Wednesday, September 28, 2005
US army plans to
bulk-buy anthrax
10:00 24 September
2005
New Scientist
David Hambling
THE US military wants to buy large
quantities of anthrax, in a controversial move that is likely to raise questions
over its commitment to treaties designed to limit the spread of biological
weapons.
A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US
army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the
production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for
equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological
agents.
Issued earlier this year, the contracts were discovered by Edward
Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, a US-German organisation that
campaigns against the use of biological and chemical weapons.
One
"biological services" contract specifies: "The company must have the ability and
be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities."
Other contracts are for fermentation equipment for producing 3000-litre batches
of an unspecified biological agent, and sheep carcasses to test the efficiency
of an incinerator for the disposal of infected livestock.
Major concern
Although the Sterne strain is not
thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination, the contracts have
caused major concern.
"It raises a serious question over how the
US is going to demonstrate its compliance with obligations under the Biological
Weapons Convention if it brings these tanks online," says Alan Pearson,
programme director for biological and chemical weapons at the Center for Arms
Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC. "If one can grow the Sterne
strain in these units, one could also grow the Ames strain, which is quite
lethal."
The US renounced biological weapons in 1969, but small
quantities of lethal anthrax were still being produced at Dugway as recently as
1998.
It is not known what use the biological agents will be put
to. They could be used to test procedures to decontaminate vehicles or
buildings, or to test an "agent defeat" warhead designed to destroy stores of
chemical and biological weapons.
Highly provocative
There are even
fears that they could be used to determine how effectively anthrax is dispersed
when released from bombs or crop-spraying aircraft. "I can definitely see them
testing biological weapons delivery systems for threat assessment," says
Hammond.
Whatever use it is put to, however, the move could be seen as
highly provocative by other nations, he says. "What would happen to the
Biological Weapons Convention if other countries followed suit and built large
biological production facilities at secretive military bases known for weapons
testing?"
A spokesperson for Dugway said the anthrax contract is still at
the pre-solicitation stage, and the base has not yet acquired the agent. They
refused to say what it will be used for.
Related Articles
US ‘war on
terror’ has public health cost
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7976
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Time
for 'NY Times' to Explore Miller's Tale
Editor
and Publisher: "It's obvious that the leaders of the Times have made a
decision not to order hard reporting on Judith Miller's involvement in the Plame
affair. This journalistic void is in stark contrast to its editorial page's
persistent calls for her release. Now it's time for the paper's public editor,
Byron Calame, to take action. "
Hurricanes Rain on
Bush's Tax Cut Parade
Even caught-in-the-headlights Michael
Brown admits bleeding: "Brown described FEMA as
a politically powerless arm of Homeland Security, which he said had siphoned
more than $77 million from his agency over the past three years. Additionally,
he said Homeland Security cut FEMA budget requests - including one for hurricane
preparedness - before they were ever presented to Congress."
BookSense.com
BookSense.com gives you the opportunity to shop
online at your locally owned, bricks-and-mortar independent bookstore ... 24
hours a day.
Okay,
Irony is officially gone for good
....Lauravia blah3
Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the
feel-good, wish-granting hit "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Mrs. Bush
sought to be on the program because she shares the "same principles" that the
producers hold, her press secretary said....
Hmmm. "Shares the same principles"? Is that like
"values"? And what would those be? This? Or maybe this? How about this?
Societies worse
off 'when they have God on their side'
a must read.
You just can't inflict some
things. Morality, ethics, the Golden Rule. They have to be lived:
learned by active relationships in communities -- contrary to William
Bennett.
Jung was, of course, pointing out the unconscious is always at
work, part of us, and our attitude towards it is of monumental consequence in
how we live and act. A deity as a sense of being part of a whole, a mystery, a
cosmos-connected Self seems
a healthy humbling model. Contrast with Mall Church. Puritan agenda. Left
Behinders...
Havoc in its
sixth year
Cindy gives it all in one paragraph here... but
then she's just a Bush Basher nutcase, you know.
My First
Time: "Karl Rove (besides just being a very creepy man) outted a CIA agent
and was responsible for endangering many of our covert agents worldwide. Dick
Cheney's old company is reaping profits beyond anyone's wildest imaginations in
their no-bid contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans. John Negroponte's
activities in South America are very shady and murderous. Rumsfeld and Gonzales
are responsible for illegal and immoral authorization, encouragement and
approval of torture; not to mention, violating Geneva Conventions, torture
endangers the lives of our service men and women in Iraq. Along with the above
mentioned traitors, Condi lied through her teeth in the insane run-up to the
invasion. The list of crimes this administration has committed is extensive,
abhorrent, and unbelievable. What is so unbelievable is that WE were arrested
for exercising our first amendment rights and these people are running free to
enjoy their lives of crime and to wreak havoc on the world."
Heartbeat of the Planet
from mike d
... the following
websites:
http://dieoff.org/page25.htm
http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf
http://dieoff.org/page175.htm
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC32/Meadows.htm
-----
and
this
"Reality" is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is
what we believe. What we believe is based on our perceptions. What we percieve
depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we
think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is
our reality." gary zukav
An Evening With Mr.
Galloway by Butler Shaffer
Greg Palast notwithstanding, Galloway hits the
important, forgotten -- and for the most part -- unknown ingredients in this
whole long-brewing, boiled-over kettle of inhumanity. I remember reading a copy
of a CIA memo about our bombing certain water purification plants back under
Bush the Elder, followed by sanctions that included refusal to deliver the parts
to fix them. Bechtel water plants. Who suffered? Saddam and the
evildoers?
They knew what they were doing. They, who
work for and by us. We're talking water... water. When are we going to
be the good guys we pretend to be?
"[...]
The theme that ran through his presentation was the presence of the “double
standard” by which Western and Middle Eastern interests are measured. The
attacks of 9/11 emerged “not out of a clear blue sky,” but from a “deep swamp of
anger and hatred” generated by decades of American, British, and Israeli
atrocities committed against Arab and Muslim people. He emphasized that the core
of the “terrorist” problem can be traced not to religious differences, but to
over fifty years of “injustices imposed upon the Palestinian people” by American
and Israeli politics. The 1982 slaughter – with the sanction of Ariel Sharon –
of helpless men, women, and children in Beirut refugee camps, also came in for
discussion.
Perhaps the most poignant example of the double standard that
presumes “the blood of Americans, or Israelis, or Europeans, to be of greater
value than the blood of Iraqis or Afghans,” was found in the earlier
American-enforced trade sanctions that led to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi
children. Madeleine Albright – Clinton’s Secretary of State who oversaw the slow
death of Iraqi children “even before they were old enough to know they were
Iraqis” – wrote off this atrocity as a price she was willing to pay. Americans
may remain oblivious to the consequences of this double standard, “but it
doesn’t escape the attention of any Muslim in the world.”
Galloway went on to remind people that the families of
those who died on 9/11 did not suffer any greater pain than did the relatives of
Iraqis and Afghans who died from American and British bombings. Each suffered
unjustifiable deaths delivered from the sky. He then reiterated what every
factually informed person (i.e., non-Fox News viewers) knows to be true: that
there were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq; that Hussein had no
connection to 9/11; and that Al-Qaeda did not have any bases of operation in
Iraq. Because of Bush’s war, however, Al-Qaeda is now quite active in Iraq,
meaning that Bush has provided recruiting incentives for
terrorists.
[...]
There is a
rapidly emerging network of opposition to the Afghan/Iraqi wars which, contrary
to the screeching war-lovers at Fox News, is not confined to “left-wing” groups.
Liberals, conservatives, socialists, Republicans, libertarians, anarchists,
Democrats, and Marxists, are discovering that the integrity of their souls can
no longer withstand the burden of their support for wars against the innocent.
In the spirit of George Galloway’s passionate plea for the lives of both the
Iraqi people and the soldiers sent to kill them, we must pull the rug out from
beneath the feet of those who shed crocodile tears for the continuing deaths of
American troops while calculating the slaughter of foreigners.
For those
of you who e-mail me asking “what can we do?,” what about demanding the
impeachment and criminal prosecution of President Bush and his co-conspirators?
If you were among those who insisted upon the impeachment of Bill Clinton for
telling lies about his sexual peccadilloes, what about a president whose lies
are far more destructive of the lives and liberties of people, not to mention
the civilization that has been mortally wounded? For those who, in the Clinton
years, expressed concern about “moral values,” the ball is now in your court.
There is nothing more at stake than the wholeness of your character and the
nature of the world you are to leave to your children."
Monday, September 26, 2005
Restoring
the American Dream
Senator John Edwards discussed the structural
poverty that was exposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and how the
country needs to seize this opportunity to take the steps necessary to fight
poverty and expand opportunities for everyone in our country.
a
key player in a very big political machine -- and managing a slush fund
" [...] The
Republican machine built by DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, et al. and pulled into
high gear after 2001, is a pay-for-play political machine. This is just another
part of the operation, like the diktat for trade associations to hire only
Republicans. Big political machines need their soldiers taken care of -- jobs on
K Street which also discipline the trade associations under Hill leadership.
Just so, they need big sums of money to move around off the books. How does Rove
keep the millions moving to Norquist? To Reed? To all the other operatives whose
names you don't know about?"
A look at the pattern. Thank you,
Josh Marshall. Kos & co-bloggers are right: this IS a must read
Many
Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
New
York Times:
"[...]More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion
in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were
awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show,
provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential
for favoritism or abuse.
Already, questions have been raised about the
political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg,
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by
the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a
former leader of FEMA.
[...]
The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract
that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the
"Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which
was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for
unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills
like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended
their performance."
Sunday, September 25, 2005
True poetry
We can kiss
the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the
Humanities goodbye. But then again, this was worth it.
...But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if
I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I
see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food
from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that
unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of
permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where
they will be tortured for us.So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and
shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the
clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles,
and I could not stomach it.Sincerely,
SHARON
OLDS
As
Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income
By ALAN FINDER
RALEIGH, N.C. - Over the last decade, black and Hispanic students here in Wake
County have made such dramatic strides in standardized reading and math tests
that it has caught the attention of education experts around the
country.
The main reason for the students' dramatic improvement, say
officials and parents in the county, which includes Raleigh and its sprawling
suburbs, is that the district has made a concerted effort to integrate the
schools economically.
Since 2000, school officials have used income as a
prime factor in assigning students to schools, with the goal of limiting the
proportion of low-income students in any school to no more than 40 percent.
...
I guess you can succeed by throwing money at a
problem. Just depends on how you throw it.
Because it's not really
about the money. That's just the means.
Someone recently informed me
that universal moral principles, world community, and justice are all dubious
concepts.
Oh.
This Dubious-ity. Why not apply it equally to cities
-- as long as we're considering worldly communities (along with peace love and
understanding) dubious. I suppose cities are indubitable -- certain and
real -- because we delineate them in space and material planes where we
can cut them up as property, thus granting them the magic essence of
indubitably. But all we're really talking about is the headache of
making agreements -- agreements that we have to have for concepts such as
human rights, treaties, and points of law, all the
dubious things we might need a UN and World Court for -- because like
it or not, we are one world, certainly one vast marketplace, like it or
not, and we better have some understanding, some ground rules, some dialogue
that attempts a delineation of this (ever-expanding) playing field.
In
many ways, communities and these intangible dubious things
are the only things really real to the psyche, the place where we spend
most of our time storing the me inside our body. They're not dubious at
all when they're the basis for understanding law and protocol and heritage and
even the shared shadows of our dreams.
What is a world community but this
organic, interdependent web of life? It's 'what is,' not what one wishes or what
'should' or used to be. Through community, small and large, we learn to
understand the grace of aging, the need for neighbor, father mother brother
daughter grandparent, and how they fit and work together; the flow and rhythm of
life, of birth, of death, and why one shouldn't steal and lie and kill (it hurts
another person: somone you love). It's the ground where we learn to grok other
dubious notions, such as honor and humanity, even politics,
negotiation and how and why to listen or speak out; that you are not a world or
law unto yourself, and that other people are like you with the same needs and
desires; that knowing one great truth does not make you know the mind of god.
All such understandings are extrapolated from the experience of living in
communities, communities that link in ceaseless points.
This living web
is what is disturbed, broken, lost in cultures that are cut off, invaded, taken
over by outsiders. Alien leaders, dependence, strange ways -- what's left for
them but Pax Romana. Praetorian Guards. Occupation. All meaning becomes
forced.
How to build community -- in any world, even one that thinks it's
free, self-determined, meets its needs , has strength
and power (dubious concepts, all) -- when its people don't meet face to
face? When human contact takes place behind glass shields -- cars and offices,
even our food comes this way, our leaders televised, our news scripted, our
friends and lovers but perfect two-dimensional strangers.
I went to a
school meeting last month where we were trying to solve a serious problem: how
to deal with No Child Left Behind when our local resources are too short. All
the parents could talk about was how the situation related to their child.
Compromise? Help? They couldn't see beyond their own door. It went
nowhere.
Why do the Red States love the Mall Church? It's community.
Sure, community based on middle men, invisible friends, magic books, carrots and
sticks, the lie that you burn in hell, that the devil is real, that you are the
Chosen Ones -- but still, the friendships bloom.
It's really just as
simple as the golden rule. If it could only be just THAT...
Remember the
last Brown Out in New York? What people said? The way they got out of their
buildings, came together, helped each other, shared, planned ... a city come to
life, face to face, hand to hand in solving the moment to moment, and oh, how
good that was.
Extrapolate.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
House
Hearings Target Leakers
WAPO Saturday, September 24, 2005; Page
A08:
[...] Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the
ranking Democrat on the panel, said she agreed with Hoekstra that the time had
come to make it easier to find and prosecute leakers of classified information,
"but only consistent with the First Amendment." She also said the panel's
hearings will look into whether the government is overzealous in classifying
information, leading government employees to disregard secrecy
rules.
Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the second-ranking Democrat, said
the committee has been told "many times of clear examples where danger and death
have occurred when leaked information came into the public realm . . . including
deaths in recent times." He said he could not describe the incidents, but that
what is needed is "an active discussion between the media, the legislative and
executive branch" to find a solution. [more]
including
deaths in recent times. --? Is this the 70
we wondered about below?
Hartford
Advocate: Rove v. Wait
"Don't know about the rest of you, but I am
still waiting for Karl Rove, Bush's erstwhile Brain, to be indicted, tried,
convicted and imprisoned for the act of revealing the identity of an
undercover CIA agent. Not just any spy, but an expert on weapons of mass
destruction who just happened to be the wife of a political enemy. It's
estimated that this 'outing' of Valerie Plame may have resulted in the deaths
of as many as 70 of her associates around the world. This is treason, my
friends. Plain and simple. It is not something that can be spun to resemble
anything other than that. When, oh when, will the trial begin?
"
Just a
little legal advice, a reminder really...
Just a little
legal advice, a reminder really...
March 17,
2003
....War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished.
And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following
orders...."
via skippy
Turnout Huge in DC
AfterDowningStreet.org:
Here
are more
photos.
Here's some blogging at truthout.
Here's
coverage, including videos at
BradBlog.
Here are photos
and blogging at DemocracyCellProject.
Nothing At All Occuring in
Our Nation's Capitol Today! And Here Are a Few Photos to Prove it...
THE BRAD BLOG
No anti-war movement?
I keep running
across wistful references from the punditocracy bemoaning the absence of an
anti-war movement in this country. The right wingnuts are unhappy because if
they can't see it, they can't demonize it - and the others, conventional wisdom
insiders all, just can't see it. Probably because they're too busy at one of
those inside the beltway movers and shakers parties scarfing all the free shrimp
at the buffet.
This isn't the
sixties.
I see the anti-war
movement in my small town. I see the anti-war movement in the now retired
veteran of the first gulf war - she wants a "Who would Jesus bomb?" bumper
sticker for her truck. I see the anti-war movement in a colleague as he tells me
his older sister's husband will be deployed to Iraq in a few weeks. I see the
anti-war movement in a friend, trained in the law, who quietly shares their
belief that this administration wouldn't recognize the Constitution, let alone read or comprehend it, even if it had
twinkling lights and you smacked them in the face with it.
I see the anti-war movement in my parents. My
father, the eighty year old veteran can't stand to see what has happened in the
last five years to his beloved country and to the military he served in for
twenty-two years. My mother quietly informed me this summer that he purchased a
burial plot next to hers - he had always wanted to be buried in a national
cemetary. No longer.
I see the
anti-war and pro-war movements in all of the service age students who haven't
signed up to go.
And sadly, I
notice all of the missing "support our troops" magnetic yellow ribbons. Up to
the 2004 election the parking lot at work was a veritable forest of yellow
ribbon magnets. I noted them on all the cars, suspecting that "'dubya' '04"
stickers would soon join them at the "appropriate" time (I was not
disappointed). Now, that little man in the White House has disappointed them,
and so, they've removed the yellow ribbon magnets. Or did they just fall
off?
It was never about supporting the troops, it was about enforcing the
false meme that in order to do so, you had to vote for that small
man.
I see the ant-war
movement. It's quiet. It's deep. And it's very big.
Anti-War
Protesters March in Washington
One of my daughters just called me from the
march. Turn on c-span.
Meanwhile, "13 Amtrak trains running between New
York and Washington were delayed for up to three hours Saturday morning for
repair of overhead electrical lines."
Everyone get the drill?
***
This war was is built on lies. What more do you need to
know?
~~~~~~~~~~~
suzanne comments:
Unfortunately this
rally will be pretty much ignored by the media but it feels good anyway to see
so many people come together to speak out against the war and the bush
administration...I do wish we had some organization other than ANSWER to
organize these rallies...they turn off lots of people who might otherwise come
out. >>
~~~~~
deb:
exactly why they're allowed to
exist.
It gets the kids connected, these rallies. All else is preaching
to the choir.
The storms have their say. People hear it. They know what
it is to sit in their cars, to be at the mercy of "road". Extrapolate.
Bullies, murderers, lack of kindness. These
impulses and qualities aren't peculiar to humans.
What is? We will lose all
we love, and we know this. We don't see beyond the moment and we're aware of
this. We have so much to learn, a cosmos worth, and are often aware of this,
too.
We're a species aware of own awareness, aware of consciousness itself.
We've eaten from the apple: that's what it meant, that myth, that
parable, before it got twisted up with misogyny (misogyny, the supreme aspect of
the impulse to punish). We become aware that we are made of the flame that burns
through all of life, through all of timespace.
Awakening, sentient, we've
also been a species suspicious of awakening: All seems to be divided along
poles, and we strive to make the world in that image. We become a tribe that
can't see itself in other tribes. Consciousness becomes the evil; the
unconscious the good.
And then the poles reverse.
In the stars, we imagine
polarity. Watching, we begin to see the reversals. To suspect the very poles.
Sentience, a fire that runs through all.
We remember this, we forget
this, we stumble along. We bear great sorrows. And joys.
We ruin the world
with selfishness. We rebuild it with kindness...
Children are not born
evil. That is the one thing I believe. And I don't believe in evil at
all.
What beats my heart?
This wisdom that knows how to beat a
heart:
it beats all hearts.
It's here right now — birthing in
every breath
saying
Let peace begin with me
Friday, September 23, 2005
When Rose
met Cindy: The case against the war in Iraq
The cold stars lighting, very old and
bleak,
In different skies.
Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
"'Those young
boys don't know who's with them or who's against them. People think we are
against the troops but we are for them - we want them home safe. Once they're
dead, the [authorities] don't want to know them. For a 19-year-old with just 24
weeks basic training to be sent to Iraq...'"
FACES
OF THE FALLEN
An e-mail reply to a former student
I received an
e-mail from a former student. It took a while for me to respond.
"Life"
Dr. Bersin,
We
have not spoken in a while and I thought to send you an email. I hope all is
well.
[Life details omitted]
My political self is lacking;
however, the fire still burns. I did make an attempt to participate on a board
or a commission in XXXXX county, but alas I never pursued it all the way
though. Currently, with school, extracurriculars are few and far between
because the schedule does not allow for it, but as I said the fire still
burns. And, although you probably do not want to hear this, I still valiantly
support our President.
Please let me know how things are for you and
XXXX. I hope to hear from you soon.
Best
regards,
XXXXX
Today I
replied:
Dear XXXXXX,
I was pleased to
hear from you - and glad to hear that life is going well.
["catching
up" details omitted]
These are extraordinary times. There are very real
and serious consequences for every one of our actions. I no longer hold back
my voice in the interest of not ruffling any feathers (as if I ever did), nor
am I now interested in keeping a civil tongue.
It's very clear to me
that you love your family and your unfolding life, as well you should. I am
perplexed by your statement "...I still valiantly support our President". I'm
no longer interested in this debate, the time for the "game" of debate is long
since past, and I, for one, am tired of that game. But, I must ask you this
question, the tortured peregrinations of Jonah Goldberg notwithstanding: If
you haven't yet done so, why haven't you enlisted?
The unpleasant
realities trump any debate. Nor, for my own selfish reasons, do I hope or want
to encourage you to place yourself in harm's way - I already live in constant
fear of the possible bad news in regard to others I know who have volunteered
themselves.
As always, I hold you in high
regard.
Sincerely,
Michael Bersin
Wash. Post , USA Today omitted
reasons for Democratic boycott of "bipartisan" Katrina commission
[Media Matters] "In
covering the September 22 launch of the House inquiry into the flawed government
response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, The Washington Post and USA Today
reported that House Democrats are boycotting the "bipartisan" investigation but
failed to provide the reasons Democrats have given for the boycott: They
would be outnumbered by Republicans on the panel and would not have subpoena
power." go. read.
equinox
mike dickman:
Have watched - vitually
every night now - the sun's slow drift south from just to the right of the
minuscule Eiffel Tower off to the right of my balcony to now over the chimneys
on the flat only just diaginally in front... Wondering how far round the arc
it'll go...
May the blessings of balanced light and dark surround us
all!
Deb:
The dissonance as a human sees its own blindness,
its disconnect from the web of life: it churns up the psyche.
New
Orleans. The plight of the poor in this nation, the inequity -- a light is now
shining on them. Its circumference expands into a vision of the world. Ethics,
morality. Wisdom. They can't be inflicted; they can't even be taught. They come
from the experience of living in community, an understanding of relationships
that sees the self in others.
The birthing begins in earnest.
x's
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wash. Post issued correction
to editorial that ...
[Media Matters]: "The September 22 issue of The Washington Post corrected
the false claim that the overall poverty rate in the United States has steadily
increased 'since 1999,' which appeared in a September 19 Post editorial. The
correction stated: 'A Sept. 19 editorial on poverty should have said the
poverty rate has been edging upward since 2000, not 1999.'
The
correction came three days after Media Matters for America posted an item
highlighting the error. As we noted, the data actually showed that the poverty
rate declined every year of the Clinton presidency and has risen every year of
the Bush presidency, hitting a low of 11.3 percent in 2000, the last full year
of Clinton's presidency, and rising to 12.7 percent in 2004. "
Weather
Underground: Wunder Blog
Suzanne:
Here are some amazing maps and photos
of the storm...
The people of Galveston, where Rita is likely to hit
hardest are also mostly very poor... certainly these storms are exposing the
incredible divide between rich and poor in this country... perhaps we can have a
genuine and open dialogue about poverty that engages the American people... this
is the real cost of the war on terrorism, an unconscionable neglect of the
people, infrastructure and environment of our own country...
same old, same old
Golly. Sure reads like the party line to me...
Wikipedia, I thought you were striving to be objective.
Praetorian Guard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Legacy Of The Guard
Although its name has become synonymous
with intrigue, conspiracy, disloyalty and assassination, it could be argued that
for the first two centuries of its existence the Praetorian Guard was, on the
whole, a positive force in the Roman state. During this time it mostly removed
(or allowed to be removed) cruel, weak and unpopular emperors while generally
supporting just, strong and popular ones. By protecting these monarchs, thus
extending their reigns, and also by keeping the mobs of Rome and the Senate in
line the guard helped give the empire much needed stability which lead to the
period known as the Pax Romana. It was not until after the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, when this period is generally considered to have ended, that the guard
began to deteriorate into the ruthless, mercenary and meddling force for which
it has become infamous. However, during the Severan dynasty and afterwards
during the Crisis of the Third Century, the legions, the senate and the
emperorship along with the rest of Roman government were falling into decadence
as well."
Ah. And then came the Council of Nicea and all decadence
was wiped away, right? (There goes the plumbing.) That old man is ever
becoming better view of history. Seems to me, Rome never died. Just got
repackaged in dogma, 'piety', a righteous inflation, and keeps overrunning
everything.
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the
pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country
tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in
every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by
gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more
beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the
roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall
the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of
water
~eecummings
Praetorian Guard
HOLLER
Suzanne: Just heard on NPR that Bush is
going to change the laws allowing the military to operate in the US during
disasters.... we need to holler loud and clear as that is a first and
devestating step toward a fascist police state.... the national guard is trained
for emergencies on the homeland and they are mostly in Iraq... To have regular
soldiers, trained for combat, essentially teenagers with guns, not even from
your own community policing the streets and manning check points is very
frightening and the end of our democracy.... what's left of it....
Deb:
Worse, they've been Blackwater mercenaries -- like those sent to New
Orleans. They were also used for crowd control stateside -- at the Florida
peace march. I'd read funding for this was funneled to them before the last
election by that Pentagon Emergency Additional $80 Billion for Iraq. From their
website:
Blackwater is working to secure
critical communications infrastructure and is also assisting in securing
necessary petrochemical facilities in the immediate aftermath of the storm. In
addition, Blackwater employees are currently supporting numerous insurance
companies in conducting accurate assessments for what will no doubt be the
largest disaster claim in U. S. history.As a private company, Blackwater USA
is capable of responding quickly and cost effectively in order to have an
immediate impact on crisis situations and mitigate, to the extent
possible, the risk associated with loss of life and property, and support
local, state, and federal agencies who are tasked with response
efforts.
The following services are available: Airlift Services
-
Security Services - Communication Support - Humanitarian Support
-
ServicesLogistics and Transportation
Services
Humanitarian Support
Services. Hm. Well, here's some of their work in Iraq.
Doesn't sound so pretty, does it?As Dana Priest wrote over a year ago in the WAPO:
So, we have a private militia with its own helicopters
and support lines. The private militia, which answers only to its corporate HQ,
not to any Constitutional chain of command, is guarding the US HQ in Baghdad and
Najaf. Does the expression Praetorian Guard begin to resonate for you
here?
(It's all so Gordon Liddy, ain't it? Liz ran into him at the
Borders in Baltimore. Little, creepy, and grinning at her. Tiny lizard eyes. I
bet they're yellow. Aliens?)
Blackwater Security --
archives
Aug
5. 2002
web archive
listing
Their 2002
Sevices statement:
Blackwater Security Consulting is the
newest addition to the Blackwater family of companies serving security,
firearms and training needs around the world. Under the direction of former
CIA officer Jamie Smith, Blackwater has deployed teams across the
nation and the globe in support of federal, state and private
industry interests. Blackwater's security specialists have extensive
experience in all dimensions of domestic and international security
operations, particularly in high-risk zones. Blackwater provides services to
the United States government, as well as local state and federal law
enforcement. Blackwater Security Consulting, or BSC as it is becoming known,
can provide the following
services...
Their employment disclaimer:
As background to the process for
being considered for work with BSC, applicants must understand a couple of
critical points:
BSC does not hire you; we contract you as an
independent contractor (IC). BSC will provide a 1099 at the end of the
year to IC’s that documents all funds paid during the year. The IC has made
provisions for all the tax issues. BSC provides overseas insurance (Defense
Base Act) when working on a U.S. Government contract.
It's like
trying to get around responsibility for troops and what they do on all sides. On
the personal level, this seems to be in dispute : see the last link here -- the
current lawsuit.
From their newsletter, the chaplain
link
As I'm reading it, I'm asking who will it appeal to? --
the commando types. Right Wing Militias. And here they thought they were the
anti-Fed.
more
Tonebone
Tonebone has been a DJ since the psychedelic
60's and his wealth of experience shines through in these lovingly created
mixes. Tonebone's genius lies in his track selection and his range is
mind-blowing... go. download.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
voucher stealth
From Sith Lord Gary
Bauer's newsletter:
John Kerry and John Edwards, both
potential future Democrat presidential candidates, used the suffering of
Hurricane Katrina to further their own agendas in separate speeches this week.
Here's an excerpt from Kerry:
"This is about the broader pattern of
incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed and beyond that a truly
systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government and devote it
to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. The plan they're
designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for
right-wing ideological experiments."
By "right-wing ideological
experiments," Senator Kerry meant school vouchers. So, let's get this straight
- public and private schools in the New Orleans area were devastated, families
have been displaced and their homes damaged, if not destroyed. But John Kerry
only wants to help those children who go to public schools. And the Democrats
wonder why they are perceived as being hostile to people of faith! If Kerry
and Edwards want to defend Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," go for it. I
think we can do better.
Okay. Let's really
get this straight. Churches don't pay taxes; that's the way it is. Taxes are
paid by the Public for their public schools; that's the way it is. Should taxes
pay for Churches, their indoctrination process -- against all tradition, against
the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, who debated that point? And if so,
which churches -- all, any? Where will a line be drawn? Bush has all ready
stepped over it by funneling taxpayer's money to his pet Faith Based Initiatives
(with no say from the taxpayers supplying the funds). Again, let's ask which
church -- because not all tax-exempt churches have gotten these funds. Who is
defining what a Church is, then? Not We, The People. In Bush's
Faith-Based nation, who will define God? Will you be allowed to differ? "I think
we can do better," Bauer says. Who is WE, Mr. Bauer? It isn't WE The
People: I can't see that taxpayers have been asked or given any say. The
Religious Right claims some mandate. Where is it? No vote reflects
that. Of voting voters, at least as many voted against Bush as for him, and
that's true of the last two elections. The only thing Bauer demonstrates here is
a hostility towards Democrats which he's trying damn hard to mirror in people of
faith.
Hey, I'm no lawyer. But I didn't think I needed to be one to be a
citizen, an equal in this nation. If this sounds simple, it's because it is:
Like your faith free? Keep a Separation of Church and State. It protects YOU,
your right to your chosen faith.
Move
America Forward
the "Cindy you don't speak for me tour,"
sponsored by MoveAmericaForward.org.
... a
non-profit organization co-chaired by former state assemblyman Howard
Koologian. Koologian is a Republican who takes credit for launching the
recall against Governor Gray Davis. His co-chair is KSFO Radio talk show host
Melanie Morgan. The group's PR firm is led by a veteran California political
strategist and the firm claims clients running from a county supervisor to
President of the United States.
KSFO Radio is owned by Disney which also
owns ABC7."
Inhumane
to keep policies muddled
By JACKSON DIEHL
First published: Saturday,
September 17, 2005
"WASHINGTON - During a
meeting at The Washington Post last month I asked Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales a pretty simple question: Is it the policy of the Bush administration
not to subject the foreign prisoners it is holding to 'cruel, inhuman and
degrading' treatment? That phrase refers to abuse falling just short of torture.
It is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration
and ratified a decade ago by the Senate.
Gonzales started to reply, then
hesitated. Then he said he wasn't sure, and would have to get back to
me.
Last week I called his office to see if the answer was ready. It wasn't.
Instead, a spokesman told me that 'the staff' response was to refer me to the
testimony delivered in Gonzales' name to the Senate Judiciary Committee after
his confirmation hearing earlier this year. It was that maddeningly unclear
language that prompted me to ask him the question in the first place.
A
couple of things about this exchange struck me as remarkable. First, how could
the attorney general of the United States not be able to state U.S. policy on
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners - especially since his
department has repeatedly reviewed the matter in the past several years?
..."
Schwarzenegger owns up
to mistakes
Must be playing well.
"In business, we
make decisions every day based upon imperfect information. We may get
blindsided by a competitive response or we may underestimate the time that it
takes to sell a product. Accepting our error, rather than avoiding
responsibility, limits the potential damage and sets us on the right course.
Poor decisions regarding our behavior that compromise our credibility with our
employees, constituents, or followers are particularly damaging."~from an executive coaching
ezine
Urge Judge Roberts and the
White House to release these key documents
Do you know that the Bush Administration still
hasn't turned over key documents about Judge John Roberts that were requested
by Judiciary Committee Democrats more than six weeks ago? A narrow, targeted
request for documents related to only cases where John Roberts played a
leadership role as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for the first President
Bush?
How can the Senate fulfill its constitutional "advice and
consent" responsibility and vote on Judge Roberts' nomination without having
all the facts?
Only one person will be able to get the White House to
release these key documents -- and that's Judge John Roberts
himself.
Email Judge Roberts now, and call on him to urge the
Administration to release these key documents to the Senate Judiciary
Committee:
------------------------
The selection of George W. Bush as president exemplifies how very much the
future hangs on Supreme Court decisions, and the mindset of individuals
appointed there should be examined with great care. It is, after all, a lifetime
appointment with the potential to wield an immense power. John Roberts’s
association with partisan think tanks like the Federalist Society should be
cause for concern, as should The White House’s refusal to release his memos on
important cases written when he worked in the Solicitor General’s office under
George HW Bush in the 1990's – memos that can give us his true stance and
attitudes, revealing the real man and possible future judge. more
Sixteen
of those memos -- on cases which focus on essential civil rights, equal
opportunity, right to privacy and access to justice – have been requested by
Senators expected to vote on his appointment, a request that goes unanswered.
Such a response by this administration defies reason and precedent. It ignores
the foundations and intentions of our democratic way of life. It ignores justice
itself.
Leahy
Says He Will Vote to Confirm Chief Justice Nominee - New York Times
I can only think he's done this thinking they
*must* filibuster Gonzales, the true abomination.
Gear up. Endurance is
all.
Hm. Gonzales and Abu Ghraib in the news -- together again. Bush will
stall the next nomination.
Arianna
Huffington: Plamegate: The John Bolton Connection
Yahoo!
News: "I'm now hearing that the investigation
may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John
Bolton.
According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred
Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about
Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made
its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column. ..."
Don't
dumb down
Guardian Unlimited Guardian Weekly
Why is science in the media so often pointless,
simplistic, boring or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been
collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present
my theory. It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they
cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then
attack this parody as if they were critiquing science....
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
"Not the
kind of thing you want flying around the Internet.”
The contemporary West is not -
despite our constant calling of them to memory - built on Auschwitz and
Treblinka, to which we have said 'No'. It is built on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
to which we have said 'Yes'."~Desmond Fennell: The Revision of European
History
"An unclassified
draft of a U.S. nuclear doctrine review that spells out conditions under which
U.S. commanders might seek approval to use nuclear weapons has been removed from
a Pentagon website, a spokesman said on Sept. 19.
Lawrence DiRita, the
Pentagon spokesman, said the document was taken down “because even in an
unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the
Internet.”
Entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations”* and prepared under the direction of the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the draft was spotted on a Pentagon website earlier this
month..."
*one presumes this one is a final version, stating:
The US does not make positive
statements defining the
circumstances under which it would use nuclear
weapons.
Maintaining US ambiguity about when it would use nuclear
weapons
helps create doubt in the minds of potential adversaries,
deterring them from
taking hostile action. This calculated
ambiguity helps reinforce deterrence.
If the US clearly defined
conditions under which it would use nuclear
weapons, others
might infer another set of circumstances in which the US
would
not use nuclear weapons. This perception would increase the
chances
that hostile leaders might not be deterred from taking
actions they perceive
as falling below that threshold.
and this...
thinking of the past few weeks, the way things have been handled. And
these were events with advance warning. Add to it that Bush thinks he's god
appointed. Believes in the Endtime. Do you trust this man and his
cohorts?
National policy requires a single execution and
termination
authority for the use of nuclear weapons. The President
retains
sole authority for the employment and termination of
nuclear
weapons. The pace of modern war dictates streamlined and
efficient
methods of C2. The President and Secretary of Defense
must have the most
current and available situational information
and intelligence and must
comprehend all strategic and theater
nuclear plans and options. Top-down
communication
transmitted over reliable, secure, and
survivable
communications systems ensures critical orders are received
for
execution, increases survivability, and reduces vulnerability
of C2 systems
across the range of military operations. The
Commander, US Strategic Command,
has combatant
command (command authority) over selected portions of
the
nation’s strategic nuclear forces and is responsible for the
planning
and execution of strategic nuclear operations.
Circumstantially, geographic
combatant commanders may be
assigned operational control over US Strategic
Command nuclear
capable forces employed
for nuclear operations in support of
theater conflicts.
Detailed planning
is key to the execution of strategic nuclear
operations. The President,
Secretary of State, and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff each provide
guidance for nuclear weapon
planning. An integrated operation plan or series
of plans
predicated on commonly agreed strategic objectives is an
absolute
prerequisite to unity of force and strategic nuclear
operations
execution. This plan or series of plans formalizes the
integration
of nuclear assets. They clarify command guidance and
objectives,
effectively assign and prioritize targets, and
synchronize
execution.
Strategic operational planning must include the
ability to respond
to new targets and changing priorities before or during
the
execution of strategic nuclear operations. This adaptive
planning
capability ensures the most efficient use of resources and that
strategic
forces are fully capable of responding to any new threats that
might
arise. Strategic planners must also be prepared to conduct
crisis
action planning in those cases where adaptable, deliberate plans
do
not exist.
[...] Whether supporting national strategic goals or
geographic
combatant commanders, the nuclear targeting process
is
cyclical. The process begins with guidance and priorities issued
by the
President, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff
and culminates with the final step of combat
assessment. The entire targeting
process consists of six phases:
commander’s objectives, guidance, and intent;
target
development, validation, nomination, and
prioritization;
capabilities analysis; commander’s decision and
force
assignment; mission planning and force execution; and,
combat
assessment.
For many contingencies, existing and emerging
conventional
capabilities will meet anticipated requirements; however,
some
contingencies will remain where the most appropriate response
may
include the use of US nuclear weapons. Integrating
conventional and nuclear
attacks will ensure the most efficient
use of force and provide US leaders
with a broader range of strike
options to address immediate contingencies.
Integration of
conventional and nuclear forces is therefore crucial to the
success
of any comprehensive strategy. This integration will
ensure
optimal targeting, minimal collateral damage, and reduce
the
probability of escalation.
Stop
Religious Discrimination in Head Start
Bush's faith based initiatives, stage 2:
from the American Civil Liberties Union
Congressman Boustany of Louisiana
plans to introduce an amendment on the House floor to roll back longstanding
critical nondiscrimination provisions that have been a part of Head Start
legislation since 1972. This is a fundamental threat to civil rights
protections against employment discrimination for Head Start teachers and
volunteers.
Religious organizations participating in Head Start make an
invaluable contribution to the education of thousands of students. These
religious organizations have complied with Head Start's existing civil rights
requirements. However, if civil rights protections were repealed, teachers or
parent volunteers working in any Head Start program run by a religious
organization could immediately lose their jobs because of their
religion.
If this passes, thousands of Head Start teachers could lose
their jobs if they fail their employers’ religious tests. Countless parents
would furthermore be blocked from climbing the ladder out of poverty that has
already allowed thousands of parents to go from being a parent volunteer to
being a trained and paid Head Start teacher solely because they do not share a
federally funded employer’s religious beliefs. Take Action Now!
If
Congressman Boustany's amendment is successful, students participating in Head
Start could lose not only their teachers, but also the close programmatic
connection with their own parents volunteering in the program. Allowing
discrimination based on religion would significantly impede the important
goals of Head Start, sending a damaging message to Head Start students and
harming their education by separating them from their own teachers and parent
volunteers. more...
Hmmm,
how about you just govern in a competent manner without the embarassing
rhetoric?
The apple
doesn't fall far from the tree.
....Gov.
Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a
short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior"
friend.
Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and
politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes
in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes
in moral values that underpin a free society.
''I rely on Chang with
great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let
him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me
down.''
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a
gift.
''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative
warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared....
I tell you, that family just isn't
right.
The Coming
Category 5 Financial Hurricane
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES
September 15, 2005
___________________
suzanne:
This congressman doesn't know
squat when he speaks about the current welfare state...what little financial
safety net remained in this country after the end of public welfare in the 80's
has been totally dismantled by the Bush administration...What we saw in terms of
poverty after Katrina is only the tip of the iceberg....America's inner cities
all contain poverty on a par with Calcutta where, hunger, homlessness, drugs and
crime are daily fare....Even in more rural and affluent places like Western
Massachusetts, people are unemployed and struggling to keep a roof over their
heads. This man is spouting typical Republican hog wash and
insensitivity..
Welfare state my ass.... Tell it to the mother who has to do
her grocery shopping at the Food Bank and sit at the ER for twelve hours when
her baby has a fever because she has no health insurance..Sure, let's rebuild
New Orleans, cover it with high rises for the rich, give the building contracts
to Haliburtin and pay for it by cutting food stamps and medicare....
Right wing news for Highschoolers
Cop a fast feel. The spin at StudentNewsDaily.com.
Have
some:
Daily Featured Article
Kabul Elections Come Off Smoothly (by Carmen Gentile, Sept. 19, 2005, WashingtonTimes.com)
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghans embraced democracy by the millions yesterday, with
voters undaunted by weeks of violence and threats of terrorist attacks to cast
ballots for the first elected parliament in decades. Sep 19, 2011,
08:57
(Smoothly!)
--->Wednesday's Biased Item 'Slumps'"The
nation's unemployment rate dipped to a four-year low of 4.9 percent..." Sep 14,
2005, 17:12
(We're on a
ROLL, boys and girls!)
--->Daily "Best of the Web" Brazile vs. Nuts(by James Taranto, OpinionJournal.com) - On Friday we
noted that New Orleans evacuees had responded enthusiastically to President
Bush's Thursday speech... Sep 20, 2008,
12:11
(Entusiastically!)
from the article, their choice for
Daily "Best of the Web" :
"Contrast
this with Angry Left idol Cindy Sheehan, who, as we also noted Friday,
is calling for U.S. withdrawal from "occupied New Orleans." Sheehan engages in
the usual left-wing cant about caring for the poor, but as the Yale
Daily News notes, reporting on a Sheehan appearance in New Haven, Conn.,
Sheehan's enthusiasts are whiter than vanilla snow:
Cornell Lewis, a preacher
and activist who spoke at the rally, said the lack of racial diversity at the
rally represents a shortcoming of the anti-war movement.
"All I see is white
people," he said. "If the anti-war movement wants to grow stronger, it needs
people of color."
Oh sure, Blacks are all for the war. (And they
love Bush.) And Yale Daily News: what empiricism! ACTUALLY -- this is
the only cite I
can find for Sheehan in the Yale Daily News; it has nothing like this quote. On
a general google web search, I did find over a hundred links re withdrawal from
"occupied New Orleans" -- all that were on right-tilting websites were out of
context; nothing else from that speech or on Cindy in general, except to call
Sheehan "nutty", or some variation of that term. Synchonicity?
For the
record, what
Cindy said. What troops were these occupying New Orleans? These.
Meanwhile:
58%
Disapprove Of Bush's Overall Performance
...59% Call Iraq Invasion A
Mistake...
67% Dissaprove Of Bush's Handling Of Iraq War...
IN BRIEF
Monday, September 19, 2005
Abrams
Hopeful that Judith Miller Will Be Released Next Month, But Not So Sure
"Although Miller is
due to be released when the federal grand jury closes its investigation of the
case on Oct. 28, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could seek an extension
or ask that a new grand jury be convened..."
A
Wimp on Genocide
NICHOLAS
D. KRISTOF
op ed new york times
President Bush doesn't often find common cause with Cuba,
Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria and Venezuela. But this month the Bush administration joined with those
countries and others to eviscerate a forthright U.N. statement that nations have
an obligation to respond to genocide.
It was our own Axis of
Medieval, and it reflected the feckless response of President Bush to genocide
in Darfur. It's not that he favors children being tossed onto bonfires or
teenage girls being gang-raped and mutilated, but he can't bother himself to try
very hard to stop these horrors, either.
more. go. read. weep.
Kooks
: Limbaugh, Friday
via Eschaton
comments: Nobody reads these
blogs? What's the latest traffic stat?
Kos alone has nearly as much traffic
as the top 50 conservablogs.
Limbaugh, Friday:
Actually, theThankfully, Mr. (Howard) Fineman has a friend
who has clued him in and now he's written a breathless piece. "In other words,
it's the Beltway versus the Blogosphere," writes Mr. Fineman. "What’s
interesting is that Rosenberg is himself a Beltway creature, a preternaturally
self-assured young insider with a cherubic face and a cold smile. He heads a
group called the New Democratic Network and ran his own campaign for DNC
chair. But the names he utters with reverence are net-based: organizers such
as Eli Pariser and bloggers such as Daily Kos and Atrios. Rosenberg rejects
that notion that the bloggers represent a new 'Internet Left.' It’s not an
ideological rift, he says, but a 'narrative' of independence versus
capitulation: too many Democrats here are too yielding to George W. Bush on
the war in Iraq, on tax policy, you name it. 'What the blogs have developed is
a narrative,' he told me the other day, 'and the narrative is that the
official Washington party has become like Vichy France.' But even though Kerry
eventually outlasted the Rebs, and even though Dean (for some weird reason)
decided to become chair of the Democratic National Committee, the civil war
didn’t end. It just went underground. The first sign of its re-emergence was
Cindy Sheehan. [...]
So what Mr. Fineman is saying here is the Democratic
Party must become what the fringe kooks of the Democrat
blogs, like Daily Kos and Atrios are. They're in the process of it
already happening. How can this not be seen by people? There will be no
patience for moderate Democrats. They're not going to be tolerated.
The new face of the party must be a Cindy Sheehan type. And
the Democrats better start listening, the story says, to people like all these
other people who think that Bush has to be gotten rid of. The thing is, nobody
reads these blogs, folks. Nobody reads them. That's the great thing. Other
bloggers read it and that's it. ~Rush~~~~~~~~~
blogsphere IS active democracy, the one true "party" composed of individuals.
KOS on
leadership and the blogsphere: "...The
press and politicians still think it's a traditional model -- from top to
bottom. So they come to me and think that by "reaching out" to me they can
reach my audience. That's complete crap. It needs to be the exact opposite,
they need to reach out to my audience. And if my audience decides its an
endeavor worthy of support, then I'll get involved.
Much the same way
with the press -- they think I'm somehow leading all these efforts. So I get
credit or blame for things I had nothing to do with. They have a hard time
understanding that netroots activism bubbles up from the bottom. It's unlike
anything in the history of politics.
As I see it, the community is the
"leader", as it filters the mass of information out there and decides what
they should lend their support to. You guys are the gatekeepers. I have a
voice in that process, and it's obviously an outsized voice, but it's still
only a voice in a mass of voices.I consider the netroots the new farm team for
the progressive leaders of tomorrow. I may not have an interest in being one
of those leaders (I'm aware of my own limitations), but I have every intention
in helping create and evangelize the infrastructure that will find, encourage,
promote, and support those leaders. "
Counting bodies - that was then, this is now
INDEPTH: IRAQ
Casualties in the Iraq war
CBC
News Online Updated Aug. 11, 2005
Even before U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad and helped topple a
statue of Saddam Hussein in Paradise Square on April 9, 2003, media
organizations and human rights groups were complaining that no one was keeping
track of the number of people killed in the war that started a month
before.
Some observers believe that measuring the bloodshed on both
sides of the conflict is a useful way to measure the progress of the
war.
That's a belief not shared by U.S. or British military officials.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the top officer in
the U.S. Central Command for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, summed up the
American military's attitude when he told reporters during the Afghan
campaign, "We don't do body counts."
In fact, the Pentagon
stopped counting the people killed by its soldiers after the Vietnam war,
where the numbers publicized were often inflated by field commanders and
Pentagon officials in attempts to show the war was going better than it was.
Those attempts ultimately backfired when the body counts provided fuel for the
anti-war movement.
But the U.S. military, like the British, does count
its own dead and wounded, even if it has tried to limit the public's awareness
of those numbers by preventing the media from covering military funerals or
the coffins returning from Iraq....
Who is
winning the war in Iraq?
U.S. forces say body counts prove
success, despite recent spate of attacks
By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Washington Post
Updated: 5:46 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
BAGHDAD - Using enemy body counts
as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab
Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest
attacks on Iraq's capital...
Could this be the reason? No, that couldn't be. This
administration and its enablers would never indulge in political calculation.
Monday, September 12, 2005
heads up.
Blackwater Mercenaries
Time to follow Blackwater. Blackwater Security,
Blackwater USA, a rose by any other name. If you have the google toolbar, please
do a search for them. At the bottom of the result page, google offers to Get
the latest news on blackwater with Google Alerts. Take that off-ramp; fill
in the info. We have to follow this closely.
Just to capture the
fascination, an excerpt from Blackwater
Mercenaries: Coming Soon to Your Town,
"It is now obvious how martial law (not officially
declared as such) will work in America in the wake of the devastation of New
Orleans. Instead of federal troops or an influx of National Guard troops sent to
“restore order” (the latter mandated in our now anachronistic Constitution;
see Article 1, Section 8) and empowered to “suppress Insurrections and repel
Invasions,” in Louisiana the state and federal governments have brazenly
violated the Constitution by sending in Blackwater Security and other private
goon squads. “Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater
private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling
the streets of New Orleans,” write Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo. “Some of
the mercenaries say they have been ‘deputized’ by the Louisiana governor;
indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their
chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they
are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the
authority to use lethal force.”
Soon after Katrina slammed into New
Orleans, the media reported the presence of Blackwater goons (and have no doubt,
Blackwater hires “special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid
regime,” according to James Ridgeway and others, people fairly characterized as
murderous paramilitary goons). Initially, it was reported that Blackwater was
hired to protect the property of New OrleansÂ’ rich elite (and hotels and other
businesses), but soon the company admitted it was “helping the U.S. Coast Guard
Sept. 1 with search-and-rescue missions, lending one of its Puma helicopters for
the missions…. [and] protecting facilities that house ‘priceless art pieces’
and special landmarks” from “looters” who were mostly interested in water and
food, not priceless art. “We are preparing for a rather long deployment for
this work,” Jack Serpas, who works for Securitas Security Services USA Inc.,
another “security” firm, told Marguerite Higgins of the Washington Post on
September 10."
go. read (as mike bermercenaries
Blackwater
mercinagenerosityd through the generousity of the present administration -- your
tax dollars at work -- have been entrenched as forces in Iraq alongside the
military all through the planned invasion of Iraq. Some background:
Bill
Berkowitz's Mercenaries
'R' U.S.
Private Pentagon
contractors are paying soldiers of fortune from Chile and South Africa up to
$4,000 per month for stints in Iraq
"On March 31, four retired Special
Operations forces employed by the private security firm Blackwater Security
Consulting were ambushed, killed, and their bodies mutilated in Fallujah.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle..."
Mercenaries
flock to fill vacuum
April 2,
2004
"Private security operators now make up the third largest armed force in
Iraq, Paul McGeough writes from Baghdad.
When the doors open at Level 5 of
the Palestine Hotel, there's a spit-and-polished Gurkha pointing a high-powered
gun into the lift.
The whole floor and another above it have been taken by
Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction wing of Halliburton, one of the
biggest US firms working in Iraq. And though the linguists of occupation don't
allow the word "mercenary", the Gurkha is part of a 15,000-strong private
security operation that is the third biggest armed force in Iraq.
Their
numbers - and salaries as high as $US1000 ($A1300) a day - attest to the danger
of this Arab version of Dodge City. .."
original
915
National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 *
http://www.accuracy.org
*
ipa@accuracy.org
__________________________
2004
Sadr City
DAVID ENDERS, denders@baghdadbulletin.com
Currently
in D.C., Enders edited Baghdad Bulletin and has spent much of
the last year
in Iraq. He will be returning there in mid-April. He said
today: "In Fallujah, as a mission to avenge the
deaths of
four 'contractors' killed there last week is underway, it is
important to
note: The four men killed, who have often been referred to
as
'civilian contractors' in the press, worked for a private security
company
from North Carolina. Private soldiers in Iraq are combatants
-- they kill
and detain Iraqis.... There are more private soldiers (over
10,000) in
Iraq at the present time than there are British soldiers.... By
closing
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr's newspaper, it appears the U.S. army
has
given the young imam the necessary leverage to call for armed struggle
on
his behalf...."
DOUGLAS VALENTINE, redspruce@comcast.net
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.douglasvalentine.com/
Author
of the book "The Phoenix Program," Valentine said today: "More and
more the
so-called 'counter-insurgency' in Iraq resembles the CIA's
infamous Phoenix
Program in South Vietnam, in which the CIA -- under cover
of military 'cordon
and search' operations -- went into villages that
supported the resistance,
in hopes of catching or killing guerrilla
leaders. The My Lai massacre was
the penultimate example of such a flawed
policy. Today, in a traditional
'cordon and search' (or 'search and
destroy') operation, U.S. Marines closed
all roads into Fallujah...."
AS'AD ABUKHALIL, AAbukhalil@csustan.edu
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
AbuKhalil
is professor of political science at California State University
at
Stanislaus and visiting professor at the University of California
at
Berkeley. He is available to comment on events in Iraq and the
region.
(His book about the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is being released in a
few
weeks.)
ANDY SHALLAL, ashallal@cox.net
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR041003.htm
In
an IPA news release dated April 10, 2003, just after the fall of
Saddam
Hussein, Shallal said: "When I was a kid in Iraq, we had coups and I
would
go out and jump in the street because it was the coolest thing. It's
like
D.C. when the Redskins win the Super Bowl. The problem is what
comes
after." With the one-year anniversary of Hussein's fall
approaching,
Shallal, founder of Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives,
said
today: "Before the incident of the Al-Hawza [newspaper] closing,
most
Shi'ite demonstrations were peaceful.... They are beginning to
realize
that the freedom they were promised is not going to simply
materialize --
no jobs, no security and now no voice.... The U.S. is left
with a cabal of
cronies (the Governing Council) whose allegiance is far more
to the
corporate invaders than it is to the people of Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi
is
holding all the cards -- he now controls the ministry of
finance
(incredible considering his background), trade and oil. It's like
having
Kenneth Lay become the head of the Treasury Department.... One must
ask
oneself: Is this part of the U.S. plan -- to create more disruptions
in
order to further clamp down? Why is the U.S. sending relatively
untrained
Iraqi police to clash with the demonstrators? How can the U.S.
justify
closing a newspaper office -- what happened to freedom and democracy?
...
Fallujah reminds one of Jenin -- the parallel with what is happening
in
Palestine is very stark. Sadr himself has made the connection."
Note: For information on
past crackdowns on
media in Iraq, see: http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR092403.htm.
Last
Summer, Human Rights Watch issued an 18-page report, "Violent
Response: The
U.S. Army in al-Fallujah," shortly after U.S. troops fired
on a group of
protestors in Fallujah.
~~~~~~~~~
back totoday... a few Blackwater stories:
Business booming
for private security
Blackwater
buys more local land
© September 11,
2005
Blackwater USA has bought more land and is constructing what will be
Camden CountyÂ’s largest building, while plans to move the companyÂ’s aviation
arm to neighboring Currituck County may be in jeopardy.
Last m onth,
Blackwater USA bought a little more than 351 acres in Camden County and 60 acres
in Currituck County as part of the same tract, according to a deed in Camden
County offices.
The security and weapons training company is also
constructing a 66,569-square-foot, two-story building with nearly 300 rooms,
according to blueprints. BlackwaterÂ’s real estate is owned by a subsidiary
called E&J Holdings LLC.
Plans for the building show a series of
smaller rooms that will, among other uses, serve as classrooms and offices for
company officials, including the company president, two conference rooms and a
cafeteria. When finished, probably in November, the building would be the
largest in Camden County, said Dave Parks, chief inspector for the
county.
The current lodge and office building is about 9,000 square feet,
according to county tax records.
The county approved plans Tuesday for
Blackwater to draw 6,000 gallons of water per day from CamdenÂ’s reverse osmosis
plant. Blackwater currently draws water from wells, said Dave Credle, the county
water system manager.
Blackwater spokesman Paul Behrends would not
comment on the recently bought land. The new building will sit on property
previously owned by Blackwater.
Blackwater USA, with 330 permanent
employees and 5,000 independent contractors, specializes in security services,
marksmanship and anti-terrorism training. The company lists its headquarters as
Moyock and owns a little more than 4,646 acres in Currituck County. But all of
the company buildings and training facilities are in Camden County on parts of
1,130 acres adjacent to the Currituck property. The latest land addition brings
the total Camden tract to about 1,481 acres.
Blackwater built a paved
training highway divided into three different tracks on 90 acres in Camden last
year. The highway is used for instruction in protecting officials, avoiding
terrorist attacks in vehicles and high- speed chase techniques, among other
things, according to the companyÂ’s Web site.
Last year in Pasquotank
County, just west of Camden County, Blackwater opened a 40,000-square-foot
target manufacturing plant, employing about 40 people.
The company
announced last year that it would move its aviation arm from Florida to
Currituck County A irport in Maple, bringing about 25 jobs and about 10
aircraft. The project stalled after a dispute over airport ownership between
Currituck and the state dragged on for months. Now, Blackwater A viation could
go elsewhere, said Currituck County Commissioner Owen Etheridge.
“If
they donÂ’t come, there are many other entities looking favorably at the
airport,” he said.
Currituck CountyÂ’s economic developer Wayne Leary
would not say what BlackwaterÂ’s plans are for the Currituck airport..." more.
go. read.
Overkill:
Feared Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
by Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo
"[...]
What is most disturbing is the claim of several
Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the
federal and Louisiana state governments.
Blackwater is one of the leading
private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It
has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US
diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to
international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of
their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings
sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah
that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
As the
threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates
even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of
Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons.
This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement
are allowed to have weapons."
Officially, Blackwater says it forces are
in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the
company's website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security
services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since
begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties.
But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2
Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law
enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting
criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are
Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department,
Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire
Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of
personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of
public safety." he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several
Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said
they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the
Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps
organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore
a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by
the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also
to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through
the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New
York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to
us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and
wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they
asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around
here," and pointed down the road.
"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who
are in Iraq?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the
place."
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran
into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their
arms.
"When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that
in?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his
neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it.
After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued
level 5, explosion proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk
(in the north of Iraq) where the real action is." Later we overheard him on his
cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem.
That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in
Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But,
as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to
6 months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys
like us in these situations."
If Blackwater's reputation and record in
Iraq are any indication of the kind of "services" the company offers, the people
of New Orleans have much to fear."
september blog
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
US army plans to
bulk-buy anthrax
10:00 24 September
2005
New Scientist
David Hambling
THE US military wants to buy large
quantities of anthrax, in a controversial move that is likely to raise questions
over its commitment to treaties designed to limit the spread of biological
weapons.
A series of contracts have been uncovered that relate to the US
army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. They ask companies to tender for the
production of bulk quantities of a non-virulent strain of anthrax, and for
equipment to produce significant volumes of other biological
agents.
Issued earlier this year, the contracts were discovered by Edward
Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, a US-German organisation that
campaigns against the use of biological and chemical weapons.
One
"biological services" contract specifies: "The company must have the ability and
be willing to grow Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain at 1500-litre quantities."
Other contracts are for fermentation equipment for producing 3000-litre batches
of an unspecified biological agent, and sheep carcasses to test the efficiency
of an incinerator for the disposal of infected livestock.
Major concern
Although the Sterne strain is not
thought to be harmful to humans and is used for vaccination, the contracts have
caused major concern.
"It raises a serious question over how the
US is going to demonstrate its compliance with obligations under the Biological
Weapons Convention if it brings these tanks online," says Alan Pearson,
programme director for biological and chemical weapons at the Center for Arms
Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC. "If one can grow the Sterne
strain in these units, one could also grow the Ames strain, which is quite
lethal."
The US renounced biological weapons in 1969, but small
quantities of lethal anthrax were still being produced at Dugway as recently as
1998.
It is not known what use the biological agents will be put
to. They could be used to test procedures to decontaminate vehicles or
buildings, or to test an "agent defeat" warhead designed to destroy stores of
chemical and biological weapons.
Highly provocative
There are even
fears that they could be used to determine how effectively anthrax is dispersed
when released from bombs or crop-spraying aircraft. "I can definitely see them
testing biological weapons delivery systems for threat assessment," says
Hammond.
Whatever use it is put to, however, the move could be seen as
highly provocative by other nations, he says. "What would happen to the
Biological Weapons Convention if other countries followed suit and built large
biological production facilities at secretive military bases known for weapons
testing?"
A spokesperson for Dugway said the anthrax contract is still at
the pre-solicitation stage, and the base has not yet acquired the agent. They
refused to say what it will be used for.
Related Articles
US ‘war on
terror’ has public health cost
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7976
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Time
for 'NY Times' to Explore Miller's Tale
Editor
and Publisher: "It's obvious that the leaders of the Times have made a
decision not to order hard reporting on Judith Miller's involvement in the Plame
affair. This journalistic void is in stark contrast to its editorial page's
persistent calls for her release. Now it's time for the paper's public editor,
Byron Calame, to take action. "
Hurricanes Rain on
Bush's Tax Cut Parade
Even caught-in-the-headlights Michael
Brown admits bleeding: "Brown described FEMA as
a politically powerless arm of Homeland Security, which he said had siphoned
more than $77 million from his agency over the past three years. Additionally,
he said Homeland Security cut FEMA budget requests - including one for hurricane
preparedness - before they were ever presented to Congress."
BookSense.com
BookSense.com gives you the opportunity to shop
online at your locally owned, bricks-and-mortar independent bookstore ... 24
hours a day.
Okay,
Irony is officially gone for good
....Lauravia blah3
Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the
feel-good, wish-granting hit "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Mrs. Bush
sought to be on the program because she shares the "same principles" that the
producers hold, her press secretary said....
Hmmm. "Shares the same principles"? Is that like
"values"? And what would those be? This? Or maybe this? How about this?
Societies worse
off 'when they have God on their side'
a must read.
You just can't inflict some
things. Morality, ethics, the Golden Rule. They have to be lived:
learned by active relationships in communities -- contrary to William
Bennett.
Jung was, of course, pointing out the unconscious is always at
work, part of us, and our attitude towards it is of monumental consequence in
how we live and act. A deity as a sense of being part of a whole, a mystery, a
cosmos-connected Self seems
a healthy humbling model. Contrast with Mall Church. Puritan agenda. Left
Behinders...
Havoc in its
sixth year
Cindy gives it all in one paragraph here... but
then she's just a Bush Basher nutcase, you know.
My First
Time: "Karl Rove (besides just being a very creepy man) outted a CIA agent
and was responsible for endangering many of our covert agents worldwide. Dick
Cheney's old company is reaping profits beyond anyone's wildest imaginations in
their no-bid contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans. John Negroponte's
activities in South America are very shady and murderous. Rumsfeld and Gonzales
are responsible for illegal and immoral authorization, encouragement and
approval of torture; not to mention, violating Geneva Conventions, torture
endangers the lives of our service men and women in Iraq. Along with the above
mentioned traitors, Condi lied through her teeth in the insane run-up to the
invasion. The list of crimes this administration has committed is extensive,
abhorrent, and unbelievable. What is so unbelievable is that WE were arrested
for exercising our first amendment rights and these people are running free to
enjoy their lives of crime and to wreak havoc on the world."
Heartbeat of the Planet
from mike d
... the following
websites:
http://dieoff.org/page25.htm
http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf
http://dieoff.org/page175.htm
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC32/Meadows.htm
-----
and
this
"Reality" is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is
what we believe. What we believe is based on our perceptions. What we percieve
depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we
think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is
our reality." gary zukav
An Evening With Mr.
Galloway by Butler Shaffer
Greg Palast notwithstanding, Galloway hits the
important, forgotten -- and for the most part -- unknown ingredients in this
whole long-brewing, boiled-over kettle of inhumanity. I remember reading a copy
of a CIA memo about our bombing certain water purification plants back under
Bush the Elder, followed by sanctions that included refusal to deliver the parts
to fix them. Bechtel water plants. Who suffered? Saddam and the
evildoers?
They knew what they were doing. They, who
work for and by us. We're talking water... water. When are we going to
be the good guys we pretend to be?
"[...]
The theme that ran through his presentation was the presence of the “double
standard” by which Western and Middle Eastern interests are measured. The
attacks of 9/11 emerged “not out of a clear blue sky,” but from a “deep swamp of
anger and hatred” generated by decades of American, British, and Israeli
atrocities committed against Arab and Muslim people. He emphasized that the core
of the “terrorist” problem can be traced not to religious differences, but to
over fifty years of “injustices imposed upon the Palestinian people” by American
and Israeli politics. The 1982 slaughter – with the sanction of Ariel Sharon –
of helpless men, women, and children in Beirut refugee camps, also came in for
discussion.
Perhaps the most poignant example of the double standard that
presumes “the blood of Americans, or Israelis, or Europeans, to be of greater
value than the blood of Iraqis or Afghans,” was found in the earlier
American-enforced trade sanctions that led to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi
children. Madeleine Albright – Clinton’s Secretary of State who oversaw the slow
death of Iraqi children “even before they were old enough to know they were
Iraqis” – wrote off this atrocity as a price she was willing to pay. Americans
may remain oblivious to the consequences of this double standard, “but it
doesn’t escape the attention of any Muslim in the world.”
Galloway went on to remind people that the families of
those who died on 9/11 did not suffer any greater pain than did the relatives of
Iraqis and Afghans who died from American and British bombings. Each suffered
unjustifiable deaths delivered from the sky. He then reiterated what every
factually informed person (i.e., non-Fox News viewers) knows to be true: that
there were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq; that Hussein had no
connection to 9/11; and that Al-Qaeda did not have any bases of operation in
Iraq. Because of Bush’s war, however, Al-Qaeda is now quite active in Iraq,
meaning that Bush has provided recruiting incentives for
terrorists.
[...]
There is a
rapidly emerging network of opposition to the Afghan/Iraqi wars which, contrary
to the screeching war-lovers at Fox News, is not confined to “left-wing” groups.
Liberals, conservatives, socialists, Republicans, libertarians, anarchists,
Democrats, and Marxists, are discovering that the integrity of their souls can
no longer withstand the burden of their support for wars against the innocent.
In the spirit of George Galloway’s passionate plea for the lives of both the
Iraqi people and the soldiers sent to kill them, we must pull the rug out from
beneath the feet of those who shed crocodile tears for the continuing deaths of
American troops while calculating the slaughter of foreigners.
For those
of you who e-mail me asking “what can we do?,” what about demanding the
impeachment and criminal prosecution of President Bush and his co-conspirators?
If you were among those who insisted upon the impeachment of Bill Clinton for
telling lies about his sexual peccadilloes, what about a president whose lies
are far more destructive of the lives and liberties of people, not to mention
the civilization that has been mortally wounded? For those who, in the Clinton
years, expressed concern about “moral values,” the ball is now in your court.
There is nothing more at stake than the wholeness of your character and the
nature of the world you are to leave to your children."
Monday, September 26, 2005
Restoring
the American Dream
Senator John Edwards discussed the structural
poverty that was exposed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and how the
country needs to seize this opportunity to take the steps necessary to fight
poverty and expand opportunities for everyone in our country.
a
key player in a very big political machine -- and managing a slush fund
" [...] The
Republican machine built by DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, et al. and pulled into
high gear after 2001, is a pay-for-play political machine. This is just another
part of the operation, like the diktat for trade associations to hire only
Republicans. Big political machines need their soldiers taken care of -- jobs on
K Street which also discipline the trade associations under Hill leadership.
Just so, they need big sums of money to move around off the books. How does Rove
keep the millions moving to Norquist? To Reed? To all the other operatives whose
names you don't know about?"
A look at the pattern. Thank you,
Josh Marshall. Kos & co-bloggers are right: this IS a must read
Many
Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
New
York Times:
"[...]More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion
in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were
awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show,
provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential
for favoritism or abuse.
Already, questions have been raised about the
political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg,
Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by
the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a
former leader of FEMA.
[...]
The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract
that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the
"Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which
was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for
unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills
like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended
their performance."
Sunday, September 25, 2005
True poetry
We can kiss
the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the
Humanities goodbye. But then again, this was worth it.
...But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if
I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I
see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food
from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that
unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of
permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where
they will be tortured for us.So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and
shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the
clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles,
and I could not stomach it.Sincerely,
SHARON
OLDS
As
Test Scores Jump, Raleigh Credits Integration by Income
By ALAN FINDER
RALEIGH, N.C. - Over the last decade, black and Hispanic students here in Wake
County have made such dramatic strides in standardized reading and math tests
that it has caught the attention of education experts around the
country.
The main reason for the students' dramatic improvement, say
officials and parents in the county, which includes Raleigh and its sprawling
suburbs, is that the district has made a concerted effort to integrate the
schools economically.
Since 2000, school officials have used income as a
prime factor in assigning students to schools, with the goal of limiting the
proportion of low-income students in any school to no more than 40 percent.
...
I guess you can succeed by throwing money at a
problem. Just depends on how you throw it.
Because it's not really
about the money. That's just the means.
Someone recently informed me
that universal moral principles, world community, and justice are all dubious
concepts.
Oh.
This Dubious-ity. Why not apply it equally to cities
-- as long as we're considering worldly communities (along with peace love and
understanding) dubious. I suppose cities are indubitable -- certain and
real -- because we delineate them in space and material planes where we
can cut them up as property, thus granting them the magic essence of
indubitably. But all we're really talking about is the headache of
making agreements -- agreements that we have to have for concepts such as
human rights, treaties, and points of law, all the
dubious things we might need a UN and World Court for -- because like
it or not, we are one world, certainly one vast marketplace, like it or
not, and we better have some understanding, some ground rules, some dialogue
that attempts a delineation of this (ever-expanding) playing field.
In
many ways, communities and these intangible dubious things
are the only things really real to the psyche, the place where we spend
most of our time storing the me inside our body. They're not dubious at
all when they're the basis for understanding law and protocol and heritage and
even the shared shadows of our dreams.
What is a world community but this
organic, interdependent web of life? It's 'what is,' not what one wishes or what
'should' or used to be. Through community, small and large, we learn to
understand the grace of aging, the need for neighbor, father mother brother
daughter grandparent, and how they fit and work together; the flow and rhythm of
life, of birth, of death, and why one shouldn't steal and lie and kill (it hurts
another person: somone you love). It's the ground where we learn to grok other
dubious notions, such as honor and humanity, even politics,
negotiation and how and why to listen or speak out; that you are not a world or
law unto yourself, and that other people are like you with the same needs and
desires; that knowing one great truth does not make you know the mind of god.
All such understandings are extrapolated from the experience of living in
communities, communities that link in ceaseless points.
This living web
is what is disturbed, broken, lost in cultures that are cut off, invaded, taken
over by outsiders. Alien leaders, dependence, strange ways -- what's left for
them but Pax Romana. Praetorian Guards. Occupation. All meaning becomes
forced.
How to build community -- in any world, even one that thinks it's
free, self-determined, meets its needs , has strength
and power (dubious concepts, all) -- when its people don't meet face to
face? When human contact takes place behind glass shields -- cars and offices,
even our food comes this way, our leaders televised, our news scripted, our
friends and lovers but perfect two-dimensional strangers.
I went to a
school meeting last month where we were trying to solve a serious problem: how
to deal with No Child Left Behind when our local resources are too short. All
the parents could talk about was how the situation related to their child.
Compromise? Help? They couldn't see beyond their own door. It went
nowhere.
Why do the Red States love the Mall Church? It's community.
Sure, community based on middle men, invisible friends, magic books, carrots and
sticks, the lie that you burn in hell, that the devil is real, that you are the
Chosen Ones -- but still, the friendships bloom.
It's really just as
simple as the golden rule. If it could only be just THAT...
Remember the
last Brown Out in New York? What people said? The way they got out of their
buildings, came together, helped each other, shared, planned ... a city come to
life, face to face, hand to hand in solving the moment to moment, and oh, how
good that was.
Extrapolate.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
House
Hearings Target Leakers
WAPO Saturday, September 24, 2005; Page
A08:
[...] Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the
ranking Democrat on the panel, said she agreed with Hoekstra that the time had
come to make it easier to find and prosecute leakers of classified information,
"but only consistent with the First Amendment." She also said the panel's
hearings will look into whether the government is overzealous in classifying
information, leading government employees to disregard secrecy
rules.
Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), the second-ranking Democrat, said
the committee has been told "many times of clear examples where danger and death
have occurred when leaked information came into the public realm . . . including
deaths in recent times." He said he could not describe the incidents, but that
what is needed is "an active discussion between the media, the legislative and
executive branch" to find a solution. [more]
including
deaths in recent times. --? Is this the 70
we wondered about below?
Hartford
Advocate: Rove v. Wait
"Don't know about the rest of you, but I am
still waiting for Karl Rove, Bush's erstwhile Brain, to be indicted, tried,
convicted and imprisoned for the act of revealing the identity of an
undercover CIA agent. Not just any spy, but an expert on weapons of mass
destruction who just happened to be the wife of a political enemy. It's
estimated that this 'outing' of Valerie Plame may have resulted in the deaths
of as many as 70 of her associates around the world. This is treason, my
friends. Plain and simple. It is not something that can be spun to resemble
anything other than that. When, oh when, will the trial begin?
"
Just a
little legal advice, a reminder really...
Just a little
legal advice, a reminder really...
March 17,
2003
....War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished.
And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following
orders...."
via skippy
Turnout Huge in DC
AfterDowningStreet.org:
Here
are more
photos.
Here's some blogging at truthout.
Here's
coverage, including videos at
BradBlog.
Here are photos
and blogging at DemocracyCellProject.
Nothing At All Occuring in
Our Nation's Capitol Today! And Here Are a Few Photos to Prove it...
THE BRAD BLOG
No anti-war movement?
I keep running
across wistful references from the punditocracy bemoaning the absence of an
anti-war movement in this country. The right wingnuts are unhappy because if
they can't see it, they can't demonize it - and the others, conventional wisdom
insiders all, just can't see it. Probably because they're too busy at one of
those inside the beltway movers and shakers parties scarfing all the free shrimp
at the buffet.
This isn't the
sixties.
I see the anti-war
movement in my small town. I see the anti-war movement in the now retired
veteran of the first gulf war - she wants a "Who would Jesus bomb?" bumper
sticker for her truck. I see the anti-war movement in a colleague as he tells me
his older sister's husband will be deployed to Iraq in a few weeks. I see the
anti-war movement in a friend, trained in the law, who quietly shares their
belief that this administration wouldn't recognize the Constitution, let alone read or comprehend it, even if it had
twinkling lights and you smacked them in the face with it.
I see the anti-war movement in my parents. My
father, the eighty year old veteran can't stand to see what has happened in the
last five years to his beloved country and to the military he served in for
twenty-two years. My mother quietly informed me this summer that he purchased a
burial plot next to hers - he had always wanted to be buried in a national
cemetary. No longer.
I see the
anti-war and pro-war movements in all of the service age students who haven't
signed up to go.
And sadly, I
notice all of the missing "support our troops" magnetic yellow ribbons. Up to
the 2004 election the parking lot at work was a veritable forest of yellow
ribbon magnets. I noted them on all the cars, suspecting that "'dubya' '04"
stickers would soon join them at the "appropriate" time (I was not
disappointed). Now, that little man in the White House has disappointed them,
and so, they've removed the yellow ribbon magnets. Or did they just fall
off?
It was never about supporting the troops, it was about enforcing the
false meme that in order to do so, you had to vote for that small
man.
I see the ant-war
movement. It's quiet. It's deep. And it's very big.
Anti-War
Protesters March in Washington
One of my daughters just called me from the
march. Turn on c-span.
Meanwhile, "13 Amtrak trains running between New
York and Washington were delayed for up to three hours Saturday morning for
repair of overhead electrical lines."
Everyone get the drill?
***
This war was is built on lies. What more do you need to
know?
~~~~~~~~~~~
suzanne comments:
Unfortunately this
rally will be pretty much ignored by the media but it feels good anyway to see
so many people come together to speak out against the war and the bush
administration...I do wish we had some organization other than ANSWER to
organize these rallies...they turn off lots of people who might otherwise come
out. >>
~~~~~
deb:
exactly why they're allowed to
exist.
It gets the kids connected, these rallies. All else is preaching
to the choir.
The storms have their say. People hear it. They know what
it is to sit in their cars, to be at the mercy of "road". Extrapolate.
Bullies, murderers, lack of kindness. These
impulses and qualities aren't peculiar to humans.
What is? We will lose all
we love, and we know this. We don't see beyond the moment and we're aware of
this. We have so much to learn, a cosmos worth, and are often aware of this,
too.
We're a species aware of own awareness, aware of consciousness itself.
We've eaten from the apple: that's what it meant, that myth, that
parable, before it got twisted up with misogyny (misogyny, the supreme aspect of
the impulse to punish). We become aware that we are made of the flame that burns
through all of life, through all of timespace.
Awakening, sentient, we've
also been a species suspicious of awakening: All seems to be divided along
poles, and we strive to make the world in that image. We become a tribe that
can't see itself in other tribes. Consciousness becomes the evil; the
unconscious the good.
And then the poles reverse.
In the stars, we imagine
polarity. Watching, we begin to see the reversals. To suspect the very poles.
Sentience, a fire that runs through all.
We remember this, we forget
this, we stumble along. We bear great sorrows. And joys.
We ruin the world
with selfishness. We rebuild it with kindness...
Children are not born
evil. That is the one thing I believe. And I don't believe in evil at
all.
What beats my heart?
This wisdom that knows how to beat a
heart:
it beats all hearts.
It's here right now — birthing in
every breath
saying
Let peace begin with me
Friday, September 23, 2005
When Rose
met Cindy: The case against the war in Iraq
The cold stars lighting, very old and
bleak,
In different skies.
Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
"'Those young
boys don't know who's with them or who's against them. People think we are
against the troops but we are for them - we want them home safe. Once they're
dead, the [authorities] don't want to know them. For a 19-year-old with just 24
weeks basic training to be sent to Iraq...'"
FACES
OF THE FALLEN
An e-mail reply to a former student
I received an
e-mail from a former student. It took a while for me to respond.
"Life"
Dr. Bersin,
We
have not spoken in a while and I thought to send you an email. I hope all is
well.
[Life details omitted]
My political self is lacking;
however, the fire still burns. I did make an attempt to participate on a board
or a commission in XXXXX county, but alas I never pursued it all the way
though. Currently, with school, extracurriculars are few and far between
because the schedule does not allow for it, but as I said the fire still
burns. And, although you probably do not want to hear this, I still valiantly
support our President.
Please let me know how things are for you and
XXXX. I hope to hear from you soon.
Best
regards,
XXXXX
Today I
replied:
Dear XXXXXX,
I was pleased to
hear from you - and glad to hear that life is going well.
["catching
up" details omitted]
These are extraordinary times. There are very real
and serious consequences for every one of our actions. I no longer hold back
my voice in the interest of not ruffling any feathers (as if I ever did), nor
am I now interested in keeping a civil tongue.
It's very clear to me
that you love your family and your unfolding life, as well you should. I am
perplexed by your statement "...I still valiantly support our President". I'm
no longer interested in this debate, the time for the "game" of debate is long
since past, and I, for one, am tired of that game. But, I must ask you this
question, the tortured peregrinations of Jonah Goldberg notwithstanding: If
you haven't yet done so, why haven't you enlisted?
The unpleasant
realities trump any debate. Nor, for my own selfish reasons, do I hope or want
to encourage you to place yourself in harm's way - I already live in constant
fear of the possible bad news in regard to others I know who have volunteered
themselves.
As always, I hold you in high
regard.
Sincerely,
Michael Bersin
Wash. Post , USA Today omitted
reasons for Democratic boycott of "bipartisan" Katrina commission
[Media Matters] "In
covering the September 22 launch of the House inquiry into the flawed government
response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, The Washington Post and USA Today
reported that House Democrats are boycotting the "bipartisan" investigation but
failed to provide the reasons Democrats have given for the boycott: They
would be outnumbered by Republicans on the panel and would not have subpoena
power." go. read.
equinox
mike dickman:
Have watched - vitually
every night now - the sun's slow drift south from just to the right of the
minuscule Eiffel Tower off to the right of my balcony to now over the chimneys
on the flat only just diaginally in front... Wondering how far round the arc
it'll go...
May the blessings of balanced light and dark surround us
all!
Deb:
The dissonance as a human sees its own blindness,
its disconnect from the web of life: it churns up the psyche.
New
Orleans. The plight of the poor in this nation, the inequity -- a light is now
shining on them. Its circumference expands into a vision of the world. Ethics,
morality. Wisdom. They can't be inflicted; they can't even be taught. They come
from the experience of living in community, an understanding of relationships
that sees the self in others.
The birthing begins in earnest.
x's
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Wash. Post issued correction
to editorial that ...
[Media Matters]: "The September 22 issue of The Washington Post corrected
the false claim that the overall poverty rate in the United States has steadily
increased 'since 1999,' which appeared in a September 19 Post editorial. The
correction stated: 'A Sept. 19 editorial on poverty should have said the
poverty rate has been edging upward since 2000, not 1999.'
The
correction came three days after Media Matters for America posted an item
highlighting the error. As we noted, the data actually showed that the poverty
rate declined every year of the Clinton presidency and has risen every year of
the Bush presidency, hitting a low of 11.3 percent in 2000, the last full year
of Clinton's presidency, and rising to 12.7 percent in 2004. "
Weather
Underground: Wunder Blog
Suzanne:
Here are some amazing maps and photos
of the storm...
The people of Galveston, where Rita is likely to hit
hardest are also mostly very poor... certainly these storms are exposing the
incredible divide between rich and poor in this country... perhaps we can have a
genuine and open dialogue about poverty that engages the American people... this
is the real cost of the war on terrorism, an unconscionable neglect of the
people, infrastructure and environment of our own country...
same old, same old
Golly. Sure reads like the party line to me...
Wikipedia, I thought you were striving to be objective.
Praetorian Guard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Legacy Of The Guard
Although its name has become synonymous
with intrigue, conspiracy, disloyalty and assassination, it could be argued that
for the first two centuries of its existence the Praetorian Guard was, on the
whole, a positive force in the Roman state. During this time it mostly removed
(or allowed to be removed) cruel, weak and unpopular emperors while generally
supporting just, strong and popular ones. By protecting these monarchs, thus
extending their reigns, and also by keeping the mobs of Rome and the Senate in
line the guard helped give the empire much needed stability which lead to the
period known as the Pax Romana. It was not until after the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, when this period is generally considered to have ended, that the guard
began to deteriorate into the ruthless, mercenary and meddling force for which
it has become infamous. However, during the Severan dynasty and afterwards
during the Crisis of the Third Century, the legions, the senate and the
emperorship along with the rest of Roman government were falling into decadence
as well."
Ah. And then came the Council of Nicea and all decadence
was wiped away, right? (There goes the plumbing.) That old man is ever
becoming better view of history. Seems to me, Rome never died. Just got
repackaged in dogma, 'piety', a righteous inflation, and keeps overrunning
everything.
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the
pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country
tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in
every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by
gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more
beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the
roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall
the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of
water
~eecummings
Praetorian Guard
HOLLER
Suzanne: Just heard on NPR that Bush is
going to change the laws allowing the military to operate in the US during
disasters.... we need to holler loud and clear as that is a first and
devestating step toward a fascist police state.... the national guard is trained
for emergencies on the homeland and they are mostly in Iraq... To have regular
soldiers, trained for combat, essentially teenagers with guns, not even from
your own community policing the streets and manning check points is very
frightening and the end of our democracy.... what's left of it....
Deb:
Worse, they've been Blackwater mercenaries -- like those sent to New
Orleans. They were also used for crowd control stateside -- at the Florida
peace march. I'd read funding for this was funneled to them before the last
election by that Pentagon Emergency Additional $80 Billion for Iraq. From their
website:
Blackwater is working to secure
critical communications infrastructure and is also assisting in securing
necessary petrochemical facilities in the immediate aftermath of the storm. In
addition, Blackwater employees are currently supporting numerous insurance
companies in conducting accurate assessments for what will no doubt be the
largest disaster claim in U. S. history.As a private company, Blackwater USA
is capable of responding quickly and cost effectively in order to have an
immediate impact on crisis situations and mitigate, to the extent
possible, the risk associated with loss of life and property, and support
local, state, and federal agencies who are tasked with response
efforts.
The following services are available: Airlift Services
-
Security Services - Communication Support - Humanitarian Support
-
ServicesLogistics and Transportation
Services
Humanitarian Support
Services. Hm. Well, here's some of their work in Iraq.
Doesn't sound so pretty, does it?As Dana Priest wrote over a year ago in the WAPO:
So, we have a private militia with its own helicopters
and support lines. The private militia, which answers only to its corporate HQ,
not to any Constitutional chain of command, is guarding the US HQ in Baghdad and
Najaf. Does the expression Praetorian Guard begin to resonate for you
here?
(It's all so Gordon Liddy, ain't it? Liz ran into him at the
Borders in Baltimore. Little, creepy, and grinning at her. Tiny lizard eyes. I
bet they're yellow. Aliens?)
Blackwater Security --
archives
Aug
5. 2002
web archive
listing
Their 2002
Sevices statement:
Blackwater Security Consulting is the
newest addition to the Blackwater family of companies serving security,
firearms and training needs around the world. Under the direction of former
CIA officer Jamie Smith, Blackwater has deployed teams across the
nation and the globe in support of federal, state and private
industry interests. Blackwater's security specialists have extensive
experience in all dimensions of domestic and international security
operations, particularly in high-risk zones. Blackwater provides services to
the United States government, as well as local state and federal law
enforcement. Blackwater Security Consulting, or BSC as it is becoming known,
can provide the following
services...
Their employment disclaimer:
As background to the process for
being considered for work with BSC, applicants must understand a couple of
critical points:
BSC does not hire you; we contract you as an
independent contractor (IC). BSC will provide a 1099 at the end of the
year to IC’s that documents all funds paid during the year. The IC has made
provisions for all the tax issues. BSC provides overseas insurance (Defense
Base Act) when working on a U.S. Government contract.
It's like
trying to get around responsibility for troops and what they do on all sides. On
the personal level, this seems to be in dispute : see the last link here -- the
current lawsuit.
From their newsletter, the chaplain
link
As I'm reading it, I'm asking who will it appeal to? --
the commando types. Right Wing Militias. And here they thought they were the
anti-Fed.
more
Tonebone
Tonebone has been a DJ since the psychedelic
60's and his wealth of experience shines through in these lovingly created
mixes. Tonebone's genius lies in his track selection and his range is
mind-blowing... go. download.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
voucher stealth
From Sith Lord Gary
Bauer's newsletter:
John Kerry and John Edwards, both
potential future Democrat presidential candidates, used the suffering of
Hurricane Katrina to further their own agendas in separate speeches this week.
Here's an excerpt from Kerry:
"This is about the broader pattern of
incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed and beyond that a truly
systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government and devote it
to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. The plan they're
designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for
right-wing ideological experiments."
By "right-wing ideological
experiments," Senator Kerry meant school vouchers. So, let's get this straight
- public and private schools in the New Orleans area were devastated, families
have been displaced and their homes damaged, if not destroyed. But John Kerry
only wants to help those children who go to public schools. And the Democrats
wonder why they are perceived as being hostile to people of faith! If Kerry
and Edwards want to defend Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," go for it. I
think we can do better.
Okay. Let's really
get this straight. Churches don't pay taxes; that's the way it is. Taxes are
paid by the Public for their public schools; that's the way it is. Should taxes
pay for Churches, their indoctrination process -- against all tradition, against
the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, who debated that point? And if so,
which churches -- all, any? Where will a line be drawn? Bush has all ready
stepped over it by funneling taxpayer's money to his pet Faith Based Initiatives
(with no say from the taxpayers supplying the funds). Again, let's ask which
church -- because not all tax-exempt churches have gotten these funds. Who is
defining what a Church is, then? Not We, The People. In Bush's
Faith-Based nation, who will define God? Will you be allowed to differ? "I think
we can do better," Bauer says. Who is WE, Mr. Bauer? It isn't WE The
People: I can't see that taxpayers have been asked or given any say. The
Religious Right claims some mandate. Where is it? No vote reflects
that. Of voting voters, at least as many voted against Bush as for him, and
that's true of the last two elections. The only thing Bauer demonstrates here is
a hostility towards Democrats which he's trying damn hard to mirror in people of
faith.
Hey, I'm no lawyer. But I didn't think I needed to be one to be a
citizen, an equal in this nation. If this sounds simple, it's because it is:
Like your faith free? Keep a Separation of Church and State. It protects YOU,
your right to your chosen faith.
Move
America Forward
the "Cindy you don't speak for me tour,"
sponsored by MoveAmericaForward.org.
... a
non-profit organization co-chaired by former state assemblyman Howard
Koologian. Koologian is a Republican who takes credit for launching the
recall against Governor Gray Davis. His co-chair is KSFO Radio talk show host
Melanie Morgan. The group's PR firm is led by a veteran California political
strategist and the firm claims clients running from a county supervisor to
President of the United States.
KSFO Radio is owned by Disney which also
owns ABC7."
Inhumane
to keep policies muddled
By JACKSON DIEHL
First published: Saturday,
September 17, 2005
"WASHINGTON - During a
meeting at The Washington Post last month I asked Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales a pretty simple question: Is it the policy of the Bush administration
not to subject the foreign prisoners it is holding to 'cruel, inhuman and
degrading' treatment? That phrase refers to abuse falling just short of torture.
It is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration
and ratified a decade ago by the Senate.
Gonzales started to reply, then
hesitated. Then he said he wasn't sure, and would have to get back to
me.
Last week I called his office to see if the answer was ready. It wasn't.
Instead, a spokesman told me that 'the staff' response was to refer me to the
testimony delivered in Gonzales' name to the Senate Judiciary Committee after
his confirmation hearing earlier this year. It was that maddeningly unclear
language that prompted me to ask him the question in the first place.
A
couple of things about this exchange struck me as remarkable. First, how could
the attorney general of the United States not be able to state U.S. policy on
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners - especially since his
department has repeatedly reviewed the matter in the past several years?
..."
Schwarzenegger owns up
to mistakes
Must be playing well.
"In business, we
make decisions every day based upon imperfect information. We may get
blindsided by a competitive response or we may underestimate the time that it
takes to sell a product. Accepting our error, rather than avoiding
responsibility, limits the potential damage and sets us on the right course.
Poor decisions regarding our behavior that compromise our credibility with our
employees, constituents, or followers are particularly damaging."~from an executive coaching
ezine
Urge Judge Roberts and the
White House to release these key documents
Do you know that the Bush Administration still
hasn't turned over key documents about Judge John Roberts that were requested
by Judiciary Committee Democrats more than six weeks ago? A narrow, targeted
request for documents related to only cases where John Roberts played a
leadership role as Principal Deputy Solicitor General for the first President
Bush?
How can the Senate fulfill its constitutional "advice and
consent" responsibility and vote on Judge Roberts' nomination without having
all the facts?
Only one person will be able to get the White House to
release these key documents -- and that's Judge John Roberts
himself.
Email Judge Roberts now, and call on him to urge the
Administration to release these key documents to the Senate Judiciary
Committee:
------------------------
The selection of George W. Bush as president exemplifies how very much the
future hangs on Supreme Court decisions, and the mindset of individuals
appointed there should be examined with great care. It is, after all, a lifetime
appointment with the potential to wield an immense power. John Roberts’s
association with partisan think tanks like the Federalist Society should be
cause for concern, as should The White House’s refusal to release his memos on
important cases written when he worked in the Solicitor General’s office under
George HW Bush in the 1990's – memos that can give us his true stance and
attitudes, revealing the real man and possible future judge. more
Sixteen
of those memos -- on cases which focus on essential civil rights, equal
opportunity, right to privacy and access to justice – have been requested by
Senators expected to vote on his appointment, a request that goes unanswered.
Such a response by this administration defies reason and precedent. It ignores
the foundations and intentions of our democratic way of life. It ignores justice
itself.
Leahy
Says He Will Vote to Confirm Chief Justice Nominee - New York Times
I can only think he's done this thinking they
*must* filibuster Gonzales, the true abomination.
Gear up. Endurance is
all.
Hm. Gonzales and Abu Ghraib in the news -- together again. Bush will
stall the next nomination.
Arianna
Huffington: Plamegate: The John Bolton Connection
Yahoo!
News: "I'm now hearing that the investigation
may be inching closer to never-confirmed UN Ambassador John
Bolton.
According to two sources, Bolton's former chief of staff, Fred
Fleitz, was at least one of the sources of the classified information about
Valerie Plame that flowed through the Bush administration and eventually made
its way into Bob Novak's now infamous column. ..."
Don't
dumb down
Guardian Unlimited Guardian Weekly
Why is science in the media so often pointless,
simplistic, boring or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been
collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present
my theory. It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they
cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then
attack this parody as if they were critiquing science....
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
"Not the
kind of thing you want flying around the Internet.”
The contemporary West is not -
despite our constant calling of them to memory - built on Auschwitz and
Treblinka, to which we have said 'No'. It is built on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
to which we have said 'Yes'."~Desmond Fennell: The Revision of European
History
"An unclassified
draft of a U.S. nuclear doctrine review that spells out conditions under which
U.S. commanders might seek approval to use nuclear weapons has been removed from
a Pentagon website, a spokesman said on Sept. 19.
Lawrence DiRita, the
Pentagon spokesman, said the document was taken down “because even in an
unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the
Internet.”
Entitled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations”* and prepared under the direction of the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the draft was spotted on a Pentagon website earlier this
month..."
*one presumes this one is a final version, stating:
The US does not make positive
statements defining the
circumstances under which it would use nuclear
weapons.
Maintaining US ambiguity about when it would use nuclear
weapons
helps create doubt in the minds of potential adversaries,
deterring them from
taking hostile action. This calculated
ambiguity helps reinforce deterrence.
If the US clearly defined
conditions under which it would use nuclear
weapons, others
might infer another set of circumstances in which the US
would
not use nuclear weapons. This perception would increase the
chances
that hostile leaders might not be deterred from taking
actions they perceive
as falling below that threshold.
and this...
thinking of the past few weeks, the way things have been handled. And
these were events with advance warning. Add to it that Bush thinks he's god
appointed. Believes in the Endtime. Do you trust this man and his
cohorts?
National policy requires a single execution and
termination
authority for the use of nuclear weapons. The President
retains
sole authority for the employment and termination of
nuclear
weapons. The pace of modern war dictates streamlined and
efficient
methods of C2. The President and Secretary of Defense
must have the most
current and available situational information
and intelligence and must
comprehend all strategic and theater
nuclear plans and options. Top-down
communication
transmitted over reliable, secure, and
survivable
communications systems ensures critical orders are received
for
execution, increases survivability, and reduces vulnerability
of C2 systems
across the range of military operations. The
Commander, US Strategic Command,
has combatant
command (command authority) over selected portions of
the
nation’s strategic nuclear forces and is responsible for the
planning
and execution of strategic nuclear operations.
Circumstantially, geographic
combatant commanders may be
assigned operational control over US Strategic
Command nuclear
capable forces employed
for nuclear operations in support of
theater conflicts.
Detailed planning
is key to the execution of strategic nuclear
operations. The President,
Secretary of State, and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff each provide
guidance for nuclear weapon
planning. An integrated operation plan or series
of plans
predicated on commonly agreed strategic objectives is an
absolute
prerequisite to unity of force and strategic nuclear
operations
execution. This plan or series of plans formalizes the
integration
of nuclear assets. They clarify command guidance and
objectives,
effectively assign and prioritize targets, and
synchronize
execution.
Strategic operational planning must include the
ability to respond
to new targets and changing priorities before or during
the
execution of strategic nuclear operations. This adaptive
planning
capability ensures the most efficient use of resources and that
strategic
forces are fully capable of responding to any new threats that
might
arise. Strategic planners must also be prepared to conduct
crisis
action planning in those cases where adaptable, deliberate plans
do
not exist.
[...] Whether supporting national strategic goals or
geographic
combatant commanders, the nuclear targeting process
is
cyclical. The process begins with guidance and priorities issued
by the
President, Secretary of Defense, and Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff
and culminates with the final step of combat
assessment. The entire targeting
process consists of six phases:
commander’s objectives, guidance, and intent;
target
development, validation, nomination, and
prioritization;
capabilities analysis; commander’s decision and
force
assignment; mission planning and force execution; and,
combat
assessment.
For many contingencies, existing and emerging
conventional
capabilities will meet anticipated requirements; however,
some
contingencies will remain where the most appropriate response
may
include the use of US nuclear weapons. Integrating
conventional and nuclear
attacks will ensure the most efficient
use of force and provide US leaders
with a broader range of strike
options to address immediate contingencies.
Integration of
conventional and nuclear forces is therefore crucial to the
success
of any comprehensive strategy. This integration will
ensure
optimal targeting, minimal collateral damage, and reduce
the
probability of escalation.
Stop
Religious Discrimination in Head Start
Bush's faith based initiatives, stage 2:
from the American Civil Liberties Union
Congressman Boustany of Louisiana
plans to introduce an amendment on the House floor to roll back longstanding
critical nondiscrimination provisions that have been a part of Head Start
legislation since 1972. This is a fundamental threat to civil rights
protections against employment discrimination for Head Start teachers and
volunteers.
Religious organizations participating in Head Start make an
invaluable contribution to the education of thousands of students. These
religious organizations have complied with Head Start's existing civil rights
requirements. However, if civil rights protections were repealed, teachers or
parent volunteers working in any Head Start program run by a religious
organization could immediately lose their jobs because of their
religion.
If this passes, thousands of Head Start teachers could lose
their jobs if they fail their employers’ religious tests. Countless parents
would furthermore be blocked from climbing the ladder out of poverty that has
already allowed thousands of parents to go from being a parent volunteer to
being a trained and paid Head Start teacher solely because they do not share a
federally funded employer’s religious beliefs. Take Action Now!
If
Congressman Boustany's amendment is successful, students participating in Head
Start could lose not only their teachers, but also the close programmatic
connection with their own parents volunteering in the program. Allowing
discrimination based on religion would significantly impede the important
goals of Head Start, sending a damaging message to Head Start students and
harming their education by separating them from their own teachers and parent
volunteers. more...
Hmmm,
how about you just govern in a competent manner without the embarassing
rhetoric?
The apple
doesn't fall far from the tree.
....Gov.
Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a
short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior"
friend.
Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and
politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes
in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes
in moral values that underpin a free society.
''I rely on Chang with
great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let
him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me
down.''
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a
gift.
''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative
warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared....
I tell you, that family just isn't
right.
The Coming
Category 5 Financial Hurricane
HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
BEFORE THE US HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES
September 15, 2005
___________________
suzanne:
This congressman doesn't know
squat when he speaks about the current welfare state...what little financial
safety net remained in this country after the end of public welfare in the 80's
has been totally dismantled by the Bush administration...What we saw in terms of
poverty after Katrina is only the tip of the iceberg....America's inner cities
all contain poverty on a par with Calcutta where, hunger, homlessness, drugs and
crime are daily fare....Even in more rural and affluent places like Western
Massachusetts, people are unemployed and struggling to keep a roof over their
heads. This man is spouting typical Republican hog wash and
insensitivity..
Welfare state my ass.... Tell it to the mother who has to do
her grocery shopping at the Food Bank and sit at the ER for twelve hours when
her baby has a fever because she has no health insurance..Sure, let's rebuild
New Orleans, cover it with high rises for the rich, give the building contracts
to Haliburtin and pay for it by cutting food stamps and medicare....
Right wing news for Highschoolers
Cop a fast feel. The spin at StudentNewsDaily.com.
Have
some:
Daily Featured Article
Kabul Elections Come Off Smoothly (by Carmen Gentile, Sept. 19, 2005, WashingtonTimes.com)
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghans embraced democracy by the millions yesterday, with
voters undaunted by weeks of violence and threats of terrorist attacks to cast
ballots for the first elected parliament in decades. Sep 19, 2011,
08:57
(Smoothly!)
--->Wednesday's Biased Item 'Slumps'"The
nation's unemployment rate dipped to a four-year low of 4.9 percent..." Sep 14,
2005, 17:12
(We're on a
ROLL, boys and girls!)
--->Daily "Best of the Web" Brazile vs. Nuts(by James Taranto, OpinionJournal.com) - On Friday we
noted that New Orleans evacuees had responded enthusiastically to President
Bush's Thursday speech... Sep 20, 2008,
12:11
(Entusiastically!)
from the article, their choice for
Daily "Best of the Web" :
"Contrast
this with Angry Left idol Cindy Sheehan, who, as we also noted Friday,
is calling for U.S. withdrawal from "occupied New Orleans." Sheehan engages in
the usual left-wing cant about caring for the poor, but as the Yale
Daily News notes, reporting on a Sheehan appearance in New Haven, Conn.,
Sheehan's enthusiasts are whiter than vanilla snow:
Cornell Lewis, a preacher
and activist who spoke at the rally, said the lack of racial diversity at the
rally represents a shortcoming of the anti-war movement.
"All I see is white
people," he said. "If the anti-war movement wants to grow stronger, it needs
people of color."
Oh sure, Blacks are all for the war. (And they
love Bush.) And Yale Daily News: what empiricism! ACTUALLY -- this is
the only cite I
can find for Sheehan in the Yale Daily News; it has nothing like this quote. On
a general google web search, I did find over a hundred links re withdrawal from
"occupied New Orleans" -- all that were on right-tilting websites were out of
context; nothing else from that speech or on Cindy in general, except to call
Sheehan "nutty", or some variation of that term. Synchonicity?
For the
record, what
Cindy said. What troops were these occupying New Orleans? These.
Meanwhile:
58%
Disapprove Of Bush's Overall Performance
...59% Call Iraq Invasion A
Mistake...
67% Dissaprove Of Bush's Handling Of Iraq War...
IN BRIEF
Monday, September 19, 2005
Abrams
Hopeful that Judith Miller Will Be Released Next Month, But Not So Sure
"Although Miller is
due to be released when the federal grand jury closes its investigation of the
case on Oct. 28, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could seek an extension
or ask that a new grand jury be convened..."
A
Wimp on Genocide
NICHOLAS
D. KRISTOF
op ed new york times
President Bush doesn't often find common cause with Cuba,
Zimbabwe, Iran, Syria and Venezuela. But this month the Bush administration joined with those
countries and others to eviscerate a forthright U.N. statement that nations have
an obligation to respond to genocide.
It was our own Axis of
Medieval, and it reflected the feckless response of President Bush to genocide
in Darfur. It's not that he favors children being tossed onto bonfires or
teenage girls being gang-raped and mutilated, but he can't bother himself to try
very hard to stop these horrors, either.
more. go. read. weep.
Kooks
: Limbaugh, Friday
via Eschaton
comments: Nobody reads these
blogs? What's the latest traffic stat?
Kos alone has nearly as much traffic
as the top 50 conservablogs.
Limbaugh, Friday:
Actually, theThankfully, Mr. (Howard) Fineman has a friend
who has clued him in and now he's written a breathless piece. "In other words,
it's the Beltway versus the Blogosphere," writes Mr. Fineman. "What’s
interesting is that Rosenberg is himself a Beltway creature, a preternaturally
self-assured young insider with a cherubic face and a cold smile. He heads a
group called the New Democratic Network and ran his own campaign for DNC
chair. But the names he utters with reverence are net-based: organizers such
as Eli Pariser and bloggers such as Daily Kos and Atrios. Rosenberg rejects
that notion that the bloggers represent a new 'Internet Left.' It’s not an
ideological rift, he says, but a 'narrative' of independence versus
capitulation: too many Democrats here are too yielding to George W. Bush on
the war in Iraq, on tax policy, you name it. 'What the blogs have developed is
a narrative,' he told me the other day, 'and the narrative is that the
official Washington party has become like Vichy France.' But even though Kerry
eventually outlasted the Rebs, and even though Dean (for some weird reason)
decided to become chair of the Democratic National Committee, the civil war
didn’t end. It just went underground. The first sign of its re-emergence was
Cindy Sheehan. [...]
So what Mr. Fineman is saying here is the Democratic
Party must become what the fringe kooks of the Democrat
blogs, like Daily Kos and Atrios are. They're in the process of it
already happening. How can this not be seen by people? There will be no
patience for moderate Democrats. They're not going to be tolerated.
The new face of the party must be a Cindy Sheehan type. And
the Democrats better start listening, the story says, to people like all these
other people who think that Bush has to be gotten rid of. The thing is, nobody
reads these blogs, folks. Nobody reads them. That's the great thing. Other
bloggers read it and that's it. ~Rush~~~~~~~~~
blogsphere IS active democracy, the one true "party" composed of individuals.
KOS on
leadership and the blogsphere: "...The
press and politicians still think it's a traditional model -- from top to
bottom. So they come to me and think that by "reaching out" to me they can
reach my audience. That's complete crap. It needs to be the exact opposite,
they need to reach out to my audience. And if my audience decides its an
endeavor worthy of support, then I'll get involved.
Much the same way
with the press -- they think I'm somehow leading all these efforts. So I get
credit or blame for things I had nothing to do with. They have a hard time
understanding that netroots activism bubbles up from the bottom. It's unlike
anything in the history of politics.
As I see it, the community is the
"leader", as it filters the mass of information out there and decides what
they should lend their support to. You guys are the gatekeepers. I have a
voice in that process, and it's obviously an outsized voice, but it's still
only a voice in a mass of voices.I consider the netroots the new farm team for
the progressive leaders of tomorrow. I may not have an interest in being one
of those leaders (I'm aware of my own limitations), but I have every intention
in helping create and evangelize the infrastructure that will find, encourage,
promote, and support those leaders. "
Counting bodies - that was then, this is now
INDEPTH: IRAQ
Casualties in the Iraq war
CBC
News Online Updated Aug. 11, 2005
Even before U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad and helped topple a
statue of Saddam Hussein in Paradise Square on April 9, 2003, media
organizations and human rights groups were complaining that no one was keeping
track of the number of people killed in the war that started a month
before.
Some observers believe that measuring the bloodshed on both
sides of the conflict is a useful way to measure the progress of the
war.
That's a belief not shared by U.S. or British military officials.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the top officer in
the U.S. Central Command for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, summed up the
American military's attitude when he told reporters during the Afghan
campaign, "We don't do body counts."
In fact, the Pentagon
stopped counting the people killed by its soldiers after the Vietnam war,
where the numbers publicized were often inflated by field commanders and
Pentagon officials in attempts to show the war was going better than it was.
Those attempts ultimately backfired when the body counts provided fuel for the
anti-war movement.
But the U.S. military, like the British, does count
its own dead and wounded, even if it has tried to limit the public's awareness
of those numbers by preventing the media from covering military funerals or
the coffins returning from Iraq....
Who is
winning the war in Iraq?
U.S. forces say body counts prove
success, despite recent spate of attacks
By Ellen Knickmeyer
The Washington Post
Updated: 5:46 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005
BAGHDAD - Using enemy body counts
as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab
Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest
attacks on Iraq's capital...
Could this be the reason? No, that couldn't be. This
administration and its enablers would never indulge in political calculation.
Monday, September 12, 2005
heads up.
Blackwater Mercenaries
Time to follow Blackwater. Blackwater Security,
Blackwater USA, a rose by any other name. If you have the google toolbar, please
do a search for them. At the bottom of the result page, google offers to Get
the latest news on blackwater with Google Alerts. Take that off-ramp; fill
in the info. We have to follow this closely.
Just to capture the
fascination, an excerpt from Blackwater
Mercenaries: Coming Soon to Your Town,
"It is now obvious how martial law (not officially
declared as such) will work in America in the wake of the devastation of New
Orleans. Instead of federal troops or an influx of National Guard troops sent to
“restore order” (the latter mandated in our now anachronistic Constitution;
see Article 1, Section 8) and empowered to “suppress Insurrections and repel
Invasions,” in Louisiana the state and federal governments have brazenly
violated the Constitution by sending in Blackwater Security and other private
goon squads. “Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater
private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling
the streets of New Orleans,” write Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo. “Some of
the mercenaries say they have been ‘deputized’ by the Louisiana governor;
indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their
chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they
are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the
authority to use lethal force.”
Soon after Katrina slammed into New
Orleans, the media reported the presence of Blackwater goons (and have no doubt,
Blackwater hires “special ops types from South Africa’s former apartheid
regime,” according to James Ridgeway and others, people fairly characterized as
murderous paramilitary goons). Initially, it was reported that Blackwater was
hired to protect the property of New OrleansÂ’ rich elite (and hotels and other
businesses), but soon the company admitted it was “helping the U.S. Coast Guard
Sept. 1 with search-and-rescue missions, lending one of its Puma helicopters for
the missions…. [and] protecting facilities that house ‘priceless art pieces’
and special landmarks” from “looters” who were mostly interested in water and
food, not priceless art. “We are preparing for a rather long deployment for
this work,” Jack Serpas, who works for Securitas Security Services USA Inc.,
another “security” firm, told Marguerite Higgins of the Washington Post on
September 10."
go. read (as mike bermercenaries
Blackwater
mercinagenerosityd through the generousity of the present administration -- your
tax dollars at work -- have been entrenched as forces in Iraq alongside the
military all through the planned invasion of Iraq. Some background:
Bill
Berkowitz's Mercenaries
'R' U.S.
Private Pentagon
contractors are paying soldiers of fortune from Chile and South Africa up to
$4,000 per month for stints in Iraq
"On March 31, four retired Special
Operations forces employed by the private security firm Blackwater Security
Consulting were ambushed, killed, and their bodies mutilated in Fallujah.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle..."
Mercenaries
flock to fill vacuum
April 2,
2004
"Private security operators now make up the third largest armed force in
Iraq, Paul McGeough writes from Baghdad.
When the doors open at Level 5 of
the Palestine Hotel, there's a spit-and-polished Gurkha pointing a high-powered
gun into the lift.
The whole floor and another above it have been taken by
Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction wing of Halliburton, one of the
biggest US firms working in Iraq. And though the linguists of occupation don't
allow the word "mercenary", the Gurkha is part of a 15,000-strong private
security operation that is the third biggest armed force in Iraq.
Their
numbers - and salaries as high as $US1000 ($A1300) a day - attest to the danger
of this Arab version of Dodge City. .."
original
915
National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 *
http://www.accuracy.org
*
ipa@accuracy.org
__________________________
2004
Sadr City
DAVID ENDERS, denders@baghdadbulletin.com
Currently
in D.C., Enders edited Baghdad Bulletin and has spent much of
the last year
in Iraq. He will be returning there in mid-April. He said
today: "In Fallujah, as a mission to avenge the
deaths of
four 'contractors' killed there last week is underway, it is
important to
note: The four men killed, who have often been referred to
as
'civilian contractors' in the press, worked for a private security
company
from North Carolina. Private soldiers in Iraq are combatants
-- they kill
and detain Iraqis.... There are more private soldiers (over
10,000) in
Iraq at the present time than there are British soldiers.... By
closing
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr's newspaper, it appears the U.S. army
has
given the young imam the necessary leverage to call for armed struggle
on
his behalf...."
DOUGLAS VALENTINE, redspruce@comcast.net
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.douglasvalentine.com/
Author
of the book "The Phoenix Program," Valentine said today: "More and
more the
so-called 'counter-insurgency' in Iraq resembles the CIA's
infamous Phoenix
Program in South Vietnam, in which the CIA -- under cover
of military 'cordon
and search' operations -- went into villages that
supported the resistance,
in hopes of catching or killing guerrilla
leaders. The My Lai massacre was
the penultimate example of such a flawed
policy. Today, in a traditional
'cordon and search' (or 'search and
destroy') operation, U.S. Marines closed
all roads into Fallujah...."
AS'AD ABUKHALIL, AAbukhalil@csustan.edu
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
AbuKhalil
is professor of political science at California State University
at
Stanislaus and visiting professor at the University of California
at
Berkeley. He is available to comment on events in Iraq and the
region.
(His book about the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is being released in a
few
weeks.)
ANDY SHALLAL, ashallal@cox.net
http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR041003.htm
In
an IPA news release dated April 10, 2003, just after the fall of
Saddam
Hussein, Shallal said: "When I was a kid in Iraq, we had coups and I
would
go out and jump in the street because it was the coolest thing. It's
like
D.C. when the Redskins win the Super Bowl. The problem is what
comes
after." With the one-year anniversary of Hussein's fall
approaching,
Shallal, founder of Iraqi-Americans for Peaceful Alternatives,
said
today: "Before the incident of the Al-Hawza [newspaper] closing,
most
Shi'ite demonstrations were peaceful.... They are beginning to
realize
that the freedom they were promised is not going to simply
materialize --
no jobs, no security and now no voice.... The U.S. is left
with a cabal of
cronies (the Governing Council) whose allegiance is far more
to the
corporate invaders than it is to the people of Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi
is
holding all the cards -- he now controls the ministry of
finance
(incredible considering his background), trade and oil. It's like
having
Kenneth Lay become the head of the Treasury Department.... One must
ask
oneself: Is this part of the U.S. plan -- to create more disruptions
in
order to further clamp down? Why is the U.S. sending relatively
untrained
Iraqi police to clash with the demonstrators? How can the U.S.
justify
closing a newspaper office -- what happened to freedom and democracy?
...
Fallujah reminds one of Jenin -- the parallel with what is happening
in
Palestine is very stark. Sadr himself has made the connection."
Note: For information on
past crackdowns on
media in Iraq, see: http://web.archive.org/web/20040602154627/http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR092403.htm.
Last
Summer, Human Rights Watch issued an 18-page report, "Violent
Response: The
U.S. Army in al-Fallujah," shortly after U.S. troops fired
on a group of
protestors in Fallujah.
~~~~~~~~~
back totoday... a few Blackwater stories:
Business booming
for private security
Blackwater
buys more local land
© September 11,
2005
Blackwater USA has bought more land and is constructing what will be
Camden CountyÂ’s largest building, while plans to move the companyÂ’s aviation
arm to neighboring Currituck County may be in jeopardy.
Last m onth,
Blackwater USA bought a little more than 351 acres in Camden County and 60 acres
in Currituck County as part of the same tract, according to a deed in Camden
County offices.
The security and weapons training company is also
constructing a 66,569-square-foot, two-story building with nearly 300 rooms,
according to blueprints. BlackwaterÂ’s real estate is owned by a subsidiary
called E&J Holdings LLC.
Plans for the building show a series of
smaller rooms that will, among other uses, serve as classrooms and offices for
company officials, including the company president, two conference rooms and a
cafeteria. When finished, probably in November, the building would be the
largest in Camden County, said Dave Parks, chief inspector for the
county.
The current lodge and office building is about 9,000 square feet,
according to county tax records.
The county approved plans Tuesday for
Blackwater to draw 6,000 gallons of water per day from CamdenÂ’s reverse osmosis
plant. Blackwater currently draws water from wells, said Dave Credle, the county
water system manager.
Blackwater spokesman Paul Behrends would not
comment on the recently bought land. The new building will sit on property
previously owned by Blackwater.
Blackwater USA, with 330 permanent
employees and 5,000 independent contractors, specializes in security services,
marksmanship and anti-terrorism training. The company lists its headquarters as
Moyock and owns a little more than 4,646 acres in Currituck County. But all of
the company buildings and training facilities are in Camden County on parts of
1,130 acres adjacent to the Currituck property. The latest land addition brings
the total Camden tract to about 1,481 acres.
Blackwater built a paved
training highway divided into three different tracks on 90 acres in Camden last
year. The highway is used for instruction in protecting officials, avoiding
terrorist attacks in vehicles and high- speed chase techniques, among other
things, according to the companyÂ’s Web site.
Last year in Pasquotank
County, just west of Camden County, Blackwater opened a 40,000-square-foot
target manufacturing plant, employing about 40 people.
The company
announced last year that it would move its aviation arm from Florida to
Currituck County A irport in Maple, bringing about 25 jobs and about 10
aircraft. The project stalled after a dispute over airport ownership between
Currituck and the state dragged on for months. Now, Blackwater A viation could
go elsewhere, said Currituck County Commissioner Owen Etheridge.
“If
they donÂ’t come, there are many other entities looking favorably at the
airport,” he said.
Currituck CountyÂ’s economic developer Wayne Leary
would not say what BlackwaterÂ’s plans are for the Currituck airport..." more.
go. read.
Overkill:
Feared Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
by Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo
"[...]
What is most disturbing is the claim of several
Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the
federal and Louisiana state governments.
Blackwater is one of the leading
private "security" firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It
has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US
diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to
international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of
their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings
sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah
that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
As the
threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates
even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of
Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons.
This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass' claim that "Only law enforcement
are allowed to have weapons."
Officially, Blackwater says it forces are
in New Orleans to "join the Hurricane Relief Effort." A statement on the
company's website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security
services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since
begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties.
But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2
Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law
enforcement activities including "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting
criminals."
That raises a key question: under what authority are
Blackwater's men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department,
Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire
Blackwater or other private security. "We believe we've got the right mix of
personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of
public safety." he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several
Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said
they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the
Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps
organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore
a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been "deputized" by
the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also
to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through
the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New
York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to
us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and
wielding automatic weapons. "Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?" they
asked. One of the police officers responded, "There are a bunch of them around
here," and pointed down the road.
"Blackwater?" we asked. "The guys who
are in Iraq?"
"Yeah," said the officer. "They're all over the
place."
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran
into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their
arms.
"When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that
in?,'" said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his
neck in a carrying case with the phrase "Operation Iraqi Freedom" printed on it.
After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a "State Department issued
level 5, explosion proof BMW," he said he was "just trying to get back to Kirkuk
(in the north of Iraq) where the real action is." Later we overheard him on his
cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem.
That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in
Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But,
as one mercenary said, they've been told they could be in New Orleans for up to
6 months. "This is a trend," he told us. "You're going to see a lot more guys
like us in these situations."
If Blackwater's reputation and record in
Iraq are any indication of the kind of "services" the company offers, the people
of New Orleans have much to fear."
aporia heights
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