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The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits in print – for Thursday, September 2, 2010, are:

“Perverse incentive system” rewards CEOs for slashing jobs

Another Gulf of Mexico oil rig explodes

Oil companies get offshore drilling moratorium overturned

Company behind Michigan oil spill buy citizens’ legal rights

Mozambique police fire on crowds protesting high fuel, food prices

Is brutal guerrilla group in death throes or returning to Uganda?

Israel may save Palestinians from an unfair peace settlement

Codebreaker for NSA, MI6 found mysteriously dead

Fidel takes responsibility for decades of persecuting gays

“Perverse incentive system” rewards CEOs for slashing jobs
CNN
(9/1/10)

Slashing jobs pays off … if you’re sitting in the executive suite

A new report may add salt to the wounds of America’s jobless. It seems many of their former bosses are profiting at their losses.

According to the report “CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” chief executive officers of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the start of the economic crisis earned nearly $12 million on average in 2009. That’s 42 percent more than the average pay of CEOs at S&P 500 firms as a whole.

“I think that really shows a really perverse incentive system in this country,” said (past This is Hell! guest) Sarah Anderson, lead author of the Institute for Policy Studies’ 17th Annual Executive Compensation Survey. “You are handsomely rewarded for slashing jobs in the middle of the worst economic crisis in 80 years,” she said …

According to Anderson, “they’re prioritizing CEO pay at the welfare of their workers”.

So how do they get away with it? Anderson said you have to look at the make-up of many companies’ executive boards. She said they’re often made up of CEOs and high level executives from other companies “who really don’t want to question this ridiculous pay system we have in this country that continues to pay people these absurd amounts of money when they’re really not performing well for their company or the overall economy.”

Another disconcerting finding of the report: 72 percent of layoff-leading firms announced mass layoffs while delivering positive earnings reports. Anderson explained layoffs are really driven by efforts “to boost short-term profits even higher and also just to continue to have such high CEO pay levels.” She said these mass cuts are often bad for business over the long-term because they impact worker morale, which can lead to lower productivity. She said they also result in additional costs related to hiring and training new workers down the road.

According to the report, there are some positive signs. The report gives high marks to two new rules adopted through the financial and health care reform bills. One requires that all firms report CEO-worker pay ratios. Another caps the tax deductibility of executive pay at health insurance companies. But, “I think that our policy-makers have a long way to go toward really reigning in the problem” Anderson said. “The problems are very evident in the findings of our report”.

• The Newsweek article, “CEO Crybabies,” takes a shot at explaining why CEOs pay and corporate profits are outpacing worker and GDP gains:
  Why is corporate America doing well when so many powerful forces seem to be arrayed against it? Some sectors are benefiting from government policy. Banks are profiting from low interest rates and the ongoing federal subsidies and guarantees. Even as the industry squawks loudly about demonization and tough regulation, banks just reported their best quarter results in three years, according to the FDIC.
  But CEOs deserve most of the credit for this turnaround. When the economy slowed dramatically in late 2008 and early 2009, they prepared for Armageddon: they slashed costs, restructured, made cold and swift decisions, and relentlessly pursued productivity and efficiency. The result: America’s CEOs collectively reengineered their businesses so they could produce profits with a lower volume of business. They’ve also continued—and intensified—their longstanding practice of beating the living daylights out of America’s labor force. Despite Democratic control of Washington, labor has never been weaker. Organized labor continues its long decline. Union membership fell again in 2009 as a percentage of the workforce, to 12.3 percent, down from 13.4 percent in 2000. And in an age of excess capacity and high unemployment, disorganized labor isn’t doing so hot either. In the past year, employee compensation as a percentage of GDP has fallen a bit.
  To review: Corporate profits have largely recovered to pre-crisis levels. A disproportionate share of economic growth is finding its way into the coffers of corporate America. CEOs are in an extremely strong negotiating position vis-à-vis their employees. And yet America’s bosses think they are members of an oppressed minority.
• The msnbc story, “CEOs lay off thousands, rake in millions,” specifically targets Hewlett-Packard’s Chief Executive Mark Hurd:
  “Our findings illustrate the great unfairness of the Great Recession,” said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the study, “CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” the latest in a series of annual “Executive Excess” reports published by the institute, a progressive think tank. “CEOs are squeezing workers to boost short-term profits and fatten their own paychecks.”
  Those CEOs include HP’s Hurd, who slashed 6,400 jobs in 2009 — a year when his compensation amounted to $24.2 million.
  Hurd made headlines last month when he suddenly resigned after an investigation into a sexual harassment claim against him found he had falsified expense reports related to meetings with a female contractor. Despite the findings, he walked away with a severance package that reportedly could be worth more than $40 million.

Another Gulf of Mexico oil rig explodes
The Associated Press
(9/2/10)

Gulf oil platform explodes, burning off La. Coast

An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP’s undersea well spilled after a rig explosion.

The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the blast, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the area Thursday morning. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said some of those from the rig were spotted in emergency flotation devices.

Seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were dispatched to the scene from New Orleans, Houston and Mobile, Ala., Ben-Iesau said. She said authorities do not know whether oil was leaking from the site.

The Department of Homeland Security said the platform was in about 2,500 feet of water and owned by Mariner Energy of Houston. DHS said it was not producing oil and gas.

Oil companies get offshore drilling moratorium overturned
UPI
(9/2/10)

U.S. drilling ban overturned — again

A motion filed by the U.S. federal government to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a moratorium on deep-water drilling was overturned, a judge ruled.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in May issued a 6-month moratorium on deep-water oil drilling following the April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, an incident that resulted in one of the worst oil spills in world history.

Companies working in the offshore drilling industry in the United States challenged the ban saying Washington had no evidence to back claims current drilling operations were a threat.

Salazar issued a second moratorium in July after U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman agreed with the offshore drilling industry. Feldman struck down the second moratorium by saying it was “substantially the same as the first one,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

Washington argues the ban is necessary to give the government and the industry time to address safety and response issues for drilling activity in waters deeper than 500 feet.

Company behind Michigan oil spill buy citizens’ legal rights
Detroit Free Press
(9/2/10)

Enbridge is under fire over Michigan oil spill cleanup tactics

The nation’s top law enforcement official is being asked to look into whether Enbridge Energy Partners pressured Michigan residents to give up legal rights to sue in exchange for hotel rooms, air purifiers and other expenses in the wake of July’s oil spill along a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.

In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of a key House committee also said it appears Enbridge urged residents seeking information about health effects to sign a form giving the company access to a person’s complete medical record.

The company did not respond to the claims raised by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Mark Schauer, a Battle Creek Democrat whose district includes the spill site.

Enbridge also was stung Tuesday by a report that a subcontractor on the cleanup may have used illegal immigrants. But the lawmakers’ letter raises the stakes. “Enbridge’s efforts to take legal advantage of Michigan residents … are reprehensible,” Oberstar and Schauer said in a letter Tuesday to the company’s president and CEO.

In the wake of July’s big oil spill in mid-Michigan, residents were evacuated from along Talmadge Creek, as worries about the health effects of 820,000 gallons of crude rushing into local waters spread quickly.

Now, there are concerns that the company that owns the pipeline that burst may have tried to compromise residents’ legal rights — including getting access to their medical records — in exchange for free hotel rooms, air purifiers, air-conditioners and information on the possible health risks associated with the spill.

Mozambique police fire on crowds protesting high fuel, food prices
The Associated Press
(9/1/10)

Mozambique police fire at crowds protesting prices

Police opened fire Wednesday on stone-throwing crowds who were protesting rising prices in this impoverished country, and a local TV station said six people were killed.

The mobs also burned tires and ransacked shops in the capital. Police responded by firing shots into the crowds and the air.

S-TV, a private station, said the dead included one child. The station said three adults were declared dead in hospitals and the other two died in the streets. The station gave no other details. It was not immediately clear if any of the six had fallen to police bullets or died from other causes.

A witness saw an ambulance remove the apparently lifeless body of a boy who had a severe head wound. The government hasn’t given any casualty figures from Wednesday’s rioting. Police appealed for calm on state radio and TV and said they had made an unspecified number of arrests.

Police had declared the marches illegal, saying no group sought permission to hold them. Word had spread for days in this former Portuguese colony in southeast Africa that there would be demonstrations.

Thousands of protesters, most of them young men, lined the streets of Bagamoyo, a crowded, impoverished neighborhood just north of downtown Maputo. As they moved into the city center, they looted shops and warehouses. Protests were also reported in other areas around Maputo.

Police appealed for calm on state radio and TV and said they had made some arrests. Youths were blocking streets and ransacking property. Many public transport drivers have abandoned their vehicles in the streets.

Mozambicans have seen the price of a loaf of bread rise by 25 percent, from four to five meticais (from about 11 cents to about 13 U.S. cents) in the past year. Fuel and water costs also have risen.

The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday international food prices have risen to their highest level in two years. Its food price index shot up 5 percent between July and August. That was still 38 percent down from its peak in June 2008.

Around the world, high prices have been blamed on dry weather’s effect on harvests and high fuel costs incurred when moving food from producers to consumers. Some critics also say bad government decisions are making shortages worse and accuse producers of colluding to push up prices.

Is brutal guerrilla group in death throes or returning to Uganda?
TIME
(9/1/10)

The Ruthless Guerrilla Movement That Won’t Die

The camp for displaced people … in Southern Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, is swarming with survivors of recent attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla movement that arose in Uganda in the late 1980s under mystic warlord Joseph Kony. Kony’s guerrillas thrive in what this area has best — a rich, magical soil, in which almost anything grows, and grows tall. Wandering amid the dense grass and makeshift huts here are displaced fathers now without sons, daughters with lost grandmothers. Their lives have been turned upside down, and to make matters worse, most cannot even explain why: their attackers speak a foreign tongue, fighting a war outside their control, and they are pursued chiefly by an Ugandan — not a Sudanese — army. The confusion of the South Sudanese is not unique, and it’s certainly not new — the LRA has spent more than two decades baffling a world shocked by its brutality. But since the end of 2008, when the LRA dispersed from its forested Congolese base after a failed U.S.-backed Ugandan military strike, the rebels have begun a new chapter few pretend to fully understand.

The LRA’s trademark tactics remain the same — the sadistic killings, the child abductions, the ghostlike movements — but the old rebel group itself is changing. Kony is believed to be turning 50 next year. Almost none of his original guard remain, and the movement is now believed to be composed mostly of former abducted boys or the children of abducted girls. Always elusive, now the guerrillas are truly on the run, scattered over the remote borders where the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Southern Sudan collide. Some believe the LRA’s fighting force has shrunk to as few as 200 men — which, if true, is likely the reason for the recent rise in civilian abductions, according to separate August reports issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Center for American Progress’s “Enough” project. Both groups document hundreds of cases of civilians who have been captured since the group went on the move in December 2008. Adults are used as forced labor and are then either killed or released, often after being barbarically tortured for amusement first. The children, though, are a different story. The boys are expected to replenish the LRA’s front lines, the girls to serve as wives. The initiation process is ghastly: of 45 children interviewed by HRW in July and August who had been held captive for more than a month, most had been forced to kill other children who refused to respond to their new marching orders.

Although this new transnational LRA could give the appearance of a dying, scattered rebellion in its final throes, some fear that Kony is neither desperate nor without a plan. Authorities in Southern Sudan — a self-governed region awaiting a January referendum in which it is expected to declare independence — believe Kony is not operating on his own. During Sudan’s 21-year civil war that ended in 2005, President Omar Bashir’s Khartoum regime actively encouraged Kony to terrorize the rebellious south and punish a hostile Ugandan government. Southern Sudan’s military and political leaders believe that the old links between Khartoum and Kony remain active. Out here, such claims are difficult to prove. “That’s always the rumor, but I have not really seen any concrete evidence to support it,” says Jehanne Henry, HRW’s Sudan researcher. But few would be surprised if it were true. “It’s certainly a possibility,” she says.

Reports suggest that the rebels’ senior ranks could be getting homesick. Interviews with former abductees by both “Enough” project workers and HRW indicated a belief on the part of Kony’s men that they will someday soon move their campaign back to Uganda. World leaders hope the movement doesn’t live to see that day. In May, President Obama signed a bill that gave his Administration 180 days to produce a new strategy to defeat the LRA and protect civilians in the territory where it is active. Advocacy groups see the bill as an opportunity to focus political energy on ending one of the world’s most horrific wars and amping up humanitarian assistance to the victims. But easy permanent solutions appear as elusive as the rebel leader himself. Even if Kony is eliminated, the headless monster he leaves behind could splinter even further, leaving a scattered trail of parasitic cells to continue his bloody reign.

Israel may save Palestinians from an unfair peace settlement
Guardian
(9/1/10)

A Middle East peace that wreaks havoc

What an irony that the Palestinians’ arch-enemy, Israel, should also be their saviour. There is a real danger that the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks  due to start on September 2 in Washington could yield a botched deal that falls far short of the needs of international law or elemental justice, and sets back the cause of Palestine for decades, if not for ever. Fortunately this will not happen as long as Israel’s obduracy can be relied on to save the Palestinians from such an outcome.

Time and again, when Israel was thrown a lifeline by Arab neighbours that could have ensured its legitimacy and security, its folly and greed lost it those opportunities. But, since they came at great cost to Palestinian rights, Israel’s obduracy had the perverse effect of safeguarding those rights. All peace proposals after 1967 were based on maintaining Israel as a regional power and forcing the Palestinians to settle for less than they were entitled to. They were repeatedly offered paltry settlements that legitimised Israel’s hold on most of their land and undermined their right of return. Had Israel agreed, the Palestinian cause would have been lost long ago.

When in the 1979 Camp David negotiations Egypt sought to give the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza a basis for a future independent state, Israel refused. It spurned a succession of Arab peace proposals, most recently the Saudi plan of 2002, offering Israel peace and recognition in return for a Palestinian state. And when, in the 1993 Oslo Accords, the PLO finally capitulated and accepted Israel’s occupation of Palestine’s remnants so long as it would enable the establishment of an independent state on this morsel, Israel responded by taking more land.

Decades of Israeli rejection and the reality of Israel’s western support finally persuaded the Palestinian leadership to get what it could. Where once Palestinians fought against dispossession and for their right to reparation and return, today’s browbeaten leadership has settled for a set of aspirations that bear little relation to rights or justice. It is this defeated leadership, reportedly under US pressure to attend or have Palestinian Authority funding withdrawn, which will take part in the talks.

The aim is a two-state settlement, which will supposedly end the conflict. The parameters are familiar from past (and, failed) peace proposals, and grossly unfair to the Palestinians. Historic Palestine will be partitioned roughly along the 1967 lines into a Jewish state on 78% of the land, plus an undefined area of the West Bank also to become Israeli, and a Palestinian state on the remainder – less than 20%. How much of East Jerusalem will go to the Palestinians has not been determined, and there will be no return of refugees.

Israel’s prime minister has set conditions before the talks. Israel will keep the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem will remain Israel’s undivided capital, and the Palestinian state must be unarmed, with its borders and airspace under surveillance. Nothing will happen unless the Palestinians first recognise Israel as Jewish and guarantee its security.

Despite such preliminaries, the indications are that Israel is not serious about a deal.

• In another Guardian piece, “Middle East talks: no real desire for change spells little hope of success,” there seems to be little hope for success:
  No previous round of Middle East peace negotiations has begun with such rock-bottom expectations as the one being launched in Washington tonight.
  Neither side expects to be able to reach an agreement unless the US tries to impose one. And few believe that if Barack Obama does attempt that, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas will be able to live with it – the Israeli premier because of his fractious rightwing coalition and the Palestinian president because of Hamas opposition and wider despair over years of peace “process” without change.
  “Both sides prefer to continue the existing situation as long as they do not have to pay the costs that an agreement requires,” argued Nahum Barnea, the Israeli commentator. Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, was a tad more diplomatic. “We are hoping talks will succeed,” he said, “but we are all very pessimistic about the viability of the peace process because of past experience.”
• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak sees far more potential for a settlement in his New York Times editorial headlined, “A Peace Plan Within Our Grasp”:
  President Obama’s determined involvement has revived our hopes for peace and we must seize this opportunity. The broad parameters of a permanent Palestinian-Israeli settlement are already clear: the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 with Jerusalem as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. Previous negotiations have already resolved many of the details on the final status of refugees, borders, Jerusalem and security.
  The biggest obstacle that now stands in the way of success is psychological: the cumulative effect of years of violence and the expansion of Israeli settlements have led to a collapse of trust on both sides. For the talks to succeed, we must rebuild trust and a sense of security.

Codebreaker for NSA, MI6 found mysteriously dead
WIRED
(8/30/10)

Dead Codebreaker Was Linked to NSA Intercept Case

A top British codebreaker found mysteriously dead last week in his flat had worked with the NSA and British intelligence to intercept e-mail messages that helped convict would-be bombers in the U.K., according to a news report.

Gareth Williams, 31, made repeated visits to the U.S. to meet with the National Security Agency and worked closely with British and U.S. spy agencies to intercept and examine communications that passed between an al Qaeda official in Pakistan and three men who were convicted last year of plotting to bomb transcontinental flights, according to the British paper the Mirror.

Williams, described by those who knew him as a “math genius,” worked for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) helping to break coded Taliban communications, among other things. He was just completing a year-long stint with MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service, when his body was found stuffed into a duffel bag in his bathtub. He’d been dead for at least a week. His mobile phone and a number of SIM cards were laid out on a table near the body, according to news reports. There were no signs of forced entry to the apartment and no signs of a struggle.

Initial news stories indicated Williams had been stabbed, but police have since disputed that information, noting that — other than being stuffed into a duffel bag — there were no obvious signs of foul play. A toxicology report is expected Tuesday.

Investigators say they haven’t ruled out the possibility that the codebreaker was killed over something related to his work. Rumors that sexual bondage equipment was found in his apartment were also nixed by police, who said the rumors were untrue and they found no evidence yet to suggest that anything in Williams’ personal life led to his death …

Williams flew up to four times a year to the U.S. to the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade HQ, according to the Mirror. His uncle, Michael Hughes, told the paper that Williams would mysteriously disappear for three or four weeks.

“The trips were very hush-hush,” Hughes said. “They were so secret that I only recently found out about them – and we’re a very close family. It had become part of his job in the past few years. His last trip out there was a few weeks ago, but he was regularly back and forth.”

Williams was said to have worked with the NSA on e-mails intercepted between Abdullah Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar and Rashid Rauf, a British national in Pakistan who was allegedly director of European operations for al Qaeda. The e-mails, intercepted by the NSA in 2006, allegedly contained coded messages.

The NSA shared the e-mails with British prosecutors but wouldn’t allow them to use the evidence in an early trial of the suspects out of fear of tipping off Rauf that he was under surveillance. It was only after Rauf was reportedly killed in a U.S. drone attack that the NSA allowed prosecutors to use the e-mails to convict the other suspects. It’s never been known whether the NSA intercepted the messages overseas or siphoned them as they passed through internet nodes on U.S. soil as part of the NSA’s controversial and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program.

An unidentified Western intelligence source told the Mirror that Williams’ job would have had him participating in “crucial high-level meetings with American intelligence officers. His job would have been crucial to the security of the UK and our interests abroad – and also to America and Europe.

“Although not particularly high up the GCHQ ladder, the importance of his role should not be underestimated. The man was a mathematical genius.”

His landlady, Jenny Elliott, told the Telegraph, “Occasionally you could hear tapes whirring from his flat, which must have been audio cassettes he used for work, but he never told me what they were.”

Fidel takes responsibility for decades of persecuting gays
BBC News
(8/31/10)

Fidel Castro takes blame for persecution of Cuban gays

Fidel Castro has said that he is ultimately responsible for the persecution suffered by homosexuals in Cuba after the revolution of 1959.

The former president told the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that there were moments of great injustice against the gay community.

“If someone is responsible, it’s me,” he said.

In the 1960s and 70s, many homosexuals in Cuba were fired, imprisoned or sent to “re-education camps”.

Mr Castro said homosexuals had traditionally been discriminated in Cuba, just as black people and women.

But, nevertheless, he admits he didn’t pay enough attention to what was going on against the gay community.

“At the time we were being sabotaged systematically, there were armed attacks against us, we had too many problems,” said the 84-year-old Communist leader.

“Keeping one step ahead of the CIA, which was paying so many traitors, was not easy.”

In 1979, homosexuality was decriminalised and, more recently, there have been efforts to legalise same-sex unions.

In the interview with La Jornada, Mr Castro also spoke of the economic embargo against the island, which was imposed by the United States in 1961. He said it was just as damaging today as it was then.

“The biggest problem was always medicine and food, which is true even today,” he said.