Tunisian PM Mohamed Ghannouchi under pressure to quit:
Tunisian protesters have stepped up calls for Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi and his cabinet to resign.
Thousands took to the streets of Tunis and other cities, while the main trade union began a march on the capital.
Policemen were among those protesting. They had defended the regime of former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali before he was ousted last week.
Mr Ghannouchi, who long served under Mr Ben Ali, has promised to leave politics after elections.
They are expected to be held in the next six months, though no date has yet been set.
[BBC]
Tucson teachers fight to overturn ban on Mexican American classes:
Tom Horne has declared classes in Mexican-American history and social studies in the city of Tucson illegal on the grounds that they are "propagandising and brainwashing" students into overthrowing the constitutional government and hating white people.
Horne has ordered schools to scrap the ethnic studies programmes under a law he wrote in his previous role as Arizona's education superintendent. He has not banned similar classes dealing with black or Native American history on the grounds that no one has complained about them.
Critics, including teachers of the classes he wants to scrap, accuse Horne of political opportunism by exploiting growing hostility to people of Hispanic origin in a state that recently passed controversial anti-immigrant legislation.
[Guardian]
In Hypercompetitive South Korea, Pressures Mount on Young Pupils:
That's a widespread belief in South Korea, where extraordinary passion for education is the norm.
Have we mentioned Jae Won is on his two-month winter holiday? No matter. He began his day by walking in the biting cold past a billboard touting perfect-scoring students to a 90-minute math tutoring session and study hall.
The tutoring was at a private cram school, or hagwon. From early morning until late at night, six days a week, nearly 60 percent of South Korean youngsters look for a leg up by adding hagwons on top of their public school load.
That kind of dedication -- some say obsession -- has catapulted South Koreans into the top tier of educational achievement. In world rankings of 15 year-olds released last November, South Korean students scored second in reading. American kids were 17th. And they scored fourth in math. Americans came in at 31st.
[PBS]
Search Stimulus dollars spent by state or check out this contract awarded
Lockheed Martin:
LITTLETON, CO
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION
Contract: $165,900,000 - National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Aug. 19, 2009
Award Description: ARRA awarded to Project Orion, part of NASA's Constellation Program, for the development of the Orion Crew Vehicle. Specifically to reduce risk for the design, development, test & evaluation of the Ground Test Article, Engineering Development Units, and Technology Development Testing for Improved Crew Safety.
Project Description: Expanded the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) Avionics Integration Lab (CAIL) design T-083 to initial Critical Design Review (CDR) detail level. Prepared Avcoat allowables test plan according to Operations Directive 24 (OD24). Completed the Avcoat allowables plan review and update according to OD24. Developed the Launch Abort System (LAS) Retention and Release (R&R) Engineering Development Unit (EDU) detail drawing. Procured the EDU LAS R&R long lead material. Completed the EDU LAS R&R vendor specifications.
Jobs Summary: The types of jobs either created or retained as a result of ARRA are listed below. Next quarters employment impact will increase due to subcontractors, which will ultimately raise the number of jobs created/retained. Design Engineer Mechanical Engineer Manufacturing Engineer Multiple Function Financial Analyst Structural Engineer Systems Engineer Proposal Analyst Systems Integration/Test Engineer Documentation Engineer Contracts Negotiator Purchase & Material Administrator Analyst (Total jobs reported: 28)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
[Stimulus Watch]
Salon:
Adrian Lamo and Kevin Poulsen have a long and strange history together. Both were convicted of felonies relating to computer hacking: Poulsen in 1994 (when he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, ironically because a friend turned government informant on him), and Lamo in 2004 for hacking into The New York Times. When the U.S. Government was investigating Lamo in 2003, they subpoenaed news agencies for any documents reflecting conversations not only with Lamo, but also with Poulsen. That's because Lamo typically sought media publicity after his hacking adventures, and almost always used Poulsen to provide that publicity.
Despite being convicted of serious hacking felonies, Poulsen was allowed by the U.S. Government to become a journalist covering the hacking world for Security Focus News. Back in 2002, Information Week described the strange Lamo-Poulsen relationship this way: "To publicize his work, [Lamo] often tapped ex-hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen as his go-between: Poulsen contacts the hacked company, alerts it to the break-in, offers Lamo's cooperation, then reports the hack on the SecurityFocus Online Web site, where he's a news editor." When Lamo hacked into the NYT, it was Poulsen who notified the newspaper's executives on Lamo's behalf, and then wrote about it afterward. Poulsen told me that the above picture was taken at a lunch the two of them had together with convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick back in 2001. When I asked Poulsen if he considers Lamo his friend, he would respond only by saying: "He's a subject and a source."
[Salon]
Coffee party finds a cause:
The coffee party is attempting to rebrand itself as more than just a weak response to its tea counterpart.
After losing steam during the midterms — just as tea partyers were riding the Republican wave to victory — coffee party leaders have a new cause they hope will revive their base: the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United.
"This is absolutely a uniting issue," Annabel Park, who founded the coffee party, said.
The 42-year-old filmmaker partnered with MoveOn, Public Citizen, Move to Amend and the Backbone Campaign to protest the anniversary of the court decision on Friday.
About 100 people gathered outside the Supreme Court for the event, which featured a mocktivism skit with "corporate persons" Mona Santo, Blackie Water, and Goldie Sachs celebrating their control over government.
[CQ]
Top USDA bee researcher also found Bayer pesticide harmful to honeybees:
For reasons not specified in the Independent article, the USDA’s Jeffrey Pettis has so far not published his research. “[It] was completed almost two years ago but it has been too long in getting out,” he told the newspaper. “I have submitted my manuscript to a new journal but cannot give a publication date or share more of this with you at this time.” (I was not able to speak to Pettis for this post as he is in meetings all day today; but he’s agreed to an interview Monday.)
Pettis’s study focused on imidacloprid, which like clothianidin is a neonicotinoid pesticide marketed by Bayer as a seed treatment. The findings are pretty damning for these nicotine-derived pesticides, according to McCarthy. He summarizes the study like this:
The American study ... has demonstrated that the insects’ vulnerability to infection is increased by the presence of imidacloprid, even at the most microscopic doses. Dr. Pettis and his team found that increased disease infection happened even when the levels of the insecticide were so tiny that they could not subsequently be detected in the bees, although the researchers knew that they had been dosed with it.
To my knowledge, Pettis hasn’t spoken to U.S. journalists about his unpublished neonicotinoid research. But he did appear in a 2010 documentary called The Strange Disappearance of the Honeybees by U.S. filmmaker Mike Daniels, which has been screened widely in Europe but not yet in the United States, McCarthy reports. Pettis’ remarks in the film are what alerted the European press to his findings on neonicotinoids.
[Gristmill]
Mass Protests in North Waziristan Against US Drone Strikes:
There was a general strike in the town of Miramshah in North Waziristan Agency today, as thousands of protesting tribesmen took to the streets to protest the continued US drone strikes against the region.
Shopkeepers closed their stores, tribesmen and religious leaders rallied with students, and speakers condemned the attacks, noting that they are killing large numbers of innocent civilians.
Protesters also expressed frustration that the Pakistani government wasn’t going anything to prevent the US attacks, and urged the Supreme Court to take official action. One shopkeeper demanded the Pakistani government move against the CIA for the killings.
US officials have rarely commented on the drone strikes, except on the rare occasions when they actually successfully kill a militant. Most of the Obama Administration’s attention towards North Waziristan has been demanding the Pakistani military invade the tribal agency and threatening to take further unilateral action if they don’t.
[Antiwar]
NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Politifact’s Bill Adair mock Obama’s pledge to fight global warming extinctions:
We have a long way to go before even fairly sophisticated members of the media understand what’s happening now and what’s coming if we don’t act soon (see Royal Society: “There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record”).
Brad Johnson has a telling example.
President Barack Obama’s pledge to forestall mass extinction from global warming is a laughing matter to NPR. Today, Morning Edition Steve Inskeep broke into guffaws of laughter as PolitiFact editor Bill Adair mocked Obama’s plan “to devote billions of dollars annually” to help “ensure that fish and wildlife survive the impacts of climate change.” Adair said he thought that meant supplying “air conditioners for bears,” considering the promise on par with the one Obama made about college football rankings:
INSKEEP: What are some of the more obscure promises on the campaign trail they said they were going to work on?
ADAIR: One we really enjoyed was the Obama promise to help species adapt to climate change. We decided that meant air conditioners for bears, which are probably not get funded now that Republicans are controlling the house.
INSKEEP: Did he misspeak? “Help species adapt”? Not not deal with climate change, but help species adapt to climate change.
ADAIR: Well, that’s what the promise said. He got very detailed in his policy statements on the campaign. It’s clear he was trying to appeal to very precise constituencies. And so we saw a lot of promises like that. My personal favorite was his promise was to push for a playoff system for college football.
[Climate Progress]
Tomgram: Ann Jones, Can Women Make Peace?:
Last week, Pentagon budget “cuts” were in the headlines, often almost luridly so -- “Pentagon Faces the Knife,” “Pentagon to Cut Spending by $78 Billion, Reduce Troop Strength,” “U.S. Aims to Cut Defense Budget and Slash Troops.” Responding to the mood of the moment in Washington (“the fiscal pressures the country is facing”), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen made those headlines by calling a news conference to explain prospective “cuts” they were proposing. Summing the situation up, Mullen seconded Gates this way: “The secretary's right, we can't hold ourselves exempt from the belt-tightening.”
Gates then appeared on the PBS NewsHour to explain the nature of Pentagon “belt-tightening,” while reminding anchor Jim Lehrer that last year the Pentagon announced plans to cap or cut “programs that, had they been built to conclusion, would have cost the taxpayers about $330 billion.” The newest $78 billion in cuts over five years was to be considered but an add-on to already supposedly staggering savings, which he described as “changes in the expected dollars that we thought we were going to have when we prepared last year's budget.” According to the Secretary of Defense, this massive set of cuts would, in fact, guarantee “modest growth” in the already monstrous Pentagon budget for at least the next three years.
Keeping Mullen’s “belt-tightening” image in mind, what you have here, imagistically speaking, is an especially obese man cutting down on his own future expectations for how much he’s planning to overeat, even as he continues to increase what he’s actually eating. In other words, this is actually a belt-loosening operation. (And by the way, the Secretary of Defense knows perfectly well that some of his “cuts,” announced with such flare, will never make it through a Congress where powerful Republicans, among others, prefer to exempt the national security budget from serious cuts, or any cuts at all.)
[Tom Dispatch]
Power to the Corporations, Baby!:
A year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its game-changing decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The 5-4 ruling threw out decades of limitations on the amount of cash corporations and unions could spend to influence elections. Arguing that those limitations curtailed the First Amendment rights of corporations and unions, the majority of the high court effectively opened the campaign-cash spigot to its maximum setting, enabling a spending free-for-all.
Outside donors, most of them anonymous, dumped almost $300 million into last year's midterms. Among them were rich individuals, such as housing titan and GOP benefactor Bob Perry, and corporations and unions, like Dow Chemical and the AFL-CIO.
So where do we stand 365 days later? How dramatically has Citizens United altered the way our leaders get elected? And can we expect more changes to campaign finance law in its wake?
It was the post-Citizens United political playing field that defined the 2010 midterm elections. Shadowy groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS, American Action Network, and Commonsense Ten sprung up to capitalize on the new ground rules. The rush of outside spending came mostly from the right, which outspent the left by more than a two-to-one average, $191 million to $94 million.
[Mother Jones]
15 Whoppers Beck Did Not Get Fired For In 2010:
No. 9 Rauf Is Not A "Peaceful Muslim" Because Someone Else Said Something Nine Years Ago
BECK: "Would A Moderate Imam, A Peaceful Imam Employ Another Imam Who" Said 9-11 Attacks Were "The Jews' Fault"? Discussing Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is a member of the board of trustees at the Islamic Center of New York and who is spearheading efforts to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan, Beck claimed:
Now, let me ask you this: would a moderate imam, a peaceful Muslim employ another imam who told an Arabic language Web site that, quote, "Only the Jews could have perpetrated the 9/11 attack." That kind of sounds like Jeremiah Wright, doesn't it?
And if Americans only knew that it was the Jews' fault, they, quote, "would have done to Jews what Hitler did," end quote. And that Jews, quote, "disseminate corruption in the land and spread heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism and drugs." Oh, that's the kind of moderate imam I've been looking for right there at ground zero. How about you? [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 8/10/10, via Nexis]
[Media Matters]
Julian Assange on WikiLeaks, War and Resisting Government Crackdown:
2010 can be defined as the year of WikiLeaks. The whisteblowing website first made headlines around the world in April when it released a video of a U.S. helicopter gunship indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians killing 12 people, including two Reuters news staff. In July, WikiLeaks created a bigger firestorm when it published more than 90,000 classified U.S. military war logs of the war in Afghanistan. Then in October, WikiLeaks published some 390,000 classified U.S. documents on the war in Iraq—the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history and the greatest internal account of any war on public record. And in November WikiLeaks began releasing a giant trove of confidential State Department cables that sent shockwaves through the global diplomatic establishment. Throughout it all, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange were targeted by the U.S. and other governments around the world. We play our interviews with Assange and with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
[Democracy Now]
Statement on rendition by Irish Labour spokesperson for Foreign Affairs:
In a statement made on January 17, Higgins referred to 04DUBLIN1739 and 07DUBLIN916 in support of his claim that the Irish government had knowingly conspired against popular and legal opinion in the use of Shannon airport by the U.S. military, while secretly harbouring a strong suspicion that it was being used for extraordinary rendition flights.
The latest US cable revealed by Wikileaks shows how even in 2004 the Government's legal advice was that allowing the use of Shannon Airport to aircraft en-route to, or returning from, a rendition mission, made Ireland complicit in torture.
:
Yet the Dáil and Irish citizens were continually assured by Ministers that permitting the use of Irish territory as a staging post was not a breach of Ireland's committments under the international convention against torture. The Government ignored its own legal advice and maintained the same line until June 2006 when the Council of Europe and the Irish Human Rights Commission stated that such aircraft were conducting illegal activity.
[WL Central]
Irish complicity in rendition.
PART AND PARCEL OF A LARGER AMNESIA CAMPAIGN....
In today's official GOP weekly address, Sen. John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming, the vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, returned to a familiar subject: his party's obsession with eliminating the Affordable Care Act.
The pitch was, not surprisingly, pretty familiar. "Republicans will fight to repeal this job-destroying law and replace it with patient-centered reforms," Barrasso said. What might patient-centered reforms look like? For one thing, the GOP wants Americans to be able to buy health insurance across state lines. For another, they'll "end junk lawsuits that drive up the cost of everyone's care." Barrasso also vowed to "restore Americans' freedom over their own health care decisions."
Substantively, Barrasso, who's never demonstrated any depth of understanding in any area of public policy, has no idea what he's talking about. He clearly doesn't understand the across-state-lines argument; the "junk lawsuits" argument has been debunked repeatedly; and the Affordable Care Act gives consumers more power, not less, over their care.
[Washington Monthly]
Lawmakers Must Respect Freedom of Expression in Wikileaks Debate:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a broad coalition of advocacy organizations sent an open letter to U.S. lawmakers today, calling on government officials to respect freedom of expression in the debate over the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.
In the wake of Wikileaks' recent publications of U.S. diplomatic cables, some lawmakers have attacked newspapers' rights to report on the information in those documents. Other government officials have cast doubt on Americans' right to download, read, or discuss documents published by Wikileaks and even the news reporting based on those documents. Rash legislation was proposed that could limit the free speech of news reporting organizations well beyond Wikileaks. In the open letter sent Wednesday, 30 groups urged lawmakers to remember and respect constitutional rights as Congress continues to discuss the issues at stake.
"By likening publishers and reporters to spies and cyber-terrorists, some government officials have irresponsibly created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty leading many to question their rights to publish, read and discuss the Wikileaks cables," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "But American law is well settled on these issues: the First Amendment strongly protects publishers' right to distribute truthful political information, and Internet users have a fundamental right to read and debate it."
In a congressional hearing about Wikileaks last week, all seven witnesses to the House Judiciary Committee cautioned against attempts to suppress free speech and criticized the overwhelming secrecy that permeates the U.S. government. The coalition joining the open letter today similarly called for caution against any new laws that could weaken the principles of free expression that are vital to our democracy.
[EFF]
President Hamid Karzai agrees to let new Afghanistan parliament meet, averting crisis:
Karzai's government, however, pushed for further inquiry . It is widely believed that Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, thought vote fraud had prevented a higher turnout in districts dominated by Pashtun constituencies.
A Supreme Court-ordered special tribunal was established in December to continue investigating the election, and Karzai wanted the inaugural parliamentary session delayed while the tribunal continued its work.
Fraud charges have come to define elections during Karzai's tenure as president. When he was reelected in 2009, findings of fraud disqualified a third of the vote.
Karzai met with lawmakers Saturday at the presidential palace to hammer out a compromise. Under mounting pressure from the United Nations and the United States to back down, Karzai backed off his insistence on a one-month delay.
[LA Times]
Separate and Unequal:
Israel has human rights obligations towards all persons under its control, including those in territory it occupies, as has been stated by the International Court of Justice and other international bodies. Israel denies that its human rights obligations apply to Palestinians in the West Bank, except for East Jerusalem, which it considers part of Israel. It argues against the applicability of human rights law based on an interpretation that restricts its applicability to the territory of a state and not to occupied territories, and on the argument that the law of occupation applies to the West Bank to the exclusion of human rights law. The International Court of Justice as well as several UN human rights committees have rejected this interpretation, on the basis of the text of the relevant human rights treaties, which define their applicability based on the degree of a government’s control over a person rather than on a state’s borders, and on the principle that human rights law and the law of occupation, as written and interpreted, are not mutually exclusive but complementary obligations that may both apply to populations under a government’s effective control. International law does not require Israel to treat Palestinian residents of the West Bank as though they were Israeli citizens; for example, non-citizens do not have the right to vote. However, the rights of Israeli citizens—including settlers—do not include the right to benefit from discriminatory treatment that violates the rights of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.
Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem). In addition, the implications of Israel’s discriminatory policies are far broader, affecting many of the roughly 2.4 million Palestinians living in the cities and towns in the occupied West Bank (known as Areas A and B) where Israel has ceded most civil responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority. That is because Area C contains substantial amounts of water resources, grazing and agricultural land, and the land reserves required for developing cities, towns, and infrastructure. It is also the only contiguous area in the West Bank, effectively isolating the cities and towns (which fall outside Area C) into disconnected enclaves.[2] As a result, Israel effectively controls movement and access between Palestinian population centers.[3] Palestinians must cross checkpoints to travel through Area C and need permits to build infrastructure that would connect to cities, towns, and villages (including roads, water and sewage pipes, and electricity towers). It is often impossible for Palestinian cities, towns, and villages that have outgrown municipal lands to expand into Area C, where Israel strictly controls Palestinian construction.
To the extent that Israel, which remains ultimately responsible for persons in the territories it occupies, has conferred powers on the Palestinian Authority (PA) in certain areas, the PA also has human rights responsibilities.
[Human Rights Watch]
NYT Hits Deficit Panic Button (Again):
Big news in the New York Times today (1/21/11): According to their new poll, Americans overwhelmingly support slashing military spending.
Wait--that's not the news.
According to the story by Jackie Calmes and Dalia Sussman (headlined "Poll Finds Willingness to Cut Spending, Just Not Medicare or Social Security"), the real story is that people don't like the idea of cutting these entitlement programs, but are really worried about the budget deficit:
While Americans are near-unanimous in calling deficits a problem--a "very serious" problem, say 7 out of 10--a majority believes it should not be necessary for them to pay higher taxes to bridge the shortfall between what the government spends and what it takes in.
The Times has tried to tell us this story about the deficit before (though at other times they've told us the opposite).
If your read far enough into today's piece, the Times alludes to a different way of gauging public sentiment--one that finds people don't feel very strongly about the deficit:
Asked what Congress should focus on, 43 percent of Americans say job creation; healthcare is a distant second, cited by 18 percent, followed by deficit reduction, war and illegal immigration.
[Fair]
"War on terror" psychologist gets giant no-bid contract:
The Army earlier this year steered a $31 million contract to a psychologist whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program.
The Army awarded the "sole source" contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university's Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.
Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.
Government contracting regulations allow sole-source contracts, but only under very limited conditions, such as when only one company has the ability to do the needed work, according to Trevor Brown, a contracting expert at Ohio State University.
[Salon]
The Incessant and Insufferable Whining of Dr. Laura:
These days, the still very highly popular radio talk show host - at her website (http://www.drlaura.com/) she refers to herself as "Dr. Laura, America's #1 Female Talk Radio Host" - who recently left the comfy studios of A.M. radio and moved over to SiriusXM satellite radio, where she can be heard Monday through Friday, is out promoting her new book, Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge.
During a recent appearance on NBC's "Today" program, less than two weeks after the Tucson shootings, Schlessinger claimed that the media, most notably CNN, tried to "assassinate" her rights when it reported on her multiple use of the n-word on her radio program last summer. The website News Hounds described the incident: "... a black woman called into Dr. Laura's then-radio show complaining of racial prejudice from her white husband's family.... [and] [w]hen [she] offered the particulars of the kind of prejudice she was sensing - including the family's use of the N-word, Schlessinger interrupted to say that the woman was wrong, was being over-sensitive and lacking a sense of humor for finding offense. Schlessinger further accused the caller of having a chip on her shoulder because when black people use the word it's acceptable but when white people do, it's not. Shlessinger peppered her 'advice' with her own generous helpings of the N-word to prove her point." (You can hear the full audio @ http://mediamatters.org/....)
After the initial incident, Schlessinger went on Larry King's CNN program and announced she was leaving A.M. radio over the attempts made to silence her:
"You know, when I started in radio, if you said something somebody didn't agree with and they didn't like, they argued with you," Schlessinger told King. "Now, they try to silence you. They try to wipe out your ability to earn a living and to have your job. They go after affiliates. They send threats to sponsors."
King pointed out that "That's their right, too."
Schlessinger claimed that her "First Amendment rights have been usurped by angry, hateful groups who don't want to debate. They want to eliminate.
[Buzzflash]
Cables Show U.S. Government Works for Boeing:
Classified State Department cables published by Wikileaks show high-up U.S. government officials have entertained and obliged special requests from foreign heads of state to help close big deals for Boeing. In 2006, a senior Commerce Department official hand-delivered a personal letter from George W. Bush to the office of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, urging the king to complete a deal with Boeing for 43 airliners, including some for the king's family fleet. The cable shows that as part of the deal, the King wanted his personal jet "to have all the technology that his friend, President Bush, had on Air Force One." Once he had his high-tech plane, the King said, "God willing," he would "make a decision that will 'please you very much.' " The U.S. obligingly authorized an upgrade in King Abdullah's plane. In other instances, Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheik Hasina Wazed, sought landing rights at Kennedy International Airport, and the Turkish government asked for assurances that one of their astronauts could join a future NASA space flight. U.S. diplomats served as marketing agents for Boeing by using State Department visits as bargaining chips and offering deals to foreign heads of state and commercial executives with the power to purchase airplanes from Boeing.
[PR Watch]