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| ...---... DemocracyNow!: Two "Must-Hear" Interviews with Two American Patriots ...---... |
| 01.27.05 (7:12 am) [edit] |
[b]I highly recommend that you take the time to listen to the following two interviews sponsored by [i]DemocracyNow![/i]:--[/ b]
[u][b]Seymour Hersh: "We've Been Taken Over by a Cult"[/b][/u]
As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares to vote today on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, we hear a speech by Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on torture from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to Vietnam.
Check-out interview & link to audio on http://www.democracynow.org/a...
[u][b]Gore Vidal on Bush's Inaugural Address: "The Most Un-American Speech I've Ever Heard"[/b][/u]
We take a look at President Bush's inaugural address with Gore Vidal, one of America's most respected writers and thinkers and the author of more than 20 novels and 5 plays. Vidal says, "If the United States does go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty and so on, she could become dictatress of the world, but in the process she would lose her soul."
Check-out interview & link to audio on http://www.democracynow.org/a...
[b]... Two "must-hear" interviews with Two American Patriots ...[/b]
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| ...---... Condoleezza Rice Confused About the Middle East ...---... |
| 01.26.05 (12:56 pm) [edit] |
"In declaring it to be America's mission in the world to end tyranny on earth, President Bush is launching a crusade even more ambitious and utopian than was Wilson's. His crusade, too, will end, as Wilson's did, in disillusionment for him and tragedy for his country." - Inaugurating Endless War by Patrick J. Buchanan, http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...
[b]The liar, traitor and Bush Crime Family toady Condi Rice was confirmed today by the corrupt Senate in an over-whelming 85-13 vote (2 Republicans didn't vote... I wonder [i]why[/i]?) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0... ... Now we have the Mad King George & Queen Condi ruling over the world, with their insane lusts for never-ending wars, vast power and obscene riches ... And, nobody to stop them ...[/b]
[b]Freedom and Occupation:
[u]Condoleezza Rice Confused About the Middle East[/u][/b]
Writing in [i]Dar Al Hayat [/i]at the end of the year, Ms Condoleezza Rice, the newly designated Secretary of State, made the following points:
... " when [i]freedom[/i] is on the march, America is more secure when [i]freedom[/i] is in retreat, America is more vulnerable. That is why the president has broken with more than 60 years of excusing and accommodating the lack of[i] freedom [/i]in the Middle East, As long as the Middle East remains a region of tyranny and despair and anger, it will produce men and movements that threaten the safety of Americans and our friends."
"When Iraqis to the polls next year to elect a government and put behind them their brutal history, democracy's power will be reaffirmed again. That opportunity exists today because America and a Coalition acted to remove one of the most brutal and dangerous regimes in the Middle East." ...
Both Ms Rice and Mr Bush like the word, [i]"freedom". [/i]In Bush's inauguration on January 20, which Ms Rice's article anticipates, Bush used the word 40 times. On the same day of Mr Bush's inauguration speech, the Israeli daily ran a story to the effect that Israel would proceed to confiscate Palestinian owned land in East Jerusalem. The Absentee Property Law of 1950, which Israel enacted in order to write into statute its desire to transfer to itself land taken from the Palestinians during the Palestinian extirpation in 1948, now plans to confiscate property owned by thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the law, those whose lands are confiscated have neither the right to appeal nor a right to compensation. [i]Freedom?[/i]
Over the past year, 869 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while Israelis, both military and civilian deaths have totaled 118, a better than 7 to 1 ratio. More than 12,000 Palestinian homes have been either demolished or damaged in the West Bank since 2000. Between September 2000 and September 2004, more than 24,000 Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been made homeless by Israeli house demolitions. In the first months of 2004, the Israeli Defense Forces demolished on average 120 residential buildings each month or four per day. In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, home demolition increased from 15 homes per month in 2002, to 77 homes per month in the first nine months of 2004. Some 13,230 dunums (3307 acres) of land have been cleared or damaged due to the barrier construction in the West Bank. Infant mortality, in the Occupied Territories has increased each year since 2000. Is this[i] freedom[/i], Ms Rice?
[b]Read the entire article on http://www.counterpunch.org/m... ...[/b]
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| ...---... Bush Administration Off by 10,000% ... and Counting ... ...---... |
| 01.25.05 (8:13 am) [edit] |
You should check-out the [b]Cost of War [/b]web-site if you want to see how your U.S. taxpayer monies could be better spent than on this disastrous bloodbath botched-up by the Bushies (who bear no burden [i]themselves[/i], as they awarded themselves massive tax cuts for themselves, their corporate cronies & their hyper-rich "constituents"-- it's the working people who are the donkeys carrying the back-breaking load for the neo-con Bushies neo-fascist rape of America and Iraq): http://www.costofwar.com
As Bush announces his $80 billion request today for, as the USA Today put it: "Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," it's worth a little trip down the war-budget memory lane courtesy of Al Franken Show blogger, Ben Wikler. http://www.airamericaradio.co...
Andrew Natsios was (and is) the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. His claims from April of 2003 below about the cost of reconstruction and occupation to the American taxpayer are, conservatively speaking (because the lines between "war," "occupation," and "reconstruction" have been hopelessly blurred)[b] off by about 10,000%[/b]. This is also, coincidentally, about as close to the mark as Bush's advisors on the war and postwar planning were.
TED KOPPEL: Well, it's a, I think you'll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that's been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no. This doesn't even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL: The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: This is 1.7 billion.
TED KOPPEL: All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
[b]Doesn't this constitute gross incompetence, [i]or what[/i]???[/b]
[b]Sources:[/b]
White House expected to seek $80B more for wars, http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
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| ...---... Torture Not Ready for Prime Time ...---... |
| 01.24.05 (7:03 am) [edit] |
Frank Rich's column http://nytimes.com/2005/01/23... for this Sunday's[i] Times [/i]is absolutely chilling. While it's not terribly surprising that the idiotic and ignorant choice by Prince Harry to wear a Nazi uniform grabbed more air time than the torture trial of an American soldier, it's no less outrageous and sickening for its ordinariness.
But the real chill lies in the irrefuted facts of torture and the maddening fact that, as Rich quotes author Mark Danner, "Nobody seems to be listening...in five years, or maybe sooner, there will be a TV news special called 'Torture: How Did It Happen?'"
That special, over which, Rich reminds us, we'll all "express great shock," will repeat the litany currently available to any TV news anchor willing to report it as it becomes relevant. Like when the trial of one of the officers accused is concluding, for example, or during the confirmation hearings of Alberto Gonzales, for another. Here's the litany, lest we forget:
... "[i]forced group masturbation, electric shock, rape committed with a phosphorescent stick, the burning of cigarettes in prisoners' ears, involuntary enemas and beatings that end in death," and the fact that "the abuses were widespread and systematic...Or that they started a year before the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Or that they have been carried out by many branches of the war effort, not just Army grunts. Or that lawyers working for Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales gave these acts a legal rationale[/i]..." ...
Despite all this, Rich argues, the fact that there hasn't been any "fresh visual meat from the scene of the crime" makes it a difficult sell in today's TV news climate. And if they had no new images it "would thus have to be explained with words - possibly more than a few sentences of words."
[b]Source:[/b]
AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
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| ...---... Iran: The Next Strategic Target ...---... |
| 01.23.05 (8:08 am) [edit] |
[b]Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh burst open the secret neocon plans aimed at Iran. In an interview, Hersh explains how Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are keeping America in the dark about their war games...[/b]
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in [i]The New Yorker [/i]magazine http://www.newyorker.com/fact... this week that the Pentagon has already secretly sent in forces to Iran to identify possible future military targets. In the article, titled “The Coming Wars: What the Pentagon Can Now Do in Secret,” Hersh wrote that he had been repeatedly told by intelligence and military officials, on condition of anonymity that "the next strategic target was Iran."
The covert reconnaissance missions have been underway since at least last summer, aided by Pakistan as well as Israel. According to Hersh's article, the president has authorized the Pentagon to send secret commando forces into as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia. These forces could potentially carry out combat operations or even terrorist acts. Bush reportedly used the Pentagon for the missions instead of the CIA to avoid having to report to Congress.
On Monday, the Pentagon criticized major aspects of the article, saying in a written statement "Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed." But President Bush, when asked by NBC’s David Gregory whether he would rule out military action against Iran, said: “I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table.”
[b]AMY GOODMAN: Your response to what President Bush has said?
SEYMOUR HERSH:[/b] Well, I mean, the thing that's wonderful about that is that, of course, if he really hopes we're doing something politically, he should join in with the talks that have been underway for more than a year. Since 2003, the European Union, primarily led by England, France and Germany, has been in extensive negotiations with the Iranians. I think there's an understanding that Iran has ambitions to become a nuclear power. It's not there yet. The goal of these talks is to offer them, I guess, to use a cliche, the carrot they need in terms of increased trade and increased credits and dual-use goods, goods that they have been denied by sanctions because of their activities, in exchange for a commitment to stop.
The United States has not joined in those talks, absolutely has nothing to do with them. In the article, I quoted senior Western diplomats — everyone's so nervous about being quoted about anything these days with this administration — anyway, a senior European diplomat said to me, we're in a lose-lose position, because as long as America doesn't join in these negotiations we really don't have the leverage. What kind of a commitment can we make for Iran's security if America stays out of it? And as long as they don't join in, we're eventually going to have to go to the United Nations for sanctions because we can't do it through diplomacy to stop them, and at that point, everybody understands that Russia and China will probably veto it, and then the Bush administration can claim, ‘Aha! The U.N. is not working again,’ which is analogous to what happened in 2003 when we went into Iraq. We didn't give the negotiations there a chance to work. So, if you really are interested in negotiations, it's simple. Start talking to Iran.
[b]Read the rest of the interview on[/b]: http://www.alternet.org/waron...
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| ...---... Condoleezza Rice's Doublespeak ...---... |
| 01.23.05 (8:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Condolezza Rice is a bald-faced liar, incompetent and the most over-rated phony of our time... In reality, Condi is Bush's favorite lap-dog: nothing more, nothing less ...[/b]
The transcript of the Rice/Boxer exchange http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... is worth reading in full. Rice's performance is breathtakingly bad, and Boxer has all the quotes and facts at her fingertips. The issue is that Condoleezza Rice engaged in demagoguery before the Iraq war. She invoked the image of a mushroom cloud over the United States. But George Tenet had told her the evidence was weak in that regard. The State Department Intelligence and Research division thought the whole nuclear bit was far-fetched. But Rice kept on saying these alarmist things nevertheless.
In the end, Rice falls back on the same brain-dead rhetorical strategy as George W. Bush. Saddam was a threat because he is intrinsically evil. He is so evil that he can be a threat even though all he had in his arsenal were those spitballs toward which Zell Miller showed such derision at the Republican National Convention. Saddam was a threat to the region, she says. She is still saying this now, today. Saddam was not a threat to the region in 2002. That is ridiculous. Iraq was also not a threat to the US. This turns out to be the Achilles Heel of any doctrine of preemptive war. It would require, in order to be justified, much better intelligence than is usually available on the capabilities and intensions of the enemy. Rice still won't admit this, which means she may drag us into further wars with further gross mistakes in judgment.
On Wednesday, Rice testified again. Now aware that Senator Boxer and others were complaining about her rigidity, she finally admitted that the US had made some serious errors in Iraq. But the example she gave, of reconstruction work, was disingenuous. Actually the US companies working in relatively safe places like Basra and Sulaymaniyah have done very good reconstruction work. She seems to be trying to find some mistake she could admit to, which would actually be the mistake of the private sector and not of the Bush adminsitration! For an incoming Secretary of State not to be willing to recognize that Iraq is a mess in part because of US policies is to translate the realm of politics into some sort of fantasyland. And in a way, that is what has been happening in US politics since Reagan was elected and Peggy Noonan began writing those syrupy speeches.
Senators Chafee and Biden urged Rice to try to engage Iran. Biden suggested she tell Bush that dropping some bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities and then hoping that the young people in blue jeans would toss out the mullas was probably not going to work. Biden has developed this wonderful sardonic sense of what exactly the Bush administration ideologues are thinking, and is able to puncture these insubstantial balloons masterfully, building on decades of experience in foreign affairs.
Rice responded concerning Iran that it was hard to have an engagement with a country that wanted to see Israel destroyed. It is such a simple-minded thing to say. Uh, let me see. In the 1980s wasn't it the Khomeini regime that sold Israel petroleum in exchange for spare parts for its American weaponry? Wasn't it the Israelis who put Reagan up to the Iran-Contra scandal by suggesting that the US ship TOWs to Iran in return for an end to the Lebanese hostage crisis? Even when it was more radical, and despite all the rhetoric, Iran was willing to deal with Israel in ways that helped the latter enormously.
It is true that some Iranian leaders, like Rafsanjani, say frightening things about Israel. But Rafsanjani has no executive power, and when he was president he didn't actually act on such sentiments. The point of engaging the Iranian regime would be to gradually ween it away from such extremism. Iran hasn't launched any aggressive wars in the region, or threatened to use weapons of mass destruction, unlke some other countries (the US had full diplomatic relations with Iraq in the 1980s at a time when it had done both of these things.) I am very uncomfortable in having US national security policy and diplomacy dictated by how politicians in a country talk about our non-Nato allies (with whom, by the way, we do not even have a mutual defense pact). And I am very suspicious that now that Iraq is a basket case, all of a sudden Ariel Sharon is calling on the US to attack Iran.
If Rice is going to be a successful Secretary of State, she simply has to get back control of US foreign policy from the Likudniks in the Bush administration.
[b]Source:[/b]
Progressive News, Juan Cole, http://www.progressivetrail.o...
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| ...---... The Shit that Oozes Out of Odious Bush's Cake-Hole & Ass-Hole ...---... |
| 01.22.05 (7:32 am) [edit] |
[b]Calling? What Calling? BushCo Says 'Never Mind' ... [/b]
[b]Except that the shit that oozes out of odious Bush's promiscuous cake-hole & constipated ass-hole leaves us with a threat for more Middle East wars (Iran is [i]next[/i] if the neo-con Nazis have their way) to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil, etc.-- while the rest of us [i]foot-the-bill [/i]paying with the lives of our loved ones and the bankruptcy of our treasury ...[/b]
After all of yesterday's considered discussion of what Bush meant when he said that "fighting tyranny" was our "calling of a lifetime," the Bush Administration says '[i]nevermind[/i]' http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
... "White House officials said yesterday that President Bush's soaring inaugural address, in which he declared the goal of ending tyranny around the world, represents no significant shift in U.S. foreign policy but instead was meant as a crystallization and clarification of policies he is pursuing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere.
[u]Nor, they say, will it lead to any quick shift in strategy for dealing with countries such as Russia, China, Egypt and Pakistan, allies in the fight against terrorism whose records on human rights and democracy fall well short of the values Bush said would become the basis of relations with all countries[/u].
Bush advisers said the speech was the rhetorical institutionalization of the Bush doctrine and reflected the president's deepest convictions about the purposes behind his foreign policies. But they said it was [u]carefully written not to tie him to an inflexible or unrealistic application of his goal of ending tyranny[/u].
"It is not a discontinuity. It is not a right turn," said a senior administration official, who spoke with reporters from newspapers but demanded anonymity because he wanted the focus to remain on the president's words and not his. "I think it is a bit of an acceleration, a raising of the priority, making explicit in a very public way to give impetus to this effort." He added that it was a "message we have been sending" for some time." ...
Ahem. Told you so http://www.dailykos.com/story... . Let the backpedalling begin from the Right Wing Pundits.
[b]Source:[/b]
DailyKos, http://www.dailykos.com
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| ...---... Don't Confirm Gonzales, Indict Him! ...---... |
| 01.21.05 (6:34 am) [edit] |
[b]Please write to Congress http://www.congress.org today and attach this request ... Don't confirm Alberto "Torture Guy" Gonzales, Indict Him! ...[/b]
Alberto Gonzales should not be the Attorney General of the United States. He should be considered a war criminal and indicted by the Attorney General. This is a suggested indictment of Alberto Gonzales for war crimes under Title 18 U.S.C. section 1441, the War Crimes Act.
[b]COUNT I:[/b] [i]Application of Geneva Conventions; Definition of Torture[/i]
On or about January 25, 2002 through January 16, 2005, Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES, Counsel to George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, did write, commission and concur in memoranda that advocated conduct by United States military forces, amounting to war crimes under Title 18 U.S.C. section 1441 (The War Crimes Act ).
The War Crimes Act defines as war crimes: grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and violations of Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions.
Section 130 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Third Geneva Convention) defines as grave breaches of that Convention: "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment," and "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."
It is well-established that Article 3 common applies to international as well as internal armed conflicts. Article 3 common provides that "persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms...shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria."
The following acts constitute violations of Article 3 common: "Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture"; "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment"; and "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention provides: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy [are prisoners of war under this Convention], such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES wrote, in a memorandum to President George W. Bush dated January 25, 2002, that the war against terrorism is a "new paradigm" that "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Defendant GONZALES wrote that the Third Geneva Convention should not apply to members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who were captured after the United States invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. Defendant GONZALES also advised President Bush in that memorandum that he could avoid allegations of war crimes under The War Crimes Act by simply declaring that the Geneva Convention does not apply to members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Defendant GONZALES wrote that a determination of the inapplicability of the Third Geneva Convention would insulate against prosecution by future "prosecutors and independent counsels."
In apparent reliance on the advice in Defendant GONZALES' memorandum, and notwithstanding the requirement of Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention that a "competent tribunal" determine the status of prisoners, President George W. Bush issued an order on February 7, 2002, specifying that the United States would not apply the Third Geneva Convention to members of Al Qaeda, and that as commander-in-chief of the United States, he had the power to suspend the Geneva Conventions regarding the conflict in Afghanistan, although he declined to suspend them at that time.
Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES commissioned the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice's memorandum dated August 1, 2002, which required that, in order to constitute "torture," the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions." This definition is contrary to The War Crimes Act and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Unusual or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty ratified by the United States.
Before the August 1, 2002 memorandum was issued, Colin Powell, Secretary of State, had counseled against its conclusions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply; he wrote that this "will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions, and undermine the protection of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general."
Although the August 1, 2002 memorandum was retracted on December 30, 2004, the provisions of the August 1, 2002 memorandum remained in effect for 2 ½ years, notwithstanding the warnings of Secretary Powell.
The January 25, 2002 and August 1, 2002 memoranda, and the February 7, 2002 order set forth policies that led to the willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment; and great suffering or serious injury to body or health, of DOES 1 through 1,000, prisoners in United States custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as listed in EXHIBIT A (Dear Mr. Gonzales).
Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES knew or should have known that, pursuant to memoranda written by, commissioned or concurred in by him, prisoners in United States custody would be subjected to willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment; and great suffering or serious injury to body or health, in violation of The War Crimes Act.
[b]COUNT II:[/b] [i]Military Commissions[/i]
Between September 11, 2001 and November 13, 2001, Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES did participate in the drafting of the Military Order establishing the Military Commissions, which order was signed by President George W. Bush on November 13, 2001. Said order mandated conduct by members of United States military forces which constitute war crimes under The War Crimes Act.
The War Crimes Act defines war crimes as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Section 130 of the Third Geneva Convention defines as a grave breach of that Convention: "willfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention."
Article 84 of the Third Geneva Convention provides that prisoners of war shall be tried in the same types of courts (military or civilian) as members of the armed forces of the Detaining Power. It also provides: "In no circumstances whatever shall a prisoner of war be tried by a court of any kind which does not offer the essential guarantees of independence and impartiality as generally recognized."
Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions prohibits "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
Unlike courts convened pursuant to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and civilian courts of the United States, the Military Order provides for no judicial review by federal courts of the United States. The final level of review in the Military Commissions is to the President or the Secretary of Defense.
Military Commission Order No. 1(6)(B)(3) allows the use of evidence that the accused is not permitted to see, and provides for the exclusion of the accused from the proceedings. These provisions violate the rights of the accused to be confronted with the evidence against him, and to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses. These rights are guaranteed to the accused in courts convened under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and civilian courts in the United States.
Section 4(c)(3) of the Military Order provides for the "admission of such evidence as would, in the opinion of the presiding officer of the military commission...have probative value to a reasonable person." Such evidence would be inadmissible under the rules of evidence in courts convened under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and civilian courts in the United States.
Defendant ALBERTO GONZALES knew or should have known that the Military Commissions, in whose creation he participated, will deprive prisoners in United States custody who will be tried before them, of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the Third Geneva Convention and Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions.
[b]Penalties Under the War Crimes Act[/b]
Title 18 U.S.C. sec. 1441 provides that any national of the United States who commits a war crime "shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death."
[b]Source:[/b]
Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists., http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
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| ...---... A Ten Foot Pole ...---... |
| 01.20.05 (9:10 pm) [edit] |
[b]Land of the Free and Home of the Brave OR Land of the Screed and Home of the Slave ... [i]Hmmm[/i]...[/b]
Despite the tightest security in American history, protestors managed to make themselves heard http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... at George W. Bush's second inauguration. Several ladies in pink, who had made it past metal detectors and strict security, turned their backs http://www.washingtonpost.com... on the President as he spoke. Demonstrators along Pennsylvania Avenue were pepper sprayed as they attemped to hold signs protesting Bush's presidency.
Even gold-edged ticket holders were mistaken for protestors as they waited for hours outside of security, some of them missing the event. Meanwhile, Bush soldiered on, giving an inaugural speech that, without mentioning Iraq, made clear there would be "no mistakes, no regret, no comment." http://www.washingtonpost.com...
[b]Source:[/b]
[i]Rachel[/i], AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
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| ...---... An Empty Exercise in Deceit ...---... |
| 01.20.05 (6:38 pm) [edit] |
[b]"President Bush has not lost his flair for irony":-- Except that the imbecilic simpleton doesn't even[i] know [/i]that he is being ironic... Bush's asinine & dangerously fascist screed today was not only "an empty exercise in deceit"; it was a neo-orwellian exercise in selling (snake oil) to the uneducated, ill-informed, naive and brain-dead sheeple (America's working people) that they should sacrifice their blood (their kids die or maimed in war, not the rich kids), sweat (slave labor, while the rich get tax cuts), and tears (the dupes to pick-up-the-pieces of Bush's neo-fascist fiascos and neo-con gambles, while the Bushies & their hyper-wealthy constituents take-the-money-and-run) in never-ending wars for never-ending profits for the few (while the rest of us pay his gambling debts) ...[/b]
President Bush has not lost his flair for irony.
Just as the president hit the point in his second inaugural address where he declared to the dissidents of the world that "when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you," authorities were removing peaceful protesters from the regal one's line of sight.
It was a similar juxtaposition of lofty rhetoric and less-than-lofty deeds that made the first term of the Bush presidency so unsettling to thinking people in the U.S. and abroad. And nothing in Thursday's inaugural ceremony suggested that the second term would be any better. Even as American forces remained mired in the quagmire of Iraq into which they were led by the Bush administration's deliberate misreading of intelligence information, the president offered no indication whatsoever that he had learned from the mistakes and misdeeds of his first term.
Bush's lack of self-reflection belied the occasionally humble notes struck during his 20-minute address. And it called into question the speech's bold assertions:
* "Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen," said Bush, who declared, "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling." Sounds great. But should anyone read that as an abandonment of the doctrine of preemptive war that served as an excuse for the unilateral invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq during the president's first term? The president provided no such indication, and his record recommends the most extreme skepticism.
* "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny," Bush said as he specifically addressed dissidents around the world, urging them to resist oppression and issuing that ringing promise that, "When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you." Does this mean that when challenges are mounted to the oppressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or elsewhere, the United States will take the side of the rebels? Can we expect the United States to impose trade sanctions on China because of that country's brutal occupation of Tibet, its jailing of dissidents and its smashing of movements for trade unionism, religious freedom and democracy? If the leaders of Russia continue to dismantle that country's freedoms, will that put them on the wrong side of the United States? The sad truth is that Bush's Republican allies continue to ridicule former President Jimmy Carter for attempting to use economic sanctions and other diplomatic tools to oppose tyranny.
* "America's influence is considerable, and we will use it competently in freedom's cause," the president announced. That's a reasonable sentiment. But should anyone take this as an acknowledgment that poor planning, self-delusion and isolation from the world made the Iraq occupation the mess that it is? Or that the United States will now set a different course? Read Sy Hersh's latest report in the New Yorker on maneuvering within the administration to launch a guaranteed-to-be-disastro us war with Iran and you will have a hard time believing that competence and common sense have won out.
* Speaking of what he called the "essential work at home," the president said he was determined to "make our society more just and equal." But how does he reconcile that pledge with the growing gap between rich and poor, assaults on affirmative action programs that allow victims of past discrimination to get an equal footing in society, and scheming to dismantle the safety-net protections of Social Security, Medicare and other programs?
* The president affirmed his faith in "the durable wisdom of the Constitution." That's a fine choice of words. But does that mean that a second Bush administration will begin dismantling the Patriot Act and other policies that undermine Constitutional protections? Does that mean that he will refuse to nominate anyone to the federal bench who does not respect the Constitution's well-defined right of privacy -- particularly as it relates to a woman's right to choose?
It would be appealing to take George W. Bush at his word. But, considering his track record, that is not an option. In fact, if history is a guide, the one guarantee we have is that Bush's words will not match his deeds. And his inaugural address will be remembered as nothing more than an empty exercise in deceit.
[b]Source:[/b]
John Nichols, [i]The Online Beat[/i], The Nation, http://www.thenation.com
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| ...---... Inauguration: Lifestyles of the Rich and Heartless ...---... |
| 01.19.05 (1:57 pm) [edit] |
[b]The rich are different from you and me ...[/b]
Due to $17 million worth of inaugural security – paid for by the city of Washington, D.C. – the Progress Report is unable to access its office. Never fear – it takes a lot more than that to keep us down. We put this list together for you ahead of time. Your regularly scheduled Progress Report returns tomorrow.
[b]A look at this week's festivities by the numbers:[/b]
$40 million: http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,4726940.story?coll=ny-nation-big- pix Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.
$2,000: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005... Amount FDR spent on the inaugural in 1945…about $20,000 in today's dollars.
$20,000: http://www.ritzcarlton.com/ho... Cost of yellow roses purchased for inaugural festivities by D.C.'s Ritz Carlton.
200: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... Number of Humvees outfitted with top-of-the-line armor for troops in Iraq that could have been purchased with the amount of money blown on the inauguration.
$10,000: http://www.philly.com/mld/dai... Price of an inaugural package at the Fairmont Hotel, which includes a Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon reception, a chauffeured Rolls Royce and two actors posing as "faux" Secret Service agents, complete with black sunglasses and cufflink walkie-talkies.
400: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005... Pounds of lobster provided for "inaugural feeding frenzy" at the exclusive Mandarin Oriental hotel.
3,000: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005... Number of "Laura Bush Cowboy cookies" provided for "inaugural feeding frenzy" at the Mandarin hotel.
$1: http://kutv.com/topstories/to... Amount per guest President Carter spent on snacks for guests at his inaugural parties. To stick to a tight budget, he served pretzels, peanuts, crackers and cheese and had cash bars.
22 million: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.
1,160,000: http://www.worldonfire.ca/don... Number of girls who could be sent to school for a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.
$15,000: http://www.npr.org/templates/... The down payment to rent a fur coat paid by one gala attendee who didn't want the hassle of schlepping her own through the airport.
$200,500: http://www.usatoday.com/trave... Price of a room package at D.C.'s Mandarin Oriental, including presidential suite, chauffeured Mercedes limo and outfits from Neiman Marcus.
2,500: http://news.bostonherald.com/... Number of U.S. troops used to stand guard as President Bush takes his oath of office
26,000: http://www.oregonlive.com/let... Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.
$290: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am... Bonus that could go to each American solider serving in Iraq, if inauguration funds were used for that purpose.
$6.3 million: http://www.citizen.org/pressr... Amount contributed by the finance and investment industry, which works out to be 25 percent of all the money collected.
$17 million: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am... Amount of money the White House is forcing the cash-strapped city of Washington, D.C., to pony up for inauguration security.
9: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005... Percentage of D.C. residents who voted for Bush in 2004.
66: http://abcnews.go.com/images/... Percentage of Americans who think this over-the-top inauguration should have been scaled back.
[b]Source:[/b]
The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| ...---... Bush's Creeping Fascism: US TV Networks Censor More Shows ...---... |
| 01.18.05 (5:07 pm) [edit] |
[b]Does this scare you??? ... It scares the hell out of me!!! ... Take a look at "Meet The Real Domestic Terrorists" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...[/b]
The panic that is gripping American TV bosses facing a puritanical backlash or exorbitant government fines has today extended to a cartoon series and a BBC drama.
Fox TV has decided to pixelate a bare derriere in a cartoon series, The Family Guy, which was originally broadcast five years ago with no complaints.
And American public television network PBS is censoring BBC drama documentary Dirty War, wary of attracting a public backlash and fines from the federal watchdog.
PBS, the American public television network, said it would cut scenes featuring a naked woman being decontaminated in a shower, in the film that centers on the aftermath of a dirty bomb attack on London.
Fox TV has already been hit by fines from the Federal Communications Commission with its network of affiliate stations each fined $7,000 in October for airing Married by America, a reality series in which a female contestant was seen licking cream from a male stripper's chest.
With its affiliate stations already rapped, FCC is now considering a record $1.2m fine for the Fox network for the same offence.
"We have to be checking and second-guessing ourselves now," Gail Berman, the head of Fox Entertainment, told Variety today.
PBS said it would use other footage from the film to show the woman from a different angle.
The BBC drama, which is distributed by cable giant HBO in the US. is part of a parcel of three films the network is donating to PBS in order to show its programming to a wider audience.
But fearful of a backlash from Christian and decency groups and increasingly stiff fines from regulators that apply to mainstream television but not to cable channels. PBS said it would cut the film.
The PBS president, Pat Mitchell, said it was making the cuts in order to protect local stations from potential fines from the FCC.
"Cable doesn't have to live with those regulations - we do," Ms Mitchell told delegates during a company briefing, adding that it would also cut an expletive used by the vice-president, Dick Cheney, in Sometimes in April, a film about the Rwandan genocide.
While the FCC has been accused by some groups of deliberately undercounting complaints, it has nevertheless shown an appetite for hitting stations with substantial fines.
Last year CBS parent Viacom was given a $500,000 fine for showing a sub-one second glimpse of Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl half-time show.
Fearful of even the slightest protest, Fox this year turned down an advert for a cold remedy because it contained a brief flash of 84-year-old actor Mickey Rooney's bottom.
Other networks are also being ultra-cautious - late last year 66 stations in the ABC network refused to show Steven Spielberg's second world war drama, Saving Private Ryan, because of its explicit language.
Groups such as the Parents Television Council, and the American Decency Association have become increasingly adept at harnessing the power of the internet and email in particular to lobby for what they call family friendly TV.
Supporters can simply email the groups website to have their complaint sent through to the relevant sector within the FCC.
Just last week the PTC urged supporters to mount an email campaign against CBS for re-broadcasting an episode of missing person drama Without a Trace which attracted around 7,500 complaints when it was first shown because it featured scenes of a "teenage orgy".
"As if it isn't bad enough that CBS/Viacom was so irresponsible to air this rubbish once at a time when millions of children were in the viewing audience, they chose to air it again - this time on the heels of their Consent Decree in which they admitted to violating indecency laws and promised to take immediate steps not to do it again," said Tim Winter, the executive director of the PTC.
"We are urging our members and other concerned citizens to file indecency complaints with the FCC about this rebroadcast."
[b]Source:[/b]
Fearful US TV Networks Censor More Shows, http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| ...---... U.S. Intelligence Reports Predicts Grim Future For Iraq ...---... |
| 01.18.05 (9:28 am) [edit] |
[b]Knight Ridder reports http://www.realcities.com/mld... : [/b]"A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there's little likelihood that President Bush's goals can be attained in the near future. Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports. ...
A new public report by the National Intelligence Council concludes that instead of diminishing terrorism, U.S.-occupied Iraq has replaced prewar Afghanistan as a breeding and training ground for terrorists who may disperse to conduct attacks elsewhere."
A must-read "THE COMING WARS" by SEYMOUR M. HERSH on http://www.newyorker.com/fact... ...
[b]Source:[/b]
AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
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| ...---... Bush Blind to Frat Boy Gloating of $40-$50 Million Victory Extravaganza ...---... |
| 01.17.05 (11:05 am) [edit] |
[b]In response to a[i] New York Times [/i]editorial "Victor's Spoils" on http://www.nytimes.com/2005/0... , is the following letter ...[/b]
To the Editor:
While I agree completely with the sentiments expressed in your Jan. 11 editorial "Victor's Spoils," the bad taste of the president's victory party should come as no surprise.
The president's capering at the swearing-in of the new Congress revealed more about his character than words ever could. His gloating and glee reminded me of a frat boy trumpeting the victory of his football team. I saw little in his performance that demonstrated maturity, presidential timbre or the sobriety that ought to come from the knowledge that American soldiers are dying every day as a result of his poor judgment and inadequate planning in Iraq.
President Bush has never had to pay for a mistake and doesn't even know how to admit to making any (other than "catastrophic success"). Is it any wonder that he cannot recognize the impropriety of spending more than $40 million on a party for himself when that money can be better spent buying armor for our troops or providing aid to the victims of the tsunami in Asia?
Michael S. Schreiber
New York, Jan. 12, 2005
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| ...---... On the Destruction of Social Security ...---... |
| 01.16.05 (6:55 am) [edit] |
[b]Joshua Micah Marshall should get an award for his outstanding reporting regarding the inside story on the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]neo-fascist programme to destroy Social Security, using scare tactics, intimidation, bald-faced lies, and mendacious propaganda ... I urge you to study his weblog over the past few weeks http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ... And, then please write to Congress http://www.congress.org opposing this outrageous rape of Social Security to enrich the Bushies; their buddies like the corporate rapist Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay; and, their Wall Street robber-barons-- [/b]
[b]Also, another courageous gladiator in the fight for the rights of working people is Dr. Paul Krugman, who provides a case-in-point:--[/b]
We must end Social Security as we know it, the Bush administration says, to meet the fiscal burden of paying benefits to the baby boomers. But the most likely privatization scheme would actually increase the budget deficit until 2050. By then the youngest surviving baby boomer will be 86 years old.
Even then, would we have a sustainable retirement system? Not bloody likely.
Pardon my Britishism, but Britain's 20-year experience with privatization is a cautionary tale Americans should know about.
The U.S. news media have provided readers and viewers with little information about how privatization has worked in other countries. Now my colleagues have even fewer excuses: there's an illuminating article on the British experience in "[i]The American Prospect[/i]," www.prospect.org, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at [i]The Financial Times [/i]who covers pension issues.
Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions."
The details of British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different. But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts.
The selling of privatization also bore a striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that privatization was the only answer.
The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was better prepared for the transition. Britain's system was backed by extensive assets, so the government didn't have to engage in a four-decade borrowing spree to finance the creation of private accounts. And the Thatcher government hadn't already driven the budget deep into deficit before privatization even began.
Even so, it all went wrong. "Britain's experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state benefits has been a failure," Ms. Cohen writes. "A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn."
Many Britons were sold badly designed retirement plans on false pretenses. Companies guilty of "mis-selling" were eventually forced to pay about $20 billion in compensation. Fraud aside, the fees paid to financial managers have been a major problem: "Reductions in yield resulting from providers' charges," the Pensions Commission says, "can absorb 20-30 percent of an individual's pension savings."
American privatizers extol the virtues of personal choice, and often accuse skeptics of being elitists who believe that the government makes better choices than individuals. Yet when one brings up Britain's experience, their story suddenly changes: they promise to hold costs down by tightly restricting the investments individuals can make, and by carefully regulating the money managers. So much for trusting the people.
Never mind; their promises aren't credible. Even if the initial legislation tightly regulated investments by private accounts, it would immediately be followed by intense lobbying to loosen the rules. This lobbying would come both from the usual ideologues and from financial companies eager for fees. In fact, the lobbying has already started: the financial services industry has contributed lavishly to next week's inaugural celebrations.
Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus in Britain that privatization must be partly reversed. The Confederation of British Industry - the equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has called for an increase in guaranteed benefits to retirees, even if taxes have to be raised to pay for that increase. And the chief executive of Britain's National Association of Pension Funds speaks with admiration about a foreign system that "delivers efficiencies of scale that most companies would die for."
The foreign country that, in the view of well-informed Britons, does it right is the United States. The system that delivers efficiencies to die for is Social Security.
[b]Sources:[/b]
Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
The British Evasion, Paul Krugman, N. Y. Times, http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
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| ...---... KING DAY: Expressing Faith Through Action ...---... |
| 01.15.05 (11:14 am) [edit] |
Over the objections of Vice President Cheney, Americans will celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. King will be honored for many things, as "prime mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the March on Washington, [and America's] youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate." But it is important to recognize all the progressive challenges King laid out for America. Providing an inspiring example of how faith can be translated into the public realm, Dr. King used his pulpit to confront – besides racial inequality – poverty, war, civil liberties, hunger and global justice, among other things. "God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here," King said, "and his children who can't eat three square meals a day…This is what we have to do." King challenged Americans to surmount the "apathy of conformist thought," and stand up for a series of specific and connected progressive causes.
[b]ECONOMIC JUSTICE:[/b] In the months immediately preceding his death on April 4, 1968, King turned his attention almost exclusively to the problem of poverty. He called for a guaranteed family income, threatened national boycotts, and spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent "camp-ins." King was interested in more than charity; he wanted to effect structural changes that would guarantee a better chance for America's poor. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar," he said, "it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Thirty-seven years after King's death, the "edifice" still needs work. In the last four years, our supposedly "compassionate" president has rammed through three separate tax cuts for the wealthy, greatly increasing the burden on low- and middle-income Americans. The result? Under President Bush, poverty rates have risen for three straight years and the number of people without health insurance has grown to 45 million.
[b]A CARING COMMUNITY:[/b] King worked to create an America where inequality – whether racial or economic – was seen as a moral issue. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," King said. "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." The Bush administration's position? Portray the poor as mentally unsound: "I do not believe being poor is a condition," said Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson, "it is a state of mind. Perhaps it is with this theory in mind that President Bush has failed to support programs benefiting America's least fortunate, like Section 8 housing and Medicaid. In addition, his administration has undermined programs designed to improve economic development in low-income areas, like the Community Reinvestment Act, and today announced it would "drastically shrink" the Department of Housing's $8 billion community branch.
[b]GLOBAL JUSTICE:[/b] King was outspoken on the issue of global justice. He was worried about those with great wealth but little conscience, who invested huge sums of money in the world's poor nations "only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries." It's good thing King didn't get a look at Halliburton, the vice president's former company, now being investigated for bribing, overcharging and defrauding foreign governments from which it has hauled in huge profits. Today, the U.S. has made it easier for multinational companies to profit with "no concern for the social betterment" of their own country either, reducing corporate taxes and refusing to close the so-called "Bermuda loophole" that allows companies to move their offices offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.
[b]FOREIGN POLICY:[/b] King vehemently opposed the Vietnam War, not just because he was against violence, but because he saw how the war could undermine America's credibility abroad. King could have been speaking of the quandary in Iraq when he warned, "The judgment of God is upon us today...We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world." Polls show that since the Iraq invasion, America's reputation has plummeted worldwide. According to the report by the Defense Science Board published in November, the Bush administration's disdain for international bodies and treaties, its unilateralism and failure to communicate with other nations, has left America, precisely as King predicted it would, "morally and politically isolated in the world."
[b]Source:[/b]
The Center of American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| ...---... U.S. "Participated in Major Conspiracy" to Divert Oil for Food Programme ...---... |
| 01.14.05 (7:17 am) [edit] |
For months, the US Congress has been investigating activities that violated the United Nations oil-for-food programme and helped Saddam Hussein build secret funds to acquire arms and buy influence.
President George W. Bush has linked future US funding of the international body to a clear account of what went on under the multi-billion dollar programme.
But a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, shows that the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government.
“Although the financial beneficiaries were Iraqis and Jordanians, the fact remains that the US government participated in a major conspiracy that violated sanctions and enriched Saddam's cronies,” a former UN official said. “That is exactly what many in the US are now accusing other countries of having done. I think it's pretty ironic.”
Overall, the operation involved 14 tankers engaged by a Jordanian entity to load at least 7m barrels of oil for a total of no less than $150m (€113m) of illegal profits. About another $50m went to Mr Hussein's cronies.
In February 2003, when US media first published reports of this smuggling effort, then attributed exclusively to the Iraqis, the US mission to the UN condemned it as “immoral”.
However, FT/Il Sole have evidence that US and UK missions to the UN were informed of the smuggling while it was happening and that they reported it to their respective governments, to no avail.
Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.
Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests.
However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. “This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme,” said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. “The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme.”
In January 2003, Millennium, a little-known Jordanian company, asked Odin Marine, a shipping broker based in Stamford, Connecticut, to find tankers to load millions of barrels of Iraqi oil. Odin declined to comment.
“The ship owners were very wary,” recalled another broker involved in the deal. “They received papers from Jordan with all kinds of government stamps claiming it was legitimate,but never actually received anything from the UN.”
In fact, no UN papers could have been provided since Millennium was not allowed to lift oil from Iraq, and the port of loading, Khor al-Amaya in southern Iraq, did not have UN authorisation to operate.
Nevertheless, shipping companies willing to take the cargo were found. “One of the vessels I fixed was the Argosea, which was owned by the Greek shipping company Tsakos,” the broker said.
At the same time, Millennium chartered a couple of supertankers, including the Empress des Mers, to hold its oil in the Gulf.
According to a spokesman for the Bahamian-based company that owned the Empress des Mers, the vessel was to be loaded at sea from other tankers and sit in the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates off Fujairah, a port at the entrance of the Gulf.
The operation was too big to go unnoticed. In the middle of February 2003, UN inspectors began receiving calls from companies that were lifting oil from Mina al-Bakr, the only UN-authorised port in southern Iraq.
The companies complained that tankers had suddenly appeared a few miles away in Khor al-Amaya. Their activities had halved the pace of loading in Mina, which was served by the same pipeline, leading to delays that were causing demurrage fees.
Furious because the Iraqis had a history of refusing to reimburse those costs, the lifters informed Mr Tellings who in turn notified the US and UK missions to the UN.
Mr Tellings provided detailed information, including the names of some of the ships spotted by inspectors in the area. He believed the tankers would be challenged by the Multinational Interception Force (MIF), the force led by the US navy that had been enforcing the embargo on Iraq.
“Three or four days later, I chased [the US and UK representatives] and asked them what had happened with my information. They told me that they had communicated it to their capitals and that they were puzzled themselves by the lack of action.”
US mission spokesman Richard Grenell said: “We were tireless advocates to bring to the attention of the committee any and all oil smuggling and illegal activity. But while the [oil-for-food] investigation is going on we are not going to talk about specific issues.”
Mr Tellings was not the only one who informed US authorities. Saybolt, the Dutch company hired by the UN to oversee oil loading operations in Iraq, reported the incident to the MIF.
On February 21 2003, when reports of the smuggling first appeared in the US press, Jeff Alderson, spokesman for the Maritime Liaison Office (MLO), the US navy office in Bahrain that co-ordinated the MIF activities, was quoted as saying that he had “no information” about it.
His successor, Jeff Breslau, confirmed to Il Sole/FT that “we have no record that we were warned” about the smuggling. But Il Sole/FT has discovered that on February 17 2003, Saybolt sent an e-mail to the MLO about smuggling that specifically mentioned the Argosea. The same day, the MLO sent a reply to Saybolt acknowledging that notification.
For months, international traders looked for ways to make the cargo legal.
“There were plenty of letters from the Jordanian ministry claiming that the oil was legitimate,” saidone trader. “But we concluded that there was no way that it could be legally bought.”
Eventually, however, customers willing to take a chance were found. “After six months, we were asked to discharge the oil,” said the spokesman for the Empress des Mers. The cargo was taken to Egypt, he added.
Out of this operation, traders estimate, Iraqis pocketed about $50m, all off the UN books, while subsequent sale of the oil netted $150m in profits.
Millennium, the company that arranged the operation, is owned by Khaled Shaheen, a Jordanian magnate who is president of Shaheen Investment & Business (SBIG), and his two brothers, according to a company search.
However, Millennium clearly operated with the approval of the Jordanian government. Papers exchanged with the shippers, and e-mails from Odin Marine describe the company as “Millennium, for the trade of raw materials and mineral oils for and on behalf of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources”.
An e-mail sent on March 6 2003 by Odin Marine to confirm the fixing of one of the vessels mentioned that “the Jordanian government through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources empowered Millennium to conduct this transaction on their behalf, as per the attached power of attorney”.
[b]Source:[/b]
Financial Times, http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d9d4...
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| ...---... Williams & the White House Still Connected??? ...---... |
| 01.13.05 (8:01 am) [edit] |
[b]When will Armstrong Williams be indicted for taking bribes???
When will White House crooks be indicted for giving bribes to corrupt "reporters" for passing along their mendacious propaganda???[/b]
According the official presidential website, the Bush administration has yet to cut its ties to discredited commentator, Armstrong Williams.
He's still listed http://www.whitehouse.gov/fel... as a commissioner in the White House Fellowship program, created in 1965 to: "provide gifted and highly motivated young Americans with some first-hand experience in the process of governing the Nation and a sense of personal involvement in the leadership of society."
One hopes that that's not what Williams was looking to impart to young fresh Fellows. Or the fact that his name is still listed may simply be a case of bureaucratic lolligagging. Either way, rumor has it http://dcinsidescoop.blogspot...%20html that the Hill is set to tackle the issue...
Also, in case anyone is tempted to violate the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" credo and believe Williams when he pleads: "it wasn't the money, I just couldn't get enough of that blessed program!"...don't.
The tireless folk at Media Matters have documented Williams as criticizing a portion of the plan http://mediamatters.org/items... that the later, somewhat wealthier Williams, would promote...
[b]Source:[/b]
[i]Evan[/i], AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
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| ...---... Elections Or Civil War??? ...---... |
| 01.12.05 (8:53 am) [edit] |
The headlong rush to faulty elections in Iraq is bringing that country closer to civil war, although civil war may result no matter what, now that we’ve bungled Iraq so badly. As readers of this space know, I’ve been hammering for weeks now to postpone or cancel the elections scheduled for 18 days from now. Finally, the [i]New York Times [/i]weighs in, and not a moment too soon.
Of course, President Bush doesn’t read the [i]Times.[/i]
Still, in a nearly full-column editorial, “Facing Facts About Iraq’s Election,” the[i] Times [/i]says that civil war in Iraq has always been the “one thing to be avoided at all costs,” but “the coming elections … are looking more and more like the beginning of that worst-case scenario.”
It adds: “It's time to talk about postponing the elections.”
The[i] Times [/i]acknowledges the reality that civil war might be inevitable anyway, which is a stunning indictment of what we’ve done to Iraq. Says the[i] Times [/i]:
... "Others argue that civil war is probably inevitable one way or another, and that we may as well get the voting over with. That kind of pessimism may be warranted. But given the horrific possibilities, we should make every effort to avoid that end. A delay in the voting seems to offer at least a ray of hope, and it pushes Iraq in the direction it desperately needs to go: toward a democracy in which all religious and ethnic groups have a stake." ...
It’s a very thin ray of hope. What the[i] Times[/i] doesn’t say is that the Iraqi “government” must make a deal with the resistance—not just with the Sunni politicians calling for a delay in the vote, such as Adnan Pachachi—but with the resistance itself. That doesn’t mean making a deal with the Al Qaeda types, but it does mean an accord with the Baath Party, the officials in the Sunni triangle, in Syria, in Jordan and elsewhere who are organizing the attacks against American forces.
The[i] Times [/i], at least, recognizes that it’s up to Bush, not the government of Iraqistan.
... "Mr. Bush does not need to call for a postponement of elections himself. He simply needs to take the pressure off the Iraqi authorities, and let them know they have the power to make whatever decision is best for their country. Some members of the interim government, including people close to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, have shown some interest in putting off the voting if there is a chance of winning more Sunni participation, and others are said to be leaning that way in private." ...
Of course, it’s still unlikely any of this will happen. It’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck. Hold your ears.
[b]Source:[/b]
Robert Dreyfuss, [i]The Dreyfuss Report[/i], TomPaine, http://www.tompaine.com
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| ...---... The Nixon Option ...---... |
| 01.11.05 (6:12 pm) [edit] |
[b]There will come a time in the not too distant future (... [i]it[/i] should have happened already, [i]but[/i]...) when we must consider the impeachment of Bush/Cheney Inc.[/b]
It is, at best difficult and possibly disrespectful, to seek global comedy in this time of global tragedy, but I’ll do my best. As I type, the death toll from the Indian Ocean Tsunami has passed 150,000 and they’re still counting. Considering the immensity of the devastation and the poverty of the region, it is highly likely that double to triple that number will perish over the next few months due to the horrendous conditions. Leaders from around the world have pledged assistance to the survivors, including our own President Bush, who has promised a whopping three hundred and fifty million dollars of aid to the 11 countries hardest hit. To understand how magnanimous this is consider that it equals roughly about 8% of what we spend blowing the hell out of Iraq each month.
Considering also our track record of enormous discrepancies between the aid we promise and the aid we deliver (SEE the Bam, Iran earthquake or our fabled AIDS aid for Africa), it is likely that our assistance in the Indian Ocean will simply be another Bush family photo-op that quietly closes up shop as soon as the press leaves town. But that should come as no surprise to those who have seen the Bush administration as more than the lovable flag waving gay-bashers they attempt to appear to be.
The recent news cycle has brought a recurrence of stories about prisoner abuse in Guantánamo Bay and throughout Iraq with tales of interrogation methods http://www.dissidentvoice.org... so vile the FBI blew the whistle. Bush’s response, of course, has been to push even harder to make Alberto Gonzales, the man responsible for rewriting US policy to condone such treatment, as our new Attorney General. Perhaps Gonzales can do for the whole of America what he has done for our military: further de-humanize it with precise legalese.
On top of that comes news that the Bush administration is considering a nifty little battle plan called “the Salvador Option” to try to turn around the continuing quagmire we commonly call Iraq. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Salvador Option http://www.democracynow.org/a... gets its name from the Reagan administration’s policies in the early 1980s in El Salvador, when our government routinely sponsored “Death Squads” who kidnapped, tortured and killed civilians who supported our opposition. All in all US trained death squads in El Salvador were responsible for more than 70,000 murders, each in the US name, each with Reagan’s blessing. To make sure they did it right the US trained them at our own academy for future Torquemadas, the notorious School of the Americas, alma mater of such notable upholders of right-wing Christian values as Guatemalan genocide http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guate... architect General Efrain Rios Montt, Bolivian president and former military dictator, Hugo Banzer, who privatized his country’s water supply by selling it to Bechtel (a Halliburton subsidiary, imagine that), and of course everyone’s favorite drug lord, pineapple and Bush senior fall guy, Manuel Noriega.
It also turns out that to make sure America stomachs Bush policy taxpayer dollars have been spent to bribe conservative pundits to promote Bush agenda. So far only one columnist, Armstrong Williams, has come forward after being fired for pocketing a cool quarter of a million dollars to promote Bush education policy, but one can only imagine how many right wing writers Karl Rove must have on the take. In a way this revelation is comforting for it finally explains how supposedly intelligent people such as Sean Hannity and Robert Novak might’ve espoused all the insane propaganda they’ve been spewing.
So, what’s a nation to do? Is there an option out before the media begins grooming Jeb for the next 8 years? US Representatives John Conyers and Stephanie Tubbs Jones gave it their best shot by linking up with Senator Barbara Boxer and attempted to challenge the fraudulent election results in Ohio, a challenge Congress failed to muster over the 2000 election fiasco. Unfortunately it only resulted in further GOP demonizing of Democrats not willing to goosestep along with their march toward making America a god fearing country. So for now it appears we will just have to accept Bush is our president.
BUT, that doesn’t mean we have to like it, nor does that mean he has to remain our president for four more years, when four more months is far too long. I say that instead of embracing the Salvador Option, we as a people should look into the “Nixon Option.” Take hope for the Repub defection on the plan to exempt Tom De Lay from ethics rules, or from the fact that the former grand wizard of the right, Newt Gingrich himself, has dubbed the president’s plan to privatize Social Security “not politically doable.” Second term presidents are notoriously scandal ridden and G. W. Bush has certainly ridden through both elections on a herd of scandals so large they make W. G. Harding look like a choir boy and old Tricky Dick himself look like St. Richard.
Consider the Nixon-Bush parallels: corrupt Republican presidents presiding over unpopular wars, myriad crooked schemes to railroad the election and a trail of scandals leading right to the Oval Office.
Chances are Bush has already committed enough high crimes and misdemeanors to be put away for life. Unfortunately we’ve yet to locate a Woodward and Bernstein to turn the tide of public opinion. Websites such as[i] Thousandreasons.org [/i]and the array of sites calling themselves “Impeach Bush” literally offer hundreds of reasons for impeachment that are far more valid than the occasional BJ from an overweight Oval Office intern. But what will be the turning point? How many more American values will we have to sell off in the name of “family values”? Upon re-election Bush proclaimed he had earned plenty of political capital and he intended to spend it. In the wake of the latest revelations of hiring death squads and bribing journalists, one can only wonder what his next shopping spree will bring.
[b]Source:[/b]
Mikel Weisser teaches social studies and poetry on the West Coast of Arizona, http://www.dissidentvoice.org...
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| ...---... News They Can Use ...---... |
| 01.11.05 (5:03 am) [edit] |
"I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."
– Armstrong Williams, on why he accepted $240K from the Bush administration to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
[i]VERSUS[/i]
Zero.
– Number of times Armstrong Williams wrote about NCLB in his syndicated column, according to the Townhall.com archive. After signing the contract, he wrote five columns.
[b]Another illegal crime perpetrated by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]warranting their impeachment ...[/b]
The White House paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams more than $240,000 of taxpayers' money to "promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind law" on his syndicated television program "and to other African-Americans in the news media." His public commentary on the law likely violated Section 317 of the Communications Act, which stipulates broadcasters must disclose when they are paid to include program matter in a broadcast. Over the weekend, Chicago-based Tribune Media Services dropped Williams's column, "saying he violated his contract," and CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said Williams failed to disclose his government contract before he praised the law during a segment in October. The Williams Contract is just the latest of the administration's repeated efforts to pass off government propaganda as news. Join Media Matters' David Brock in asking news organizations to refrain from using Williams as an "independent" commentator.
[b]"EDUCATING" THE PUBLIC: [/b]The Williams contract was filtered through Ketchum, a public relations firm that the Department of Education has paid $1 million in taxpayer money to help promote its policies. As part of a $700,000 contract uncovered by People for the American Way in October, Ketchum helped the administration produce a "video news release geared for television stations." It also developed a ranking system for newspaper coverage of NCLB. Points were awarded for stories saying "President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education," while "Stories lost five points for negative messages, including claims that the law is not adequately funded or is too tough on states."
[b]AN INSTANT ADVOCATE: [/b]Williams has called himself a "longtime supporter of No Child Left Behind," but he wrote nothing about the bill in his weekly syndicated column until his contract kicked in late in 2003. He proceeded to write five columns singing the praises of Bush's education policies in the first six months of 2004. In addition, he shilled for NCLB on CNN (10/19/04) and CNBC's the Capital Report (8/9/04). According to Bloomberg's Al Hunt, Williams did some heavy lifting for the bill behind the scenes as well: "Armstrong did deliver his promise," Hunt said, "because I occasionally worked out at a gym and Armstrong's there, and he told me several times, you know, 'Why don't you write about No Child Left Behind.'"
[b]MORE FAKE NEWS:[/b] NCLB is not the only domestic policy the Bush administration has promoted covertly to the public. Last January, local news stations across the country aired a story by "reporter" Mike Morris, "describing plans for a new White House ad campaign on the dangers of drug abuse." Viewers were not informed that Morris was not a journalist, nor that his "report" was produced by the government. On Friday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, "scolded the Bush administration for distributing phony prepackaged news reports," which included a "'suggested live intro' for anchors to read, interviews with Washington officials and a closing that mimics a typical broadcast news sign off."
[b]ACTING LIKE JOURNALISTS:[/b] The GAO's rebuke is the second of its kind. The Office chided the White House last year for distributing fake news segments promoting its Medicare legislation. One segment featured paid actress Karen Ryan posing as a "reporter." Another video, intended for Hispanic viewers, showed a government official being interviewed in Spanish by an actor posing as a reporter named "Alberto Garcia." The GAO said the segments "violated federal law" and were a form of "covert propaganda" because "the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets."
[b]Source:[/b]
The Center for American Progress, http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| ...---... Questions Build, But Not in the Senate ...---... |
| 01.10.05 (1:53 pm) [edit] |
It seems unlikely that Alberto Gonzales will be "sacrificed" to satisfy critics of the U.S. torture policies in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib. In fact, while the evidence http://msnbc.msn.com/id/68034... of commonplace torture continue to mount, no Senator seems to think that Gonzales, or anyone else, should be held accountable. Editorials from Milawaukee to St. Petersberg urge Congress to deny the nomination as one small stand against terror. Instead, as a recent Washington Post editorial http://www.washingtonpost.com... states: "The message Mr. Gonzales left with senators was unmistakable: As attorney general, he will seek no change in practices that have led to the torture and killing of scores of detainees and to the blackening of U.S. moral authority around the world."
[b]Sources:[/b]
AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
Unfit to Serve, http://www.tblog.com/template...
Alberto Gonzales, Bush's Torture Guy, http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| ...---... Something's Gotta Give ...---... |
| 01.10.05 (5:42 am) [edit] |
[i]That which can not go on forever won't[/i]
"Stein's Law" - (Herbert Stein)
[i]We're now led by men who think that macho posturing makes Stein's Law go away. On issues ranging from budgets to foreign policy, they insist that we can sustain the unsustainable. And when challenged to explain how, they engage in magical[/i] [... and maniacal ...] [i]thinking[/i].
Paul Krugman
The Bush administration has set the United States upon a course which, if it continues, is almost certain to lead to a radical transformation of American society. And it will continue, for George Bush is renowned for his determination to "stay the course," and for his disinclination to contemplate and consider alternative policies and courses of action in the face of unforeseen developments.
It is impossible to predict the outcome of Bush's radical experiments with the American economy, his disregard of our political traditions, and his freedom from constraints from the Congress, the media, and soon the federal judiciary. Most scenarios are, quite frankly, dreadful. If we are to avoid the precipice toward which we are accelerating, this deliverance must come from a shock of recognition of our perilous condition followed by decisive and concerted action by the financial establishment, the media, and the general public. It has happened before in our history - the end of isolation and the mobilization for war, following the Pearl Harbor attack, the discrediting of Joseph McCarthy, and the fall of Richard Nixon, our disengagement from the Viet Nam war. Unfortunately, the prospects for such a rescue from the Bushevik folly are not promising.
Of this much we can be confident: current trends set in motion by the Bush Administration can not continue indefinitely. Herbert Stein's law rules: "That which can not go on forever won't." Yet this is a regime that recognizes no limits, and has forgotten the meaning of "enough." And so, as with a bending branch, or an ever-tightening violin string, the process must eventually come to an abrupt end. As the national debt soars out of control, as income disparity between the very wealthy few and the remainder of the population grows even as the median standard of living falls, as the casualty lists from endless foreign wars lengthen, as dissenting opinions are ruthlessly suppressed and civil liberties curtailed - eventually,[i] something's gotta give[/i].
The developing crisis has many dimensions, any of which, or a combination of which, might well bring about sudden catastrophic consequences as they reach a breaking point.
Let's examine a few of these dimensions:
[i][b]The Federal Deficit and the National Debt[/b][/i]. A leading economist forecasts that America faces "economic armageddon." The odds: about 90%. And who is this economist? Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, or some other liberal? No, it is Stephen Roach, the chief economist at the Wall Street investment firm, Morgan Stanley. As Brett Arends of the Boston Herald reports, http://business.bostonherald.... the "four horsemen" of this "economic apocalypse" are the federal deficit, the trade deficit, the falling value of the dollar, and record level of consumer debt -- all of which continue to grow, with no end in sight. And so, the branch bends and the string tightens. As the dollar falls, interest rates rise, imported consumer goods become unaffordable, retail stores close, workers are laid off, bankruptcies and home foreclosures follow - more dominos fall, and the economy collapses. If, however improbably, we are to escape another depression, the remedy is no picnic. The remedy? Allow inflation to rise, thus reducing the value of consumer debts. Bad news for long-term lenders. But if inflation rises, it's a sure bet that real wages will not keep pace.
When at last the bubble bursts, Bush, Inc. and the corporate media will, no doubt, blame this catastrophe on "the terrists," Bill and Hillary Clinton, God's punishment of America for tolerating gays, abortions and the ACLU. Anything but their greed and their cockamamie policies But surely there is a limit to the gullibility of the American public and to its capacity to absorb economic deprivation. And when that limit is reached, watch out, Dubya!
[i][b]Income disparity - economic injustice[/b][/i]. Twenty-five years ago, the average Fortune 500 CEO earned forty times as much as his median employee. Today, that number is greater than 500 http://www.faireconomy.org/pr... . To put this in perspective, this means that twenty-five years ago it took that CEO about a week to earn as much as his worker earned in a year. Now he earns his worker's annual salary in half a day - from the time he enters his office in the morning to the time he leaves for his three-hour three martini lunch.
Is this disparity enough? Apparently not. Bush intends to make his wealth-favoring tax "reforms" permanent, as he continues to phase-out taxation on investments and estates while continuing taxation on earned income. All this will accelerate the "reverse Robin Hood" flow of wealth from the middle class and the poor (those who produce the wealth) to the super-rich (those who own the wealth).
Will the time for that CEO to earn his worker's annual income now shrink from four hours to one? To ten minutes? How much more of this robbery will the impoverished public tolerate, before it storms the Bastille?
In the meantime, unemployment will increase as well-paying jobs continue to flow out of the country, and median family incomes continue to drop. For how long? Surely not forever.
[i][b]Civil Liberties and Civil Rights[/b][/i]. Few Americans appreciate that five of the ten articles of the Bill of Rights http://www.crisispapers.org/l... specify the individual's protections from abuses of law enforcement and prosecution: [i]the Fourth [/i](restricting searches and seizures),[i] the Fifth [/i](no self-incrimination, no confinement without indictment, no double jeopardy, right to due process), [i]the Sixth [/i](right of accused to be given statement of charges, to confront accusing witnesses, and to have benefit of counsel), [i]the Seventh [/i](right to trial by jury), and [i]the Eighth [/i](no excessive bail or fines, no cruel or unusual punishment). Nowhere in the Bill of Rights are we instructed that these rights apply only to citizens of the United States.
All of these guarantees have been violated, by executive order of the President, in the case of the "detainees" seized in "the war on terror" and held in various prisons abroad, in Guantanamo Bay, and within the United States. In addition, these incarcerations are in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which have the status of United States law. These violations continue, despite a ruling of the Supreme Court that they be discontinued.
And now we have just learned that the Administration is claiming the right to hold these wretches for life, without charge http://www.washingtonpost.com... .
We've heard the excuses for these outrages: "But these people aren't citizens, they are terrorists - Arab soldiers in the Al Qaeda army."
[i]Non-citizens[/i]? Consider the American citizen, Yasir Hamdi.
[i]Arab non-citizens[/i]? Consider the Hispanic (Puerto Rican) citizen, Jose Padilla.
And who is a "terrorist." Apparently, anyone whom the President or the Attorney General designates a "terrorist."
And remember, the Bill of Rights applies to all persons, whether or not they are citizens.
Still feel safe? True, they haven't come after ordinary dissenting citizens - not yet. But keep in mind the warning of Martin Niemoeller:
... "In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time, there was no one left to speak up." ...
[i]Be afraid - be very afraid[/i].
[i][b]The Human Cost of the Iraq War[/b][/i]. At the close of 2004, more than 1200 American military and more than 100,000 Iraqis were dead as a result of the war. And for what? The original justifications for this war, Saddam's WMDs and his al Qaeda connection, as proclaimed by Colin Powell to the Security Council in February, 2002, and by George Bush shortly before, in his State of the Union address, are now universally recognized as bogus. So now there is a new justification: "bringing democracy to the people of Iraq." Day after day, the Iraqis are making abundantly clear what they think of our "gift." There is still no "exit strategy" from the Iraq war, and while we remain, our presence stimulates the recruitment of al Qaeda terrorists, and our international prestige, now at an all-time low, continues in free-fall.
In another year, in another ten years, how many more dead and wounded will be sacrificed to this folly? How many more parents will grieve, how many more young wives will be widowed, how many children will be orphaned - needlessly, meaninglessly? The Vietnam war taught us that there are limits to the numbers of lies that the American people will believe, and the numbers of losses that they will endure. There still are limits. Sooner or later, the American people will say "enough!" - and they will throw out the scoundrels that brought this misery upon us and upon the people of Iraq, and who stained our good name and reputation with the world community.
[i][b]The Stolen Elections - Past and Future[/b][/i]. If in fact the will of the American voters in the 2004 was overturned by computer fraud and voter suppression, then it would appear that the Republicans have executed a perfect crime. Today, January 6, as I write this, the Congress has certified the election, and George Bush has been officially elected to his second term. No Senate or House elections have been contested. Immediately after the election and forward to this day, cogent criticisms of the validity of the election have been almost entirely excluded from the mainstream media.
In today's debates, Republican Senators and Members of Congress have said, time and again, that "there is not a shred of evidence" that the Ohio election was unfair and invalid, as if repeatedly saying so would make it so. The Democrats, for their part, while complaining bitterly of successful GOP tactics aimed at suppressing votes in Democratic districts, repeated a litany of their own: "it is not our intention to overturn the results of this election." By so saying, they were following the lead of their candidate, Senator John Kerry.
Notwithstanding all that, compelling reasons remain to doubt the validity of the announced tally of votes, and "the results of this election." It remains a fact that 30% of the votes in this national election were cast, and 80% of the votes were compiled, by three private companies, owned and controlled by conservative Republicans. The voting machines produce no independent auditable record and utilize a secret software "source code." And as several software experts have demonstrated, these machines can be readily "hacked" and the vote tallies altered, without leaving a trace of the mischief.
These are the simple, undisputed and indisputable facts about the "black box" voting machines. The response of the Republican party and the Republicans who manufacture and machines and write the secret software: "Trust us!" There is not, and cannot be, any other response. That is what they intended, for there are many affordable means by which the accuracy of the votes might have been independently audited and validated. These were all deliberately rejected. The public has been offered no plausible explanation of why this is so.
While direct validation of the votes has been denied the public by the Republican Congress and Republican state legislatures, there are compelling indirect indications that this election was stolen - a serious charge, which I will defend in my next essay. Suffice to say that the most significant evidence of fraud comes from the early exit polls. Exit polling sufficed to uncover fraud in the elections in the Georgian Republic and in Ukraine, and to lead to new elections which overthrew the corrupt governments. Exit polls were also very accurate in uncontested and auditable states in the November election. Virtually all the "errors" favored Bush, and the widest deviations occurred in the "battleground states," http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/... such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The response of RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie to the American exit polls? Abolish them!
Absent widespread and persistent public protest, in the forthcoming elections of 2006 and 2008, the percentage of votes issuing from paperless "black box" voting machines will increase significantly.
Despite the determined attempt by the mainstream media to keep the issue of election fraud from the public's attention, a small but significant minority of 16% believed, in early November, that this election was stolen http://pollingreport.com/2004... , and that number has since increased to 19% http://bellaciao.org/en/artic... .
It is now widely believed that had the Supreme Court not intervened in 2000 and had the Florida vote continued, Al Gore would have won the state and the presidential election. In addition, there is good reason to believe http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/... that had the 2002 elections been honest, the Democrats would have won back the Senate. In the past election, the early exit polls indicated a Kerry victory by about the same margin eventually claimed by Bush. But the public has apparently accepted the official word that the exit polls were wrong, and the final tally was correct.
But if the economic conditions, the unconstitutional repressions, and the casualty figures from abroad follow the trends projected above, in the forthcoming elections there will be surge of voter reaction against the Republican administration and Congress. This sentiment will be reported in the pre-election polls, (unless these too are suppressed or "fixed" in favor of the Republicans).
Now imagine, in 2006, a landslide of public sentiment demanding a change of government in Washington - say, 60/40. Suppose then that instead, the final "official" tallies show further GOP gains in Congress, including a filibuster-proof sixty vote majority in the Senate. Imagine further, the same overwhelming public sentiment in 2008 and the announced "close" election of Bush's successor - his brother Jeb. In both cases, almost all votes will be then cast with and compiled by unauditable machines build and secretly coded by private Republican corporations.
Do you believe the public would put up with this? Perhaps they would - after all, the American public has tolerated today far more official abuse and mendacity than many of us would have imagined to be possible, just a decade ago. But is there no limit to what our fellow citizens will endure? In Ukraine and in the Republic of Georgia, there were limits; they were exceeded, and the corrupt regimes were overthrown.
If the last three elections were in fact stolen by the GOP, the evidence of that theft remains even though the media refuses to report it. No doubt, there is still more evidence to be uncovered. The Republican regime in Washington will of course do nothing to expose the crime, but there are numerous states and municipalities still in Democratic control that can carry on investigations. If public discontent grows significantly, as economic, civil, and international conditions worsen, the public may become much more open to the idea that the Bush regime is not, and never has been, "the people's choice" - that it is, in fact, the people's oppressor.
Numerous additional unsustainable trends have been set in motion by the Bush Administration. This late in the essay, I can only list them with brief comments:
* [i][b]Media concentration and bias[/b][/i]. There is a limit to how much the "official" press can deviate from the experience, memory, and common sense of the public before that public simply ignores that official line and looks elsewhere for accurate news and for opinion that reflects public sentiment. The Royal governors in the American colonies discovered this, as patriots set up committees of correspondence, and the "underground publications" by Thomas Paine became best sellers. The Soviet government also discovered the limits of propaganda, as the citizens ignored Pravda, Isvestia and Gostelradio, and turned to The Voice of America, the BBC and unauthorized publications - "Samizdat." Even now, an American samizdat http://www.crisispapers.org/f... is emerging in the progressive internet.
* [i][b]Official lies and eroding credibility[/b][/i]. The Bush propaganda machine depends upon a widespread public amnesia - a failure of the public to remember during one week, what Bush, Inc. and its servile media said the week before. Even so, the facts persist, as do the records thereof. Bush did, in fact, announce "mission accomplished" and the end of Iraqi resistance, from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln. And Colin Powell did in fact tell his lies before the Security Council in February, 2002. Those words can not be unsaid. The Bush lies http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... are being recorded and chronicled by the progressive opposition, and as the public comes to suffer more from the abuses of this regime, it will become ever more receptive to the idea that the Busheviks simply can not be believed. And a leader who can no longer be trusted or believed is a leader who ceases to lead -- unless (ominously) he does so through brutal repression.
* [i][b]Energy independence[/b][/i]. The Bush-Cheney insistence upon staying with the petroleum-based economy will have devastating consequences for world climate and the global environment. But it will also have serious impacts upon our economy, and perhaps much sooner than most of us might expect. It is likely that sometime during this decade, world oil production will "peak" and then decline - [u]the world is running out of oil[/u] http://www.crisispapers.org/e... . Add to that, the increasing demand for oil from China and Japan which, co-incidentally, are our primary international creditors. This can only mean that gas prices must rise sharply and soon. There is much more at stake than the price at the pump, for petroleum is the foundation of our economy. It drives farm machinery, and brings food to us from the farms, ranches and fisheries. Goods are shipped to us by gasoline powered vehicles and plastics are produced from petrochemicals. Other countries that wisely foresee the ending of the petroleum age are developing and investing in alternative energy technologies, while we are falling far behind. Nature decrees and science confirms that we cannot go on like this. But we know what George Bush thinks about science, and thus it is no surprise that he has cut funding to the National Science Foundation and from support for alternative energy research and development.
* [i][b]The emerging theocracy[/b][/i]. Listen to the religious right - Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Bob Jones III - and they will tell you that because they delivered the election to George Bush, they now "own" him and the Republican Party. Expect to hear demands that "intelligent design" be taught alongside, or even instead of, evolution, and that the Ten Commandments posted in every courtroom. Also expect legislation to be introduced to restore anti-sodomy laws, repression of gays and lesbians, and the end of most legal abortions. Be assured that the non-Christian twenty percent of our population will not tolerate this. And these citizens - including Jews and agnostics, prominent in the arts, sciences, the law, finance and education - are influential far out of proportion to their numbers. Moreover | |
