In 2006, Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion in U.S. imports from China and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2006. Wal-Mart's trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period [Economic Snapshots, 6/27/07].

PUBLIC OPINION POLL: CONSUMERS SKEPTICAL OF WAL-MART'S NEW ADVERTISING

• What Wal-Mart Savings Claim Doesn't Tell You [Advertising Age]
  Consumers aren't buying Wal-Mart's new "Save Money. Live Better" ad campaign, according to a survey to be released today by Wal-Mart Watch, which found that only 4% of people believe that Wal-Mart saves the average family $2,500 annually.
  

LEE SCOTT HIGHEST PAID EXECUTIVE IN ARKANSAS

• Wal-Mart , Alltel officers state’s highest-paid execs [Arkansas Democrat Gazette]
  Four Wal-Mart employees were among the 10 highest-paid executives - H. Lee Scott at $ 23 million, John Menzer at $ 12. 2 million, Michael Duke at $ 10. 8 million and Eduardo Castro-Wright at $ 6. 5 million.
  

• A Big Salary With a Big Stipulation: Share It [New York Times]
  Some experts on philanthropy think that other companies should follow Bear Stearns’s model. "If you’re a corporation like Wal-Mart, think of what an impact that could make," said Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University.

WAL-MART'S HOLIDAY PROFIT OUTLOOK, HIRING RATES LOOKING BAD

• Wal-Mart Earnings May Slow as Chief Scott Cuts Holiday Prices [Bloomberg News]
  Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, may report its smallest profit increase in five quarters after Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott lowered prices to lure shoppers squeezed by rising gasoline costs and mortgage payments.
  

Holiday hiring time not joyful [Chicago Tribune]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's biggest retailer, said it will employ between 20,000 and 25,000 seasonal workers nationally, half the number the company said it would hire last year.

Neoconservatives and International Relations

With little notoriety, a major political storm is brewing over the ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). On one side, an impressive coalition has formed, uniting the Bush administration, business groups, environmentalists, oil companies, a large bipartisan majority of U.S. senators, and 155 different nations under one tent. On the other side, a small contingent of knee-jerk isolationists is threatening to sink a seemingly non-controversial treaty that would "create a system for negotiating drilling, mining, and fishing rights." Revealing their core distrust of multilateralism, a familiar cadre of right-wing voices such as former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, neconservative hawk Frank Gaffney, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and others are aggressively attempting to thwart passage of the UNCLOS treaty. "The opposition to the Law of the Sea is based entirely on a visceral hatred for multilateral cooperation," writes Scott Paul, deputy director of government relations for Citizens for Global Solutions. "Its champions detest all forms of international organization and believe the purpose of international law is to constrain U.S. behavior." The same far-right ideologues who have argued that the United States should feel unencumbered by international law to go to war, torture, and pollute are now raising their heads in opposition to the UNCLOS treaty. For that reason, the convention is the "the perfect issue for progressives to rally around," writes The American Prospect's Kate Sheppard, because "it reveals the outrage from the outer edges of the right for what it really is: anti-cooperative isolationism that is both unfounded in fact and counter to American interests." Moreover, winning the battle over the Law of the Sea is an important step toward restoring America's international reputation and paving the path for future international agreements on climate change, weapons proliferation, and a host of other issues.

THE NEED FOR UNCLOS: Beginning in 1973 and ending in 1982, representatives from 160 nations met regularly under U.N. auspices to "hash out concerns about military navigation rights, territorial boundaries, environmental protections, and use of the ocean's resources." The convention also established tribunals that would resolve disputes that might arise between nations' interpretation of their sea rights. Since 1982, the Law of the Sea has languished without U.S. ratification. But new leadership in the Senate has bolstered hopes of passage. Seventy percent of the earth's surface is covered by ocean, and the mission of UNCLOS is to preserve marine resources for future generations. The treaty binds all nations to protect the "marine environment, protect fish stocks, and prevent pollution with as much care as the U.S. does." Former Republican Secretaries of State James Baker and George Schultz write that the longer the United States delays ratification, the more it "compromises our nation's authority to exercise its sovereign interests, jeopardizes its national and economic security, and limits its leadership role in international ocean policy." The UNCLOS would help address such issues as the current scrambling over the Arctic's mineral and energy reserves, helping stave off military confrontations that could arise.

HELD CAPTIVE BY THE FAR RIGHT: The far right has engaged in hyperbolic misrepresentations and fear-mongering to rally the activist base against the treaty. CNN's right-wing pundit Glenn Beck characterized it as a "socialist, globalist, elitist" accord. Inhofe, who annually leads an effort to defund the United Nations, called it the "greatest raid on sovereignty" in his lifetime. Bolton has been lobbying lawmakers to oppose the treaty, despite the fact that just a couple of years ago, he repeatedly advocated for it. Gaffney has formed the Coalition to Preserve American Sovereignty, which is stoking fear in the right-wing base over the impact of a multi-national sea accord. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) has pledged his opposition, explaining, "I'm not going to get in a twit about what the Swiss or Belgians may think about us." Sens. John Sununu (R-NH), Norm Coleman (R-MN), and George Voinovich (R-OH), who all voted for the Law of the Sea in 2004, are now reconsidering their votes in a clear pander to the activists. Even the Republican presidential candidates are chiming in. "Let's stop the Law of Sea Treaty," former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said recently at the Values Voters Summit, drawing an ovation from religious conservatives.

A TEST FOR PROGRESSIVES: The battle of the UNCLOS treaty is a defining issue for progressives, both because it reveals the failed unilateralist approach and restores the principles of global cooperation. "You have an agreement that's endorsed by a Republican president, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Coast Guard, an overwhelming number of senators from both political parties, business groups, trade associations, and you already have 155 countries that are party to the treaty. It seems like if you can't get that through, I don't know what kind of treaty you can get through the Senate," said Spencer Boyer, director of international law and diplomacy for the Center for American Progress. Scott Paul, who has been spearheading the awareness campaign on the left, adds, "Winning the ratification battle would seriously de-fang the same pugnacious nationalists who are on the opposite side of almost every important foreign policy issue facing the U.S."

There They Go Again

During the "Grapevine" segment of the November 6 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Fox News Washington managing editor and host Brit Hume asserted: "The Clintons' ability to withhold information from the public extends not just to the Clinton Presidential Library it seems, but also to the University of Arkansas library as well. Four enormous binders of data about the Clinton presidency -- and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton's [D-NY] role in it -- apparently will not be released to the public by the university library before next year's election." However, Hume provided no evidence of "[t]he Clintons' ability to withhold" from the public documents held by the University of Arkansas library. Indeed, as Hume later acknowledged: "The Clinton campaign says it has not had any contact with the University of Arkansas about delaying the release of the papers." In a November 6 ABCNews.com article on the papers, which Hume cited during his report, ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper reported: " 'It's not a conspiracy,' [Tom] Dillard [head of the University of Arkansas Special Collections Department] told ABC News. No representative of the Clintons has been in touch with the Library, he said. 'No, absolutely not. No political campaign has been in touch with us. Nor have any individuals been in touch with us asking us to do anything different from what we would normally do.' "

Additionally, Hume claimed:

HUME: Last month, the library said the papers would not be made public until 2009 because they were not yet processed. But the library's annual report for '05-'06 says the processing is, quote, "nearing completion," and, one year later, the library newsletter said the Blair papers were, quote, "previously processed."

While Hume claimed that the university library's newsletter said the "papers were, quote, 'previously processed,' " the newsletter simply stated that university archivist Kerry Jones "previously processed the papers of the late Diane Blair." Tapper wrote that this "implied the job has been completed." However, Tapper also quoted Dillard saying: "All I can say is that was a preliminary estimation and neither of the collections that were reported on are finished, neither Blair nor Congressman Hutchinson's papers"; "They're just not ready."

The newsletter reported:

The Special Collections Department is gearing up to begin processing its largest manuscript collection, the papers of former U. S. Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt. These records, more than 1,400 boxes of materials, document Hammerschmidt's 26-year tenure as the representative for Arkansas' third district, 1967-1993.

According to Timothy G. Nutt, the manuscripts and rare books librarian in the Special Collections Department, a staff of three processing archivists as well as an intern from the Honors College have been hired to process the collection. Leading the processing is Felicia Thomas, who previously worked on the papers of another former third-district congressman, Asa Hutchinson. Other processors are Kerry Jones, who previously processed the papers of the late Diane Blair, and Case Minor, a history graduate student. Will Puddephatt, an Honors College junior majoring in German and history, will serve as the project intern.

The library's '06-'07 annual report, which appears to cover the time period from June 30, 2006, to June 30, 2007, indicated that library staff worked on the Blair papers during that period:

The Libraries had the assistance of four Honors College interns this year in Special Collections. They assisted manuscript processors in working on various manuscript projects, including the Diane Blair Papers, the John Paul Hammerschmidt Papers, the Fay Jones Collection, the Larry Vonalt Papers, Cynthia Rodes Smith Correspondence, Henry and Katie Wood Collection, John M. Page Correspondence, the 20th Century Club Collection.

From the November 6 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

HUME: The Clintons' ability to withhold information from the public extends not just to the Clinton Presidential Library it seems, but also to the University of Arkansas library as well. Four enormous binders of data about the Clinton presidency -- and Hillary Clinton's role in it -- apparently will not be released to the public by the university library before next year's election.

ABC News reports the information was compiled by Clinton friend Diane Blair for a book, but Blair never wrote it and passed away in 2000. The Clintons have one copy of the papers, the other's at the university.

Last month, the library said the papers would not be made public until 2009 because they were not yet processed. But the library's annual report for '05-'06 says the processing is, quote, "nearing completion," and, one year later, the library newsletter said the Blair papers were, quote, "previously processed."

The Clinton campaign says it has not had any contact with the University of Arkansas about delaying the release of the papers.

OSHA Investigates Wal-Mart

OSHA's Wal-Mart Investigation [BusinessWeek]

• The Labor Dept.'s Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) has opened an investigation into a whistleblower complaint against Wal-Mart Stores (WMT). OSHA sent a letter to Chalace Epley Lowry, the employee involved, saying the agency is "notifying the party named in the complaint about the filing of the complaint" and "conducting an investigation into your allegations," according to a copy of the letter reviewed by BusinessWeek.
  

FINAL RESOLUTION: ROEHM, WAL-MART END BATTLE, RELEASE STATEMENTS

• Wal-Mart ad executive drops lawsuit [Associated Press via BusinessWeek]
  A former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. ad executive says she won't refile a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the company. She also acknowledged that allegations of ethical breaches she made in her original suit, which was dismissed, contained inaccuracies.
  
  
• Wal-Mart, former exec call truce [CNN Money]
  Fired ex-Wal-Mart marketing executive Julie Roehm and Wal-Mart have called a truce and dropped lawsuits against each other.
  
  
• Statements of Roehm, Jacobs In Wal-Mart Employment Case [Wall Street Journal]
  A spokesman for Julie Roehm issued the following statement today: In August, a Michigan judge dismissed Julie Roehm's lawsuit against Wal-Mart, honoring a provision in Ms. Roehm's contract that requires any lawsuit to be filed in Arkansas.
  
  
• Ex-Executive of Wal-Mart Drops Suit on Severance [Associated Press via New York Times]
  "I just decided not to pursue it," the executive, Julie Roehm, said yesterday by telephone. She would not elaborate beyond a prepared statement that her lawsuit had gone beyond her effort to recover $1.5 million in severance pay.
  
  
• Battle Between Wal-Mart, Roehm Is Over [Advertising Age]
  Nearly a year after it began, the fierce legal and public realtions battle between Wal-Mart and Julie Roehm appears to be at an end, with the embattled former marketing executive coming out of it having gained nothing.

Never Too Young

TINY TOTS OPEN THEIR PIGGY BANKS TO CANDIDATES You're never too young to make a campaign contribution, according to the Federal Election Commission, and bundlers are capitalizing on this loophole more than ever this election cycle. Because the FEC has not set any age limit on donations and doesn't ask donors' ages, parents looking to give more than the $2,300 limit per election are breaking open their kids' piggy banks (or trust funds) and contributing more in their names, listing their occupation as "student" in most cases. Having given $2.9 million already in the first nine months of this year, students (many of whom are over 18 and eligible to vote) have surpassed the $2.8 million in contributions they gave to presidential candidates in the entire 2004 election cycle. Democrats are collecting 69 percent of the money. Hillary Clinton has collected the most from students -- at least $836,000.

*Read more about 3rd Quarter contributions from students, along with other Q3 observations: http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=312

*Read the Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/23/AR2007102301882.html

MILITARY CONTINUES TO GIVE TO PAUL, OBAMA:
Despite his anti-war stance, or perhaps because of it, Ron Paul has collected more money from members of the U.S. military than any other presidential candidate, including John McCain, a Vietnam War prisoner who backs the administration's policy in Iraq. Paul has brought in at least $53,670 from the uniformed services since the campaign's start, compared to McCain's $40,000. Democrat Barack Obama, who opposed the resolution to go to Iraq from the start, is the number-two recipient with at least $45,200. (Obama had been ahead of Paul after the 2nd Quarter.) The contribution record of the military has become less Republican since the Iraq war began, and some donors say they're contributing to express dissatisfaction with the Bush administration's handling of the war and foreign policy. Tallying donations exceeding $200, Democrats have received 35 percent of the total $319,000 in contributions from uniformed service members this year. By comparison, in 2000, the last presidential race before the Iraq war began, Democrats received only 18 percent of contributions from the military.

*Read a Capital Eye story from September about military giving: http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=300

BATTLE OF THE SEXES:
Hillary Clinton, the lone woman in the presidential field, is bringing in more money from female donors than any other candidate. But she doesn't have the largest number of female donors. That distinction belongs to Democrat Barack Obama, who has so far collected money from at least 22,045 women giving more than $200, compared to Clinton's 17,539. (Only donors who give more than $200 are itemized in campaign finance reports, so it's impossible to determine a gender breakdown for smaller donors.) Clinton is nearly tied with Democrat Dennis Kucinich in the percentage of total funds coming from women -- about 44 percent for both of them. Among Republicans, a larger number of women have given to Mitt Romney than any other candidate in the party, 8,801 donors giving a total of $12.1 million, or about 32 percent of his total. But with about 35 percent of his funds from women, dropout Sam Brownback's receipts from females make up the largest percentage of his total compared to all other GOP candidates.

*Presidential contributors by gender: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/donordemCID_compare.asp?cycle=2008&cand1=N00000019&cand2=N00009638

The siege of Gaza is going to lead to a violent escalation

Seumas Milne
Thursday November 1, 2007
The Guardian

There is, it seems, an unbridgeable gap between the western world's apparent recognition of the dangers of Palestinian suffering and its commitment to do anything whatever to stop it. This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups. A plan to cut power supplies has only been put on hold till the end of the week by the intervention of Israel's attorney general.

Both moves come on top of the existing blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since last year's election of Hamas and the confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it is obliged to pass on as part of previous agreements. And instead of being restrained by the US or European Union, both have deepened the crisis by imposing their own sanctions and withdrawing aid. The result has, inevitably, been further huge increases in unemployment and poverty. But far from discouraging rocket attacks, they have risen sharply - though the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been running at more than 30 to one, compared with four to one at the height of the intifada five years ago.

The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, yesterday branded Israel's intensification of the Gaza siege as a violation of international law: despite its withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power both legally and practically. Not that the situation is much better in the occupied West Bank. Despite the US and Israel's fatal backing for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his emergency government of a non-existent state, Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions, segregated road-building and construction of the land-grabbing separation wall continue apace in the territory where Abbas's nominal writ supposedly runs.

There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, squeezing this already constricted piece of land into apartheid-style cantons, and making free movement or normal economic activity entirely impossible. All this is in contravention of international law; much of it directly violates UN security council resolutions, such as resolution 446 against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But, whereas the occupied people face sanctions and international isolation, the occupiers pay no penalty at all. On the contrary, they are aided and armed to the hilt by the US and its allies.

Given the speed at which Israel continues to create facts on the ground, it's no surprise that even Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned a few days ago that the "window for a two-state solution" could be closing. But it is of course her government that has underpinned this takeover at every stage. And having preached democracy as the salvation of the Middle East, the US and its allies demonstrated what that meant in practice when it greeted the winners of the Palestinian elections with a political and economic boycott.

Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel. The US and Israel then went one step further, funding and arming a section of the defeated Fatah leadership in an attempt to overthrow Hamas's administration. When that failed, the US encouraged Abbas to impose an unconstitutional administration of his own and blocked any power-sharing with Hamas, which is the precondition for Palestinian advance.

Instead, the US is gearing up for a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from which Hamas is excluded and which almost nobody believes offers any prospect of real progress towards a settlement. Its main appeal to the Bush administration is perhaps that it can be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran. For the Palestinians, it's maybe just as well that the Israeli government is resistant to any timetable for statehood - let alone serious negotiation on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders - as any agreement that such a weak leadership could now secure would not stand a chance of being accepted by its people.

Already, Hamas and the other non-Fatah Palestinian parties are preparing to stage their own conference in Damascus to coincide with the Annapolis jamboree. Their aim is to challenge the right of Abbas, who has never had any of the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat, to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations over its future. While they were prepared to accept him as a negotiator for a national unity government, there will be no acceptance of deals made by a figure many Palestinians now regard as simply operating under US and Israeli licence.

Nor should there be any interest in such a setup for anyone who wants to see a lasting settlement of the conflict. As in previous periods when political progress has been blocked, there are clear signs that pressures for a return to wider resistance are building up on the Palestinian side. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said on Monday that he did not expect a new intifada if Annapolis failed because the Palestinian public was "exhausted and lacks leadership". It's true that any new upsurge in violence is likely to be different from in the past. But Palestinians are also well aware that it was the first intifada that led to the Oslo agreement, for all its weaknesses, and the second intifada that triggered Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas has mostly held back from armed action against Israel in the past couple of years, though it has allowed attacks by others. That may be about to change. This week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared that "every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza", while Hamas leader Ahmad Nimr told a rally that the movement was now ready to "strike inside the heart of Israel, the occupation entity" if Israel did not stop its killings in Gaza. Hamas has a variety of options - including rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the West Bank over the much-vaunted security barrier - that could dramatically escalate the conflict. The wider international interest in a just settlement could not be more obvious.

Ann Coulter: The "irreligious" are "trying to stir up trouble with the religious"

On the October 30 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Alan Colmes said to his guest, conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter: "I haven't spoken to you since you made your infamous comment saying that people like me need to be 'perfected,' " adding, "So how about embracing one of the great Christian virtues, as Jesus discussed, humility, and apologizing to all those people you offended by that comment?" Colmes was referring to Coulter's statement, documented by Media Matters for America, on the October 8 edition of CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch that "we" Christians "just want Jews to be perfected." Responding to Colmes, Coulter stated: "[I]f you're going to go around citing all the people I have offended, Alan, I have 1,000 Orthodox rabbis supporting me." Later, Colmes asserted: "You claim 1,000 Orthodox rabbis support you. I don't know who they are, but I can tell you, you know the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, and many others have condemned you for that. Do you care?" Coulter responded: "I wear it as a badge of honor. It's like citing the National Organization of Women to tell me how all women feel. The point is: This is the same old fight we see all the time with the irreligious trying to stir up trouble with the religious."

Coulter's response on Hannity & Colmes echoes remarks she made on the October 15 broadcast of Townhall Radio's The Michael Medved Show, where -- as Media Matters documented -- she claimed: "This is just the irreligious against the religious," while responding to criticism surrounding her comments on The Big Story. Coulter made a similar statement later that same evening on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, as Media Matters also documented.

Coulter's assertion that "I have 1,000 Orthodox Jews supporting me" is an apparent reference to an October 15 article published on LifeSiteNews.com -- a "non-profit Internet service dedicated to issues of culture, life, and family" that "emphasizes the social worth of traditional Judeo-Christian principles" -- which quoted Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance for America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, saying: "She said nothing that in any way indicates anti-Semitism." The article characterized Levin as a "spokesman for some 1000 orthodox rabbis" and also quoted him as saying: "It is a fact that millions of Christians believe in evangelizing and preaching the gospel and it is their belief for a Jew to accept the tenets of Christianity and accept the divinity somehow completes them and brings them to perfection," and noted that "Levin stressed, 'That's obviously not our belief, that's not the traditional Jewish belief at all.'"

During the show, following Colmes' assertion that Coulter "doesn't want to own up to" her October 8 statement, Coulter said: "I gave a beautiful description of the Old Testament and the New Testament, but it's very frightening to secularists."