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The Weekly Spin [01 Jul 2006|11:20am] THIS WEEK'S NEWS == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. Pro-War "Vets for Freedom" Tied to Bush's PR Team 2. Hadji Girl == SPIN OF THE DAY == 1. Kids to Kraft: Where's the Wheat? 2. U.S. Leads Effort To Shorten EU's REACH 3. Drug Companies Fail Transparency Test 4. Call Goes Out For PR Industry Makeover Proposals 5. CSR "Preventing Progress," Concludes Study 6. CanWest Pushes Drug Ads in Canada 7. Life and Lobbying Go On, After Abramoff 8. Afghanistan's Media War 9. Nuking Hearts and Minds in Britain 10. Republicans Plot Pro-War Strategy to Win in November 11. Benador Asks: Are You With the Fabricators or the Terrorists? 12. Shell Oil Execs To Press the Flesh 13. Pentagon Calls SOS for Foreign Media Work 14. Ethics All Clear for Election Front Group ( Read more... ) Suck it, Trebek

Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Set For June Or July [01 Jun 2006|12:36pm] McGovern: Staged terror attacks across Europe, US "probable" in order to justify invasion Former CIA analyst and Presidential advisor Ray McGovern, fresh from his heated public confrontation with Donald Rumsfeld, fears that staged terror attacks across Europe and the US are probable in order to justify the Bush administration's plan to launch a military strike against Iran, which he thinks will take place in June or July. Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, McGovern was asked about the timetable for war in Iran and said that behind the diplomatic smokescreen, the final chess pieces were being moved into position. "There is already one carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the last report I have at least - they will all be there in another week or so." "The propaganda has been laid, the aircraft carriers are in place, it doesn't take much to fly the bombers out of British and US bases - cruse missiles are at the ready, Israel is egging us on," said McGovern. McGovern said Iran's likely response to a US air strike would be threefold - mobilizing worldwide terrorist cells that would make Al-Qaeda look like a girls netball team - utilizing its cruise missile arsenal to attack US ships and sending fighters into Iraq to attack US forces. "The Iranians can easily send three divisions of revolutionary guard troops right over....the long border with Iraq," said McGovern, stating that the local Sunni population of Iraq would welcome such an invasion. The turmoil caused by such an action would lead the US to tap its so-called 'mini-nuke' arsenal said McGovern, opening a new Pandora's box of chaos. McGovern highlighted President Bush's all time record low approval ratings as a reason for launching an attack on Iran to again whip up false patriotic fervour. "I can see Karl Rove saying, 'look what you need to do is become a war president again, get us involved with something pretty big here and then strut around and say you can't vote for a bunch of Democrats to pull the rug out from under me while there's a war going on'." McGovern drew a comparison with the concillatory cold war stance of Russia and JFK's decision to respond in a similar manner, and the Iranian President's letter which was immediately dismissed by the Bush administration. JFK's approach saved the US from potential nuclear anihalation while Bush's actions put the US in severe danger as Russia and China give ominous mixed signals on what their response to a US strike on Iran will be. McGovern lambasted Bush's inner circle as uniformly lacking any real military experience and characterized them as a cabal already hell-bent on war. McGovern entertained the notion that western governments and intelligence hierarchies could potentially stage terror attacks in Europe and the US either before or after an invasion of Iran. "That's altogether possible," said McGovern. "I would say even probable because they need some proximate cause, some casus belli to justify really unleashing things on Iran....I would put very little past this crew - their record of dissembling and disingenuousness is unparalleled." McGovern said that Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld, fearing impeachment and Enron-style criminal proceedings, are urging President Bush to launch a war in order to create a climate unconducive to lengthy investigations and impeachment proceedings. Asked to cite specifically when we should expect to see an attack launched, McGovern said, "I think we all agree that an attack is likely before the election and we all agree that it has to do largely with the election - as for timing I see a likelihood that it could come as early as late June or early July, most of my colleagues predict August, September, maybe an October surprise even." "My thinking is that for it to be October that would be so crass and so transparent that even this crowd would shy away from making it so obvious," said McGovern. McGovern is set to appear along with a host of other respected and credible whistleblowers at the American Scholars Symposium at the end of this month. 1 things Trebek suck| Suck it, Trebek

infowars news [01 Jun 2006|12:24pm] Latest Neo-Con Lie: Iraq Safer Than Washington DC Old and distorted figures used to sell wonderful war Neo-Con publication claims that were parroted by the New York Sun, Rush Limbaugh and others purporting Iraq to be safer than Washington DC have been thoroughly debunked as having used old and distorted figures. On Monday under the headline, 'Iraq Less Violent than Washington, D.C.', newsmax reported, "Despite media coverage purporting to show that escalating violence in Iraq has the country spiraling out of control, civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C. Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000. While that number sounds high - astonishingly, the Iowa Republican discovered that it's significantly lower than a number of major American cities, including the nation's capital. "It's 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C.," King told Crowley." As to be expected, the warhawks' argument is based around phony numbers, illogical comparisons and selective data. Think Progress crunches the numbers to illustrate the fraud. Not a scene you're likely to see in DC. For a start the King report uses outdated 2002 data for Washington DC, which just happens to be the same year snipers Malvo and Muhammad inflated the casualty numbers of violent deaths. 2004 data gives the real figure of 35.8 deaths per 100,000 in DC. The Pentagon's own report released yesterday lists an average of 94 violent casualties per day in Iraq between February and May of 2006. This translates into 34,310 deaths per year in Iraq. Iraq's 26.7 million population, plus another 150,000 coalition forces gives us a number of 128 deaths per 100,000. The Boston Globe also reports that insurgent attacks are at their highest levels since records began. King is comparing one American city, known as the 'murder capital' of the USA, to the entire country of Iraq. Not to Baghdad, Tikrit or Fallujah, but to the entire country, and including large swathes of population numbers that are untouched by the turmoil due to their remote rural locations and don't know a car bomb from a laptop computer. This is blatant attempt to distort the figures in order to arrive at a pre-ordained result. Comparing the entire country of Iraq to America and not just DC, the murder rate for all of America in 2004 was 5.5 per 100,000. In addition, King's Iraq figure does not include deaths from civil homicides, only from war. The Wall Street Journal breaks this down further. In March 2006 GOP congressional candidate Howard Kaloogian was forced to apologize after his campaign website carried a photograph of a peaceful city corner (seen above) with the following caption. "We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq'' which is "much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it -- in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.'' Several eagle eyed bloggers began to notice details that weren't quite consistent with Iraqi streets - people holding hands, wearing western clothing, and billboards written in Turkish. In reality the photograph depicted a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey. The tell-tale signs are explained in the graphic below. Despite the Bushite media's insistence that there is some kind of liberal conspiracy to hype violence in Iraq and make the administration look incompetent, the reality is that the turmoil is indicative of a complete success on the part of Bush and his handlers. Neo-conservative and Israeli strategy documents dating back to the eighties describe an agenda to break up Iraq into different sectarian factions and promote inter-Arab conflict. From that perspective the quagmire is exactly what the PNAC warmongers desire and the left-wing and progressive blog sites should avow themselves of this information if they wish to truly understand what is unfolding in Iraq. Suck it, Trebek

US Marines gunned down 24 Iraqi civilians to avenge their comrade [01 Jun 2006|12:12pm] Relatives and neighbors gathered near the shrouded bodies of civilians said to have been killed by marines in Haditha, Iraq, in November. "They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart." - Observations of Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones after the Haditha Massacre On November 19, 2005, Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division based at Camp Pendleton allegedly killed 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in a three to five hour rampage. One victim was a 76-year-old amputee in a wheelchair holding a Koran. A mother and child bent over as if in prayer were also among the fallen. "I pretended that I was dead when my brother's body fell on me, and he was bleeding like a faucet," said Safa Younis Salim, a 13-year-old girl who survived by faking her death. Other victims included girls and boys ages 14, 10, 5, 4, 3 and 1. The Washington Post reported, "Most of the shots ... were fired at such close range that they went through the bodies of the family members and plowed into walls or the floor, doctors at Haditha's hospital said." The executions of 24 unarmed civilians were conducted in apparent retaliation for the death of Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas when a small Marine convoy hit a roadside bomb earlier that day. A statement issued by a US Marine Corps spokesman the next day claimed: "A US Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another." A subsequent Marine version of the events said the victims were killed inadvertently in a running gun battle with insurgents. Both of these stories were false and the Marines knew it. They were blatant attempts to cover up the atrocity, disguised as "collateral damage." The Marine Corps paid $38,000 in compensation to relatives of the victims, according to a report in the Denver Post. These types of payments are made only to compensate for accidental deaths inflicted by US troops. This was a relatively large amount, indicating the Marines knew something was not right during that operation, according to Mike Coffman, the Colorado state treasurer who served in Iraq recently as a Marine reservist. Congressman John Murtha, D-Pa., a former Marine, was briefed on the Haditha investigation by Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee. Murtha said Sunday, "The reports I have from the highest level: No firing at all. No interaction. No military action at all in this particular incident. It was an explosive device, which killed a Marine. From then on, it was purely shooting people." The Haditha massacre did not become public until Time Magazine ran a story about it in March of this year. Time had turned over the results of its investigation, including a videotape, to the US military in January. Only then did the military launch an investigation. These Marines "suffered a total breakdown in morality and leadership, with tragic results," a US official told the Los Angeles Times. "Marines over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," Murtha said. Murtha's statement both indicts and exonerates the Marines of the crime of murder. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Premeditation and deliberation - cold-blooded planning - constitute malice. Complete self-defense can be demonstrated by an honest and reasonable belief in the need to defend oneself against death or great bodily injury. The Marines might be able to show that, in the wake of the killing of their buddy Terrazas by an improvised explosive device, they acted in an honest belief that they might be killed in this hostile area. But the belief that unarmed civilians inside their homes posed a deadly threat to the Marines would be unreasonable. An honest but unreasonable belief in the need to defend constitutes imperfect self-defense, which negates the malice required for murder, and reduces murder to manslaughter. Many of our troops suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, a Marine in Kilo Company, did not participate in the Haditha massacre. TJ Terrazas was his best friend. Briones, who was 20 years old at the time, saw Terrazas after he was killed. "He had a giant hole in his chin. His eyes were rolled back up in his skull," Briones said of his buddy. "A lot of people were mad," Briones said. "Everyone had just a [terrible] feeling about what had happened to TJ." After the massacre, Briones was ordered to take photographs of the victims and help carry their bodies out of their homes. He is still haunted by what he had to do that day. Briones picked up a young girl who was shot in the head. "I held her out like this," he said, extending his arms, "but her head was bobbing up and down and the insides fell on my legs." "I used to be one of those Marines who said that post-traumatic stress is a bunch of bull," said Briones, who has gotten into serious trouble since he returned home. "But all this stuff that keeps going through my head is eating me up. I need immediate help." A key quote from a Marine officer could be used to show premeditation - and thus malice - in support of a possible murder charge against the shooters. An article in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune which is reprinted from the New York Times News Service, cites a report by "one Marine officer" that "inspectors suspected at least part of the motive for the killings was to send a message to local residents that they would 'pay a price' for failing to warn the Marines about insurgent activity in the area." Curiously, that paragraph is missing from the same story in both the print and online editions of yesterday's New York Times. For some reason, the Times had second thoughts about that paragraph, and removed it, after the copy had been sent to other papers over the wire. Regardless of how those who may ultimately be charged with murder fare in court, a more significant question is whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld will be charged with war crimes on a theory of command responsibility. Willful killing is considered a war crime under the US War Crimes Act. People who commit war crimes can be punished by life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies. Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to stop or prevent it. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are knowingly prosecuting a war of aggression in Iraq. Under the United Nations Charter, a country cannot invade another country unless it is acting in self-defense or it has permission from the Security Council. Iraq had invaded no country for 11 years before "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and the council never authorized the invasion. A war that violates the UN Charter is a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg Tribunal, aggressive war is the supreme international crime. Hagee flew from Washington to Iraq last week to brief US forces on the Geneva Conventions, the international laws of armed conflict and the US military's own rules of engagement. He is reportedly telling the troops they should use deadly force "only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful." This creates a strong inference that our leaders had not adequately briefed our troops on how to behave in this war. This, combined with the evidence that US forces are committing torture based on policies from the highest levels of government, as well as reports of war crimes committed in places such as Fallujah, served to put Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld on notice that Marines would likely commit war crimes in places such as Haditha. Our highest leaders thus should have known this would happen, and they should be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act. Murtha told ABC there was "no question" the US military tried to "cover up" the Haditha incident, which Murtha called "worse than Abu Ghraib." Murtha's high-level briefings indicated, "There was an investigation right afterward, but then it was stifled," he said. "Who covered it up, why did they cover it up, why did they wait so long?" Murtha asked on "This Week" on ABC. "We don't know how far it goes. It goes right up the chain of command." Murtha said the decision to pay compensation to families of the victims is strong evidence that officers up the chain of command knew what had happened in Haditha. "That doesn't happen at the lowest level. That happens at the highest level before they make a decision to make payments to the families." Haditha is likely the tip of the iceberg in Bush's illegal war of aggression in Iraq. "We have a Haditha every day," declared Muhanned Jasim, an Iraqi merchant. "Were [those killed in Haditha] the first ... Iraqis to be killed for no reason?" asked pharmacist Ghasan Jayih. "We're used to being killed. It's normal now to hear 25 Iraqis are killed in one day." "We have a Fallujah and Karbala every day," Jasim added, referring to the 2004 slaughter by US forces in Fallujah and bombings by resistance fighters in the Shiite city of Karbala. In Fallujah, US soldiers opened fire on houses, and US helicopters fired on and killed women, old men and young children, according to Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein. "What we're seeing more of now, and these incidents will increase monthly, is the end result of fuzzy, imprecise national direction combined with situational ethics at the highest levels of this government," said retired Air Force Col. Mike Turner, a former planner at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Senator John Warner, R-Va., head of the Armed Services Committee, pledged to hold hearings on the Haditha killings at the conclusion of the military investigation. "I'll do exactly what we did with Abu Ghraib," he told ABC News. Warner's pledge provides little solace to those who seek justice. Congress has yet to hold our leaders to account for the torture by US forces at Abu Ghraib prison. Only a few low-ranking soldiers have been prosecuted. The Bush administration has swept the scandal under the rug. During the Vietnam War, the US military spoke of winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. But in 1968, US soldiers massacred about 400 unarmed elderly men, women and children in the small village of My Lai. A cover-up ensued, and it wasn't until Seymour Hersh broke the story that it became public. "America in the view of many Iraqis has no credibility. We do not believe what they say is correct," said Sheik Sattar al-Aasaaf, a tribal leader in Anbar province, which includes Haditha. "US troops are very well-trained and when they shoot, it isn't random but due to an order to kill Iraqis. People say they are the killers." Graffiti on one of the Haditha victims' houses reads, "Democracy assassinated the family that was here." More: Haditha: Massacre and cover-up? Marines 'to face charges over the Haditha massacre' On a Marine Base, Disbelief Over Charges 1 things Trebek suck| Suck it, Trebek

Bush admits to mistakes - with a smirk [28 May 2006|03:11pm] In a joint news conference, Bush said he had used inappropriate "tough talk" -- such as saying "bring 'em on" in reference to insurgents -- that he said "sent the wrong signal to people." Richard Wolffe from Newsweek, joined Keith Olbermann and says that Bush's more realistic tone and mannerisms seemed rehearsed: "And for me the big giveaway was at the end of that answer, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but the President flashed a big grin to those of us sitting in the front rows. It didn't seem that he was quite as contrite as his performance." Another Staged Charade From The War Criminals Bush/Blair press conference feigns Iraqi support for Globalist occupation forces Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | May 26 2006 Thursday night's Bush/Blair press conference was the latest in a long line of carefully choreographed, staged and scripted, PR charades designed to fool the watching audience into thinking that there was anyone outside of the Globalist coalition of the killing and their dwindling army of sycophantic cheerleaders that actually supported the never ending occupation of Iraq. White House press conferences are as staged as an Arnold Schwarzenegger photo op, with scripted questions that are known beforehand and scripted answers. None more so than Bush's 'humble' admission that his "bring 'em on" challenge wasn't exactly going to win hearts and minds in the middle east, for which the lapdog media are slavishly back-slapping Bush this morning. The last time Bush was asked if he had made any mistakes at a White House press conference was April 13th 2004. On this occasion Bush's reaction was a national embarrassment to rival trying to open a locked door in China, and an insight into the true nature of these phony media spectacles. Anyone who watched the TV footage witnessed the embarrassing sight of Bush pausing for at least five seconds and saying absolutely nothing. Bush's admonition that the question should have been written 'ahead of time' (like the rest) proves that this was an impromptu question in an otherwise carefully scripted briefing. Bush's bizarre response caused waves of speculation that his answers were being fed through to him via an ear piece and this became a major talking point during the Bush-Kerry election debates. "John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet," said Bush as he puffed out his cheeks, fumbled for words, and faltered like a deer in the headlights. During a prime time press conference on March 6th 2003, a flustered Bush admitted that the event was "scripted" after a reporter interrupted him looking down at his notes to see which journalist to next call upon. The word 'scripted' was later excised from numerous mainstream media transcripts of the event. Bush's infamous staged conversation with US troops ordered to paint a rosy picture of conditions in Iraq was exposed when video tape of Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, coaching the troops on what their choreographed answers would be was aired. Thursday night's charade was kept carefully within controlled parameters as Bush and Blair discarded every question with the same canned response. Blair's insistence on ducking questions about the illegality of invading Iraq by dismissing it as past tense and harping on about how we must forget about that and concentrate on rebuilding the country needs to be put in its proper context. This would be like breaking into your neighbors house, killing his wife and children, smashing up the place and then telling the police that the reasons and consequences of doing all this are not important because the house is a mess and in need of renovation. Hailing the installation of another puppet government as a turning point, Bush and Blair carefully avoided questions about when troops will be withdrawn. Press speculation that a large scale withdrawal is imminent has been heard before and always turns out to be baseless. The only point at which troops will be withdrawn is when they are needed to bludgeon another broken backed third world country in the name of democracy. Blair's indignant preaching about Al-Qaeda in Iraq spoiling his Straussian vision of global democracy (international world government by force) was propped up by Bush's reference to the mythical Al-Zarqawi presence and the determination of the terrorists to succeed. The fact is that the 'insurgents' are comprised almost entirely of Iraqis and half of Iraqis actually support their goals. On the other hand polls have shown that Bush and Blair's imperial occupation forces garner no more than 18% approval. Iraqis say the country is worse than it was under Saddam and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said human rights abuses had eclipsed those of the deposed Hussein. If Chinese troops occupied Los Angeles, bombed villages, told citizens they couldn't re-enter their homes without chipped ID cards, engaged in untold massacres, set up torture camps, took control of all free medial, and imprisoned anyone who protested their presence, would Americans who fought back be characterized as insurgents and terrorists? Suck it, Trebek

news [28 May 2006|02:38pm] U.S. Military Admits Iraq Massacre -- Months After Press Reported It NEW YORK Months after the killings were uncovered by the press, the U.S. military finally appears ready to admit that a massacre took place in an Iraqi village last November 19 and then was covered up by soldiers or officers. "A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians," Congressional, military and Pentagon officials confirm, The New York Times reports Friday. "Two lawyers involved in discussions about individual marines' defenses said they thought the investigation could result in charges of murder, a capital offense. "That possibility and the emerging details of the killings have raised fears that the incident could be the gravest case involving misconduct by American ground forces in Iraq." Time magazine first brought the murders to lights in the U.S. in March, after months of charges in the Arab press. Knight Ridder and the Associated Press followed with stories. The main evidence was a video shot by a local journalism student, plus testimony of villagers to human rights workers. It is not known why four months passed after the incident before the U.S. media covered the story, and six months until the military confirmed the episode, sparking more anger against Americans in Iraq. "When these investigations come out, there's going to be a firestorm," retired Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, formerly a top lawyer for the Marine Corps, told The Washignton Post for a Friday story. "It will be worse than Abu Ghraib -- nobody was killed at Abu Ghraib." An Army lawyer who has heard some accounts of the investigation told thge Post, "It's a lot more serious than people thought at the beginning. It's really bad timing," coming as the repercussions of the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal are waning. The military had first said that the victims died from a homemade bomb, and later, in a crossfire. This is how the Times reported the incident last November 20: "The Marine Corps said Sunday that 15 Iraqi civilians and a marine were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad....The bombing on Saturday in Haditha, on the Euphrates in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, was aimed at a convoy of American marines and Iraqi Army soldiers, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman. After the explosion, gunmen opened fire on the convoy. At least eight insurgents were killed in the firefight, the captain said." Now, the Times reports, evidence "indicates that the civilians were killed during a sustained sweep by a small group of marines that lasted three to five hours and included shootings of five men standing near a taxi at a checkpoint, and killings inside at least two homes that included women and children, officials said. "That evidence, described by Congressional, Pentagon and military officials briefed on the inquiry, suggested to one Congressional official that the killings were 'methodical in nature.'" Three Marine officers — the battalion commander and two company commanders in Haditha at the time — have been relieved of duty, although officials have declined to link that action to the probe, the Times noted. Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a retired Marine colonel, told the Times that the allegations indicated that "this was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians." He added, "This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity." Americans Against Spying A majority of Americans disapprove of the NSA’s domestic phone call monitoring, according to a poll by USA Today. More than two-thirds are concerned the program goes far beyond phone calls into banking records and Internet usage. Sixty-two percent want immediate congressional hearings. Anti-Terror Tool Turned on Muckrakers Now it seems the Patriot Act is being exploited by the FBI to root out reporters’ confidential sources, by conducting telephone searches that no longer require a judge’s authorization. As a senior federal official told ABC: "It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration." Lobbyist Donations As High As Ever (PDF) The midterm elections this fall will supposedly be all about the "culture of corruption" in Washington, wherein noble-minded reformers—most of them Democrats, presumably—will rail against lobbyists who are perverting and distorting government. So far, though, lobbyists are just carrying on as usual. Public Citizen released a report today looking at donations by lobbyists and their PACs—in 2006, lobbyist donations to members of Congress are on pace to be about 10 percent higher than they were in 2004 (totaling $34 million), which were in turn 90 percent higher than they were in 2000 (totaling $18 million). Interestingly, Jack Abramoff is only the 30th-ranked lobbyist donor. And not surprisingly, most of the money goes to members of the Senate and House appropriations committees, which ultimately decides how federal money gets spent. Supposedly this is different from the actual bribery that took place when Duke Cunningham was sitting on the House appropriations committee, but the dividing line here seems pretty hazy. Zogby poll shows interest in new Septmber 11 investigation A recent Zogby poll found that over 70 million Americans distrust the official explanation of the September 11 attacks. 42% believe there has been some kind of coverup; 45% believe that Congress on an international tribunal should investigate the attacks again. An August, 2004 poll showed that nearly half of New Yorkers believed that U.S. officials consciously allowed the attacks to happen, and 2/3 of New Yorkers want a new investigation of the events. The report of the September 11 Commission left much to be desired in terms of White House culpability, and omitted information about the collapse of WTC Building 7. Like a Teenager with a Credit Card When Bush took office the nation’s debt ceiling — Think: The limit on your Master Card — was $5.95 trillion dollars. That’s some mad cheddar. But less than two months after successfully petitioning Congress to raise the debt ceiling by $653 billion — the fourth hike in five years — the president has tucked a provision in to his latest budget plan that would boost our nation’s credit limit by another $653 billion. Bush practices a brand of ‘fiscal conservatism’ that would only make sense to Orwell. With this fifth hike, our debt ceiling would rise to nearly $10 trillion. For those of you who lie to see the zeroes, that’s $10,000,000,000,000 Operation Mock Zarqawi After admitting that operation "Villainize Zarqawi" had been too effective for its own good, the military is now seeking to throw the propaganda machine into reverse, tearing down the "terrorist mastermind" whose image they boosted with such cold calculation. Once again, The New York Times appears to be the preferred vessel to disseminate the Pentagon’s agitprop. On its front page this weekend, the Times reports on the zany "outtakes" of a Zarqawi terror video that the Pentagon claims American "troops had discovered amongst a trove of information about Mr. Zarqawi last month in the dangerous town of Yusifiyah, just south of Baghdad." In the video Zarqawi is seen sporting white New Balance sneaks and fumbling with an automatic weapon, which one of his handlers burns himself on by holding its barrel. The Times parrots the Pentagon’s preferred line: The message Mr. Zarqawi wants to deliver has always been clear: That Shiites—or "apostates"—and anyone who helps the new Iraqi government or the American military faces a horrible death... But with the release of the out-takes today the American military sought to send a very different message: That Mr. Zarqawi is a poseur who can’t even fire a basic infantry weapon and walks around in comfortable shoes. As the Washington Post story from two weeks ago makes clear, however, the Pentagon itself had sought to villainize Zarqawi and make him the face of anti-American terror and sectarian violence in Iraq. It quotes one high ranking military officer as saying: "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will—made him more important than he really is." Something about this counter-propaganda campaign is incredibly fishy. In particular because Zarqawi is seen walking around on his own two feet, when the reason he’d been reported to have entered Iraq in the first place was to seek medical treatment for an injured leg, which many reports said was amputated. Widespread Torture From Amnesty International: Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq and other locations. While the government continues to assert that abuses resulted for the most part from the actions of a few "aberrant" soldiers and lack of oversight, there is clear evidence that much of the ill-treatment has stemmed directly from officially santioned procedures and policies, including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for use in Guantanamo and later exported to Iraq. While it seems that some practices, such as "waterboarding", were reserved for high value detainees, others appear to have been routinely applied during detentions and interrogations in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq. The latter include hooding, stripping and shackling of detainees in painful positions as well as using military dogs to intimidate blindfolded detainees; prolonged isolation, deprivation of food and sleep and exposure to extremes of temperature also appear to have been common practice to punish detainees for failing to cooperate or to "soften them up" for interrogation. Many of the techniques listed above, even if applied in isolation or for limited periods, would in Amnesty International’s view violate the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 16. Such techniques have reportedly been used against "war on terror" detainees in combination and for prolonged periods, causing severe pain and suffering (physical, mental or both) and, being inflicted intentionally by officials for the purpose of obtaining information, thereby amount to torture.(4) Some of the approved techniques, such as forced shaving of facial and head hair, stripping and the use of dogs to inspire fear, appear to have had a specific discriminatory or racist application in the case of Muslim detainees. It is now known that at least thirty-four detainees who died in US custody have had their deaths listed by the army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides. The true number of such deaths may be higher as there is evidence that delays, cover-ups and deficiencies in investigations have hampered the collection of evidence. The Worst President in History?: One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush (Rolling Stone) George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history. ...Like a Hole in the Head "I think Jeb would be a great president... I would like to see Jeb run." Suck it, Trebek

the Weekly Spin [03 May 2006|01:36pm] THIS WEEK'S NEWS == BLOG POSTINGS == 1. Television Stations Respond... And It's Worse Than You Think 2. Network neutrality, telecom company cash and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) 3. Neil Young Clobbers the Thought Police 4. Welcome To the Launch of Congresspedia == SPIN OF THE DAY == 1. Wal-Mart's Changing PR 2. Chertoff Proposes Disaster Embedding 3. Lincoln Group Work In Iraq "Completely Inept" 4. Connecticut Cuts 'Ade at Schools 5. PR Exec: Fake TV News is Good for You! 6. Ketchum Lands Contract To Polish Russia's Image 7. RJR Tobacco's Push to Keep Smoke-Filled Rooms 8. Too Little of a Good Thing 9. The Flacks Are Coming, the Flacks Are Coming! 10. Radio Payola in NH - Politics as Usual? 11. White House Snow Job 12. Learning from, and Spinning, the Chernobyl Disaster ( Read more... ) Suck it, Trebek

Shocked Awe fans and friends, [03 May 2006|01:35pm] I have just moved out of state and it's taking a while to get things grounded around here, however I am not abandoning this journal. Just a heads-up. Suck it, Trebek

record debt under Bush [17 Mar 2006|06:46am] Congress Raises Debt Cap, Fourth Increase Under Bush (Update4) The U.S. Congress approved a $781 billion increase in the federal government's debt limit, the fourth time lawmakers have raised the cap since President George W. Bush took office. The Senate voted 52-48 to increase the legal limit on federal borrowing to $8.97 trillion, up from $8.18 trillion. The House approved the measure last year, meaning the legislation now goes to the president for his signature. Treasury Secretary John Snow warned Congress in increasingly dire terms that the government couldn't keep paying its bills, and risked defaulting on its debt, without an immediate increase in the cap. The ceiling was lifted about 30 minutes after the Treasury postponed the scheduled announcement of the sale of three-month and six-month Treasury bills. An hour later Treasury said it would sell $37 billion in bills. After the vote, Snow said lawmakers had protected ``the full faith and credit of the United States'' and ensured the government ``can deliver on promises already made, such as Social Security and Medicare payments and aid for the victims of the 2005 hurricanes.'' The increase in the debt limit will bring more borrowing and ``possibly a new round of spending,'' said Richard Schlanger, who manages about $4 billion of fixed-income assets, including Treasury bonds, at Pioneer Asset Management in Boston. ``As long as foreigners are willing to finance us, bring it on.'' Lambasting Bush While the vote was never in doubt, Democrats used the occasion to lambaste the administration's fiscal policies. Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, accused Republicans of pushing ``reckless'' policies that had created ``an explosion of debt'' over the course of the past five years. Republicans said the vote was needed to protect the nation's credit. No Democrats voted for the debt-limit increase. Three Republicans voted against it: Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Ensign of Nevada and Conrad Burns of Montana. Lawmakers also rejected, 55-44, a Democratic proposal that would have required the Treasury Department to study the economic and security implications of the nation's foreign-held debt. Overseas Investors ``We're funding a war, we're trying to fund certain programs,'' said Kevin Giddis, head of fixed-income trading at brokerage firm Morgan Keegan Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee. ``We need'' foreign investors. ``We're going to continue to need them because if they go away we're going to have an inflationary situation.'' The government will spend $217 billion on interest on the debt this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. By contrast, federal spending for the Department of Education is $83 billion. The Bush administration is leading the country down ``a reckless course of crushing debt, deficit-financed tax cuts and increasing the burden on the middle class,'' Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, said. Shifting Money For the last month the Treasury has been moving money between government accounts to stay below the debt limit and keep the government running. Snow last week authorized the government to use the $15 billion available in the exchange stabilization fund and issued a ``debt issuance suspension period'' to stop temporarily investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund. The Treasury also redeemed some of the fund's current investments. Last month Snow stopped investing money from the Government Securities Investment Fund in Treasuries, which requires the issuing of notes, and suspended sales of state and local government securities. The Treasury said in January it plans to borrow $188 billion from January to March, the most ever for a single quarter. ``The Fed Chairman's been concerned about the deficit,'' Giddis said, referring to Federal Reserve chief Ben S. Bernanke. ``If the Fed's concerned about anything, we as traders and investors should be concerned as well.'' Fourth Debt Increase This is the fourth time the administration of President George W. Bush has asked lawmakers to raise the debt limit and it brings the ceiling to 70.3 percent of gross domestic product, the highest since the 1997 increase. The four debt-limit increases in the 1990s pushed the ceiling above 70 percent of GDP, though it fell below that level by 2002. Congress complied with the last request, in November 2004, only after the Treasury was forced to delay auctioning bills and notes and move money among government pension funds. Since Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget has gone from four years of surpluses, the longest such run since before the Great Depression, to deficits brought on by a recession, tax cuts, the Sept. 11 attacks, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane damage. Bush last month sent Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request for fiscal 2007 that calls for a deficit of $354 billion, compared with a record $423 billion forecast for this year. The Bush administration says it expects to shave the deficit to less than 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2009, from 3.2 percent this year. The Treasury estimates it will borrow $427 billion in fiscal 2006 and $373 billion in fiscal 2007 to fund government operations, the budget showed. The government borrowed $297 billion in 2005, according to the documents. 1 things Trebek suck| Suck it, Trebek

FAMILY DEMANDS THE TRUTH [09 Mar 2006|07:25am] New inquiry may expose events that led to Pat Tillman’s death Moved in part by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Tillman decided to give up his career, saying he wanted to fight al Qaeda and help find Osama bin Laden. He spurned the Cardinals’ offer of a three year, $3.6 million contract extension and joined the Army in June 2002 along with his brother Kevin, who was playing minor-league baseball for the Cleveland Indians organization. Pat Tillman’s enlistment grabbed the attention of the nation — and the highest levels of the Bush administration. A personal letter from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, thanking him for serving his country, now resides in a storage box, put away by Pat’s widow, Marie. Instead of going to Afghanistan, as the brothers expected, their Ranger battalion was sent to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Tillmans saw combat several times on their way to Baghdad. In early 2004, they finally were assigned to Afghanistan... Tillman’s death came at a sensitive time for the Bush administration — just a week before the Army’s abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq became public and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon immediately announced that Tillman had died heroically in combat with the enemy, and President Bush hailed him as “an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror.” His killing was widely reported by the media, including conservative commentators such as Ann Coulter, who called him “an American original — virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.” His May 3, 2004, memorial in San Jose drew 3,500 people and was nationally televised. Not until five weeks later, as Tillman’s battalion was returning home, did officials inform the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by his fellow soldiers... A soldier who on April 23 burned Tillman’s bullet riddled body armor — which would have been evidence in a friendly-fire investigation — testified that he did so because there was no doubt it was friendly fire that killed Tillman. Two days later, Tillman’s uniform and vest also were burned because they were soaked in blood and considered a biohazard. Tillman’s uniform also was burned. The officer who led the first investigation testified that when he was given responsibility for the probe the morning after Tillman’s death, he was informed that the cause was “potential fratricide.’’ After they received the friendly-fire notification May 28, the Tillmans began a public campaign seeking more information. But it was only when the Tillmans began angrily accusing the Pentagon of a coverup, in June 2005, that the Army apologized for the delay, issuing a statement blaming “procedural misjudgments and mistakes.” -- Legal liability. In testimony on Nov. 14, the officer who conducted the first investigation said that he thought some Rangers could have been charged with “criminal intent,” and that some Rangers committed “gross negligence.” The legal difference between the two terms is roughly similar to the distinction between murder and involuntary manslaughter... Throughout the controversy, the Tillman family has been reluctant to cause a media stir. Mary noted that Pat shunned publicity, refusing all public comment when he enlisted and asking the Army to reject all media requests for interviews while he was in service. Pat’s widow, Marie, and his brother Kevin have not become publicly involved in the case, and they declined to comment for this article. Yet other Tillman family members are less reluctant to show Tillman’s unique character, which was more complex than the public image of a gung-ho patriotic warrior. He started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.) Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.” Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, told one anecdote that took place during the March 2003 invasion as the Rangers moved up through southern Iraq. “I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.” Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry. Senior Chief Petty Officer Stephen White — a Navy SEAL who served with Pat and Kevin for four months in Iraq and was the only military member to speak at Tillman’s memorial — said Pat “wasn’t very fired up about being in Iraq” and instead wanted to go fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said both Pat and Kevin (who has a degree in philosophy) “were amazingly well-read individuals … very firm in some of their beliefs, their political and religious or not so religious beliefs.” Baer recalled that Tillman encouraged him in his ambitions as an amateur poet. “I would read him my poems, and we would talk about them,” Baer said. “He helped me grow as an individual.” Tillman subscribed to the Economist magazine, and a fellow soldier said Tillman created a makeshift base library of classic novels so his platoon mates would have literature to read in their down time. He even brought gourmet coffee to brew for his platoon in the field in Afghanistan. Baer said Tillman was popular among his fellow soldiers and had no enemies. “The guys who killed Pat were his biggest fans,” he said. “They were really wrecked afterward.” He called Tillman “this amazing positive force who really brought our whole platoon together. He had this great energy. Everybody loved him.” His former comrades and family recall Tillman as a born leader yet remarkably humble. White, the Navy SEAL, recalls one day when “some 19-year-old Ranger came and ordered him to cut an acre of grass. And Pat just did it, he cut that grass, he didn’t complain. He could have taken millions of dollars playing football, but instead he was just taking orders like that.” Mary Tillman says that’s how Pat would have wanted to be remembered, as an individual, not as a stock figure or political prop. But she also believes “Pat was a real hero, not what they used him as.” For the moment, all that is left are the memories and the thick binders spread across Mary Tillman’s dining room table in San Jose. As she waits for the Pentagon investigators to finish their new probe, she wonders whether they will ask the hard questions. Like other family members, “I just want accountability,” she said. “I want answers.” Hannity, Coulter "don't believe" that Tillman liked Noam Chomsky, opposed Iraq war; Tillman's mother disagrees On the September 27 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter told co-host Alan Colmes that they "don't believe" a report that Army Ranger Pat Tillman was a fan of leftist author Noam Chomsky, opposed the Iraq war, and planned to vote for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in the 2004 presidential election. But according to a September 25 San Francisco Chronicle report that Colmes cited, Tillman's mother said that he had planned to meet privately with Chomsky and that "Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war." Tillman, a former pro football star, served in Iraq before being killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. Suck it, Trebek

story of the hour [02 Mar 2006|04:30am] If you're not outraged, you're still not paying attention! Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina AP Exclusive: Video Shows Bush, Chertoff Clearly Warned Before Hurricane Katrina Struck By MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON WASHINGTON Mar 2, 2006 (AP)— On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's fateful landfall, President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved. All of it was captured on videotape. The Associated Press obtained the confidential government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans their own inside glimpse into the government's fateful final Katrina preparations after months of fingerpointing and political recriminations. "My gut tells me … this is a bad one and a big one," then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. The president didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared." The footage along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by AP show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster. A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and Brown, then the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome. "I'm concerned about … their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall. The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the footage. "I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing," Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times." Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts though not the videotapes from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago. "There's nothing new or insightful on these tapes," Knocke said. "We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate's review and are working with them on their recommendation." New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration's Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage from an AP reporter's camera. "I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now," Nagin said. "I was listening to what people were saying they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware." Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response: Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.( Read more... ) Videotapes of Bush pre-Katrina getting warnings Suck it, Trebek

news [02 Mar 2006|04:29am] Congressional GOP Did Not Want to Explain (Port) Sale to Public For the past two campaign cycles, Karl Rove has successfully painted Democrats as soft on national security. The Dubai sale offered them a golden opportunity for payback, report Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe and White House Correspondent Holly Bailey in the current issue of Newsweek. Dubai Ports World already works closely with the U.S., shutting down its commercial traffic whenever the Navy sails in. So when it first approached the Feds about a takeover in mid-October, there were no red flags. They finished their formal review in mid-January with no public fanfare and no extended inquiry, write Wolffe and Bailey who, in the March 6 issue (on newsstands Monday, February 27), reconstruct the events of the port sale and explain how an obscure maritime takeover turned into a political shipwreck. When you follow the money, the ports sale makes sense The ocean-cargo industry consolidation that Colgan cited gained momentum in 1999, when CSX Corp., then headed by John W. Snow, now U.S. Treasury secretary, sold its large ocean-cargo unit to Maersk, the Danish ocean-cargo carrier, for $800 million. CSX badly needed cash because its bidding war with Norfolk Southern Corp. had raised the price of Conrail Inc., the Philadelphia freight railroad, from $91 a share to $115. The two Southern railroads fought to a stalemate, and jointly bought and broke up Conrail. In 2004, CSX sold its Hong Kong and South American port operations to Dubai Ports World for $1.15 billion. As Treasury secretary, Snow chairs the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which approved the Dubai deal. The panel includes the secretaries of state and homeland security and other administration officials. RELATED: Bush's War Rhetoric Blows Back in Port Furor At the core of Bush's case for invading Iraq was the contention that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed the burden of proof in evaluating potential threats. Bush justified the war, despite inconclusive intelligence about whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, largely on the grounds that after Sept. 11, waiting for definitive evidence of danger was itself too risky. Whistleblower Charged With Three Felonies for Exposing Diebold's Crimes A whistleblower in Los Angeles is in legal trouble and needs our help. Stephen Heller is alleged to have exposed documents in Jan. & Feb. 2004 which provided smoking gun evidence that Diebold was using illegal, uncertified software in California voting machines. The docs also showed that Diebold's California attorneys (the powerful international law firm Jones Day) had told them they were in breach of the law for using uncertified software, but Diebold continued to use the uncertified software anyway. Lawyers dissect Bush's argument; show he doesn't have unchecked authority Why the President's Defense of Executive Power to Wiretap Without Warrants Can't Succeed in the Strict Constructionist Court He Wants Report: Pentagon Warned on Torture, Abuse The Navy's former general counsel warned Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that circumventing international agreements on torture and detainees' treatment would invite abuse, according to a published report. Legal theories granting the president the right to authorize abuse in spite of the Geneva conventions were unlawful, dangerous and erroneous, Alberto J. Mora advised officials in a secret memo. The 22-page document was obtained by The New Yorker for a story in its Feb. 27 issue. RELATED: Never-before-released Abu Ghraib photos published by Salon A Letter From The Troops A first-ever survey of U.S. troops on the ground fighting in Iraq was released February 28, 2006. The findings are surprising, particularly the fact that an overwhelming majority of 72 percent of American troops in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year. http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13984316.htm A Mississippi House committee voted Tuesday to ban most abortions in the state. The only exception would be if the life of the pregnant woman were in danger. There would be no abortions allowed in cases of pregnancy caused by rape or incest. MEDIA Vargas's interview of Bush on ABC contained false statements, missed opportunities Summary: During an exclusive interview with President Bush on the February 28 broadcast of ABC's World News Tonight, co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas repeated White House distortions and uncritically accepted Bush's answers -- even though some were demonstrably false. Only on Fox: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" Summary: Fox News featured two onscreen captions during a segment on escalating violence in Iraq that read: " 'Upside' To Civil War?" and "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" Suck it, Trebek

the most important news of late [28 Dec 2005|01:20pm] Bush's Snoopgate The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security. Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Post 911 Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled. Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy. Howard Dean Launches FOIA for Information on Bush's Illegal Spying Have you heard that George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court? This is specifically against the law. Bush says political appointees in the Justice Department outlined the legal authority to get around the restrictions in our laws and the Constitution, but those legal memos are classified. I just added my name to a formal Freedom of Information Act request to see these documents. We need to know if the president broke the law, and where this administration thinks the line of its authority is. You can sign on to the Freedom of Information Act request here. Destroying Checks and Balances with the Stroke of a Pen What I just read should scare every American. In connection with the spying scandal, where without any court review or supervision the President unilaterally spied on Americans, we now have the purported legal justification for his actions. The Justice Department has written the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees with its legal arguments. In a nutshell, the letter argues that the President's Article II authority as Commander in Chief allows him to do whatever he wants. He doesn't need congressional authorization or oversight. He does not need to go to any court. His decisions are unreviewable by the Supreme Court. It is a similar argument used to justify torturing detainees. Norman Solomon: NSA Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush’s illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda. Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show. Spying said to be broader than reported NEW YORK -- The National Security Agency has conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls - without court orders - than the Bush administration has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on its Web site. The NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained access to streams of domestic and international communications, said the Times in the report late Friday, citing unidentified current and former government officials. The story did not name the companies. Since the Times disclosed the domestic spying program last week, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida. But the Times said that NSA technicians have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might lead to terrorists. The volume of information harvested from telecommunications data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the paper said, quoting an unnamed official. The story quoted a former technology manager at a major telecommunications firm as saying that companies have been storing information on calling patterns since the Sept. 11 attacks, and giving it to the federal government. Neither the manager nor the company he worked for was identified. Media Matters: Top 12 media myths and falsehoods on the Bush administration's spying scandal 1. Timeliness necessitated bypassing the FISA court 2. Congress was adequately informed of -- and approved -- the administration's actions 3. Warrantless searches of Americans are legal under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 4. Clinton, Carter also authorized warrantless searches of U.S. citizens 5. Only Democrats are concerned about the Bush administration's secret surveillance 6. Debate is between those supporting civil liberties and those seeking to prevent terrorism 7. Bin Laden phone leak demonstrates how leak of spy operation could damage national security 8. Gorelick testimony proved Clinton asserted "the same authority" as Bush 9. Aldrich Ames investigation is example of Clinton administration bypassing FISA regulations 10. Clinton administration conducted domestic spying 11. Moussaoui case proved that FISA probable-cause standard impedes terrorism probes 12. A 2002 FISA review court opinion makes clear that Bush acted legally Those were the days: House Republican statements on Clinton's impeachment Suck it, Trebek

news [10 Nov 2005|11:22am] A man mourns for a family member who was killed by a suicide bomber in a central Baghdad restaurant. Bombing at Crowded Baghdad Restaurant Kills at Least 30 BAGHDAD, Nov. 10 -- A suicide bomber entered a crowded Baghdad restaurant during the breakfast rush Thursday morning and detonated himself in a fiery blast, killing at least 35 people and wounding more than two dozen others, witnesses and police said. Al Qaeda Terror Group Claims Attacks in Jordan Three nearly simultaneous bomb blasts tore through hotels here Wednesday night, killing more than 50 people and sending fear and panic through the streets of the normally tranquil city. Bush Administration Borrows more from Foreign Nations than Previous 42 Presidents Combined Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation's history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In the past four years alone (2001-2005), the Bush Administration has borrowed a staggering $1.05 trillion. Bush's War on Veterans On Friday, November 11, Americans will observe Veteran's Day... Earlier this year, Republican leaders in Congress blocked $2 billion in emergency funding for veterans' health care from the $82 billion supplemental funding bill. They felt that the money would be better spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we're producing more and more injured soldiers for whom we cannot afford adequate medical care. Why Paris is Burning Americans should be very concerned about the violence that has swept across France the last two weeks. The riots, and the deeper problems they have laid bare, are a microcosm of the larger struggles of Muslims across the Muslim-majority world to integrate into a globalized order from which they have been marginalized for decades, even centuries. Senators Turn Up Heat on Oil Executives Oil company executives faced tough questions Wednesday about their industry's record profits during a Senate hearing that gave lawmakers a chance to vent about high energy costs... But at a joint hearing of two Senate committees, the executives of five major oil companies made no apologies for their profits — more than $30 billion in the third quarter of this year. US Army Admits Use of White Phosphorus as Weapon . . . there is no way you can use white phosphorus like that without forming a deadly chemical cloud that kills everything within a tenth of a mile in all directions from where it hits. Obviously, the effect of such deadly clouds weren't just psychological in nature. Rumsfeld Can Authorize Exceptions To New "Humane" Interrogation Directive The new directive lays out broad policy governing interrogations of detainees in Defense Department custody, but leaves the definition of "humane" to a separate, yet to be released directive that is still being debated within the administration. Related: Did It Just Get Evil In Here? Nine United States senators recently voted against a measure that would ban torture. The Daily Show reacts. (Click here and select "Interro-gate") Additional news: Paging Dr. Ross Onetime jailbird and now America's most aggressive debunker of legitimate scientific research. The Lie Factory A Mother Jones Special Investigation The inside story of how the Bush administration pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. ( Andrea Yates to get new trial ) Did Religion or Extremism Play a Role in Mothers who Murdered their Children? Suck it, Trebek

news [10 Nov 2005|10:53am] Fox News: "Why All The Fuss About Torturing People?" Having Their Subsidies, and Eating Local Business Too Over at Tom Paine, Greg LeRoy, the executive director of Good Jobs First, provides a much-needed look into the billions of dollars in subsidies that Wal-Mart receives: A Wal-Mart official once stated that the company seeks subsidies in about a third of its stores, suggesting that more than 1,100 of its U.S. stores are subsidized. A national survey by Good Jobs First in 2004 looked at 160 stores and all of the company's distribution centers—and found that more than 90 percent of them have been subsidized. Altogether, 244 subsidized facilities in 35 states received taxpayer deals of more than $1 billion. The full Good Jobs First survey, available here, also cites at least 40 instances where Wal-Mart enjoyed abatement on property-taxes. And critics of "eminent domain" laws can note that Wal-Mart too has leaned on that crutch by condemning Wisconsin cornfields and apple orchards to seize land for its stores. The idea of public subsidies for a company with an economy larger than that of most countries is comical. But shaming tactics are unlikely to work against a corporation that's willing to dissuade the unhealthy from working at its stores in order to cut costs, or one that's happy to deny reports about working conditions in its South American subsidiaries. On the other hand, the new Wal-Mart movie, has at the very least goaded the company into spending millions on a public relations counter-attack. As a charmingly commonsensical letter to the NYT editor reads: This might seem like a simple question, but instead of Wal-Mart's investing in a "war room" to improve its public image, why doesn't the company just raise salaries, allow unions and give its employees better health care? Then Wal-Mart wouldn't need a war room. The money that the company is spending on its image should be spent to do the right thing. Doesn't Wal-Mart see that? One can agree with Cato Institute economist Brink Lindsey, who, in an interview with PBS, said: Wal-Mart is doing what the American economy is all about, which is producing things consumers want to buy … offering consumers a wide range of goods at rock-bottom prices. It is meeting the market test. And still disagree that "Wal-Mart is good for America," as he goes on to say. It’s clear the company has undermined the original philosophy that served as the bedrock for its humble Bentonville origins, which predicated the store's success not just on its famed "every-day low prices," but also on an understanding that happy employees make happy customers, and an underlying culture of entrepreneurialism that perhaps has been diluted in its exponential expansion. Cheney's Torture Kick Dick Cheney is truly insane. The vice-president is now off making impassioned pleas in defense of torture: Last Tuesday, Senate Republicans were winding up their weekly luncheon in the Capitol when the vice president rose to speak. Staffers were quickly ordered out of the room—what Cheney had to say was for senators only. Normally taciturn, Cheney was uncharacteristically impassioned, according to two GOP senators who did not want to be on the record about a private meeting. He was very upset over the Senate's overwhelming passage of an amendment that prohibits inhumane treatment of terrorist detainees. Cheney said the law would tie the president's hands and end up costing "thousands of lives." He dramatized the point, conjuring up a scenario in which a captured Qaeda operative, another Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, refuses to give his interrogators details about an imminent attack. "We have to be able to do what is necessary," the vice president said, according to one of the senators who was present. Andrew Sullivan has been particularly eloquent about the wrongness of torture and the wrongness of forcing our military officers to carry it out and the wrongness of our archipelago of secret CIA prisons around the world. Consider too that Elliot Abrams, the man who covered up the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador during the Reagan years and called the U.S.-backed death squads in that country a "fabulous achievement," is now trying to dissuade Cheney from his views on torture. Once again: Cheney's now too extreme for Elliot Abrams. Now some people might be tempted to think that yes, Cheney's moral compass is a bit askew, but he is vice-president, he does know a lot that we don't know, and maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt that the executive branch really does need to "be able to do what is necessary." Sorry, but no. Cheney doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, ever. Throughout his time in Washington he's shown himself to be, frankly, a strategic moron with exceedingly poor judgment, as seen in this anecdote from his tenure during Bush I: Following one White House meeting at which he'd asked for more time and more troops, Stormin' Norman reports; Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell called to warn the Desert Storm commander that he was being loudly compared, by a top administration official, to George McClellan. "My God," the official supposedly complained. "He's got all the force he needs. Why won't he just attack?" Schwarzkopf notes that the unnamed official who'd made the comment "was a civilian who knew next to nothing about military affairs, but he'd been watching the Civil War documentary on public television and was now an expert." And then, twenty pages later, Schwarzkopf casually drops the information that he got an inspirational gift from Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney right before the air war finally got under way. Cheney was presenting a gift to a military man, and he chose something with an appropriate theme: "(A) complete set of videotapes of Ken Burns's PBS series, The Civil War." But that wasn't the only gift that Dick Cheney had for Norman Schwarzkopf. Having figured out that the general was being too cautious with his fourth combat command in three decades of soldiering, Cheney got his staff busy and began presenting Schwarzkopf with his own ideas about how to fight the Iraqis: What if we parachute the 82nd Airborne into the far western part of Iraq, hundreds of miles from Kuwait and totally cut off from any kind of support, and seize a couple of missile sites, then line up along the highway and drive for Baghdad? Schwarzkopf charitably describes the plan as being "as bad as it could possibly be... But despite our criticism, the western excursion wouldn't die: three times in that week alone Powell called with new variations from Cheney's staff. The most bizarre involved capturing a town in western Iraq and offering it to Saddam in exchange for Kuwait." (Throw in a Pete Rose rookie card?) None of this Walter Mitty posturing especially surprised Schwarzkopf, who points out that he'd already known Cheney as "one of the fiercest cold warriors in Congress. This is not a man worth trusting. The Truth About Free-Riders The latest issue of the British Medical Journal has an excellent article on American drug companies. To put this in context, recall that of late, the pharmaceutical industry has been lobbying the U.S. government to sign "free" trade deals with other countries that would: raise prices on patented drugs; extend patent protection to delay the introduction of generics; and block "re-importation" to the United States. Why would they do such a thing? Because, says Big Pharma, the rest of the world hasn't been paying its "fair share" of research expenditures, and it's time for them to stop free-riding. Which brings us to the BMJ article, which basically screams "Liar!" The United States government is engaged in a campaign to characterise other industrialised countries as free riding on high US pharmaceutical prices and innovation in new drugs... The campaign, strongly backed by the pharmaceutical industry, seems to have started in the late 1990s as a response to a grass roots movement started by senior citizens against the high prices of essential prescription drugs. This issue was the most prominent one for both parties in the 2000 elections and has since been fuelled by a series of independent reports documenting that US drug prices are much higher than those in other affluent countries... We can find no convincing evidence to support the view that the lower prices in affluent countries outside the United States do not pay for research and development costs. The latest report from the UK Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme documents that drug companies in the United Kingdom invest proportionately more of their revenues from domestic sales in research and development than do companies in the US. Prices in the UK are much lower than those in the US yet profits remain robust. Companies in other countries also fully recover their research and development costs, maintain high profits, and sell drugs at substantially lower prices than in the US. Interestingly, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry's claim that European countries "free ride" seems to be based primarily on a 2004 report produced by Bain & Company, a consulting group in Boston. (The AARP passed it widely around.) But that report doesn't provide any evidence for its claim that "innovative drugs" are somehow less available in Europe as a result of overly-low prices. Perhaps American pharmaceutical companies aren't marketing their absolute latest and flashiest patented drugs in Europe, true. But considering how many of these are "me-too" drugs with little to no significant medical benefit, perhaps it's no surprise that Europeans aren't suffering much for the loss. The IRS finally Looks at Church/State Separation After Justice Sunday passed this year, some of us were wondering whether the Internal Revenue Service would ever investigate blatantly political churches like Two Rivers Baptist in Nashville. Now, we learn that the IRS is indeed going after a church for political involvement: All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena may lose its tax-exempt status because its rector, J. Edwin Bacon, preached an anti-war sermon two days before the 2004 election. In all fairness, it should be noted that in 1992, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of a Binghamton, New York church because it ran ads opposing the candidacy of Bill Clinton. The tax code explicitly prohibits churches from becoming involved in campaigns and elections. Though an argument can be made that opposing the war in Iraq was a campaign issue in 2004, the same argument can be made that August's Justice Sunday, which involved many churches, was a direct promotion of the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts. Then there is the matter of large tax-exempt church-related organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition, which routinely involved themselves in election matters. I am opposed to the tax exempt status of churches because I perceive them as primarily as private clubs at the least, and agents of social control at their very worst. But if the tax-exempt status is to remain in place--and we know it is--how odd that, after thirteen years, the only target is a liberal institution in California. The Trouble with Housing Policy James K. Galbraith argues that expanding homeownership is a good and proper policy route for helping working families to increase wealth. George Fredrickson made a similar point in a recent New York Review of Books essay, "Still Separate and Unequal," where he discussed the vast wealth gap between white and black Americans, and argued that historical disparities in homeownership were to blame: How did this vast inequality come about? It was mainly the result of the greater white access to home mortgages that were insured and subsidized by the federal government. Before the 1930s a home buyer had to put down 50 percent of a house's price and could get only a relatively short-term mortgage, perhaps only ten years. By the 1950s, as a result of a series of federal housing programs, including the GI Bill, most Americans could get long- term mortgages—up to thirty years— with a down payment as low as 10 percent. By 1984 seven out of ten whites owned their own homes, worth on average $52,000. But only one in four blacks owned a home, worth, on average, less than $30,000. ... The advantages of whites over blacks ... were more characteristically Northern than Southern; they manifested themselves in the growth of virtually all-white suburbs outside the major cities and virtually all-black ghettos within them. This new form of racial segregation was not simply the product of private choices, among them the refusal of white home-owners to sell to blacks, blockbusting and the racial "steering" of home buyers by real estate agents, and the personal prejudice of bankers asked to approve loans for blacks. The urban segregation that has contributed so much to the persistence of black inequality came about in large part because between the 1930s and the 1970s federal housing agencies refused to approve mortgage loans in neighborhoods that were "redlined," which meant property values were deemed uncertain because of the presence of blacks. True enough. All the same, modern-day housing policy to correct this imbalance sometimes seems pretty painfully misguided. The Bush administration, like its more liberal predecessor, has made a point of offering subsidized mortgages to low-income and especially minority families, which is a great idea in theory, as Galbraith's and Frederickson's pieces might suggest. But so long as homes remain unaffordable for 80 percent of all renters, including 21 million renters who couldn't get mortgages under even the loosest of underwriting standards, these sorts of policies will only go so far. Lower-income families that can afford homes, meanwhile, often end up with units in need of costly repairs or are located in poor neighborhoods plagued by crime and unemployment. Not the best way to create wealth, obviously, or reduce the inequality and segregation Frederickson's talking about. In Baltimore a few years ago, reporters discovered that homes basically falling apart were being "patched up" and sold to low-income families at inflated prices. In the South, 40 percent of low-income home-buyers were steered into trailer parks on leased land. Not to mention the fact that extending homeowner credit to low-income and/or minority neighborhoods usually opens the door to predatory lenders to walk on in. Plus, it's not even clear that owning a home is always a fantastic wealth-enhancing strategy for low-income families. It's true that the median wealth of low-income homeowners is 12 times that of renters with similar incomes, and most of that comes from the home. But renters and owners tend to be very different people to begin with, at different stages of the life cycle, in different financial situations. How "good" of an investment owning a home is often depends on when an owner enters the market, how long it holds the property, local market conditions, etc. On the downside, some low-income families who buy a home can quickly find themselves assailed with all sorts of costs—insurance costs, property taxes, utility bills—and often borrow against the equity of their home in a financial pinch, erasing any wealth. That's not to say Galbraith or Frederickson are on the wrong track; clearly they know what they're talking about. Still, we hear about policies to promote homeownership—from both parties—as a strategy for helping working families, but they deserve far more scrutiny. It's troubling, for instance, that the percent of mortgage loans that end in foreclosure have risen from 1.24 in the 1990s to 1.46 these days—a potential sign that people are being steered into homes before they're ready. A proper housing policy, perhaps, would increase the stock of affordable housing and help out low-income renters until they're ready to own a home. What we have now, unfortunately, is a national housing policy primarily intended to benefit lenders—who, these days, depend on sub-prime loans to low-income families for profits—while slashing rental-assistance programs like Section 8. Did Texas Just Ban Marriage? HJR No. 6 passed in Texas yesterday, supposedly to ban gay marriage. But read the text closely. Sec. 32 (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. (b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage. Is it egg-heady coastal elitism to point out that Texas just defined marriage and then made it illegal for everybody, even heteros? I wonder if "family values" include literacy. Dover Evolves One small, but nonetheless sweet victory for people who acknowledge the virtues of empiricism: the Dover, PA, school board was thrown out of office by the town's voters. These are the folks who decided to join with the Thomas More Law Center to force a landmark test case in the hopes of establishing "intelligent design"—widely viewed as a stalking horse for biblically-based creationism—as constitutionally permissible classroom instruction. Suck it, Trebek

news [19 Oct 2005|12:57pm] ( Defiant Saddam Hussein Pleads Not Guilty, Slams Court ) Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News. "He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this." Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world. As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble. Miers Supported Ban on Most Abortions in '89 Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday. "If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature," asked an April 1989 questionnaire sent out by the Texans United for Life group. Miers checked "yes" to that question, and all of the group's questions, including whether she would oppose the use of public moneys for abortions and whether she would use her influence to keep "pro-abortion" people off city health boards and commissions. Halliburton's New Low in Treachery According to the Tribune, American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor into Iraq. Most of those falling for the fraudulent job offers are impoverished Asians who, the newspaper said, "often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way with little protection." The Tribune got on the story after 12 young civilians from Nepal were kidnapped by terrorists in Iraq and a few days later publicly slaughtered. The newspaper sent a reporter and photographer to Nepal, where they interviewed families and friends and soon discovered that thousands of men are routinely recruited for "good" Mideast jobs, but wind up in the most treacherous stretches of Iraq territory working in private jobs for the U.S. military. A brother of one of the kidnapped men told Cam Simpson, the Trib reporter, that the last time he heard from his brother was when he called from his supposed job in Jordan. He was being sent against his will to Iraq, the brother said, and then blurted out, "I am done for." The phone then went dead. The next time the young Nepalese was seen was on a TV screen two weeks later, his hands tied behind his back and a gun pointed at his head. O'Reilly excused Bush's Katrina response: "maybe he's exhausted" O'Reilly neglected to mention that President Bush had been on a "working vacation" on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for more than four weeks when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. As The Washington Post reported, Bush had been informed of the extent of the disaster as early as Monday, August 29, but chose to stay in Crawford until Wednesday, August 31. That day, Bush made his first "visit" to the region, during which he surveyed the damage from a window on Air Force One en route to Washington, as The New York Times reported. Bush actually set foot in New Orleans for the first time on Friday, September 2. Analysis: Decline In Armed Conflict Claimed The independent Human Security Report released at the United Nations says armed conflict declined by 40 percent since 1991, citing successes of U.N. conflict-resolution and peace-building policies. Pakistan Quake Rescuers Try to Reach 500,000 People More than 500,000 people in northern Pakistan, the world's most mountainous region, haven't been reached and are in danger of dying from hypothermia after the Oct. 8 earthquake, the United Nations said. The Partisan War Syndrome The Democrats' policy of doing nothing as the Republican Party keeps tripping over itself is a recipe for continued political failure and irrelevance. Senate Republicans Insert Wildlife Refuge Drilling In Budget Bill A Senate committee voted Wednesday to include drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge in a massive budget proposal, assuring that drilling opponents won't be able to use the filibuster to thwart oil development there. The Fallen Legion Commentary: The ever more numerous casualties of the Bush Administration In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field of military procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted. For years, Greenhouse received stellar evaluations from superiors -- until she raised objections about secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) -- a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided over. Suck it, Trebek

Cleansing the Savages: Christian Extremists in Iraq [25 Jun 2005|09:53am] Just beneath the surface of the US war lies a Crusader mentality and faction, despite an official public relations effort to conceal it. Here are some examples for the religious community to ponder and discuss. * Air Force Chaplain Submits Resignation (NYT, June 22); "Air Force Chaplain Tells of Academy Proselytizing” (NYT, May 12). Reports that evangelical Christians in leadership positions at the academy were creating a discriminatory climate. Chief of chaplains for the air force, responding to an internal film on tolerance, asks "why is it that the Christians never win?". Chaplain MeLinda Morton forced to resign. * The Pentagon Unleashes a Holy Warrior, by William Arkin (LAT, Oct. 16, 2003). Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, former head of top-secret Joint Special Operations Command, and frequent speaker at Christian Right meetings, says his god is "a real god" and allah is an "idol":, "Satan wants to destroy us...as a Christian army", George Bush was "appointed by God", "we are hated because we are a nation of believers", etc. Boykins shows aerial photos of Mogadishu with a dark smudge which he says is "the principalities of darkness...a demonic presence...that god revealed to me as the enemy." Boykin has never been disciplined or removed. * Evangelicals Flock Into Iraq on a Mission of Faith (LAT, Mar. 18, 2004). Nine evangelical churches open in Baghdad in eight months, supported with $100,000 per church. Nine hundred thousand bibles in Arabic sent to Iraq. Thirty missionaries work in Baghdad, 150 have visited. "God and the president have given us the opportunity to bring Jesus Christ to the Middle East." "Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Iran, Libya, throughout the Middle East." Yes, sharing Christ’s love causes conflict, but the alternative is allowing people to go to hell. * Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion", says Rev. Franklin Graham, who delivered the invocation at President Bush’s inauguration. * Muhammad was a "demon-possessed pedophile" says Rev. Jerry Vines, past president of 16-million member Southern Baptist Convention. * End-Time Believers See Prophecies Fulfilled in Iraq (W Post). Time LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ books sell 38 million copies since 1995, describing rapture, rise of the anti-Christ, seven years of hell on earth, armageddon, return of Jesus, etc. "Iraq fits like hand in glove", says editor of Endtime magazine. Chapter 9, Verse 11 (9/11) predicts the coming of an army of locusts led by the Destroyer (Saddam). One-third of mankind is to die. * U.S. Hires Christian Extremists to Produce Arabic News, by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Alternet (May 2, 2003). Official US governement Arabic language satellite launched from studios of Grace Digital Media, controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are "rabidly pro-Israel." Suck it, Trebek

news [24 Jun 2005|10:47am] Schiavo autopsy reveals massive brain damage, no signs of abuse Her brain was far too damaged for that, or to have felt any pain, Thogmartin said, as she slowly died at age 41 by dehydration 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under a court order sought by her husband. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," he said. "The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain." 9/11 families to Karl Rove: Stop trying to reap political gain from 9/11 As families whose relatives were victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, we believe it is an outrage that any Democrat, any Republican, any conservative or any liberal, stakes a "high ground" position based upon the September 11th death and destruction. Doing so assumes that all those who died and their loved ones would agree. In truth, some would and some would not. By definition the conduct is divisive and, because it is intended to be self-serving and politicizes 9/11, it is offensive. We are calling on Karl Rove to resist his temptations and stop trying to reap political gain in the tragic misfortune of others. His comments are not welcome. Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked executive power In late December 2001, a memorandum was sent from the United States Justice Department to the Department of Defense.(4) It advised the Pentagon that no US District Court could "properly entertain" appeals from "enemy aliens" detained at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Because Cuba has "ultimate sovereignty" over Guantánamo, the memorandum asserted, US Supreme Court jurisprudence meant that a foreign national in custody in the naval base should not have access to the US courts. The first "war on terror" detainees were transferred to the base two weeks later. The memorandum remained secret until it was leaked to the media in mid-2004 in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Not long after this leak, on 28 June 2004, the US Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that the federal courts in fact do have jurisdiction to hear appeals from foreign nationals detained in Guantánamo Bay.(5) Yet almost a year later, none of the more than 500 detainees of some 35 nationalities still held in the base – believed to include at least three people, from Canada, Chad and Saudi Arabia, who were minors at the time of being taken into custody – has had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed. Top five Gitmo falsehoods In recent weeks, the debate over the Pentagon detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has garnered increased coverage on cable and network news programs. But as Media Matters for America documents, conservative media figures have often attempted to downplay the severity of the alleged abuses at Guantánamo, dismiss every detainee as a terrorist unprotected by international law, and distort criticism of the Bush administration's detention policy. Bush's Empathy Shortage Why do families with the shakiest grip on the American dream support the Bush equivalent of taking bread from the poor and giving it to the rich? Related: The Chauffeur's Dilemma How Bush converted an economic program aimed at strip-mining America into a program for winning blue-collar hearts and minds. Bush Administration Shorts Veteran Health Funds By $1B The $1 billion shortfall emerged during an administration midyear budget review and was acknowledged only during lengthy questioning of Jonathan B. Perlin, VA undersecretary for health, by House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) at a hearing yesterday. Suck it, Trebek

IRAQ SCANDAL: don't ignore this story! [24 Jun 2005|10:27am] "FOLLOW THE MONEY" Rep. Waxman's latest investigation of the CPA's mismanagment of the Development Fund of Iraq (DFI, successor to the Oil-for-Food program) has prompted Republican colleagues to join him in demanding a full investigation into what he describes as an "appalling level of incompetence, mismanagement, waste, fraud, and greed" that makes the UN oil-for-food "scandal" puny by comparison. According to Waxman, a total of $12.7 billion in cash was shipped to Iraq out of DFI accounts held in trust for "the Iraqi people" by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The cash was shipped in 484 pallets of $100 bills, weighing a total of 363 tons. This includes a shipment of $2.4 billion made just one week before the CPA handed authority over to the new Interim Government -- the largest shipment of cash in Federal Reserve history. Off the Books "With so much cash arriving in Iraq, you might think that extensive precautions would be taken to account for the funds," Waxman suggested to his colleagues on the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, which held the first ever hearings of the DFI yesterday. "But exactly the opposite happened: U.S. officials used virtually no financial controls to safeguard the Iraqi funds. No certified public accounting firm was hired to monitor disbursements, and auditors found that U.S. officials could not account for billions of dollars." Waxman's report is bolstered by CPA's own Inspector General, who criticized the CPA's "less than adequate controls" on expenditures and "contracting actions" in a report released in January. Waxman also indicated that "the largest single recipient of DFI funds was Halliburton. The company vastly overcharged to import gasoline into Iraq and to provide other oil-related services. These overcharges – which exceed $200 million – were billed to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But U.S. officials arranged for over 80% of them to be paid out of the DFI." "Here’s the most incredible part," Waxman says. "When the U.N. auditors charged with overseeing the DFI asked about the overcharges, U.S. officials concealed them." It's clear from this letter from Halliburton that U.S. officials did so at the company's request. Pentagon officials told Waxman privately that this is the case, according to a related New York Times story. While Halliburton has claimed it was protecting proprietary information, committee chairman Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) is not buying the story. Shays accused the Pentagon of "deferring completely to the contractor's absurdly expansive view of what constitutes proprietary information and must be shielded from view." "This is a self-inflicted wound, a needless failure to meet transparency obligations," Shays suggested. "It really ticks me off. It seems senseless." So what's the Pentagon's excuse? Perhaps they've been too busy giving Halliburton another contract for work in the Balkans (despite an ongoing federal criminal probe into the legality of the company's existing Balkans contracts) and hiring the company to build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence for Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which you will recall was announced shortly after former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney defiantly declared that Gitmo would not be shut down. Whether the oil revenues-for-Halliburton investigation will lead all the way to Cheney himself is anyone's guess. But one twist that the intrepid reporters and congressional investigators interested in "following the money" back to the original decision to give Halliburton/KBR the no-bid contract paid for out of the DFI, is that at some point they are likely to end up knocking on the door of former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz who, as the current president of the World Bank sits on the international advisory monitoring board (IAMB) charged with overseeing the DFI, an obvious conflict of interest. (To learn more about and to continue to follow this unfolding scandal see Waxman's site, Halliburton Watch and Iraq Revenue Watch.) Suck it, Trebek

news [24 Jun 2005|10:16am] DOCTORS AS TORTURERS by Erica Jong The word Orwellian has become inadequate to describe what’s going on at Gitmo. We now have physicians advising on and observing torture. I guess that once you suspend the Geneva Convention anything is possible. I was once the wife of a psychiatrist drafted into the US Army during the Viet Nam War. I know that there’s always the right way and the Army way. The Viet Nam war caused army doctors to learn special skills—like counseling victims of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or counseling the children of personnel who were traumatized or helping adolescents to deal with the distress of moving every two years when their parents were transferred... But never in my three years as a medical officer’s wife did I hear of trained specialists assisting torturers. Every time we think we have reached a new low, we go even lower. Of course Nazi Germany asked doctors to experiment with Jews--thrusting them into freezing water, performing useless operations without anesthesia. But they were Nazis and we’re Americans in love with liberty. Right? Also the Nazis thought Jews were subhuman so they got no benefit of empathy. So now we’re doing that to Muslims. The Attorney General, Mr. Gonzales, approves. At least we’re not torturing Latinos. His ox is not currently being gored. The President and Vice President think Gitmo is just swell. Cheney depicts it as a kind of Health Spa in the tropics. What can an American prisoner expect when captured if this is how we treat our captives? And most of them are charged with no crime. We have not only suspended the Geneva Convention, we have also suspended the Hippocratic oath: “first, do no harm.” 70 Percent Chance of Attack... Sen. Richard Lugar's (R-IN) office has just released a new report on proliferation that makes some massively important points. The most eye-opening stat here is that a survey of proliferation experts suggested that the chances of a WMD attack on a city somewhere in the world—radiological, nuclear, biological, chemical—could be as much as 70 percent over the next ten years. Obviously the plural of opinion isn't fact, but 70 percent is pretty appallingly high, no? Meanwhile, those same experts say we can expect about two to five countries to join the nuclear weapons club over the next ten years—they don't say which countries, but it's safe to assume that the Bush administration won't stop Iran and North Korea from arming, and I've got a hunch that we might well see Saudi Arabia, Japan, and possibly even Taiwan in that club. Meanwhile, those proliferation experts are more or less in consensus on what is to be done here: strengthen arms control treaties, boost funding for the Nunn-Lugar initiative to destroy "loose" Russian nukes, placing controls on nuclear fuel cycles, etc. etc. Most of which has not been done, although now that John Bolton's out of the State Department there have been a few encouraging steps. Oh, and they all think it would sure be nice to try and stop Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons, although the White House's utter inability even to talk to Pyongyang makes the latter a non-starter. Now the policy recommendations here are all eye-glazing stuff, it's truel; perhaps not nearly as exciting for Karl Rove as, say, accusing one-third of the country of treason. Still, nuclear proliferation's almost as big a threat to our country as Dick Durbin—lest we forget, President Bush did claim it as his number one priority during the presidential debates—and as always, it would be awfully swell if someone in charge was thinking seriously about this stuff. Karl Rove's "Understanding of 9/11" Mr. Rove, the first thing that I would like to address is Afghanistan - the place that anyone with a true “understanding of 9/11” knows is a nation that actually has a connection to the 9/11 attacks. One month after 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan, took down the Taliban, and left without capturing Usama Bin Laden - the alleged perpetrator of the September 11th attacks. In the meantime, Afghanistan has carried out democratic elections, but continues to suffer from extreme violence and unrest. Poppy production (yes, Karl, the drug trade) is at an all time high, thus flooding the world market with heroin. And of course, the oil pipeline (a.k.a. the Caspian Sea pipeline) is better protected by U.S. troops who now have a “legitimate” excuse to be in that part of Afghanistan. Interesting isn't it Karl that the drug “rat line” parallels the oil pipeline. (Yet, with all those troops guarding that same sliver of land, can you please explain how those drugs keep getting through?) Now Karl, a question for you, since you seem to be the nation's self-styled sensei with regard to 9/11: Is Usama Bin Laden still important? Lately, your coterie of friends seems to be giving out mixed messages. Recall that in the early days, Bin Laden was wanted “dead or alive.” Then when Bin Laden slipped through your fingertips in Tora Bora, you downgraded his importance. We were told that Bin Laden was a "desperate man on the run,” and a person that President Bush was not "too worried about". Yet, whenever I saw Bin Laden's videos, he looked much too comfortable to actually be a man on the run. He looked tan, rested, and calm. He certainly didn't look the way I wanted the murderer of almost 3,000 innocent people to look: unkempt, panicked, and cowering in a corner. Karl, I mention Bin Laden because recently Director of the CIA, Porter Goss, has mentioned that he knows exactly where Bin Laden is located but that he cannot capture him for fear of offending sovereign nations. Which frankly, I find ironic because of Iraq--and let's just leave it at that. But, when you say that “moderation and restraint” don't work in fighting terrorists, maybe you should share those comments with Mr. Goss because he doesn't seem to be on the same page as you. Unless of course, Porter is holding out to announce that Bin Laden is in Iran. (Karl, I want Bin Laden brought to justice, but not if it means starting a war with Iran - a country that possesses nuclear weaponry. The idea of nuclear fallout in any quadrant of the world is just not an acceptable means to any ends, be it capturing Bin Laden, oil or drugs. But, Afghanistan and Bin Laden are old news. Iraq is the story of today. And of course, it appears that Iran will be the story of next month. But, I digress.) More to the point, Karl when you say, “Conservatives saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and prepared for war,” what exactly did you do to prepare for your war? Did your preparations include: sound intelligence to warrant your actions; a reasonable entry and exit strategy coupled with a coherent plan to carry out that strategy; the proper training and equipment for the troops you were sending in to fight your war? Did you follow the advice of experts such as General Shinseki who correctly advised you about the troop levels needed to actually succeed in Iraq? No, you didn't. It has always been America's policy that you only place soldiers' lives in harm's way when it is absolutely necessary and the absolute last resort. When you send troops into combat you support those troops by providing them with proper equipment and training. Why didn't you do that with the troops that you sent into Iraq? Why weren't their vehicles armored? Why didn't they have protective vests? Why weren't they properly trained about the rules of interrogation? And Karl, when our troops come home – be it tragically in body bags or with missing limbs – you should honor and acknowledge their service to their country. You shouldn't hide them by bringing them home in the dark of night. Most importantly, you should take care of them for the long haul by giving them substantial veteran's benefits and care. To me, that is being patriotic. To me, that is how you support our troops. To me, that is how you show that you know the value of a human life given for its country. For the record Karl, does Iraq have any connection to the 9/11 attacks? Because, you and your friends with your collective “understanding of 9/11” seem to be contradicting yourselves about the Iraq-9/11 connection, too. First, we were told that we went to war with Iraq because it was linked to the 9/11 attacks. Then, your rationale was changed to "Iraq has WMD". Then you told us that we needed to invade Iraq because Saddam was a "bad man". And now it turns out that we are in Iraq to bring them "democracy." Of course, the Downing Street memo clarifies many of these things, but for the record Karl: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11; there were few terrorists in Iraq before our invasion, but now Iraq is a terrorist hot-bed. America had the sympathy and support of the whole world before Iraq. Now, thanks to your actions, we find ourselves hated and alienated by the rest of the world. Al Qaeda's recruitment took a nose-dive after the 9/11 attacks, but has now skyrocketed since your invasion of Iraq; and most importantly, nearly 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed because of your war in Iraq. These facts speak for themselves. (And, they speak very little about effectively winning any war on terror.) Karl, you say you “understand” 9/11. Then why did you and your friends so vehemently oppose the creation of a 9/11 Independent Commission? Once the commission was established, why did you refuse to properly fund the Commission by allotting it only a $3 million budget? Why did you refuse to allow access to documents and witnesses for the 9/11 Commissioners? Why did we have to fight so hard for an extension when the Commissioners told us that they needed more time due to your footdragging and stonewalling? Why didn't you want to cooperate so that all Americans could “understand” what happened on 9/11? Since the release of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report, have you helped bring to fruition any of the commission's recommendations? Have you truly made our homeland safer by hardening/eliminating soft targets? Because, to me rebuilding a tower that is 1,776 feet tall where the World Trade Center once stood seems to be only providing more soft targets for the terrorists to hit. Moreover, your support for the use of nuclear energy seems to be providing even more soft targets. Tell me, while you write your nifty little speeches about nuclear power, do you explain to your audience how our nuclear plants will be protected against terrorist attack or infiltration? What assurances do you give that nuclear waste will not find its way into terrorist's dirty bombs and onto our city streets? And, how do you assure your audience that the shipment of radioactive material will not become a terrorist target as it rolls through their own backyards? To date, you have done practically nothing to secure our ports, nuclear power plants, and mass transportation systems. Imagine if the billions of dollars you spent in Iraq were spent more wisely on those things here at home. Imagine what sort of alternative energy resources (bio-diesel, wind power, solar power, and hybrid automobiles) could have been researched and funded in the past three years. Talk about regaining the respect and support of the world, that is the one way to do it. Karl, if you “understand 9/11”, then why don't you understand that until we have a more environmentally friendly energy policy, we cannot effectively fight the war on terrorism. By being dependent on foreign oil, we have no choice but to cozy up to nations that sponsor terrorists. Moreover, because of oil, we may end up placing our troops and our nation at greater risk by having to invade certain oil-rich countries. Our invasion of these countries merely serves to inflame would-be terrorists by reinforcing their notion that we are gluttonous and self-centered -- invading sovereign nations solely to steal their oil. Forgive me Karl, but is that how you think you "win hearts and minds"? Does that help in any way to "spread democracy"? Finally Karl, please “understand” that the reason we have not suffered a repeat attack on our homeland is because Bin Laden no longer needs to attack us. Those of us with a pure and comprehensive “understanding of 9/11” know that Bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks so he could increase recruitment for al Qaeda and increase worldwide hatred of America. That didn't happen. Because after 9/11, the world united with Americans and al Qaeda's recruitment levels never increased. It was only after your invasion of Iraq, that Bin Laden's goals were met. Because of your war in Iraq two things happened that helped Bin Laden and the terrorists: al Qaeda recruitment soared and the United States is now alienated from and hated by the rest of the world. In effect, what Bin Laden could not achieve by murdering my husband and 3,000 others on 9/11, you handed to him on a silver platter with your invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Which leads me to my final questions for you Karl: What are your motives when it comes to 9/11 and are you really sure that you understand 9/11? BeNow All You Can Be This week the Pentagon began working with a private company called BeNow to create a marketing database of Americans 16- to 18- years old. According to the Washington Post, the product being marketed to these kids, you will not be shocked to learn, is enlistment in the military. It’s bad enough that the data that the No Child Left Behind Act requires high schools to compile are being provided to military recruiters, so that they can call kids at home and pitch them a swell career in the armed forces. But this new database will contain even more information: birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, even what subjects the kids are taking. So just as Amazon.com can send you an email saying that you might want to buy the new Anne Coulter book because you bought Mussolini’s memoirs in the past, now the Pentagon can pick off kids whose grades aren’t scholarship material and whose zip codes aren’t high-income, and paint a rosy picture of their future in uniform. And that’s not to mention the identity theft issues. Imagine what a treasure-trove the BeNow database will be to hackers in Uzbekistan. The Pentagon, of course, assures us that all this information will be secure. But coming within days of our learning that 16 million American credit-card holders can kiss their privacy goodbye, the Defense Department’s promises aren’t very comforting. Serving our country in the armed forces is a courageous and patriotic choice. But that’s not what this new Big Brother offensive is about. It’s about military recruiters failing to make their quotas, because kids don’t want to serve in a war they don’t believe in. It’s about none of the children of the chickenhawks and of the right-wing pundits in Washington enlisting, because war’s fine as long as someone else's kids fight it for them. At the height of the Vietnam War, a raging issue was whether to permit military recruiters and reserve programs on campus. Today, the battle has moved to the high schools, and in a virtual world, no one can be kept out of our homes and our lives. Before we offer up the next generation on a silver platter to the war machine, shouldn't we be demanding that Jenna and Barbara Bush put in their time in Iraq? Related: Democracy Now!: Pentagon Developing Massive Database on Millions of U.S. Students The Pentagon is working with a private company to create information dossiers on millions of young Americans to help identify college and high school students as young as 16 to target for military recruiting. We speak with the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Center and Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA). Burn This Let's see...the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, tens of millions of Americans are uninsured, the public education system is a disgrace and Congress is debating...flag burning? It's good to see their priorities are in order. I know that if I'm a guy with a son in Iraq, helping out a parent who worked for a company where the pension fund went south, and whose daughter can't get a decent education, flag burning it what I think about when I wake up each day, and I'm glad Congress shares my priorities. But what I really want to know, if I'm that guy, is when our elected represenatives are going to have more hearings on steroid abuse in professional baseball. Suck it, Trebek

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