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Sunday
- 7/6/03 > Friday - 6/27/03
IRAN IN OUR SIGHTS
"President Bush declared on June 25 that
"we will not tolerate" a nuclear armed Iran. His words
are empty. The physical evidence for a nuclear weapons program
in Iran simply does not exist." This is the
view of anthropologist William O. Beeman, and Thomas Stauffer,
former nuclear engineer and specialist in Middle Eastern energy
economics.
The Bush administration bases it's claim that Iran has an active
nuclear weapons program on its construction of nuclear energy
plants (one at Natanz, another at Bushehr), but Beeman and Stauffer
come at this with a counter argument. They say:
The testable part of the claim -- that the Bushehr reactor is
a proliferation threat -- is demonstrably false. There are several
reasons, some technical, some institutional.
--The Iranian reactor yields
the wrong kind of plutonium for making bombs.
--The spent fuel pins in the
Iranian reactor would, in any case, be too dangerous to handle
for weapons manufacture.
--Any attempt to divert fuel
from the Iranian plant will be detectable.
--The Russian partners in the
Bushehr project have stipulated that the fuel pins must be returned
to Russia, as has been their practice worldwide for other export
reactors.
For more information go the the
article.
^
TOP
INCOMPETENT
PRESIDENT SUPPORTED BY INCOMPETENT ELECTORATE:
THE VISION
IMPAIRED LEADING THE SEE-NO-EVIL
According to this Pacific
News Service article, the sniping at U.S. troops in Iraq
is not being done by Saddam Hussien loyalists, as claimed by
the Bush administration. They are coming from "...almost
every quarter of the Iraqi population, particularly the Shiites,
who never supported Saddam. Moreover, these difficulties spring
not from some organized opposition, but from public dissatisfaction
with the incompetent and disorganized management of the occupation."
And why would ordinary IraqiS want to kill their liberators?
As the writer of the aricle, William
Beeman notes, because, "Basic utilities have not been
restored. There is no drinking water. Food spoils in the scorching
heat with no electricity to run refrigerators. There is no cooking
fuel. The Americans' decisions to fire public officials associated
with the Baath Party, including those who could help turn the
electricity back on, was deeply unpopular.
And "Basic nutrition is also a desperate concern. "Today,
the lives of 100 percent of the Iraqi population, 27 million
people, depend on the provision of monthly food rations,"
UNICEF chief representative in Iraq Carel de Roy declared on
July 1. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) chief representative
in Baghdad, Torben Due, says the crisis is unprecedented. "To
avoid a food crisis in the country we have initiated the largest
emergency operation in the 40-year history of the WFP,"
he told the InterPress News Service on July 2."
This is the kind of incompetence for which George Bush earns
his high approval ratings. How shall we describe the incompetence
of the approvers? How will history?
*
PNS contributor William O. Beeman (William_beeman@brown.edu)
teaches anthropology and is director of Middle East Studies at
Brown University. He is author of "Language, Status and
Power in Iran," and two forthcoming books: "Double
Demons: Cultural Impediments to U.S.-Iranian Understanding,"
and "Iraq: State in Search of a Nation."
^
TOP
DEMOCRATS... TO GOOD
TO WIN?
"We live in a culture that values brazen
certainty and loud conviction, no matter how wrongheaded. Pity
the Democrats, stuck with the wrong set of virtues." --James
Traub in the NY Times.
Interesting.
^
TOP
Saturday-
7/5/03
FUNDAMENTALIST RELIGIOUS DREAMS OF RAPTURE AND
DIVINE MISSION AND WHAT MAY HAPPEN IF THEY'RE BOUNCING AROUND
THE OVAL OFFICE
 Is George Bush a fanatic?
I don't know yet, but if he were Patrisia Gonzales and Roberto
Rodriguez consider some hair-raising consequences in their Universal
Press Syndicate commentary here.
A Gonzalez/Rodriguez scenario: "A president comes to power,
believing that the greatest threat to the United States is not
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba or North Korea, but
Russia and China. Taking a page from President Bush, he sells
the nation on the idea that the threat posed by those two nuclear
powers is imminent and a great threat to our existence. Thus,
he begins plans to liquidate them before they liquidate us.
"Meanwhile,
alarmed at the series of pre-emptive wars and their subsequent
occupations, Russia and China enter into a strategic alliance
with the objective of striking at the United States first. Why
wait their turn to be annihilated? they reason, invoking memories
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and President Bush's recent abrogation
of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty."
Many will consider this an off-the-wall idea --probably the same
people who considered the idea of pre-emptive American wars off-the-wall;
probably the same people who considered the idea of the incarceration
without trial off-the-wall; probably the same people who considered
the idea of being held incommunicado without benefit of legal
counsel off-the-wall. But considering history, off-the-wall ideas
can floor you even before you have time to hit the ceiling.
Yes, "Far from fantasy," say Gonzalez and Rodriguez,
"this is in line with, and the logical conclusion of, the
"Bush doctrine," which explicitly states that it reserves
the right to war upon any nation that seeks to challenge its
domination. Unlike a game of tic-tac-toe, which can produce a
stalemate every time, this one produces mutually assured destruction
(MAD)."
Does this seem
crazy? You bet. But, but... (G & R again) "But what
if global domination is not the goal of this administration?
And what if future president No. 44 is deranged, delusional or
a religious fanatic, bent not on world domination but obsessed
with spreading our "enlightenment," obsessed with fulfilling
Biblical prophecy -- with bringing about the rapture -- thus
paving the way for the Second Coming of the Lord? (The president
purportedly told the new Palestinian prime minister that God
had instructed him to attack Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,
and to bring about peace to the Middle East.)
The only reason this has not happened before is that we've never
had a religious nut in the White House. Might we ever? Who can
fathom the ways of the Lord ...or his missionaries?
Gonzalez-Rodriguez here.
WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
In a
sort of litany of anti-Americanism commentator Richard
Reeves reports some
current European views. To put it succinctly, Reeves suggests
we're being bashed. But who do we have to blame but ourselves?
When you transmit, vituperation, challenge, and belligerence
you're bound to get it back.It's a law of human nature apparently
not studied by some.
^
TOP
WHY
TOILET FUNCTIONS WERE NEVER MENTIONED IN THE CONSTITUTION
Do we or do we not have
a right to privacy? Clarence Thomas doesn't think so, and I have
at least one friend who agrees with the justice.
Thomas supports his view by citing Justice Potter Stewart. In
1965 Stewart had disagreed with the majority in a case involving
the director of a Planned Parenthood program who advised a married
couple in the use of contraceptives. If the court had sided with
Stewart in 38 years ago, you might today be a felon if you practice
birth control, and so would your doctor if he or she discussed
it with you.
Do you bristle at this? Of course.
Why? Because you know as well as the framers of the constitution
and the writers of the Declaration of Independence what conservatives
would rather not. Namely, that you have "certain inalienable
rights" endowed to you "by (your) creator", not
by the constitution. How can we deny this when we announced our
independence with the words "we hold these truths to be
self-evident"? Of course all of the quotes contained in
this paragraph are from the Declaration of Independence, and
if that's not enough for the likes of Thomas, Rehnquist, and
Scalia, maybe they should rule on constitutional matters for
some other government.
In his excellent essay
on our right to privacy author Thom Hartmann spells out just
how this right is imbedded in the constitution, despite the absence
of it's explicit mention in it. Hartmann's argument is beautiful.
It deserves to be read by all true patriots as a defense against
the incursion by conservatives into out bedrooms.
In his recent dissent in the Texas sodomy law case Clarence Thomas
wrote, "just like Justice Stewart, I 'can find [neither
in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution
a] general right of privacy,' or as the Court terms it today,
the 'liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent
dimensions.'"
And Thomas should note he's in
appropriate company. Radio bombasticator Rush Limbaugh also pontificated
on his program on June 27, 2003 that "There is no right
to privacy specifically enumerated in the Constitution"
followed by the perpetually pinched-up Jerry Falwell who then
agreed with his bretheren on Fox News. It was a neoconservative,
anti-privacy, love fest! But Thom Hartmann points out that there
are good reasons the right of privacy was not specifically mentioned
in the constitution.
Hartmann says, first, it's simple: "...the Constitution
wasn't written as a vehicle to grant us rights. We don't derive
our rights from the constitution." In fact, the author notes,
if they follow their own reasoning "Limbaugh and Thomas
may soon also point out to us that the Constitution doesn't specifically
grant a right to marry, ...(it) doesn't grant a right to eat,
or to read, or to have children. Yet do we doubt these are rights
we hold?" Answer? No, because these rights are so fudamental
they need not be stated. They are certain and inalienable. They
predate the constitution. In fact they predate any form of government
because we were endowed with them by our creator.
"They belong to us from birth," say Hartmann, "as
opposed to something the Constitution must hand to us..."
In Hartmann's words, "The job of the Constitution was to
define a legal framework within which government and business
could operate in a manner least intrusive to "We, The People,"
who are the holders of the rights. In its first draft it didn't
even have a Bill of Rights, because the Framers felt it wasn't
necessary to state out loud that human rights came from something
greater, larger, and older than government. They all knew this;
it was simply obvious."
But what begins as obvious becomes
less obvious after it's been tortured and bent around ideological
jigs. But in his essay Thom Hartmann does a fine job of unbending.
And one of the best and most interesting points of Hartman's
straightening process is so mundane and so practical that it
makes clear and perfect sense. His point has to do with the meaning
of the word "privacy" as it was commonly used at the
time the constitution was created.
What meaning, you ask? Well,
this is why toilet functions were not mentioned in the constitution.
Go here
for the rest of the story.
^
TOP
THE NAKED PRESIDENT
BERLIN (Reuters) - A
German man woke up to find himself stark naked in the middle
of a street after sleepwalking from home, police said Thursday.
The 37-year-old man called police in the southern town of Buchen
at around 6 a.m. after discovering he had left his house keys
at home.
"The man waited naked for
police at the phone booth, who gave him a raincoat to wear,"
said a police spokesman.
An American standing nearby was heard to mutter, "What's
the big deal, our president's been sleepwalking naked for a long
time now and few seem to care or even notice --although,"
he mumbled, "some Saudi Arabian terrorists did provide him
with a fig leaf labeled "9/11" a couple of years ago.
Interviewed later, the man added
that following the president's streaking incident he'd witnessed
a few quick-witted neoconservatives hurriedly wrap the president
in the American flag and bundle the nude dude into a waiting
limosine covered with oil industry logos.
Story here.
^
TOP
Friday-
7/4/03
A TEXAS ARMADILLO'S TALE
In a warning against
the long-term effects of regime change, H.D.S. Greenway in his
column
today in the Boston Globe, presents a short history
of the CIA's role in the coup that installed the Shah of Iran
in 1953.
 Greenway's
writes, "Today, 50 years after the last American inspired
overthrow of an Iranian government, Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives
around him talk of changing the present Iranian government. Some
even talk of bringing back the dead shah's son and putting him
on the throne.
"Regime change is coming
to Iran anyway as its young people tire of the theocracy. They
don't need the Bush administration to do it for them. But one
has to wonder whether the ideological zeal of the regime changers
who surround President Bush aren't sowing the seeds for another
50 years of trouble for the United States, just as the coup against
Mossedegh did. As Kinzer quotes Truman: ''There is nothing new
in the world except the history you do not know.''
Ok, we've been warned; but some people are as protected against
history as Texas armadillos are against desert life ...and as
capable to govern.
^
TOP
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF LOVEMAKING
If only Antonin Scalia
had followed the logic of his written decision in the Texas sodomy
law case, I could be sleeping more easily right now. What Scalia
wrote was this: "It is clear from this [sodomy decision]
that the court has taken sides in the culture war, departing
from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic
rules of engagement are observed." If the right-wing justice
actually believed what he said, maybe the Supreme Court would
have stayed out of the business of deciding elections back in
2000, and George Bush would off somewhere causing damage on a
much smaller scale.
But as Clarence Page points out
in his recent commentary in the Chicago Tribune, conservatives
only want to keep the government off our backs when liberals
are doing the governing. As Page says, "Yes, traditional
conservatives endeavor to put limits on the power and reach of
government into the lives of individuals, except when they, too,
want to reach into the lives of individuals."
In this regard conservatives
in power are no different then liberals in power, each will use
government to advance their agenda. The thing with conservatives
is, they aim to control the most personal aspects of our lives,
and finally, through their use of religion, the way we think.
And they have the money to do it.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in an interview with
George Stephanopoulis said, "I have this fear that this
zone of privacy that we all want protected in our homes ..."
could lead to a state in which "criminal activity within
the home would in some way be condoned." What criminal activity,
making love? No one is arguing that say, murder, should be condoned
within the privacy of the home.
Read Clarence Page's column here.
^
TOP
Thursday-
7/3/03
THE BUSH DOCTRINE AND VACUUMING COBWEBS
An excellent analysis
of the Bush administration's view of the world and the U.S. role
in it, by Political Scientist, Kurt
Mills of James Madison University can be found here.
Mills' field is International Relations (Ph.D).
In the article, originally given as part of a public panel discussion
entitled "Should We Invade Iraq?" Mills calls the Bush
Doctrine the, "...ultimate expression of “anti-worldism,”
and observes, "Whereas people talk about “anti-Americanism”
and ask “why do they hate us so much?”, after reading
this document (the administration's National Security Strategy),
I was compelled to ask, “why do we hate them so much?”
Why indeed?
The question brings to the fore something that's always bothered
me about George Bush. Behind his "aw shucks" affability
I've always sensed seething hostility and aggression. That he's
turning it on the world first, may not be all bad. It may give
us time to react before he focuses it on his political opponents
...but first we'll have to vacuum the cobwebs out of the heads
of the American electorate. Kurt Mills' article helps do just
that.
WHEN
INTELLIGENCE MEETS IGNORANCE
Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House
intelligence committee makes a case that George Bush mislead
us into war. According to an article by David Corn of The Nation,
Harman bases her argument on "...information preliminarily
reviewed by the intelligence committee as part of its ongoing
investigation into the prewar intelligence on Iraq."
As Corn points out, "This
is not an op-ed judgment; this is an evaluation from a member
of the intelligence committee who claims to be basing her statements
on the investigative work of the committee. Here's
what she says:
To see the whole debate on the intelligence bill--which includes
Harman's statement--click
here.
APOLLO
ALLIANCE
In an attempt to buck
tradition a group called Apollo Alliance has been formed to deal
with our energy needs in more rational ways.
I just leaned about Apollo Alliance through an email tip. You
can go here to learn
more.
^
TOP
Sunday-
6/29/03
EDITING REALITY
President Clinton just
liked to hang out with Hollywood; but while George Bush loathes
it's values, he apes it's methods. According to the article
by Molly Ivins Bush can see clearly now the rain has gone. He
can do this because he has an expert editing room that simply
removes all obstacles in his way. Editing it is a much more efficient
way of dealing with reality than doing something positive about
it, and it costs less. Editing reality is the way the president
intends to pay for his tax cuts.
"You've got to hand it to those clever little problem-solvers
at the White House. What a bunch of brainiacs. They have resolved
the entire problem of global warming: They cut it out of the
report!" Ivins says.
"This is genius," she goes on. "Everybody else
is maundering on about the oceans rising and the polar icecaps
melting and monster storms and hideous droughts, and these guys
just … edit it out.
"The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding
that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations
of smokestack and tailpipe emissions, and could threaten health
and ecosystems," reports The New York Times. Presto -- poof!"
Then, going one step further to complete the ruse, the truth-in-advertising
crew in el Casa Blanco puts in a body double. They substitute
a "...new study on global non-warming funded by -- ta-da!
-- the American Petroleum Institute." But based on
her experiences with API lobbyists, Molly says she's impelled
to warn us that, "They have no scruples, they have no decency,
and they have no shame. (See 50 years worth of reporting on the
industry by The Texas Observer.) Also, they lie."
Which gives our dear Texas columnist the opportunity for a little
segway into an observation of what we now see is normal White
House parlance. The lie. Ms. Ivins mentions in passing that George
Bush's 2002 State of the Union promise to expand AmeriCorps by
50 percent, from 50,000 up to 75,000 was, in the vernacular,
bullshit. Instead "Two weeks ago, Bush and Republicans in
Congress cut AmeriCorps by 80 percent."
"USA Freedom Corps will
expand and improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and Senior
Corps to recruit more than 200,000 new volunteers," he said.
But the reality is...snip, snip, snip ...Hey, did anyone see
what happened to that section of reality we chopped out a few
minutes ago? I wanna splice it back in with some special effects.
Go here
to read the rest of the story.
^
TOP
TUNNEL VISIONARIES
Some governments
are run by visionaries, some are run by tunnel-visionary. For
an example of the latter, go here. where you'll find an
account of the Rehnquist court's family values.
ARE WE GOOD FOR THE WORLD?
Is Google
God? NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman asks
today.
Friedman is laying out the increasing significance of a wired
world in how the people of the globe perceive
us and act
toward us, and whether they decide we're good for the world or not.
In his article the columnist quotes Robert Wright, the author
of "Nonzero," a highly original book on the integrated
world. Wright says, "The key point is not just whether people
hate us. The key point is that it matters more now whether
people hate us, and will keep mattering more, for technological
reasons. I don't mean just homemade W.M.D.'s. I am talking about
the way information technology — everyone using e-mail,
Wi-Fi and Google — will make it much easier for small groups
to rally like-minded people, crystallize diffuse hatreds and
mobilize lethal force. And wait until the whole world goes broadband.
Broadband — a much richer Internet service that brings video
on demand to your PC — will revolutionize recruiting, because
video is such an emotionally powerful medium. Ever seen one of
Osama bin Laden's recruiting videos? They're very effective,
and they'll reach their targeted audience much more efficiently
via broadband."
"None of this means we, America, just have to do what the
world wants, but we do have to take it seriously, and we do have
to be good listeners. We, America, "have to work even harder
to build bridges," argues Mr. Wright, because info-tech,
left to its own devices, will make it so much easier for small
groups to build their own little island kingdoms. And their island
kingdoms, which may not seem important or potent now, will be
able to touch us more, not less. "
Something to consider the next time you get a chance to vote.
^
TOP
RED HERRINGS AND FRONT-MEN
"Does even the most
left-wing Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world
would be better off with Saddam in power?" This is Newt
Gingrich's justification for the war. This is the sleight-of-hand
now in play by front-men. This defensive shift in the justification
for war is taking place all over the news from president Bush
on down. But it should not be surprising to find such good Christian
men adhering to the observation of Don Marquis, an American humorist
of the early 20th century, who said that, "Honesty is
a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless
it is kept under control." Boosting profit and keeping
honesty under control permeates the atmosphere of the Bush administration.
In fact, if we're going haul ourselves out of this mess, we'll
need a Pentagon-sized Department of Debunkers headed by the Amazing
Randy with under-secretaries Penn & Teller whistle-stopping
the country deflating illusions .
But Gingrich's argument is a
red herring. Forget the Gingrich ploy. A far bigger issue is
whether the administration manipulated the American people into
war. Because if the world was in such danger from a morally corrupt
and weak regime such as Saddam Hussien's, think how it would
fare in the ring with a nation as powerful as the U.S.A. that
has God on it's side. It'd be too much even for Rocky Balboa.
A counter question to Newt would be: If Americans have been so
easily influenced by tainted info to go so far as to launch a
preemptive war and invade a nation --virtually unilaterally--
does that make the world a better place?
But this is something the world
will decide. And when the world decides major proprietary issues
what do we often get? World wars. Let's hope we don't go there
this time.
But, let’s say it again
with feeling: As far as the future's concerned, the better
question is, If the administration lied about this --and remember,
"Administration" is the entity we're dealing with here,
not George Bush-- if the Administration and it's interests have
manipulated the American people into launching a war, does this
make the world a better place?
What has so radically changed
is just this: "For half a century, the United States (could
be counted on) as the pacemaker for progress... With the war
in Iraq, it has not only abandoned this role; it has also given
up its role as guarantor of international rights. And its violation
of international law sets a disastrous precedent for the superpowers
of the future. Let us have no illusions: the normative authority
of the United States of America lies in ruins," says philosopher
and social theorist, Jurgen Habermas.
The trouble with Habermas is
that, "... he believes
that through reason we can understand the world and achieve enlightenment."
He must have been hanging around with Tom Jefferson and that
bunch. What chumps. Not only is he out of step with the times,
but also with Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and the rest of
Bush's double-think people. Still, the muddle-headed philosopher
may just be right about that "normative authority of the
United States of America lying in ruins" thing.
Extreme times make strange bedfellows.
In what may be a miraculous intervention by God, even conservative
George Will is on the left side of this issue. Will said just
the other day, “Some say the war was justified even if WMDs
are not found nor their destruction explained, because the world
is “better off” without Saddam. Of course it is better
off. But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps
even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny — on to
Burma? — it is unacceptable to argue that Saddam’s
mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications
for pre-emptive war.”
Exactly. Make no mistake about
it; what the stooge-ideologist Gingrich is saying is this: "What's
the big deal? The manipulation of the U.S. population by means
of false and misleading information (if if gets them to do what
you want them to do) is not as bad as Saddam Hussien. Not only
that, but as Martha Stewart might say, ‘It‘s even a
good thing’."
But as we've said, whether it’s
a good thing or not is something the world will ultimately decide
for itself and comment upon. But, in the meantime, polls say
70% of us are putting a lot of faith in those hogging and sculpting
information --which reminds me, remember when we had an independent
press?
So, dear citizens, this is what
we'll be hashing out over the next few years: "Will the
United States survive as what it has traditionally been: the
place the world hangs its hopes upon? Or will it suicide-bomb
it's shining city on a hill to smitherines and lapse into infamous
historical tendencies?
It's gonna be a long century.
^
TOP
Saturday-
6/28/03
TEN LIES
Here's
a list of lies compiled by columnist Christopher Sheer. Go here to take a look at Sheer's
examination of each.
LIE #1: "The evidence indicates
that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq
has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other
equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich
uranium for nuclear weapons." – President Bush, Oct.
7, 2002, in Cincinnati.
LIE #2: "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa." – President Bush, Jan.28,
2003, in the State of the Union address.
LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam]
has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." – Vice
President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."
LIE #4: "[The CIA possesses]
solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda
going back a decade." – CIA Director George Tenet in
a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in that
evening's speech by President Bush.
LIE #5: "We've learned
that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons
and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the
Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
– President Bush, Oct. 7.
LIE #6: "We have also discovered
through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned
and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical
or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that
Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]
for missions targeting the United States." – President
Bush, Oct. 7.
LIE #7: "We have seen intelligence
over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons,
and that they have dispersed them and that they're weaponized
and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements
have been established." – President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003,
in a national radio address.
LIE #8: "Our conservative
estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and
500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000
battlefield rockets." – Secretary of State Colin Powell,
Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.
LIE #9: "We know where
[Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad
and east, west, south, and north somewhat." – Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to
the press.
LIE #10: "Yes, we found
a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited."
– President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally
June 1, 2003.
Sheer reports that, "On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks,
five hours after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon,
retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a strange call from someone
(he didn't name names) representing the White House position:
"I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You
got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism.
This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told
Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But –
I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never
got any evidence.' "
My guess is that as long as George Bush is president, we never
will either.
^
TOP
NEVER SPEAK ILL OF THE
DEAD?
They
say we should never speak badly of the dead. I don't know where
that comes from --probably a remnant of ancestor worship-- but
at least one South Carolinian chooses to ignore that bit of folksy
wisdom... and kudos to him.
In an article at Alternet.com examining the life of
recently deceased Strom Thurmond, Christopher George says, "...it's
important to remember people for who they actually were, not
some rose-colored vision of who they were, or pretended to be.
It's with that in mind that I want to paint a picture of what
Strom Thurmond really stood for. He was a racist."
George dismisses apologists for Thurmond who portray him as simply
a product of his time. As if living at a time when everybody
around him believed in the virtues of segregation inoculated
the Senator from charges that he was just another a small man
with a small mind. George's point is that longevity does not
bestow virtue. The truth is, Thurmond negotiated the greater
part of his 100 years with a small mind himself. He did not rise
above his upbringing, he sank into it.
"All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the
Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools,
our churches and our places of recreation and amusement,"
the old Dixiecrat said. This was not a statesman speaking, but
a bigot. And using such means to eventually ride into the senate
and stay there for eons, he was a self-serving bigot as well.
As the reporter
says," Those are not the words of a man caught up in a movement.
That's the voice of a man stoking the fires of hate for political
gain."
It's fitting that such a man would bolt the Democratic Party
in 1964 to join Republicans. He must have thought it was a place
more amenable to his world view. Having accepted him, can it
be argued otherwise?
Go here to read the full article
of one southerner whose fed up with it's past.
^
TOP
IGNORANT AMERICANS, PET SHIEKHS, AND POLITICIANS
What
is an ignorant American? If you don't know ask an Iraqi hinterlands
shiekh. In the British paper The Telegraph, a report
of an interview with
Sheikh Fahran al-Sadeed written by Peter Foster, reveals that
the sheikh, fresh from a meeting with Paul Bremer, the US administrator,
spent most of the time enthusiastically denouncing "ignorant
Americans" and foreigners in general. The shiekh, Foster
was told by a British diplomat, was a very powerful man who heads
Iraq's Shamir tribe.
Giving the reporter a lesson in the complexities of Iraqi politics,
Fahran explained that not all shiekhs are real shiekhs. It seems
that in the 1990s, in an effort to buy loyalty, Saddam Hussien,
created hundreds of "pet shiekhs" in much the same
way that U.S. corporations buy "pet politicians" here
at home. These shiekhs are known derisively in the backlands
as "Shiekh 90s".
Foster learned from Sheikh Fahran, that "...the "fake"
sheikhs are queuing up outside Bremer's office daily for a slice
of the reconstruction pie. He laughs wildly at Bremer's gullibility,
predicting Iraq will be in flames if the Americans don't start
creating jobs and stability soon."
Foster and his entourage made their way through Bedouin areas
protected by a letter written in Arabic from Sheikh Fahran. He
got a hint of the sheikh's influence when he first handed the
letter to a suspicious tribesman later in Baiji, a provincial
oil-town 160 miles north of Baghdad. Foster says they knocked
on the door of a large house and whatever the letter said, it
had "...an almost magical effect. The guard on the gate
...a narrowed-eyed Bedouin with a loaded gun (looked) at us suspiciously
until the letter (was) produced, with Sheikh Fahran's personal
card attached. Suddenly those eyes are wide open."
In an another
interview later, in a Bedouin settlement about 30 miles west
of Baghdad, Foster, trying to assess the local attitude about
the war, asked the Headman what he felt now. Was he happy to
see the back of Saddam? " 'Of course,' he says, adding in
the same breath that he hates the American "invader".
The Coalition ceased to be "liberators" after the first
day," Foster observed.
"Is life better since the war? No, he says, it's worse.
Before the war, the ministry gave them food every month. Contrary
to all the assurances given by Mr Bremer at his Baghdad press
conferences, the headman says the American-led authority gives
them nothing. The food is not getting through."
The tales told to Foster by poor rural Iraqis for the most part,
cast a negative light on Americans. For more of what we're up
against read Foster's report here.
^
TOP
 Friday- 6/27/03
WHEN ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS EVERYTHING IS UP FOR GRABS
There
was a time the right bashed the left for doing bad things for
good causes. It was justified bashing then and it's justified
now. But now the shoe's on the other foot. As Robert Sheer notes
in an article at Alternet.com,
"Immoral and undemocratic means lead inevitably to immoral
and undemocratic ends."
"With the administration's core rationale for invading Iraq
– saving the world from Saddam Hussein's deadly arsenal
– almost wholly discredited," Sheer says, "the
Republicans now want us to believe that any distortions of the
truth should have been forgotten once we took Baghdad."
As Newt Gingrich put it last week: "Does even the most left-wing
Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would
be better off with Saddam in power?" What Gingrich is saying
of course is that lying to the American people to start a war
is ok by him. There seems to be general agreement among Republicans
and the American people (so far) that Gingrich is right.
"It was OK to lie about the nonexistent evidence of ties
between Hussein and Al Qaeda. It was OK to lie about the U.N.
weapons inspectors, claiming they were suckered by Hussein. It
was OK to lie, not only to Americans but to our allies in this
war, about "intelligence" alleging that Iraq's military
had chemical and biological weapons deployed in the field. Only
it's not OK. Washington's verbal attack on the U.N. inspectors,
for example, is of no small consequence, undermining global efforts
to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation."
When ends-justify-means becomes accepted practice you get things
like airliners smashing into towers and Pentagons, and everyone
invading everyone else. You get chaos, as in Israel today. You
get brutal dictatorships like that of Stalin and Saddam Hussein
himself. You get what you really don't want.
Scheer says, "This administration's behavior is an affront
to the nation's founders and the system of governance they crafted.
It is sad that we now have a president who acts like a king and
a Congress that acts like his pawn."
^
TOP
BYRD
BLASTS BUSH COVERUP
"Mr. President,
the American people have questions that need to be answered about
why we went to war with Iraq. To attempt to deny the relevance
of these questions is to trivialize the people's trust."
But trivializing trust is the name of the game with these guys.
It's their policy.
Read the senator's article here.
UNDER
THE PERCH WHEN THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
If you
need more evidence you can't trust what you find in American
news media go here. If you don't care,
don't bother, but then don't blame me when you find yourself
under the perch when the chickens come home to roost.
Investigative reporter, Greg Palast, reports after a trip
to Venezuela, that the reporting in this country of what's happening
in that country is somewhat distorted. He says coverage in the
United States plays up the demonstrations against Venezuelan
President, Hugo Chavez, and ignors the greater pro-Chavez crowds.
One example of this, Palast says, is that, "Last June, on
Page One of the San Francisco Chronicle, an Associated Press
photo of a mass of demonstrators carried the following caption:
"TENS OF
THOUSANDS OF VENEZUELANS OPPOSED TO PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ..."
The caption let
us know this South American potentate was a killer, an autocrat,
and the people of his nation wanted him out. The caption continued:
"[Venezuelans] marched Saturday to demand his resignation
and punishment for those responsible for 17 deaths during a coup
in April. 'Chavez leave now!' read a huge banner."
The reporter confirmed the large anti-Chavez demonstration. He
said he'd been in Caracas and, "...watched 100,000 march
against President Chavez. I'd filmed them for BBC Television
London."
However, that's
not the end of the story. He adds, "But I also filmed this:
a larger march, easily over 200,000 Venezuelans marching in support
of their president, Chavez. That picture, of the larger pro-Chavez
march, did not appear in a single U.S. newspaper. The pro-Chavez
marchers weren't worth a mention."
Why might this be, you ask? Palast has an answer.
"Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers
in Venezuela. Note their color. White. And not just any white.
A creamy rich white.
"I interviewed
them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up
bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation
owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.
And the color
of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola
nuts – just like their hero, their President Chavez. They
wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts."
Palast Explains:
"For five centuries, Venezuela has been run by a minority
of very white people, pure-blood descendants of the Spanish conquistadors.
To most of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are brown, Hugo
Chavez is their Nelson Mandela, the man who will smash the economic
and social apartheid that has kept the dark-skinned millions
stacked in cardboard houses in the hills above Caracas while
the whites live in high-rise splendor in the city center. Chavez,
as one white Caracas reporter told me with a sneer, gives them
bricks and milk, and so they vote for him.
"Why am
I explaining the basics of Venezuela to you? If you watched BBC
TV, or Canadian Broadcasting, you'd know all this stuff. But
if you read the New York Times, you'll only know that President
Chavez is an "autocrat," a "ruinous demagogue,"
and a "would-be dictator," who resigned when he recognized
his unpopularity."
Does it occur to you that we may be being manipulated by our
press?...Nah.
Read the rest of the article here, then go scream at some
media mogul, complain to our right-wing congress... or may George
Bush would listen.
^ TOP
INCOMES
UP, TAXES DOWN
 Not that it's surprising but...
"The 400 wealthiest taxpayers
accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United
States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight
years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue
Service. But their tax burden plummeted over the period."
So says a
report in today's NY Times.
"The data, in a report that
the I.R.S. released last night, shows that the average income
of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers was almost $174 million in 2000.
That was nearly quadruple the $46.8 million average in 1992.
The minimum income to qualify for the list was $86.8 million
in 2000, more than triple the minimum income of $24.4 million
of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 1992."
Two sides of the coin:
"The Citizens For Tax Justice favors higher taxes on the
wealthy, and its director, Robert S. McIntyre, said yesterday
that the I.R.S. data bolsters that viewpoint. "Regardless
of which party these 400 are in, these are the guys Bush wants
to help, even though they have so much money they don't know
what to do with it," he said. "How Bush feels about
the half of the population that doesn't have much money is he
got them a tax cut worth an average of $19 each.
"William W. Beach, a tax
expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization
that favors lowering taxes for all Americans, said that the top
400 taxpayers made "the significant contribution" to
government revenue — about one in every $64 of individual
income tax paid. Cutting taxes, he said, will prompt the wealthy
to invest more in the economy's growth."
...and then find ways to increase profits by squeezing labor
al la American
Airlines... or just steal it outright al la Enron.
LEONID
BREZHNEV IS ALIVE AND KICKING?
When is an NGO (Non Governmental
Organization) not an NGO? When it's a Governmental Organization!
In another of it's get-government-on-our-backs tactics, the Bush
administration is threatening what have until now been NGOs.
Here's what's going on (from a commentary
in the Canadian Globe
and Mail):
"On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID,
gave a speech blasting U.S. NGOs for failing to play a role many
of them didn't realize they had been assigned: doing public relations
for the U.S. government. According to InterAction, the network
of 160 relief and development NGOs that hosted the conference,
Mr. Natsios was "irritated" that starving and sick
Iraqi and Afghan children didn't realize that their food and
vaccines were coming to them courtesy of George W. Bush. From
now on, NGOs had to do a better job of linking their humanitarian
assistance to U.S. foreign policy and making it clear that they
are "an arm of the U.S. government." If they didn't,
InterAction reported, "Natsios threatened to personally
tear up their contracts and find new partners."
So the party that wants to get government off our backs really
just wants to get government off business's back, forget about
freedom of thought for evrybody else.
According to the article's author, Naomi Klien, the corruption
works this way: "The war on NGOs is being fought on two
clear fronts. One buys the silence and complicity of mainstream
humanitarian and religious groups by offering lucrative reconstruction
contracts. The other marginalizes and criminalizes more independent-minded
NGOs by claiming that their work is a threat to democracy.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is in charge
of handing out the carrots, while the American Enterprise Institute,
the most powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., is wielding
the sticks."
Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands "unprecedented,"
and says, "It looks like the NGOs aren't independent and
can't speak for themselves about what they see and think."
Many humanitarian leaders are
shocked to hear their work described as "an arm" of
government; most see themselves as independent (that would be
the "non-governmental" part of the name).
The rationale behind this further move to stifle dissent "...takes
as its premise the idea that there is something sinister about
"unelected" groups of citizens getting together to
try to influence their government. "The extraordinary growth
of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to
undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies,"
the site claims.
These were methods used in the
now defunct country we used to worry so much about. We'd better
not stop worrying yet; thought control is on the rise at home
spearheaded by the most dangerous president ever to be unelected.
Either that or Leonid Brezhnev is alive an kicking and running
things from John Poindexter's old White House basement office.
^
TOP
PREVIOUS DAYS> |
THE
ORIGIN OF ALL WARS IS
THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH
--SOCRATES, PHAEDO
THE COST
OF WAR:
A
RUNNING TALLY
|
> ROLLING
BACK THE 20TH CENTURY
> FISCAL TRAINWRECK
> A
NEW POLICY: FIDUCIARY MENDACITY
> COMMENTARY:
LESS BEAUTIFUL AND NOBLE
A
FABLE
A
STRANGE TALE OUT OF EDEN
PRAY
ABOUT:
BUSH
AND GOD
CHECK OUT
|
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questionW
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FEATURE COMMENTARIES
Red
Herrings and Front-men
"Does even the most left-wing
Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would
be better off with Saddam in power?" This is Newt Gingrich's
justification for the war. This is the sleight-of-hand now in
play by front-men. This defensive shift in the justification
for war is taking place all over the news from president Bush
on down. But it should not be surprising to find such good Christian
men adhering to the observation of Don Marquis, an American humorist
of the early 20th century, who said that, "Honesty is
a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless
it is kept under control." Boosting profit and keeping
honesty under control permeates the atmosphere of the Bush administration.
In fact, if we're going haul ourselves out of this mess, we'll
need a Pentagon-sized Department of Debunkers headed by the Amazing
Randy with under-secretaries Penn & Teller whistle-stopping
the country deflating illusions .
Less
Beautiful and Noble
By the time the average U.S. citizen wakes from his-and-her reality
tv, comfort, and fear-induced stupor there won't be a single
social or regulatory program of the federal government left.
For Republican neoconservatives this is exactly the point. To
follow their rhetoric, government-funded programs such as public
education, social security, medicare, and universal health care
coverage, run counter to the dictates of a market economy and
thwart the will of God. With George Bush's tax-cut orgies, by
the time Dubya supporters John and Jane Doe (at the moment among
post-9/11 hyper-patriotic 70-percenters) realize they've participated
in their own enronization every single one of those programs
will have been sucked into the investment portfolios of the richest
among us.
The Grandure of the Deceit
Today we have an
administration that misled us into a war and manipulates information
without shame, creating lies that have resulted in death and
destruction and altered the character of the nation, and the
right claims it’s unpatriotic to be critical. It’s
not. If we're talking about mendacity, the difference between
the Clinton and Bush administrations is simply the the grandure
of the deceit.
Is
Iraq His Elizabeth Smart ?
By all the evidence
I've come to believe that faithfulness to God is like anything
else in this world, it's only as good as its practitioner. Sometimes
faith leads to self immolation, sometimes to the immolation of
others; sometimes the practitioner goes to jail, sometimes he
starts a religion, sometimes he even gets declared president
by the Supreme Court. In the beginning (to quote a phrase), there's
no way of telling where it'll end up. This puts religious faith
in the same class as everything else we do and should not be
relied upon as a guarantee of right-action. |
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