริ่มต้นการฝึกงานของเขาเป็นช่างไม้ เขาได้รับการยกเว้น ผู้พิพากษา Mollway เก็บแสงเสียงแม้กระทั่งการเปรียบเทียบแบบไร้สายผ่านไมค์ไปรอบ ๆ เพื่อ jurors สำหรับการตอบสนองของพวกเขากับไมโครโฟนคาราโอเกะ มันทำงานลูกขุนแต่ละถือไมค์ขึ้นอย่างใกล้ชิดและเก็บไว้ในแนวนอนเพื่อให้มันสามารถส่งได้อย่างถูกต้อง

ถ้าต้องการที่จะบอกคุณเกี่ยวกับวิธีการ jurors ถือไมโครโฟนที่คุณเห็นว่ามันไม่จริงวันที่น่าตื่นเต้น

ปรับแต่งในวันพรุ่งนี้เมื่อการทดลองเริ่มต้นจริงๆ

by Larry Geller

Courthouse News Service reported this morning that new complaints have been filed against the Hawaii Department of Public Safety and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) alleging that abuses continue at Saguaro Prison in Arizona. The plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief.

The men say CCA "deliberately destroyed and failed to preserve evidence of their wrongdoing, including videotapes ... intercepted mail, delayed mail, denied mail and interfered with phone calls to family and attorneys" and "deliberately falsified reports."
They say that Saguaro's Warden Todd Thomas participated in the abuses, Hawaii's on-site Public Safety monitor, John Ioane, did nothing to stop it.

According to the new complaint:

"Plaintiffs were stripped of nearly all of their clothing while being beaten, questioned, and humiliated.

"Plaintiffs were threatened with harm to themselves and their families, including through such statements as:

"a. 'We have your emergency contact information;'
"b. 'We know who your family is and where they live and we are going to harm them;'
"c. 'We are going to kill you;'
"d. 'We will continue to beat you and the only way to stop that is to commit suicide;'
"e. 'We will send you to hell;'
"f. 'We will stick something up your ass.'
"g. 'We will smash all the bones in your face.'"

To conceal the abuses, CCA violated its own policy by refusing to videotape the acts, the complaint states.

"Inmates were told that if they told anyone what had happened, they would be killed or beaten further.

[Courthouse News Service, Private Prison Beatings Continue, Men Say, 7/27/2011]

Although the report does not use the word, the alleged treatment of Hawaii prisoners probably amounts to torture under the international conventions that the US has signed onto and which then became law of the land.

Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie recently signed a new contract with CCA worth $45.5 million a year to keep prisoners at Saguaro and at the Red Rock Correctional Center until 2014.

by Larry Geller

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Commentary: Wednesday’s jury selection may not be exciting, but this case is as full of drama as anything on courtroom TV.  Scroll down and check out the bulleted items in Malia Zimmerman’s article Seeking Justice on the Hawaii Reporter website or here on Disappeared News.

---

Today (Tuesday, 7/26/2011) Judge Susan Oki Mollway issued her final pre-trial motions, clearing the way for jury selection to begin in the trial of Alec and Mike Sou, the brothers who own and run Aloun Farms on Oahu.

The Sous face 12 charges related to the forced labor of up to 44 Thai farm workers and could spend 20 years in prison if convicted.

In denying the defense motions, Judge Mollway refused to preclude evidence related to Global Horizons Manpower, Inc., or the criminal trial against them. That trial, billed as the largest human trafficking case in US history, is scheduled to take place next year in Honolulu.

Finally, Mollway refused a defense motion to dismiss charges.

Jury selection tomorrow will be complicated by the wide media coverage around the original charges brought against the Sou brothers, followed by their adoption of a plea agreement under which they pled guilty to reduced charges that could have brought maximum sentences of five years. Later, there was more publicity as Judge Mollway threw out the plea agreement after defendants appeared to backpedal on some of the agreed facts. Trying to empanel a jury not tainted by the publicity may be a challenge.

To assist the process, Judge Mollway announced that she will be using a printed questionnaire to start with, followed by individual questioning of each potential juror.

When jury selection is complete, which would most likely be Wednesday or Thursday, the jury will be instructed, opening the way for approximately 90 minutes of opening arguments.

Although the judge has been extensively briefed, opening arguments are usually the first opportunity that the general public has to understand the prosecution's planned strategy for the case and the response that will be mounted by the defense.

The case is expected to end by Labor Day.

---

Google แปล : วันนี้ (อังคาร 2011/07/26) ผู้พิพากษา Mollway Oki Susan การเคลื่อนไหวของเธอที่ออกสุดท้ายก่อนการทดลองการล้างวิธีการในการคัดเลือกคณะลูกขุนที่จะเริ่มต้นในการทดลองของอเล็กซ์และ Mike Sou พี่น้องซึ่งตัวเองและเรียกใช้ฟาร์ม Aloun เกี่ยวกับโออาฮู

ใบหน้า Sous 12 ค่าใช้จ่ายที่เกี่ยวข้องกับการบังคับใช้แรงงานถึง 44 คนงานในฟาร์มไทยและสามารถใช้จ่าย 20 ปีในคุกหากถูกตัดสินว่า

ในการปฏิเสธการเคลื่อนไหวของการป้องกัน, Mollway ผู้พิพากษาปฏิเสธที่จะดักคอหลักฐานที่เกี่ยวข้องกับกำลังคนทั่วโลก Horizons, Inc หรือการทดลองทางอาญากับพวกเขา การทดลองที่เรียกเก็บเงินเป็นกรณีการค้ามนุษย์ที่ใหญ่ที่สุดในประวัติศาสตร์ของสหรัฐอเมริกามีกำหนดจะใช้สถานที่ในปีถัดไปในโฮโนลูลู

สุดท้าย Mollway ปฏิเสธการเคลื่อนไหวต่อสู้เพื่อยกเลิกการเรียกเก็บค่าบริการ

การเลือกคณะกรรมการตัดสินในวันพรุ่งนี้จะมีความซับซ้อนโดยครอบคลุมสื่อกว้างประมาณค่าใช้จ่ายเดิมที่มากับพี่น้อง Sou ตามด้วยการยอมรับของข้อตกลงภายใต้ข้ออ้างที่พวกเขา pled ผิดกับการลดค่าใช้จ่ายที่อาจมีประโยคที่นำมาไม่เกินห้าปีของพวกเขา ต่อมามีการประชาสัมพันธ์มากขึ้นเป็น Mollway ผู้พิพากษาโยนออกข้ออ้างข้อตกลงหลังจากที่จำเลยที่ปรากฏ backpedal ในบางส่วนของข้อเท็จจริงที่ตกลงกันไว้ พยายามที่จะ empanel คณะลูกขุนไม่ปนเปื้อนโดยการประชาสัมพันธ์อาจจะเป็นสิ่งที่ท้าทาย

เพื่อช่วยให้กระบวนการ Mollway ผู้พิพากษาประกาศว่าเธอจะใช้แบบสอบถามการพิมพ์เริ่มต้นด้วยการตามด้วยคำถามของแต่ละลูกขุนที่มีศักยภาพในแต่ละ

เมื่อเลือกคณะลูกขุนจะเสร็จสมบูรณ์ซึ่งส่วนใหญ่น่าจะเป็นวันพุธหรือวันพฤหัสบดีที่คณะลูกขุนจะต้องมีการสั่งเปิดทางสำหรับการประมาณ 90 นาทีของการขัดแย้งการเปิด

แม้ว่าผู้พิพากษาที่ได้รับฟังการบรรยายสรุปอย่างกว้างขวางขัดแย้งมักจะมีการเปิดโอกาสแรกที่ประชาชนทั่วไปมีการเข้าใจกลยุทธ์การวางแผนการฟ้องร้องสำหรับกรณีและการตอบสนองที่จะติดตั้งโดยการป้องกันที่

กรณีที่คาดว่าจะยุติโดยวันแรงงาน

 

The story below is reproduced with permission. Please check the Hawaii Reporter website for an additional video related to the case. The original story is here. Malia Zimmerman’s coverage of the human trafficking cases has been carried also by the Bangkok Post.

Seeking Justice

BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN - Samporn Khanja remembers the day his life changed forever – his father died. He was just 14 years old, but he dropped his childhood games to manage farming duties at his family’s 25-acre farm in Maha Sarakham, Thailand. He and his three sisters made enough money on their cucumbers and rice sales to get by, but Khanja dreamed of a better life.

So when Khanja read the Aloun Farms advertisement posted on the Thai Department of Labor bulletin board for a full-time landscaping job in Hawaii that paid $9.42 an hour, he took the job. But the decision Khanja made in 2004 to travel to Hawaii with 43 other Thai men to work at Aloun Farms would not only devastate his family financially, but it would land him 7 years later in the middle of one of Hawaii’s most notorious human trafficking trials.

This Wednesday, Honolulu U.S. District Court Judge Susan Oki Mollway will oversee what is expected to be a three- to four-week trial to determine whether Aloun farms owners Michael Mankone Sou and Alec Souphone Sou are guilty of 12 charges related to forced labor, document servitude and visa fraud of Khanja and the other Thai workers.

On Monday, Defense attorneys Thomas Bienert Jr. and Thomas Otake argued that the charges their clients should be dropped because what they did “is not a crime,” or human trafficking, rather a dispute over wages.

"This case is kind of an interesting one because it's about whether you can extend this law and call something forced labor when at most what you did was tell people what is the natural consequence of them not doing their job," Bienert said.

"If the government is allowed to apply this forced labor statute in a way that they're attempting to do so, I think a lot of employers need to be worried," Otake said.

The defense team also tried to get more information on what the grand jury was told about the forced labor statute and changes made in 2008 by congress to include financial harm. Before that, it was a crime to force someone to work under the threat of "serious harm." Prosecutors continue to argue that serious harm can also be financial.

This defense’s legal strategy outlined Monday is a change from January 2011, when each brother pled guilty to one charge of importing laborers from Thailand to force them to work and agreed to cooperate with the federal government’s efforts to prosecute others involved with this case in Thailand. They later backed out of the deal.

In 2009, the brothers were indicted on three counts including forced labor, document servitude and visa fraud for their role in the recruitment scheme that Thai workers say left them in deep financial trouble.

From April 2003 and February 2005, the indictment said the Sou brothers and William Khoo of the Thai Taipei Manpower Company, enticed the “impoverished, rural farm workers” making $1,000 a year to work instead at Aloun Farms for $9.60 an hour for three to four years, housing and transportation included.

Workers paid high recruitment fees upfront - of between $15,000 and $22,500 or an estimated 15 to 22 years of their typical annual income - by obtaining high interest loans that they secured with their family home and farmland. The Sous received “kickbacks” from the workers recruitment fees, the indictment says.

Udon representatives told them that if the workers ran away in the United States even once or defaulted on their loan, they’d owe $1 million to $1.25 million in penalties.

Court documents say the Sou brothers confiscated the workers passports and H-2A visas when they arrived in September 2004 and paid workers just $5 to $6 an hour or a flat monthly wage also deducting money for meals and accommodations.

The Sous were able to obtain through The Aloun Foundation, their non-profit 501(c) 3, several loans from the Department of Agriculture including $642,000 and $2,100,000 for farm labor housing and $346,500 from the same department for rural rental assistance payments for a total of $3,088,900 from 2004 to 2009.

But the 5-star accommodations the Thais were promised was actually a 5-bedroom house in Waianae that would house all of them, said Khanja, forcing the workers to cram into the bedrooms and bathrooms to sleep. In off work hours, workers confirm they were locked in that two-story house, surrounded by a chain link and concrete fence, “limiting their movement.”

Some of the workers were moved weeks later to a storage container on the farm property, which had no air conditioning or indoor plumbing, and they all were ordered not to socialize with outsiders, the workers said.

When the workers complained that they didn’t get the pay they were promised and unfairly had expenses taken out of their pay so they made minimal or no wages, the indictment said the Sou brothers “threatened to send them back to Thailand knowing the workers could not pay off their debts and would cause serious economic harm including the loss of their family property.”

There has been high drama throughout this case leading up to the July 2011 trial.

• After sending an email around asking for friends, business associates and employees to show up in court and to write letters in their favor, the Sous bused in dozens of their workers to line the courtroom for their sentencing.

• Two former governors and some of Hawaii’s most influential bankers, agricultural leaders and business people partnering with the Sous, are siding with the brothers via letters to the judge and statements to the news media.

• To show that the Thai workers were well cared for during their employment at Aloun from September 2004 to February 2005, the defense team at that sentencing hearing showed a 10-minute video featuring Aloun employees they claimed have cooked or driven for them – and included testimony of a Buddhist priest about the workers' emotional well being.

• Federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment on October 27 after the Sous backed out of their plea deal and included accusations that the Sous “corruptly obstructed, influenced, and impeded an official proceeding” with a video “that contained false and misleading representations.”

• Mike Sou was under house arrest in 2010 with “no contact” order with witnesses since reportedly trying to influence Thai workers to change their testimony and say they lied to the FBI and in return offering them through a third party $35,000 each.

• The case put Hawaii in the international spotlight after the New York Times editorial page, a French documentary, Al Jazeera London and Asian media covered the story.

• The Sous brought in Bienert, a former California-based U.S. attorney, deemed the "Perry Mason of Prosecution” before he became a defense attorney.

But with all the distractions, the Thai workers, many who are witnesses, are focused on what they hope will be a good end result.

While Khanja is testifying here in America, his sisters are in court in Thailand hoping to delay foreclosure. If he doesn’t pay back the entire $20,000 plus $13,000 in interest for a total of $33,000 soon, his family will lose everything they own.

Meanwhile, despite the defense attorneys' attempt to get the case thrown out Monday, Mike Sou’s attorney, Thomas Otake, said his client is “very eager and very happy that the trial is here,” adding “these false allegations have been devastating to his business and to himself personally.”

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Malia Zimmerman is the editor and co-founder of Hawaii Reporter. She has worked as a consultant and contributor to several dozen media outlets including ABC 20/20, FOX News, MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, UPI and the Washington Times. Malia has been listed as one of the nation’s top "Web Proficients, Virtuosi, and Masters" and "Hawaii's new media thought leader" by http://www.thewebstersdictionary.com Reach her at Malia@hawaiireporter.com

AP’s Mark Niesse did a great job reporting on the upcoming Aloun Farms brothers trial. So please click over and read his story: Hawaii farm owners face human trafficking trial (AP, 7/25/2011).

“I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”--Grover Norquist

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by Larry Geller

House Republicans may achieve Norquist’s goal if they simply allow the August 2 debt ceiling deadline to pass without an agreement. Is this unlikely? Maybe not, if should the 250 members of Congress who have signed his “no tax” pledge decide to stick by it. 

Reading each day how our federal government is totally paralyzed by this unwavering Republican ideology and watching the ship of state power full steam ahead towards what they admit will be a disaster, reminds me of the Titanic story, but replayed in slow motion. (click image for larger)

 

The question is whether Republicans will go along with any compromise at all. Perhaps they expect that Democrats will cave to Republican demands because they really do not want an economic crisis on their watch.

Remember that on the Titanic there never were lifeboats for the poor folks in third class, who were by and large trapped anyway because they had no way to get upstairs to the deck. It was assumed they would simply perish in a disaster. Same today, right?

 

“…the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency.”

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by Larry Geller

I found myself reading about the Titanic on Wikipedia after listening to the latest Al Jazeera news on KPFA. The image in my head (unfortunately, I can’t draw worth a damn) is of a huge ship-of-state heading for an iceberg marked “Debt Ceiling.” At least, it seems like a good metaphor for our current voyage toward potential economic destruction.

Obama, on deck steering this thing with a TV remote, is willing to sell the lifeboats in advance. The water is full of sharks (Republicans) and the Democrats are in their dinghies, fishing for sardines. Good thing I can’t draw, I guess.

Day by day the Titanic gets closer to that iceberg. The danger is not to the rich folks who support Congressional Republicans, but to the rest of us. After the historical Titanic went down, it was like that:

97 percent of the women in first class survived, 86 percent of the women survived in second class and less than half survived in third class.[84] Of men on board, 33 percent of the first class were saved, while only 8 percent of the second class and 16 percent of the third class were saved.

How to hit this economic iceberg without really trying? Just do nothing. That’s a good summation of Congress’ best efforts so far. Sound and fury also comes to mind.

The pull-quote above is from The Mother of All No-Brainers (NY Times, 7/4/2011), very worth a read.

A Google search reveals that plenty of others have associated the current Congressional course as the voyage of the Titanic all over again.

Also hot on the web is Grover Norquist’s no tax increase pledge, apparently signed by about 250 members of Congress. How does that figure in? Even Norquist himself may not be as clear as you’d think, but he may have given pledge-signers a way out with regard to expiring Bush tax cuts:

If there were no vote in Congress and taxes rose automatically, then no politicians would have voted for higher taxes and no elected official would have broken his or her pledge.

But that is different from supporting a plan by some Democrats that would end some or all of these lower tax rates, higher per-child tax credits and the A.M.T. patches — policies that, by the way, Congress has extended repeatedly with bipartisan support. It is difficult to see how such a package would fail to violate the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

[New Yorker quoting NY Times, Grover Norquist: “You Can’t Break the Pledge”, 7/24/2011]

So that should give Republicans some wiggle room. Right? Wrong. As the article indicates, he seems later to have taken that back.

So the Titanic steams inexorably towards that iceberg.

What will happen? Certainly nothing good (unless you believe that any damage to the government is a good thing, which is said to be the position of some Tea Partiers and others).

While waiting for the collision, check out the Wikipedia article on the first Titanic. It’s pretty good reading.  Notice that those in third-class never had a chance, and died in large numbers, while the rich folks in first class did very well.  As I said, it’s not a bad metaphor.

 

by Larry Geller

Of course, I don’t know what he might say, but likely it won’t be good for seniors or anyone else who’s not already rich. I was thinking that the time for him to announce objectionable news would be late Friday, after newspapers have already sent staff home for the weekend.

Sure enough, President Barack (“Cat Food”) Obama will speak this evening at 6 p.m., EDT, according to a tweet just in.

Live feed here. Starts noon, HST.

by Larry Geller

Recent revelations suggest that not only was the bank bailout probably unnecessary to protect the US economy, our government gave their buddies and campaign contributors far more than was ever made public. Like, $16 trillion more. And that staggering sum was not limited to US banks.

And now Congress, with the cooperation of President Barack (“Cat Food”) Obama, is trying to squeeze seniors and those in most need of their hard-earned benefits and tax deductions while further expanding tax deductions for the rich.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, through an amendment he wrote a year ago, obtained an audit that discovered:

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.

[Bernie Sanders, The Fed Audit, 7/21/2011]

As to the revelation that the bank bailouts may not have been necessary at all, here is a snip from today’s Democracy Now interview with Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends:

MICHAEL HUDSON: If you’re talking about the revelations of the senator, these are the second big story to come out in the last two weeks. The first story, really, was two weeks ago when Sheila Bair finished her five-year term at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. And now that she left, she was able to talk about the arguments that were going on while all of this money was being given away. She opposed it. She said none of this money, not a penny, had to be given away at all. She said the job of the FDIC was to do exactly what it did with Washington Mutual and IndyMac. She said they could have closed down Citibank, they could have closed down AIG and the others. Depositors insured by the FDIC wouldn’t have lost a penny. She said, "That’s what the FDIC does."

She was overruled by Geithner and by the Treasury Department, and especially by Bernanke, who essentially said, "We have to save the rich first. We have to save the gamblers." There was plenty of money in all of the banks to cover all of the retail vanilla deposits for businesses, families. What there was not money for was for all the cross-gambles that they had made on derivatives—that is, which way interest rates would go, which way currencies would go. And so, this was really a casino. These were bets. And people like the AIG couldn’t pay. And the question is, how are you going to get the winners in this casino to get money from the losers, who are broke? So these $16 trillion worth of loans were all for junk securities. They weren’t for the solid securities that did back out the deposits. These were all for junk gambles, having nothing to do with the real economy at all.

[Democracy Now, Pushing Crisis: GOP Cries Wolf on Debt Ceiling in Order to Impose Radical Pro-Rich Agenda, 7/22/2011]

by Larry Geller

China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.
…
EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.

[Washington Times, Report: China building electromagnetic pulse weapons for use against U.S. carriers, 7/22/2011]

The nuclear test that knocked out streetlights and even car ignitions on Oahu took place 49 years ago this month. For more on operation “Starfish”, see this Disappeared News story: Disappeared by time: Nuclear test near Hawaii puts out streetlights, sets off burglar alarms, kills car ignitions (1/9/2009).

NPR (National Public Radio) actually posted a video in their story on this a year ago: A Very Scary Light Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space (NPR, July 10, 2010). Here are two snips from the short video.

 

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Of course, the effects of the Pacific nuclear testing on Hawaii were minimal. To fast-forward to the present, Hawaii, under governors Lingle and Abercrombie, is seeking to cut off medical care to former residents of the Pacific Islands who live in the state because of US nuclear bombing of their homeland. Abercrombie has not withdrawn the state’s appeal to the 9th Circuit of a district court ruling against these cuts. An informational briefing on the case at the Legislature will be held on August 22, 10-12 a.m., location to be announced.

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by Larry Geller

Below is a copy of a letter sent today by Hawaii’s Office of Information Practices to Judge Victoria Marks, Chair of the Hawaii State Reapportionment Commission asking for information in response to the complaint filed yesterday by Disappeared News.

Now, this is just the beginning. Of course, I could be wrong in my allegations. But you’re in the loop, you can follow along if you wish.

This isn’t a battle, and I hope not a war. It’s an attempt to have the important process of reapportionment carried out in full public view, strictly legal.

 

Download 0721 Ltr to Reapportionment Comm